Climate activists jailed and Obama 'moves against' Biden

The sketch writers focus on Sir Ed Davey's appearance at the Post Office inquiry on Thursday

There is widespread coverage of the findings of the first report of the Covid public inquiry in today's papers.

"They failed us all" says the headline of the Daily Mirror, next to a photo of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, wearing a facemask. The Guardian quotes from the report, which says UK Covid planning was "beset by fatal flaws". The Sun says the UK's Covid flaws left 235,000 to die. But it says the only real fault of successive health secretaries was accepting the complacent assurances of health experts advising them.

The Times says the report lays bare "a culpable lack of imagination among politicians and scientists alike... to consider the full range of potentially disastrous scenarios when there was still time to do something about it." It must never happen again, the paper says. The Daily Express agrees and says "next time, we must be ready".

The i, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph all report on attempts by Democrats to get US President Joe Biden to end his campaign for re-election. The Telegraph reports Mr Biden may stand down at the weekend. It quotes a friend of the president, who says: "I pray he does the right thing. He's headed that way".

The i's editorial says Mr Biden's aides "have been hiding growing concerns about his fitness for the campaign, and eventually for the highest office". The Financial Times says Democratic grandees are pushing behind the scenes, but says Mr Biden's campaign team are staunchly defending him, insisting he is staying in the race.

"Judge who spoke for all of us on Eco-Fanatics" reads the headline on the front page of the Daily Mail, beneath photos of the five environmental protesters, jailed for up to five years on Thursday for blocking the M25 over four days. But there's criticism of the sentences in The Times. The paper quotes the entrepreneur, Dale Vince, who says the jail terms - the longest ever for non-violent demonstrations - "can't be right", given the overcrowding in prisons. To the Guardian's columnist George Monbiot, "these are sentences of the kind you might expect in Russia or Egypt".

The sketch writers focus on Sir Ed Davey's appearance at the Post Office Horizon inquiry. In the Daily Mail, Quentin Letts said it was fortunate that the appearance happened after the general election. Had Thursday's "bottom-wriggler" of a session come before polling day, he says, the Lib Dems "might have gone down with their pants on fire".

For John Crace in The Guardian, "this was, at times, a shifty Ed. At others, a bewildered Ed. An Ed who couldn't believe what had happened to him."

Tom Peck in The Times says Sir Ed's eyes narrowed and his jaws clenched. "I have personally looked in those very same eyeballs, as their owner steadies himself to be shot 80ft in the air by a giant pendulum swing. I’ve seen them bank around a high corner at 68 miles an hour and turn into the only quadruple barrel roll section of rollercoaster anywhere in Europe. I only realise now that I’d never actually seen the man look nervous," he says.

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