Top story: Huge defeat for centre-left government

Italy faces a hung parliament after exit polls forecast that more than half of the votes cast in the country’s general election went to populist parties in a devastating rejection of the centre-left government. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement looks like being the biggest party with 31% of the vote, a remarkable result for a party formed nine years ago by the comedian, Beppe Grillo. Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition won 36% of the votes and hopes to form a government. If the coalition does secure a majority, the 81-year-old Berlusconi would not be allowed to become prime minister again because of a tax conviction. That would potentially clear the way to power for Matteo Salvini, leader of coalition partner the League (formerly known as the Northern League) and a man who wants immigrants to be deported en masse.

Our Rome correspondent, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, says Italians will nevertheless wake up this morning with no idea who their next prime minister will be. Forecasts have been wrong before and there is much horse trading to be done under the country’s complicated electoral system. But it is clear that Italians, following the populist pattern of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France and huge gains by the far-right party AfD in Germany, have rejected the centre-left government of Matteo Renzi and his campaign message of economic recovery. You can follow the latest machinations at our live blog here.

Wiggins questioned – One of Britain’s greatest sporting success stories is under a cloud today after an explosive report by MPs suggested that Team Sky and Sir Bradley Wiggins used performance-enhancing drugs to win the 2012 Tour de France. Wiggins became one of the country’s most celebrated athletes after his ground-breaking victory in cycling’s greatest race, which he followed up with a gold medal a month later at the London Olympics. But a long-awaited report by the Commons select committee for digital, culture, media and sport concludes that Team Sky abused the anti-doping system to allow Wiggins, and possibly support riders, to take powerful corticosteroids to prepare them for the Tour de France. Team Sky has always claimed that Wiggins took the decongestant fluimucil but MPs say they found this explanation “implausible” and that they believe he took corticosteroids to improve his power-to-weight ratio before the race. Wiggins denies the claims and says he hopes to “have his say” in the coming days.

The report could signal the end for Team Sky and its manager, Sir David Brailsford, who are already under investigation after their star rider Chris Froome failed a drug test in December. Our sports news correspondent Martha Kelner asks how much longer this organisation can continue “when every scintilla of credibility they had as a completely clean team has been decimated by another inquiry”.

‘Put the kettle on, Mum’ – Gary Oldman triumphed over fellow British nominees Daniel Day-Lewis and Daniel Kaluuya to win the Oscar for best actor for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour at the Academy Awards in Hollywood. In his acceptance speech, the Londoner thanked the movie industry for “giving him a dream” and told his 99-year-old mother: “Put the kettle on, I’m bringing Oscar home.” But it fell to Frances McDormand, a popular winner of best actress for Three Billboards, to electrify the audience with a rousing speech in which she exhorted all female nominees to stand up and urged producers to back their projects. She concluded: “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ‘inclusion rider’.” She was referring to a Hollywood contractual term which requires cast and crew on a film to meet a certain level of diversity.

The best picture award went to the cold war fantasy thriller The Shape of Water, and the film’s director, Guillermo del Toro, made it a double triumph by picking up the Oscar for his work. Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor for Three Billboards, while Allison Janney won best supporting actress for her dark turn as the mother of the ice skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya.

Check out the full list of full list of winners and, if you went to bed at a sensible time, you can can recreate the suspense by reading back through our live blog here. And, of course, you can’t miss our gallery of glamorous pictures from the red carpet.

Tax the rich, Tory says – David Willetts, a former Conservative cabinet minister, is proposing higher taxes on the baby boomer generation as a way of reducing the fiscal burden on younger people as spending on healthcare, education and welfare increases rapidly in the next two decades. Willetts, now head of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, will say in a speech today that although his proposed 15p income tax rise for wealthy homeowners and pensioners would be “unpalatable” for many Tories, the debate can no longer be delayed. He also wants the “regressive” council tax replaced with a property tax.

Carillion fail – The government failed to force the directors of the collapsed contracting giant Carillion to adopt a restructuring plan that could have saved millions of pounds in public money. Several sources have told the Guardian that the consultants EY devised a plan in December to sell off profitable parts of the company and place the rest into liquidation, avoiding an involuntary collapse. The plan could have salvaged £364m, EY believed, and reduced the £1bn deficit of the company’s 13 pension schemes, a chunk of which must now be covered by taxpayers. But ministers believed it was not appropriate to advise Carillion’s directors what to do.

Loss of appetite – Brexit has copped the blame for a lot of things, from the fall in the pound to a rise in racist attacks. But it also seems that it has put us off our food – or at least eating out in restaurants. A new study says that one in three of the UK’s top 100 restaurant groups are making a loss as households reconsider their budgets in the wake of uncertainty around leaving the EU, says the report by accountancy group UHY Hacker Young. The mid-market chains Jamie’s Italian, Prezzo and Strada are among the eateries to have announced closures.

Lunchtime read: The inhumanity of Britain’s immigration system

Our columnist Nesrine Malik offers the fascinating, astounding fact that there have been 45,000 changes to the UK’s immigration laws since Theresa May became home secretary in 2010. And Nesrine should know: she’s been battling to win British citizenship for most of that time. She details that battle today in a powerful account of a process so dehumanising that she describes feeling only “exhaustion and sadness” when she finally became British last year. All she looked forward to, she says, was that she would never have to think about any of it again. She longed to feel integrated by her love of Britain but found the process blighted by what she calls the “administrative incompetence and politically instructed cruelty” to fulfil targets on migration that the government cannot meet and is too proud to jettison.



Sport

Antonio Conte branded the Sky Sports pundits Jamie Redknapp and Gary Neville “stupid” after they described Chelsea’s display in their 1-0 defeat by Manchester City as “anti-football” and “embarrassing”. In Italy, on what was supposed to be the biggest weekend of the season, Serie A stopped for Davide Astori, the Fiorentina captain who died on Saturday aged 31. Tributes have continued to flow for Sir Roger Bannister, the gentleman athlete who almost didn’t run the race that defined him, Sean Ingle writes. And Kyle Edmund replaces Andy Murray as Britain’s No1 player today; the 23-year-old Yorkshireman concedes his elevation owes as much to the Scot’s enforced nine-month sabbatical as his own rapid improvement over the past year.



Business

UK manufacturers are on course to outpace growth in GDP, according to a new report, but they can only dream of the sort of expansion promised for the Chinese economy. Premier Li Keqiang said in a speech to the people’s congress in Beijing today that the economy was set to grow by 6.5% this year.

The euro has been calm in overnight trade despite the Italian election result. It has slipped slightly on the pound to €1.118 although the Italian stock market looks set for a dip of 1.5%. Sterling buys $1.379 this morning.

The papers

The Sun reports the Team Sky story (see above) and has the head line “Wiggo doping shock”, calling the MPs’ report a “bombshell”.

The Guardian also has the story on its front but splashes on news that the government could have recouped millions of pounds for taxpayers from Carillion – but did not pursue a proposed rescue plan in December.

The Mirror has a picture of the late Roger Bannister on the front and a story alleging a person was given a job in the NHS despite having been jailed for a scam involving it.

The Mail says millions of people are being told to ration their water use as the big freeze has caused so many burst pipes.

The Express, meanwhile, has a story about a “pensions shock” saying many people are cashing in their pensions without realising only the first 25% of that is tax-free.

The Telegraph says doubts are being raised over historical accusations against British troops in Iraq.

The FT leads with a Trump adviser saying there would be no exemptions to the steel tariffs the president wants to impose – even for allies. The Times says Theresa May has told Donald Trump not to launch a trade war.



For more news: www.theguardian.com

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