Osborne can only pray as the storm in Europe rages

The Scream - it's all we can to prepare for eurozone meltdown

The Chancellor and No 10 seem powerless to act, while many Tories call for bolder measures

A British explorer on a round-the-world expedition described this week how a raging tropical storm left her trapped in the cramped cabin of her battered rowing boat, water seeping through the door, while waves smashed her equipment and rolled her over and over. Sarah Outen scrawled the words “breathe” and “smile” on her hands to help her fight off panic. Eventually she sent out an SOS, and sailors from the Japanese coastguard flew deep into the Pacific to pluck her to safety.

I haven’t checked his hands lately, but George Osborne reminds me of that young sailor: the Chancellor’s adventure has been turned into a test of endurance. He is trapped by the economic crisis raging all around him, powerless, upended, clinging on while external forces batter Britain. The economy has sprung leaks and may yet sink. There is no one – least of all Japan – capable of answering a distress call.

Westminster is running out of analogies to describe the horror the Government is going through. Another way to illustrate the mood among ministers and officials confronted with the euro crisis and our teetering economy is to imitate Munch’s The Scream: hands to head, mouth opened in a howl of despair. Certainly behind the scenes the feeling of worry, bordering on fear, is palpable. The prospect of an economic cataclysm terrifies the upper reaches of the Government. In public it is all confident smiles, but in private they are dead scared. Politically, meanwhile, every assumption has been ground to ashes. Instead of recovery leading to re-election, all they can see ahead is stagnation and uncertainty. Is there anything they can do?

This question will shape politics between now and 2015. Mr Osborne says “yes, but not much”. Some of his Tory colleagues say – none too loudly – “frankly, no, we’re stuffed”. Others, though, say “yes, plenty” and accuse him of lily-livered timidity and worse. On Sunday, the Chancellor argued that the crisis in the eurozone is killing a recovery already struggling against the effect of rising oil prices and the legacy of debt left by Labour. What the British economy needs above all things, he said, is a resolution that brings certainty to the fate of the euro and its members. His argument carried force because it is self-evident. We are sufficiently entwined with the eurozone to make us dependent on its success, or lack of it. The majority view seems to be that Mr Osborne is right: whatever tinkering the Treasury can come up with – a tax tweak there, a regulatory change here – nothing will affect our prospects like an end to the uncertainty tearing apart the euro. Markets, companies, even governments, have put everything on hold while we wait. And wait.

But a policy of wait and see immediately invites questions. For a start it is too Micawberish, suggesting ministers are powerless and paralysed while they hope for something to turn up. Mr Osborne may be right about the overwhelming nature of the external crisis Britain faces, but it does not follow that there is nothing to be done. Nor is he suggesting that is the case. Tomorrow he will use his Mansion House speech to remind us of the scale of the challenge. He will also sketch out what more the Government can do while members of the eurozone argue among themselves. Next month will bring further announcements on credit easing, infrastructure spending, and housing investment. Those around Mr Osborne will tell you that action is possible in Europe itself: both he and David Cameron have been forthright in urging Angela Merkel and others to resolve their differences and address the crisis. They will do so again at this month’s crucial G20 meeting and then the all-important European Council. Britain may not be in the euro, but the Prime Minister and Chancellor want to be in the debate about its future. From Berlin, it must be said, the message is different: Mr Cameron’s refusal to endorse the new euro treaty before Christmas, and his withdrawal from the German-led EPP group in the European parliament, have marginalised Britain. The eurogroup is far more likely to consult Washington than London.

The Treasury is trying hard to resist the temptation to wish things would get worse. There are plenty on the Conservative side who are beginning to think that whatever the dangers, a sudden, cathartic moment which saw Greece or others ejected from the eurozone, or even a disorderly break-up of the single currency, would be better than the long-term damage done by years of stagnation. Better a short, sharp disaster now, than one that goes on and on. Mr Osborne understands too well the appeal of such a logic. “A total meltdown is a very risky thing to wish for,” one ally says. “Once you start to look at the implications, it’s quite terrifying.” It’s for that reason the Chancellor has decided – reluctantly – to urge the Europeans on towards some kind of fiscal union that might bring stability to the euro. “It may stick in the throat because we don’t really believe in it, but any hard-headed analysis tells you it’s the right thing to do.”

Among Conservatives, however, there is a growing number who say he can do even more. They want Mr Osborne to be more daring, and are growing increasingly vocal and public in their criticism. If things get worse – certainly if the euro breaks up – then all bets are off and Mr Osborne will be freed of the constraints of the Coalition. He will have permission to do things that he does not currently contemplate, including unfunded tax cuts and a radical paring-down of employment regulations. Privately, he recognises this may become necessary. Tory MPs speak of an emergency Budget acting as a defibrillator on a moribund economy, with tax cuts and a programme to pump credit straight to businesses, possibly through the state-owned RBS.

Months of omnishambles culminated in an unprecedented set of Budget U-turns that cost little financially but dented the Treasury’s credibility. Strip aside the hysteria and the Budget still achieved some vital work, cutting corporation tax and raising tax thresholds. No 10 admits that the Chancellor could have done more to prepare the ground for the “granny tax” (not least by pointing out it isn’t a tax).

Downing Street hopes now that it has at last found a degree of stability. It cleared the decks before the Jubilee, calculating that the weekend of festivities would act as a firebreak. Mr Cameron’s appearance before the Leveson Inquiry tomorrow, following Mr Osborne’s confident performance on Monday, will, they hope, cauterise that particular wound. Their internal polling claims to detect the beginnings of a recovery for Tory fortunes but from such a low base as to be negligible for now. More government announcements are planned through next month, building up to what they pray will be a successful Olympics that will give Mr Cameron some sort of summer bounce in time for his party conference.

In fact, what we are witnessing is a discreet relaunch, though this time they are smart enough not to utter the word. And boy are they are right not to. As I keep saying, there are plenty on their own side who want Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne to fail. Low-level threats are ever present – Ukip, fuel prices, cost of living – and then there’s their knack for incompetence, as witnessed by last night’s fumble over the EU referendum.

Meanwhile, out there, the storm still rages, pinning them down in their frail skiff. They are trying not to panic, remembering to breathe and smile, hoping for the best but planning for the worst.

Gay marriage is one of worst threats in 500 years, says Church of England

The Government’s plan to introduce same-sex marriage is one of the most serious threats to the Church of England in its 500-year history, senior clergy claim.

The Church today outlines its opposition to the Government’s proposals in scathing terms. Anxiety among Church leaders is so acute that they raise the spectre of disestablishment, warning that any attempt to alter the definition of marriage could fatally undermine the Church’s privileged position.

