Tabloid money…
another headache for the Queen
● Prince Charles’s close aide is facing a possible police probe over claims a Saudi billionaire was offered a knighthood and a British passport if he donated £1.5m to the prince’s charities. Michael Fawcett (pictured) has stepped down temporarily as the £95,000-a-year chief executive of The Prince’s Foundation (he has not commented on the claim, while the billionaire denies any wrongdoing). “Spare a thought for the Queen.” says The Sun. She should be looking forward to her Platinum Jubilee next year, “with a settled monarchy ready for transition”. Now she must contend with a potential scandal for Charles, while US prosecutors want to question her favourite son, Prince Andrew, as a witness in an inquiry into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The only winners in this seemingly neverending mess are the screenwriters for The Crown.”
● The government is talking up its “bold plan to inject more cash into the health and social care systems” as a tax increase to save the NHS, says Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express. Let’s hope that the £36bn allocated over the next three years doesn’t become another “subsidy for the expansion of bloated officialdom”. After all, on the day that Boris Johnson announced his plan, the NHS was recruiting 42 new chief executives on an average salary of £223,000 to “oversee the establishment of ‘integrated boards’” to manage the co-ordination of healthcare and other social services. The “high level of public affection” for the NHS “cannot hide the reality that its resources are not always used wisely”.
● Takeover deals “have come fast and thick in recent months”, says Alex Brummer in The Daily Mail. The battle for Morrison’s is eyecatching, but most others are “relatively small, in the single billions”. The real test for politicians will come when a bigger FTSE 100 beast is targeted. BT is a top target; French billionaire Patrick Drahi owns 12.1% and could “get close to effective control” if he bought Deutsche Telecom’s 12% stake. GlaxoSmithKline is another potential target; it is undergoing a “difficult transition” and activist investors are “shaking the tree”. The government has navigated “the choppy Britain-for-sale waters” so far, but it would face a “real dilemma” over whether to block bids for firms such as these.