If Rishi Sunak is indeed to be our next PM, says Clare Foges in The Times, how can he redeem the Conservative Party? After years of hearing “endless musings” about how the Tories can win and hold on to power, “and very little on what they will do with it”, Sunak must now put the “national interest” first. This means abandoning the “cabinet-of-cronies model” and recruiting those who run our country on ability; implementing whatever tax and spending cuts are necessary to stabilise the economy, “regardless of the electoral pain”; and ditching pointless culture war rhetoric. It also means addressing “the elephant rampaging around the room”: Brexit, which is responsible for “a significant portion of our economic malaise”. In 2016, the British economy was 90% the size of Germany’s; now it is less than 70%.

It’s astonishing how little coverage it has received, says Edward Luce in the FT, but Joe Biden has just launched a “full-blown economic war” on Beijing. Specifically, his administration has announced severe restrictions on the export of high-end US semiconductor chips to China; similar limits on chips made with US equipment (which means pretty much all of them); and a ban on Americans and green card holders working with Chinese chip producers without approval. The move won’t just affect China’s military and AI capabilities, which rely on advanced computer chips. It means America is committed “to blocking China in all kinds of civilian technologies that make up a modern economy”.