Ever since the reign of Henry VIII the Church of England has been the country’s official religion, facing down threats to its establishment as severe and varied as the Spanish Armada and the English Civil War. That senior clergy have raised concerns about same-sex marriage in a similar context indicates how seriously they view the Government's attempt to redefine marriage – as a potential attack on the role of the Church itself.

Critics have dismissed the Church’s stance as overly dramatic and called on bishops to follow the lead of established religious bodies in Iceland, Sweden and Denmark who largely embraced gay marriage.

The Church’s position, which was drawn up by senior bishops and lawyers, is confirmation that despite supporting civil partnerships eight years ago, the Church believes extending marriage rights to same sex couples is simply a step too far. The clerics say that the plans for same-sex marriage “have not been thought-through properly and are not legally sound”.

Downing Street has insisted that its plans to bring in equal marriage laws will go ahead. In March the Government launched a three-month consultation process calling on supporters and opponents to put forward their views with the deadline for submissions closing later this week.

The Church of England’s response lists a number of key reasons why they cannot support same sex marriages both theological and practical. At the heart of the debate is whether the definition of marriage can be changed from the lifelong union of a man and woman to that of any couple.

The government insists the change is a simple one which would allow “all couples, regardless of their gender, to have a civil marriage ceremony.” No religious organisation would be compelled to conduct a wedding ceremony as they would not take place in religious buildings.

But the Church counters that the proposals changes the very meaning of marriage, which is defined by both canon and parliamentary law.

Speaking to The Independent yesterday the Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, criticised the speed with which the consultation on same sex marriage was being pushed through and added that “unintended consequences” could threaten the church’s historical role.

“If a category of marriage is created which separates the Church’s understanding of marriage from that of the state, it is bound to have some effect on the relationship of the church and its locality,” he said.

“That begins to raise questions about the nature of establishment as we’ve understood it.”

Lawyers acting for the Church have advised that the current proposals could leave it vulnerable to legal attacks precisely because it is the established religion that is tasked with officiating marriages to everyone in their parishes. There is particular concern that the European Court of Human Rights might force them to conduct gay wedding ceremonies if the meaning of marriage under British law was changed to include a couple regardless of their gender.

“It seems to me to be on the face of it at least possible, and perhaps more likely probable, that a challenge would be brought before the courts,” predicted Bishop Stevens. “And that it could be argued that for the established church not to make its premises available to people purely on the grounds of their sexuality could be regarded as discriminatory. The lawyers are arguing that it’s very likely that there’s a serious prospect that a successful challenge could be mounted in the courts.”

The Church’s stance will please its traditionalist and social conservative wings but will cause dismay among more liberal congregations who have campaigned to see it embrace equal marriage rights.

Symon Hill, from the Christian think-tank Ekklesia, commented: "The Church of England has missed an opportunity to move on from the defensiveness which has characterised many debates over same-sex marriage. This is particularly disappointing given that many of the Church of England's own members are far more positive about same-sex marriage than this official statement suggests.”

He added: “Marriage has been redefined many times throughout history. When married women were given the right to own property in 1882, there were those who argued that the new law undermined marriage. Similar claims were made when laws were passed to protect women from domestic violence and rape. Marriage has meant many things in many cultures.”

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, added: “It's an important issue of religious freedom that any denomination should be free to decline to celebrate long-term same-sex partnerships. Conversely, that means that a Church should not be entitled to prevent other institutions or the state from recognising them either.”

Apple launches its best laptop, dumps Google Maps and creates an electronic wallet

Yesterday in San Francisco, Apple revealed a bunch of software and hardware enhancements designed to sharpen its edge. David Phelan reports from the event

o what did Apple announce yesterday? How much time do you have? From the moment CEO Tim Cook stepped on stage at the Moscone Centre, San Francisco, the innovations came thick and fast. There was no new iPhone – that’s expected in the autumn – and no mention of the fabled Apple iTV set. But there was enough to keep the 4,000 plus audience of developers and press in a state of deep concentration for over 90 minutes.

There were the usual housekeeping boasts that showed how well the company’s doing. These included 30 billion downloads of apps, sales of 365 million iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) and so on. There were spirited pops against rivals – of the 650,000 apps available, 225,000 are dedicated tablet apps, where other tablet platforms can only claim numbers in their hundreds, Cook asserted.

And then came the reveals. The MacBook Air, the light, super-portable deluxe laptop, was revised with faster chips and bigger flash drives, for lower prices than last year’s models. The MacBook Pro had similar incremental improvements (while the 17in display model was quietly dropped – though it’s likely to return, surely).

And then executive Phil Schiller announced the new MacBook Pro, a dazzling and utterly desirable notebook. It has a Retina Display – Applespeak for a screen with such high resolution you can’t pick out individual pixels. This 15.4in screen is stunning. It makes photographs gleam and text look as sharp as print. Programs will be updated to make the most of this pixel density.

It’s thin – Schiller proudly demonstrated that his finger was thicker than this svelte machine – though this does mean it’s the first Pro without an optical drive, so DVD playback will require the addition of an external disc drive.

It’s fast, light and best of all, if you go by the audience whooping in the Moscone, available today. Prices start at £1,799, which frankly seems like a bargain for such an advanced piece of kit. The MacBook Pro was the stand-out announcement, though the software reveals that followed may prove more groundbreaking.

Mountain Lion is the next big cat in the Mac operating system series. Its release date was confirmed as next month and its price even cheaper than last year’s Lion software ($19.99, with UK price to follow, I’d guess around £17.99). This is very cheap, obviously, especially as you can install it on all the Macs in your household for this price.

New features number in the hundreds but many had been announced already. New at San Francisco was the intriguing Power Nap which lets your computer be updated with new software, emails and notifications while both you and it sleep. And Dictation, a program introduced on the iPhone 4S as part of Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant, will arrive on the Mac. This will be of interest to Nuance, the leaders in voice recognition and whose Dragon Dictation program sales may be affected.

If you use multiple Apple devices, as the company hopes you will, you may surf the internet on your iPad, iPhone and computer. A new feature called iCloud tabs shows your browsing history from all your iDevices in one place. This looked ice-cool.

But the killer software innovations were saved for iOS which will arrive in the autumn, presumably with the new iPhone. Among the 200 new elements were increased opportunities to use FaceTime, the video calling feature. Currently it’s only available over wi-fi, but will work on 3G connections in future, too.

The voice-controlled Siri will be hugely enhanced, with lots of sports, restaurants and film information capabilities, though some of these may be restricted to the States for now. Siri had started proceedings by warming up the crowd. “I’m looking forward to the new Samsung,” the robotic voice intoned, “not the phone, the refrigerator.” Cue der-dun-der-dun-tish drum effects.

