City profiles
Sir Richard Branson Virgin Atlantic marked its new service between Heathrow and Seattle with a “ceremonial flight”, featuring a special “on-theground welcome” from Sir Richard Branson, said USA Today. Virgin views Seattle as a “young, entrepreneurial, innovative, outdoorsy, risktaking city”, and thus “a great fit” with its brand. Sir Richard is less enamoured, though, of President Trump, said Newshub.co.nz. On his recent trip to New Zealand, he laid into his “fellow magnate”. The “only saving grace” of the presidency, said Branson, is that “the first days in office have been so disastrous” that “the chances of him lasting more than one term are extremely unlikely”. In other business, Branson urged Kiwi farmers to swap dairy farming for cannabis cultivation. “You should legalise it, grow it, tax it, regulate it,” he said.
The European Commission president once said that power had “an erotic quality”, says Lionel Barber in the FT. But Jean-claude Juncker admits now to finding it “less and less erotic”. As Britain’s divorce proceedings begin, he describes Brexit as “a tragedy, and people do not know that this tragedy will lead to conclusions”. He thinks the UK will face an exit bill of at least s60bn, and that Theresa May is, at heart, a Brexiter. David Cameron, he says, always warned him: “I have one major problem. If May publicly says that she is for Brexit then we are lost.” Juncker doesn’t think history will judge Cameron kindly. “I have met two big destroyers: Gorbachev who destroyed the Soviet Union, and Cameron who destroyed the United Kingdom.”