Top story: Cost of city ambitions too high

Hello, it’s Warren Murray reading you in this morning.

More of England’s young people are getting stuck in the small towns where they grew up or went to university because they cannot afford rent in cities or regional hubs where wages are higher, says the Resolution Foundation thinktank. It has found the number of people aged 25 to 34 starting a new job and moving home has fallen 40% over the last two decades.

A person on average earnings in Scarborough paying average rent would have been 29% better off by moving to Leeds in 1997. In 2018, rising rents and stagnant wages mean the benefit is 4%. Moving from Sunderland to York in 1997 would have been worth a 6% rise in earnings after rent, but would now result in a 24% fall.

The phenomenon is not just affecting the young. Someone working in a school in Cornwall, for example, would be considerably poorer moving to a similar job in Bristol. The findings come alongside Affordable Housing Commission research that 43% of all renters are facing affordability problems and 5.5 million are unable to buy their own home.

D-day anniversary – World leaders will attend ceremonies today on the beaches of Normandy, where 75 years ago Allied troops landed to push Nazi forces out of France. On an occasion that will mix politics with poignant historical remembrance, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will first meet Theresa May to launch the construction of a British memorial at Ver-sur-Mer. Macron and Donald Trump will hold private talks followed by a working lunch after a ceremony at the US military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. The site overlooking Omaha beach holds 9,400 graves – representing 40% of the American forces killed during the weeks of fighting that followed the D-day landings.

Play Video 1:59 May, Trump and Macron speak at D-day 75th anniversary ceremony – video highlights

Tens of thousands of French and foreign visitors have converged on the Normandy coast for this year’s commemorations to honour the dwindling number of firsthand witnesses to the fighting. Justin Trudeau will attend a ceremony at Juno beach, where Canadian forces were in charge of the assault. On 6 June 1944, now known as the “longest day”, 156,000 troops landed on the beaches chosen for the D-day invasion, most of them American, British and Canadian. It remains the largest amphibious assault in history, claiming the lives of an estimated 4,400 troops in the first day alone.

Bad news for Bridgend – Ford is planning to close its Bridgend engine plant in Wales, with the likely loss of about 1,700 jobs. The announcement is expected today at the plant, which has been making engines since 1980. Cost-cutting by Ford across Europe, the end of the plant’s contract to make engines for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), and of course Brexit are thought to be factors in the decision. Honda has announced the closure of its Swindon plant in 2021 while Nissan has scrapped plans to built its X-Trail model at Sunderland. JLR, Britain’s biggest carmaker, is also cutting jobs. The Unite union is due to meet with Ford management this morning.

Trump tramples Troubles – Donald Trump has managed to compare Ireland’s post-Brexit border dilemma to the US border with Mexico. The US president, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said: “I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border.” Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall. “I think you do, I think you do,” Trump said. “The way it works now is good, you want to try and to keep it that way.” The awkward meeting at Shannon airport took part amid a heavy police and security presence in Ireland with the visit by Trump, unpopular in the country, the subject of protests in Shannon and Dublin. Today, Trump will travel to France for D-day commemorations before returning to his currently barricaded golf and hotel resort in Doonbeg, County Clare, and then going home.

Centre-left to lead Danish government – Denmark’s Social Democrats have claimed victory in parliamentary elections with 25.9% of the vote. The centre-right Liberals of outgoing prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen reached 23.4% while the populist, far-right Danish People’s party (DPP) plunged to 8.7% – less than half their tally in the last election. The Social Democrat-led “red bloc” of leftist parties won 91 seats in the 179-seat Folketing, against 75 for Rasmussen’s rival “blue bloc”. Mette Frederiksen, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, says she intends to form a minority government with ad hoc support of other parties.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mette Frederiksen, leader of Denmark’s opposition Social Democrats. Photograph: Ritzau Scanpix/Reuters

Denmark’s mainstream parties have in recent years adopted hardline anti-immigration policies previously the preserve of the far right. Frederiksen has defended her party’s backing for many of the restrictive immigration measures passed by the outgoing government, mostly instigated and supported by the DPP. Most of the other “red bloc” parties do not back the Social Democrats’ immigration policies, so coalition-making looks tricky.