Now it would be able to launch apps, too, so saying “Skype” would start an internet phone call, for instance. And Siri, so far only on the iPhone 4S, will come to the iPad 2 and current iPad when the software is launched.

There were improvements to how you do the crucial thing a phone does, make and receive calls. So when a call comes in you can choose with the touch of a button to decline it and reply with a message. HTC, the skilful Taiwanese phone maker, has built this in for a long time, but typically Apple has made it look even better and offer more skillful additions. Like Do Not Disturb which takes messages without ringing your phone. Or it will allow calls to come through from specific contacts or from urgent callers who repeatedly ring within short time periods. Very clever.

Passbook is a simple way to put tickets, boarding passes and shop payments into one place. Reminders are triggered by place or time so when you arrive at the gate, your boarding pass automatically appears on the phone’s screen. Spooky. Windows Phone uses a similar system but Apple makes it slicker. This is the first step towards a digital wallet. If the next iPhone includes the NFC technology found on Oyster cards and door entry systems, such an idea will become a palpable reality. It’s taken Apple to do this – rival phones have greater capabilities but haven’t managed anything close.

And when you’re done with a ticket, say, with typical elan the phone shreds it before your eyes.

But the most captivating visuals were saved for the new Maps software which will see Google’s mapping software dropped from the iPhone. The mapping which replaces it looks simple and elegant. It’s done in-house by Apple in what it described as a worldwide endeavour. This included a gorgeous 3D rendering of cities building by building called Flyover. It looked amazing.

Since iOS 6 will only work on iPhones from 3GS onwards, iPads from the second generation, and more recent iPods, Google’s Maps app won’t vanish completely yet. And the big downside is there’s no mention of maps you can use offline, to save data costs in foreign countries.

But at least there was traffic information which will be improved by anonymised data gathered from iOS users – now there’s clever – and turn-by-turn navigation.

Apple follows its own road, ignoring customer demands for greater manual controls. It resists peer pressure to include technologies it doesn’t fancy just because rivals trumpet them. Sometimes these things can be annoying but the announcements like yesterday’s prove that the company’s stubbornness yields dazzling results. The software arriving in July and the autumn seem likely to put Apple ahead of its rivals. Again.

Spanish bond yields at record high as Fitch downgrades 18 banks and financial contagion spreads to Italy

Spain’s borrowing costs soared to their highest levels since the introduction of the single currency in 1999 today, as any confidence investors might have taken from Madrid’s weekend pledge to seek a bailout for its toxic banking sector drained away.

Yields on the country’s 10 year bonds shot up to 6.8 per cent this afternoon as investors frantically dumped their holdings of Spanish debt, before falling back to 6.72 per cent.

The credit rating agency Fitch added fuel to the flames of alarm by downgrading 18 Spanish banks, following its downgrade of Madrid’s sovereign debt to BBB last month. Among the Spanish lenders cut were Bankia, CaixaBank, and Banco Popular Espanol, with Fitch blaming the weakening Spanish economy, which is forecast to contract by 1.7 per cent this year and to remain in recession well into next year.

Uncertainty over the Spanish bailout is one of the driving forces behind growing investor unease. A decision is yet to be taken over whether Spain will receive funds to rescue its banks from the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) or from its permanent replacement, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is due to come into force next month. If the ESM is used, existing holders of Spanish sovereign debt would find themselves pushed further down the queue of creditors in the event of a sovereign restructuring, acting as an incentive for investors to get out of Spanish debt now.

Germany and the Netherlands have indicated that they would prefer the funds to come from the ESM. A suggested compromise is for the funds to come from the EFSF and to then be transferred into the ESM, while keeping the same legal status to reassure existing private sector creditors. But this would need to be approved by all eurozone leaders.

Meanwhile, Spain’s financial contagion spread to Italian bonds today, with Rome’s borrowing costs spiking steeply, hitting 6.22 per cent at one stage in trading, before settling at 6.16 per cent. Italian 10 yields have not been this high since January.

The technocrat Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, lashed out at the Austrian finance minister, Maria Fekter, who, earlier this week, refused to rule out the possibility of Italy needing to seek its own bailout in due course. Mr Monti branded Ms Fekter’s comments “completely inappropriate”.

Italy has a deficit half the size of Spain’s and its banking sector is believed to be in much better condition. But the country is in a deeper recession, having contracted by 0.8 per cent in the first three months of the year and by 0.7 per cent in the preceding quarter.

The last time that Spanish borrowing costs were at yesterday’s levels was during last November’s panic, which prompted the European Central Bank (ECB) to begin its €1 trillion liquidity operation for the European banking system. The vice president of the ECB, Vitor Constancio, sounded relatively dovish yesterday, saying that the central bank is ready to act to stabilise the eurozone if necessary. “We stand ready to provide liquidity and we are ready to face whatever may occur” he said. But last week the ECB failed to cut interest rates from 1 per cent.

After many weeks of prevarication and denial, Spain announced on Saturday that it will apply to the European Union for a bailout of up to €100bn in order to recapitalise its banks, which have been pushed to the brink of insolvency by bad loans made to the country’s collapsed property sector. Spain has said it will not know how much support it will need until later this month when an independent audit of its domestic financial sector by consultants Roland Berger and Oliver Wyman is completed. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the sector needs at least €40bn.

The Spanish government, led by prime minister Mariano Rajoy tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade its European partners to use the common bailout resources to rescue its banks directly, bypassing the state. But, instead, any eurozone bailout loans will now add to Spain’s sovereign debt pile, pushing the country’s total indebtedness to 90 per cent of GDP.

Flash flood warnings for southern England

People wade through flood water at Barnham near Chichester in southern England. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Householders and business owners are being warned about flashflooding in someparts of England as hundreds of people continued to mop up following the recent deluge.

The number of flood warnings, which signal that flooding is expected and ordering people to take immediate action, rose to five overnight. All of the warnings concernedriverside areas in south-east England, including the River Ouzel in Bedfordshire.

More than 40 flood alerts – which mean that flooding is possible – were issued by the Environment Agency, again mainly for the south-east but also for East Anglia, the Midlands, the north-east and south-west.

Up to 65mm of rain has fallen within 24 hours, more than southern England's average rainfall for the whole of June, flooding homes and businesses, closing schools and disrupting transport.

On Tuesday morning, four schools in West Sussex, which bore the brunt of the bad weather in England, were closed. A number of A-roads were closed and two lanes of the M3 were shut.

A severe weather warning issued by the Met Office for London, the south-east, east and south-west of England and Wales remained in force.There is no end in sight to the bad weather in some parts of the country, with another area of low pressure bringing in more rainclouds expected later in the week.

Though forecasters were not expecting torrential rain immediately, the fear is that even light rain on saturated ground could cause problems.

