Morning briefing Friday 21st November

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters? PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands, so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk This is the Times Morning Briefing for Friday the 21st of November. President Zelensky will discuss a sweeping US-Russian peace plan for Ukraine with President Trump in the coming days.

0:45The 28-point plan appears to reward Moscow for its invasion, and was drafted by Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, and his Russian counterpart in Miami at the end of October. It seems to include Kiev giving up some of its eastern territory and limiting the size of its armed forces to 600 ,000 personnel. It would also see Russia reintegrated into the global economy. Caitlin Dornbass was one of the first journalists to see the plan. She spoke to Times Radio saying her sources told her Ukraine were on board. I've spoken to very senior US officials who say that the plan is exactly as it has been reported.

1:25And additionally, it gave me some further details of how that came to be. Apparently it came to be with the inputs of both Moscow and Kyiv. But Professor Scott Lucas, who is from University College Dublin's Clinton Institute, which focuses on America and its global relations, says privately Ukraine is against the plan and reports they believe it's workable, a political spin from Trump's team. Now, Zelensky is not going to come flat out and reject this proposal. Because if you reject the proposal, you're going to tick Donald Trump off. And if you tick Donald Trump off, he'll simply go into Vladimir Putin's pocket.

2:03So you don't do that. Zelensky and European partners, including the UK, will keep saying, all right, let's discuss exactly what we mean by each of these terms. Some 23 ,000 people died unnecessarily from COVID because the British government's response to the pandemic was too little too late. That's according to a damning official report. The COVID-19 inquiry condemned inexcusable failings by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister at the time, to appreciate the calamity facing the UK. It concluded national lockdowns could have been avoided entirely if ministers had reacted more quickly to control the virus in February 2020.

2:46The chair, Baroness Hallett, particularly criticised how number 10 was run, saying there was a toxic culture there. Marcus Beard was the UK government's head of misinformation monitoring during the pandemic. We were faced with a threat that was ten times like anything we had ever seen. So we had to throw out the rulebook and rebuild one from scratch. And teams across government in health in Downing Street and across all kinds of government departments absolutely had to rebuild the rules from scratch. Boris Johnson has previously apologised for his government's reaction to the pandemic. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to formally approve a new supersized Chinese embassy in the heart of London next month after being given the green light by the intelligence services.

3:32The Times has been told that the Home Office and the Foreign Office will not raise any formal objections to the plan, providing that appropriate mitigations are put in place to protect national security. Richard Spencer is the Times' China correspondent. We understood that the main objection to this embassy was from the security services or the security establishment. And if MI5 and MI6 are not expected to put any major objections to this embassy approval, then that's quite surprising. Starmer is also expected to travel to China next year as Britain seeks to bolster economic relations with Beijing, despite concerns it's carrying out large-scale espionage against the UK.

4:16This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Quick question. When was the last time a display ad changed your mind?

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