Surrogacy reform overdue – Laws governing surrogacy should be updated to allow intended parents to assume the status of legal parents as soon as a baby is born, rather than having to wait months, according to the law commissions of England, Wales and Scotland. Their consultation recommends ending the requirement for intended parents to have a genetic link to the child. Profit-seeking surrogacy agencies should remain banned, the commission’s report suggests, while calling for public views on surrogacy payments. The consultation also calls for a national register allowing those born through surrogacy access to information about their conception. Current surrogacy laws are unchanged since the 1980s.

Fish and scripts – The Cornish fishing village of Mevagissey is looking for a new GP. Dr Katherine James has announced she will be handing back her contract to run the local surgery on 31 July and it is feared 5,300 patients will be forced to travel elsewhere for treatment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Marlene Behennah, who was Mevagissey’s GP for 30 years. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

The town has launched a campaign – hashtag #willyoubemygp – aiming to woo doctors with picturesque, winding streets, friendly folk and superior fish and chips. In a campaign video posted on the Cornwall Channel, a crowd of residents chant: “Be our GP. We are a lovely community. We need you.” Dr Marlene Behennah, Mevagissey-born and a doctor at the surgery for 30 years until 2002, said she was “very very sad” the surgery might close. “I mean, this is my life’s work.”

Today in Focus podcast: China’s other Tiananmen Squares

Lily Kuo, the Guardian’s Beijing bureau chief, discusses reporting on the hundreds of other Chinese cities that were involved in the student protests in 1989. And: Patrick Wintour on Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Sudan’s military crackdown.

Lunchtime read: Lies, damned lies and economics

The familiar political explanation for rising economic inequality is the huge shift in economic and political thinking, in favour of free markets, during the reigns of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It fits the facts – across developed economies, the biggest rise in inequality since 1945 occurred in the US and UK from 1980 onwards.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration: Guardian Design/Christophe Gowans

But that explanation, writes Jonathan Aldred, is too top-down: it is all about what politicians and other elites do to us, and looks like a convenient myth that lets us avoid thinking about another possibility: that through our electoral choices and decisions in daily life we have supported rising inequality, or at least acquiesced in it. “Inequality is unlikely to fall much in the future unless our attitudes turn unequivocally against it. Among other things, we will need to accept that how much people earn in the market is often not what they deserve, and that the tax they pay is not taking from what is rightfully theirs.”

Sport

English football lurched back to the bad old days on Wednesday night when hundreds of supporters were baton-charged by riot police after hurling bottles and goading officers at a fan zone in Porto. Meanwhile, Cristiano Ronaldo’s two late goals, added to a first-half effort, gave Portugal a 3-1 win in the Nations League semi-final after Switzerland. Eden Hazard is set to join Real Madrid after the Spanish club and Chelsea agreed a fee in the region of €100m (£88.5m) plus add-ons.

Rohit Sharma’s patient century guided India to a six-wicket victory to leave South Africa staring at a Cricket World Cup exit after their third defeat in three games. And Johanna Konta, the British No 1, can reach her first grand slam final with victory in Paris on Friday but even if she fails she is enjoying her tennis again and believes that is the reason for her resurgence.

Business

Japan’s Nikkei has eked out some small gains overnight as Asian markets were hampered by concerns about the US trade rows with Mexico and China, prompting investors to buy domestic-demand oriented shares. Mexican and American officials claimed progress in White House talks late on Wednesday but Donald Trump declared it was “not nearly enough” to halt the import taxes he wants to impose if the flow of migrants to America’s southern border is not addressed. The IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, has told Reuters that escalating tariff threats are sapping business and market confidence, and could slow growth that is currently expected to improve next year. The pound is worth $1.268 and €1.129 this morning while the FTSE is due to open a bit higher.

The papers

D-day commemorations feature on many of the front pages today. The Mirror says “On behalf of the free world... thank you”, the Mail says we have “A debt we can never repay”, the Telegraph praises “The resilient generation”, the Times calls the commemorations “A salute to sacrifice”, the Express urges the country: “Let us never forget their sacrifice” and the Sun leads on the Queen’s speech on the anniversary: “Maj generation”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guardian front page, Thursday 6 June 2019.

The i and the Guardian have pictures from the commemorations but splash on different stories. The i’s lead is “Save our NHS”, saying the country needs to resist any attempts to sell off the health service to the US, and the Guardian’s is: “Social services accused of failing toddlers murdered in their homes”.

The FT also has a picture of commemorations, featuring the Queen, Donald Trump, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron. Its top story is: “Woodford fund crisis deepens as St James’s Place cuts $3.5bn ties”.

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