The clear-up continued in areas such as Littlehampton, on the Sussex coast, where about 40 properties, including holiday B&Bs, were under as much as 1.2 metres (4ft) of water.

Emergency services warned people to stay away from floodwater and not to attempt to drive through it. Health officials said people who swallowed floodwater should seek medical help if they felt ill. One other side-effect of the weather has been an increase in the number of rats leaving flooded sewers.

In Wales, scientists are investigating if the flooding has washed downstream potentially harmful metals such as zinc and lead.

More than 1,500 people were evacuated and 150 rescued after water gushed through homes and businesses in Ceredigion, Powys and Gwynedd, where as much as 150mm of water fell within 24 hours – twice the average for the whole of June. Ceredigion county council leader, Ellen ap Gwynn, said many people who had lost everything were not insured. She said: "It has been a once-in-a-100-year event. I think now the full scale of the damage and loss is beginning to sink in." The council is setting up a disaster fund for those not insured. "I would urge the public to donate everything they can to help those who have lost everything," she said.

The Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, said the government was spending £40m on bolstering flood defences and tackling coastal erosion over the next 12 months. "The reality is you can't prevent flooding at all times, especially when you get very unusual weather patterns such as we've seen over the last few days in this part of Wales," he said.

"The situation will be examined; we'll talk to the Environment Agency about what could be done to help boost flood defences in the future."

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, said lessons had to be learned. "While we all hope this will be a once in a lifetime event for these particular communities, similar disasters have become increasingly common and it is incumbent upon the government to take steps to alleviate the causes.

"It is also timely for ministers to look very closely at development on land prone to flooding and consider the introduction of policy to put an end to this practice."

Despite the heavy rain, the Environment Agency confirmed areas of southern England still remained in drought, although it said the crisis was easing.

A spokesman said: "The rain we have had since the start of April following the driest March for 70 years has led to a huge improvement in water resources. Water companies have seen reservoir levels rise, river levels are mostly back to normal and many wildlife habitats that were suffering due to a lack of water have recovered."

Army cuts another 2,900 jobs

Defence secretary warns that redundancy rounds must continue as RAF and navy also announce job cuts

The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said there was 'still some way to go' to cut the army to 82,000 people. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

The army has axed another 2,900 jobs in the latest cull of the Britishmilitary amid warnings from the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, that there is "still some way to go" before the redundancy rounds can end.

More than a quarter of those leaving the army in this tranche are being forced out and the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday it had not yet decided how it could reduce overall numbers to 82,000 – the target demanded by the cuts announced last year.

The RAF and navy have also had to shed staff, though not as many as expected. The air force is to lose 730 personnel, and the navy 170, though both services believe that should be enough to prevent further job losses. The MoD said the total number of people being axed in this round was 3,800.

The cuts to the British military were set out in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, and revised last summer. The navy and the air force were each told to axe 5,000 staff, but the hardest hit was the army, which has to shrink by 19,000 before the end of the decade.

In a speech last week, Hammond hinted that the army faced a major restructuring that is likely to lead battalions being axed, and historic regiments merged. These reforms are expected to be announced shortly, and will have a bearing on how the army will manage the next part of the redundancy programme.

The MoD has stressed that senior officers from all services have not been spared, and that 16% of those leaving the forces in the cuts announced on Tuesday are middle or senior ranks. A full breakdown will not be published for six weeks, but it is thought the army has lost brigadiers and dozens of lieutenant colonels. The navy was looking to axe five commodores and 17 captains, and the RAF needed to cut air commodores and up to 30 group captains.

Ministers have been encouraged that the number of people looking to leave the armed forces voluntarily remains high.

This means the services are making fewer compulsory redundancies than they expected. But in a statement, Hammond conceded there was more pain to come, for the army at least, though he insisted that the mission in Afghanistan would not be affected by the cuts.

"Of course I regret that it has been necessary to make redundancies to deliver our plans for reducing the size of the armed forces. We still have some way to go to bring the size of the army down to 82,000 and decisions on what is necessary to achieve this are yet to be taken, but we won't compromise the mission in Afghanistan."

The numbers of the highest ranking officers in the armed forces are also being cut, though this is being done through a separate programme being undertaken by the MoD's Defence Reform Unit. An internaldocument leaked to the Guardian showed the MoD had become so "top heavy" with senior ranking officers and civil servants that up to 700 posts needed to be cut over the next three years. Full details of the reductions were expected in the spring, and the lack of any announcements has led some in Whitehall to speculate that the top brass will be spared from the worst of the cuts. The shadow defence minister, Kevan Jones, has insisted senior staff are being protected at the expense of lower ranks.

Church of England accused of scaremongering over gay marriage

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said a poll showed 80-85% of people in the UK under 50 backed gay marriages. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

The Church of England was accused of carrying out a "masterclass in melodramatic scaremongering" as it delivered an uncompromising warning to the government against pressing ahead with a controversial proposal to legalise gay marriage.

Introducing same-sex marriage could lead to the church being forced out of its role of conducting weddings on behalf of the state, the CofE claimed in a potentially explosive submission in response to the government's consultation on gay marriage, which closes on Thursday.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, which campaigns for gay rights, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Many bishops in the Church of England today will be rather pleased because once again they are not talking about global poverty or the HIV pandemic - they are talking about the subject that obsesses them, and that is sex.

"I have not come across such a masterclass in melodramatic scaremongering – that somehow this is the biggest upheaval since the sacking of the monasteries – since as a journalist myself a decade ago I was summoned to a government briefing to be told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

He said Stonewall would be publishing its major five-yearly polling of public attitudes on Tuesday, showing that between 80-85% of people in the UK under the age of 50 support extending the legal form of marriage to gay people – and three in five - 60% of people of faith in modern Britain – say gay people should be able to get married.

The church submission's warning of a potential clash between canon law – that marriage is between a man and a woman – and parliament is likely to put pressure on the prime minister, David Cameron, who has spoken out in support of gay marriage and already come under fire from supporters of the proposals for allowing a free vote among Tory MPs.

In a 13-page submission, the church says it cannot support the proposal to enable all couples, regardless of their gender, to have a civil marriage ceremony.

"Such a move would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history," it says.

"Marriage benefits society in many ways, not only by promoting mutuality and fidelity, but also by acknowledging an underlying biological complementarity which, for many, includes the possibility of procreation."

The Rt Rev Tim Stevens, bishop of Leicester, speaking on the same programme, conceded there were "some grounds" for saying the Church of England obsesses about sex.

"I rather sympathise with that statement but I don't think this is anything to do with obsessing about sex," he said.

"I think this is the church trying to uphold our traditional teachings and understanding about marriage and trying to avoid a sudden and rapid redefinition of marriage for everybody at a time when many marriages are in difficulties and where it is very unlikely that, within just a few weeks, a universally acceptable new definition of a fundamental social institution can emerge."

The bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Rev Steven Croft, said the government proposals represented a fundamental change to a very important social institution.

"Whilst this is being presented as a kind of minor extension to what marriage means, actually, from the point of view of the church and of society, it is a really, really fundamental change to an institution which has been at the core of our society for hundreds of years and which for the church is not a matter of social convention but of Christian doctrine and teaching," he told BBC Breakfast.

"One in four marriages in England are performed by the Church of England and that proportion is rising at the moment.

"In every marriage service the priest begins the service by spelling out what marriage is - a union between one man and one woman with the intention of it being lifelong.

"So it is really important to register back to the government that this is not a minor change, this is a fundamental change to a very, very important social institution."

The controversy comes at a particularly delicate time for the church, which is in the middle of a process that will choose a new archbishop of Canterbury later this year to replace Dr Rowan Williams.

Internal debates on gay rights have been particularly heated during his tenure as he struggled to balance the CofE's own factions at the same time as holding together the disparate worldwide Anglican communion of 80 million members.

The church's submission warns that despite ministerial assurances that churches would not have to conduct gay marriages, it would be "very doubtful" whether limiting same-sex couples to non-religious ceremonies would withstand a challenge at the European court of human rights.

This could make it impossible for the CofE to continue its role conducting marriages on behalf of the state, it warned.

Under the current law, anyone who is resident in England has a legal right to marry in his or her CofE parish church irrespective of religious affiliation. Around a quarter of weddings in England take place in CofE churches.

The church position as set out in the submission, which notes the CofE's "unique position" in relation to the performing of marriage ceremonies, potentially raises the prospect of the biggest rupture between the state and the Church of England since it became the established church 500 years ago.

It claims the proposals would redefine institution of marriage in English law, warning: "At the very least that raises new and as yet unexplored questions about the implications for the current duties which English law imposes on clergy of the established church."

Complaining that several major elements of the government's proposals had not been thought through and were not legally sound, the church said introducing gay marriage could also lead to challenges to civil partnership law, as removing the concept of gender from marriage while leaving it in place for civil partnerships would be unlikely to be "legally sustainable".

A Home Office spokesman said: "The purpose of the equal civil marriage consultation is to enable us to listen to all views, including those of all religions.

"Marriage is one of the most important institutions we have. It binds us together, it brings stability, and it makes this country stronger. We have been clear that no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages as a result of our proposals.

"We welcome the Church of England's response and we will be carefully considering all points of view before publishing the outcome of the consultation later in the year."

Pakistani chief justice's son accused of taking gifts to influence father

Arsalan Iftikhar Chaudhry allegedly promised to influence his father’s rulings. Photograph: T Mughal/EPA

Luxury flats in London, hotels in Park Lane and gambling debts in Monte Carlo: rarely has corruption and influence-peddling in Pakistan been more embarrassingly laid bare than in the documents presented to the country's supreme court.

In page after page of official deposition, one of Pakistan's richest men cheerfully itemised how he bankrolled a playboy lifestyle for the son of the country's top judge. The young man had allegedly promised to influence his father's rulings.

According to the receipts set out in the 83-page document, the property developer Malik Riaz Hussain showered gifts and cash worth more than £2m on Arsalan Iftikhar Chaudhry, a 32-year-old businessman.

His father, the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has long enjoyed hero status among many Pakistanis as the freewheeling scourge of some of the country's most powerful people and institutions. Now he finds himself on the receiving end of corruption allegations, even if so far only his son is directly implicated.

According to the deposition, Iftikhar promised a friend of Hussain's son-in-law that he had inside information about investigations launched by his father into Bahria Town, a private company that builds sprawling luxury housing estates for retired military officers and the wealthy elite.

"[Iftikhar could] manage to resolve the said cases in favour of Bahria Town … and on the said pretext repeatedly got favours in different shapes on one pretext of the other," Hussain's statement said.

Those favours are laid out in pages of paperwork that records everything spent during three all-expenses-paid trips to London by Iftikhar and other unnamed members of the chief justice's family, in the form of receipts, airline tickets and tenancy agreements.

On the first trip, in the summer of 2010, a three-bedroom flat was rented in Portman Square for a month for £40,000, and a luxury Range Rover was hired for transport around town.

The party made a four-day side-trip to Monte Carlo where Iftikhar gambled in the casino of the Hotel de Paris, losing his wealthy benefactor €10,000 (£8,800) in cash.

Trips the following year included stays at a luxury hotel and a flat off Park Lane costing £4,000 a week.

During a chaotic press conference held after the court hearing, Hussain said the chief justice had been warned of his son's activities more than six months previously, but nothing was done. He warned of more revelations to follow.

"I'll disclose things that will make people realise what's happening in Pakistan," said Hussain. "The president tried to stop me going with this. No one except Allah is with me." In his affidavit, Hussain said he had been "blackmailed" by the chief justice's son, and said he had not made his revelations at the behest of either the ruling party or the army, both of which might have cause to damage the judge. Arsalan has denied the allegations.

Among other recent cases, Chaudhry has tried to force the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, to revisit dormant corruption allegations against the president, Asif Ali Zardari, and humiliated the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency over election-rigging charges. The chief justice's office prevents him making statements outside court, meaning he has struggled to disassociate himself from the claims against his son. Initially he presided over the case himself, during which he swore on the Qur'an that he had no knowledge of his son's business affairs. However, he later stepped down after complaints of a conflict of interest.

The case has focused unprecedented attention on Hussain, a powerful multimillionaire said to be the 12th richest man in Pakistan, who rose from humble origins to control a vast property empire favoured by the military and who now travels around the world in a private jet emblazoned with the name Bahria Town 001.

In a country where public services either do not exist or are in a state of collapse, luxury developments that boast private fire services and manicured lawns are in demand from those who can afford to pay. There are Bahria developments in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore, the latter based on a replica of Trafalgar Square complete with a Nelson's Column.

One of Pakistan's anti-corruption bodies is investigating claims that much of the land on which Bahria Town was built was illegally "grabbed" and sold on for vast profit.

The court deposition suggests Hussain was disappointed that he failed to get rid of his legal problems through his largesse towards the chief justice's son. "I did not get any relief whatsoever in the [cases] pending before this august court, contrary to the assurances and promises made by [Iftikhar]," he said.

Clinton accuses Russia of delivering attack helicopters to Syrian regime

Hillary Clinton warned that the Assad regime may be about to turn its forces against Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

The US has accused Russia of risking a dramatic escalation of the conflict in Syria by shipping attack helicopters to the regime in Damascus.

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, went on to allege that Moscow is lying about weapons deliveries to Syria by falsely claiming they are not being used to suppress the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

"We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria," said Clinton. "They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn't worry, [that] everything they're shipping is unrelated to [Syria's] actions internally. That's patently untrue, and we are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."

A Pentagon spokesman, Captain John Kirby, said he could not confirm Clinton's assertion but added that the Syrian regime is already using attack helicopters against the opposition. However the state department said that its information is about new deliveries on their way to Syria.

Moscow has been a longstanding supplier of weapons to the Assad regime and Syria hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean.

Clinton, speaking to a forum in Washington, added that intelligence also indicated that the Assad regime may be about to turn its forces against Syria's largest city, Aleppo, close to the northwestern border with Turkey.

"There seems to be a massing of Syrian forces around Aleppo which we've got information about over the last 24 or 48 hours. That could very well be a red line for the Turks in terms of their strategic or national interests," she said.

Earlier this week, the US said it feared a "potential massacre" in al-Haffa, a besieged opposition stronghold near Aleppo, on the heels of mass killings in Qubeir and Houla which it has blamed on the Assad regime.

Clinton's warning came shortly after a senior UN peacekeeping official described the conflict in Syria as a civil war. It is the first time the UN has characterised the uprising that way.

The UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations, Hervé Ladsous, also said that attack helicopters are now in use alongside other large weapons.

"Clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas. So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery, but also attack helicopters," he told Reuters.

Clinton gave tepid support to the efforts of the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, to put together a group of countries to work out a roadmap for a transition of power in Syria. So far Annan's efforts to quell the conflict have foundered.

Russia is part of the group and Clinton was sceptical of Moscow's claim that it is not wedded to Assad as Syria's leader.

"Russia has increasingly said it was not defending Assad but it worried about what came after Assad, and that it would on political transition. But there are always a lot of caveats that they then interpose," she said.

"We have a timeline in mind to see if this effort of Kofi's can be successful. The outer limit of that is mid-July when the security council has to decide whether or not to extend the mission. Certainly if there is no discernible movement by then it will be very difficult to extend a mission that is increasingly dangerous for the observers on the ground."

Kenyan doctors push for drive to reduce cervical cancer deaths

Vaccination is crucial in developing countries because so few women go for cervical cancer screening. Photograph: Loanna Hoffmann/Alamy

At age 22, all Martha Achieng' Ooko craved was freedom and a place to call her own. She was working hard as a beautician, giving manicures and pedicures in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu, saving to open her own salon one day. People who knew Ooko, the eldest of five children, believed she had what it takes to succeed.

Last December, at the age of 25, Ooko was dead. Not from a car crash, nor a complicated childbirth, and not from HIV-Aids – crises that typically claim young lives in Kenya. When doctors at Nyanza provincial hospital had first diagnosed Ooko with stage 2B cervical cancer a year earlier, her sister Joy was convinced it was a mistake.

Days after receiving the bad news, Ooko, her sister and their mother travelled to Nairobi's Kenyatta national hospital (KNH) for a second diagnosis. This time, the verdict was worse – stage 3. The family could afford treatment, and Ooko immediately began a series of six radiotherapy and two chemotherapy sessions. But it was too late. "It took less than a year from her diagnosis to her death," says 20-year-old Joy, her face still blank with disbelief and shock.

Ooko's death underlines a question for developing countries such as Kenya: how best to spend limited health resources? Non-communicable diseases such as cancer have not, in the past, been seen as a priority. Many public health specialists are saying that must change. "Every year, Kenya loses approximately 3,400 women to cervical cancer," says Dr Lucy Muchiri, a pathologist who specialises in the disease at KNH and the University of Nairobi.

Muchiri suspects that the numbers of cervical cancer fatalities are significantly higher because there is no accurate tally of cancer rates in remote rural areas. "Not everyone has access to laboratory diagnosis," she says, "so a lot of Kenyans die of disease or are being treated at home without medical diagnosis." Health advocates and researchers estimate that fewer than 5% of Kenyan women are screened for cervical cancer annually.

Fortunately, the past decade has yielded another powerful tool in the fight against cervical cancer worldwide. In 2006, the pharmaceutical company Merck released a vaccine called Gardasil, while competitor GlaxoSmithKline released the Cervarix vaccine. Both are designed to protect women from the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer. By 2009, 33 developed countries had included the HPV vaccine as part of their national immunisation programmes.

According to the American National Cancer Institute, widespread vaccination has the potential to reduce deaths from cervical cancer worldwide by as much as two-thirds. In most developing countries, the cost of the vaccine has been seen as too high. But Kenya's neighbour, Rwanda, has pursued a public-private vaccine delivery strategy that demonstrates what can be done. With vaccines donated by Merck, Rwanda last year began to roll out an ambitious nationwide programme that aims to provide vaccine protection to all girls within three years.

Although some projects in Kenya offer the HPV vaccine, Kenya's national reproductive health strategic plan has addressed cervical cancer largely through the roll-out of a low-cost screening tool known as VIA (visual inspection of the cervix using ascetic acid). For the past two years, the government has aggressively trained healthcare workers to use this "see and treat model".

VIA requires no laboratory back-up. The physician manually applies ascetic acid (or vinegar) on to the cervix to allow for a better view of the surface. If lesions or abnormalities are detected, they can be treated immediately. It is a powerful screening tool, which lawmakers adopted relatively quickly.

Research among Kenyan women to find out how much they know about cervical health suggests a further challenge. A 2010 study conducted in Kisumu by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill found that 89% of the study population knew of cancer in general, but only 15% had heard of cervical cancer. None of the women in the study knew about the HPV vaccine.

Muchiri summarises the biggest hurdle – the need for wide-scale public awareness. "The concept of screening and annual check-ups is really not part of our vocabulary," she says. "In Kenya, you go to hospital when you're sick, you don't go to hospital to look for disease."

Arguably, the vaccine is even more crucial for women in developing than developed countries, because so few women go for screening and there is little access to medical treatment if cervical cancer is diagnosed.

Up to now, appeals to Kenyan policymakers – including targeted lobbying of women representatives – has failed to achieve provision of the HPV vaccine as part of the government's reproductive health strategy. But government agencies recently said they are beginning the process of applying for HPV vaccines to enable mass vaccination campaigns. KNH's Dr Gathari Ndirangu cautions, however, that more than acquiring vaccines is needed. Careful planning, he says, will be required to handle the HPV vaccine, which must be kept at an appropriate temperature. "Logistics for vaccines," Ndirangu says, "take up much more resources than the actual procurement."

Public education about the need for screening and vaccines could yield positive results, Muchiri believes. "Once the public owns this problem and pushes for it," she says, "then the government would be forced to implement the strategy in full."

Moncef Marzouki plants seeds of change in impatient Tunisia

The Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, admits his is an impossible job. Photograph: Martial Trezzini/AP

Moncef Marzouki strode into the room that former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had used for an office, and sank with distaste into the sofa under the flag. Ben Ali had Marzouki arrested and exiled for 16 years, and the human rights activist turned interim president was not going to look comfortable in this gilded cage. Besides, faux Louis XIV with blue and gold tassles?

Ben Ali's palace may lack the taste of the one Emperor Hadrian built up the hill, but it is on a lavish scale. Marzouki refuses to live here. He is still, he says, the same man who worked as a doctor in deprived suburbs of Paris for 20 years.

Time is short. The transitional coalition government has until next April to succeed, before it returns to the country for a fresh mandate. It is determined not to stay beyond its welcome. In that time, the troika – comprising the Islamist Ennahda party, Marzouki's leftist Congress for the Republic and the centrist Ettakatol – promises to create 800,000 jobs, turn around an economy pillaged by the departed dictator and produce a constitution that will last.

In the face of a steady barrage of strikes, withering daily fire from the media – not least state-owned TV – and fresh clashes on Tuesday with Salafists in Tunis, the palace's new tenant admits his is an impossible job. "I keep telling the people, you can't expect to eat the fruits of the tree. You have to plant it and wait. They say OK, we understand, but we want them now," he said.

The armoured trucks and razor wire around Tunis's souk, the seat of the protests against the old regime, have not disappeared. The plat du jour on today's menu of crises is Muammar Gaddafi's former prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi: the Tunisian prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, an Islamist, wants to extradite him to Libya, but the president refuses. The prime minister says we don't need your signature; the president says yes, you do.

"Issues of human rights are extremely important to me, and I am not going to sign when this guy could be submitted to torture or to the death penalty," Marzouki said. The Islamists retort: how can Tunisia ask Saudi Arabia to hand back Ben Ali and his wife when Tunisia refuses to hand over Mahmoudi to Libya?

There are other issues. "They are too liberal for me in the American sense of the word and I am too socialist for them in the French sense of the word," the president said. But after six months the three parties have become firm believers in each other. And each has started to argue the other's case. The result is that Marzouki, an exile infused with the French understanding of laïcité, or secularism, now argues that the west is reading Tunisia's Islamists all wrong.

"When people tell me that we are going back to some new Islamic dictatorship, they don't understand the fact that Islam is not the main force; the main force is democracy. We secularists did not become Islamists, the Islamists became democrats, and this is why I think the Arab spring is the triumph of democracy and not Islamism," he said.

"Islam is just trying to use democracy but in fact when you use democracy, I would not say you become a slave of it, but you become part of it. So this must be understood by the west. Even if we have elections and Ennahda prevails, it does not mean that the Islamist mood is prevailing. It means that the Islamist movement has been co-opted by democracy."

The other secularist party, Ettakatol, makes a similar point. Its spokesman, Mohamed Bennour, said: "We are in a coalition, not a union. This is the first time this has happened in Arab history. We said we would enter this coalition 10 days before the election took place and we are sticking to our word. We are not doing it for ourselves. We are doing it to build a democracy that will last."

It is a strange political experiment. Each partner has had to compromise. For Islamists it was the use of the word sharia in the preamble to the new constitution. "I thought that we would lose a lot of time discussing whether the kind of state would be secular or religious and sharia, but fortunately Ennahda was wise enough to say: OK, we are going to use secular vocabulary instead," Marzouki said. "Now we are discussing what kind of political system – would it be parliamentary or presidential – and I think we are reaching a kind of consensus about it, half presidential, and half parliamentary."

The good news of political dialogue in Tunis has yet to percolate to the likes of Bechir Dridi, a law graduate who has been out of work for four years. In Béja, an hour's drive from Tunis, the wheat fields are full to bursting but the bumper cropis of little use to the town's college graduates.

"The head may have changed, but the body is still the same. In a town like this the administration is packed full of Ben Ali's placemen, who parcel out the jobs to each other's children. There are no posts. You can apply as often as you want but the door is closed. If anything, it's worse than before," Dridi said.

The pace of change is grindingly slow. The ministry of justice has kicked out 82 judges for incompetence or corruption and put 100 more under investigation. No judge is being told any more which way their decision should go. But all the records and the paperwork are stuck in the old logjam. It will take time for the new broom to reach Béja.

The private sector is weak, and no one trusts firms to last, so all the jobs are in the state sector. Modest signs of success are just starting to show: growth and investment began to return in the last quarter. The price of fruit and vegetables in the markets dropped back after a year of soaring inflation, because Tunis clamped down on the contrabandcrossing the porous borders with Libya and Algeria.

Opinion polls all point to a bigger and wider coalition next April. Before then, in October, the first jobs may appear. But Tunisia's newborn democrats must still prove they can deliver.

It is a hard, crisis-strewn slog. And Ben Ali's hired hands, like his furniture, are still around. The new government is determined to ensure they do not return to prominence.

François Hollande's partner takes Twitter swipe at his ex

Valérie Trierweiler (L) took a swipe at Ségolène Royal, with a good luck tweet to the dissident Socialist candidate standing against Royal in parliamentary elections. Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images

François Hollande's partner, Valérie Trierweiler, has sparked a political storm and embarrassed the Socialist party by tweeting her support for a dissident candidate standing against Hollande's ex-partner, Ségolène Royal, in the parliamentary elections.

The saga threatens to damage Hollande, who has been careful to style himself as a down-to-earth "president normal" but now faces charges from the right that animosity between his present and past girlfriends has turned his leadership of France into a celebrity soap opera worthy of the worst excesses of Nicolas Sarkozy's highly public love life.

Trierweiler's unexpected tweet comes at a critical time for the Socialists. Royal, who is the mother of Hollande's four children and was his long-term partner before he moved in with Trierweiler in 2007, is facing a difficult fight for a parliamentary seat in La Rochelle.

She topped the poll in the first round but another local Socialist, Olivier Falorni, who came second, has refused to stand aside and is fighting on a dissident ticket in the final runoff this weekend.

The Socialist party, which backs Royal, had pressured Falorni to quit the race.

Hollande was quoted saying Royal was "the only candidate" with presidential support in Royal's latest campaign leaflet, issued on Tuesday morning as the Socialist party leader, Martine Aubry, arrived in La Rochelle to support her.

But just before noon, Trierweiler, or @valtrier – who was once dubbed "Tweetweiler" for her use of the social network – tweeted: "Good luck to Olivier Falorni who has proved himself worthy, who has fought alongside the people of La Rochelle for so many years with selfless commitment."

Paris political circles were so shocked at the tweet, which appeared to be a clear jibe at Royal and a shot in the foot of Hollande, that most thought Trierweiler's account had been hacked. But 40 minutes later, Trierweiler replied to Agence France Presse with a one-word text message that "yes", she had sent the tweet.

An unnamed but dumfounded Elysée adviser who was in an interview with Le Monde at the time, muttered that he'd been prepared for government crises but not "marital" ones.

The saga, which immediately dominated all news media, seemed to play into every stereotype and criticism that Trierweiler had been seeking to avoid, namely that she interfered in politics.

The first lady, a political journalist who once covered the Socialist party, has insisted on continuing her journalistic career and maintains a column on culture in Paris Match. Asked recently on radio if she meddled in politics, she said that charge was totally false.

The French right, in the middle of a fierce parliamentary election campaign in which Hollande hopes to win a Socialist absolute majority, leapt on the tweet.

Geoffroy Didier of the UMP, said Trierweiler's personal "score-settling" meant Hollande's promised "exemplary republic" had turned into a bad "celebrity" saga. "The 'normal presidency' is definitively dead," he declared. "From now on, it's Dallas at the Elysée."

Several rightwing politicians accused Hollande of carrying out a love-life "vaudeville". One warned of "score-settling at the OK Corral". Royal declined to comment. The Socialist leader, Aubry, said the "only thing that matters" was Hollande's support for Royal. The Socialist Jean-Louis Bianco said Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the last Socialist president François Mitterrand, would never have allowed herself to "meddle" in politics.

Hollande is doubly vulnerable as he had vowed that his presidency would be above party politics. Earlier this year, Trierweiler told a magazine: "François trusts me totally except for my tweets." She said she had a strong personality and refused to quit social networking.

The tension between Trierweiler and Royal, who ran for the presidency in 2007 as her relationship with Hollande was ending, has been widely covered in the French media, including Trierweiler's assertion in a recent book about her that she didn't vote for Royal in 2007.

Royal was reported to have been outraged when Trierweiler approached her without warning for a public handshake for the cameras at a rally during the campaign.

On stage at La Bastille after his election victory, footage showed that after Hollande gave Royal a kiss on the cheek, Trierweiler demanded of him: "Kiss me on the mouth."

Royal had backed Hollande during the presidential campaign and had been hoping to win the La Rochelle seat in order to be made speaker of parliament as a reward for her loyalty.

Falorni, who is continuing his campaign battle against Royal, said he was very touched by Trierweiler's message of "personal friendship".

Russia protests: tens of thousands voice opposition to Putin's government

Russian anti-Putin opposition activists coincided their protest march with 'Russia day', a national holiday Photograph: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Russiaon Tuesday in the first major demonstrations against the government since Vladamir Putin was sworn in as president on 7 May.

Despite thunderstorms and the absence of key opposition figures, the "March of Millions" went ahead in the capital – a day after searches conducted by armed police in the homes of opposition activists and their families. Leading activists, including blogger Aleksei Navalny, socialite Ksenia Sobchak, and liberal organiser Ilya Yashin, were prevented from attending because they had been summoned for questioning by Russia's Investigative Committee in connection with the violence at the last rally on 6 May.

But Yashin, speaking to the Guardian after he was released on Tuesday evening, indicated that the move may have succeeded only in raising the profile of the rally. "The investigators did all they could to increase the amount of people that came today," he said.

While official estimates put the number of participants at 18,000, organisers claimed between 100,000 and 200,000 people had turned out. A similar march in Saint Petersburg attended by several thousand was halted by police and its organisers arrested after it over-ran its allotted time.

Smaller marches took place across Russia. An activist from Astrakhan, Oleg Shein, who shot to fame for his 40-day hunger strike against electoral fraud this year, was arrested during an unsanctioned rally in the southern Russian city.

In Moscow the weather played a role in dampening tempers with thunder and lightning at the beginning of the march and a torrential afternoon downpour that all but cleared the rally site an hour and half before the planned finishing time.

The atmosphere was darker than that at similar mass demonstrations over the winter months that began after allegations of large scale vote rigging during parliamentary elections in December. While previous gatherings have been marked by their creativity, fewer witty homemade placards were visible this time.

"The rallies [before Vladimir Putin was elected president] were almost festivals," said Nikolai Kharikonov, who was wearing a white ribbon, the opposition symbol. But the mood today was different, he said, "I am completely sick of Putin power."

Actions taken by the authorities in recent months, including a controversial new law increasing fines 150-fold for protestors, the arrests of 13 people allegedly involved in attacking riot police on 6 May and the previous day's searches, helped boost protestor numbers.

"I came because of the stupid law on protests and the searches," said 49-year old Alexander. "The authorities have initiated an escalation of the conflict."

Former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov avoided a police search on Monday because he was not at home, but he was issued a summons to questioning immediately after addressing the crowd on Moscow's Prospekt Sakharova. Protestors booed and jeered when the news was announced.

Most of the leaders being questioned had been allowed to leave by police by yesterday evening, but Navalny remained in custody and was escorted to the office of his Anti-Corruption Fund so he could be present while it was searched.

Some protestors arrived at Tuesday's event prepared for confrontation. A taxi driver arrested during the violence at last month's protest and who gave his name as Vycheslav showed a knife that he had managed to slip through the police metal detectors. "I don't intend to use it though," he said.

A wide range of political groups were present from anarchists, communists and gay right activists to nationalists, opponents of internet piracy laws and supporters of the jailed members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot.

Nationalists demonstrators wearing the white, yellow and black of Imperial Russia were particularly prominent. They formed columns led by men and women in black uniforms accompanied by drums and chanted slogans including "Russia, Forward!" and "Russian Order for Russian People."

Tuesday was also Russia Day, an annual commemoration of the emergence of the Russian Federation from the break-up of the Soviet Union. In honour of the national holiday Putin spoke to a select audience in the Kremlin at about the same time as the day's opposition march was taking place.

"Various points of view are being expressed about Russia today and Russia's future," he said. "Such heated discussions are normal for a free, democratic country."

But opposition leaders warned from the stage that the window for discussions was almost closed. "The time of slogans is passing," Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who received some of the biggest cheers of the day, told protestors.

Police investigators were working to a political agenda in their focus on opposition leaders, said Yashin, and they appeared to be preparing criminal cases against Navalny, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and himself.

But yesterday's demonstration showed that the protest mood among Russia's middle classes had not faded, according to political analyst Pavel Salin.

"The situation is ideal for the opposition leaders," he said. "We live in the 2010s and not the 2000s and they are more turbulent and less predictable."

The opposition will now take a summer break. The next mass protest is planned for 7 October, Putin's birthday.