EU horse trading dominates newspaper front pages

There's claim and counter-claim on the subject of the EU on a number of Sunday's front pages.

The Sunday Times says Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is pushing for a two-year ban on EU migrants claiming benefits in the UK.

According to the Observer though, crackdowns of this sort - or more generally on freedom of movement within the EU - is going to get short shrift from the powers-that-be in Brussels.

Elsewhere, the death of Ariel Sharon appears on some front pages, including the Independent on Sunday.

Discussing the Sunday Times' front page for the BBC News Channel's paper review, author and journalist Shyama Perera said in the UK, "we also do forget that we've got our own people going to other countries in the EU and they would be affected adversely were we to push for those sort of changes."

On the broader subject of UK-EU ties, she added: "All I see is more and more powder in this keg and what I can't ever see is who is going to defuse it. There's this run of disapproval and discord with no solutions."

Vincent Moss, political editor of the Sunday Mirror, agreed that a benefits crackdown on migrants would "appeal to many Conservative supporters".

But he added: "It's also a bit of a deflection strategy by Iain Duncan Smith because he's trying to reform things like benefits at home with the universal credit, and that's going very badly wrong, it's running behind time."

Sharon still divides

Surely few deaths can have inspired such contradictory headlines as that of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"To many Israelis he was a heroic warrior nicknamed The Bulldozer, but to Palestinians he was known as The Butcher," writes the Sunday Mirror.

The Sunday Times says he "never believed the independence that Israel won in 1948 was enough in itself. The country needed defending against neighbours who were determined to destroy it."

To that end, the Sunday Express says, he was single-minded, and "worked for it as both a soldier and politician with brilliance and brutality in equal measure."

Robert Fisk though, writing in the Independent on Sunday, is far less equivocal. Sharon will receive "the funeral of a hero and peacemaker", and "thus do we remake history", he says. "How speedily did toady journalists in Washington and New York patch up this brutal man's image," he asks. George W Bush referring to him as "a man of peace" was especially "ghastly", Fisk adds.

The Observer's Peter Beaumont says whichever side you come down on, "one thing is unavoidable" - "Sharon forged his path on the battlefield through the force of his personality, an extraordinary self-belief in his place in history, and in his importance."

Vigil and verdict

Most papers give their impression of the vigil held in Tottenham on Saturday to remember Mark Duggan.

"The mood was fiery and the rhetoric angry," notes the Observer.

According to the Independent on Sunday, "The ceremony was interspersed with emotional call and response chants of 'no justice, no peace' and 'who are the murderers? The police are the murderers'".

But while the vigil remained peaceful, the Sunday Times says "anarchist groups have been planning to join forces with criminal gangs to try to exploit simmering racial tensions" in Tottenham.

There was certainly fury in court earlier this week when a jury gave their verdict that Mr Duggan had been lawfully killed by police despite being unarmed at the time of the shooting.

Archie Bland, also in the Independent, says it might have been "a perplexing verdict" in some ways but it "can still be a right one". While the family were "entitled to disagree" with it, he adds, they should not have "screamed abuse" at the jury after they gave it.

The Sunday Telegraph's leader column says "pandering to the Duggan family" should be "resisted". It goes on: "It was shocking that the judge led the court in a period of silence to the dead man - as if the proceedings were a memorial rather than an inquest. It was inappropriate for Nick Clegg to say that he 'totally understood' the family's anger."

Nevertheless, the coroner at the inquest, Keith Cutler, has reportedly told the Mail on Sunday he will ask Mr Duggan's family "to help shape recommendations on police firearms procedure".

'Poor punter'

Several of the red tops have been campaigning against fixed-odds betting terminals, which have been labelled "the crack cocaine of gambling".

The Daily Star Sunday says it has discovered that "most big-name betting firms are opening shops until midnight", in what the paper calls "a cynical move to allow hooked gamblers more time to pour cash into the terminals." Its leader urges politicians "to stop this blight on the poor punter".

On a different note, the Sunday People claims that Chancellor George Osborne took "the boss of the world's biggest maker of casino machines on a trade mission to China". The paper thinks this is incompatible with David Cameron's expressed desire to take action against fixed-odds terminals. It calls on the PM to limit stakes to £2 and the number of machines in a single bookmakers to one.

Plebgate pondered

Earlier this week, PC Keith Wallis admitted he had lied when he claimed to have witnessed then Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell calling police officers in Downing Street "plebs".

Why did he do it? Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police Brian Paddick, in the Independent on Sunday, says rank-and-file officers "felt betrayed by the Tories, traditionally their supporters" when the party launched "a programme of radical reform of the police". He goes on: "Perhaps feeling let down... this proof, as PC Wallis saw it, that the Tories really did hate the police, just had to be made public."

Camilla Cavendish, writing in the Sunday Times, feels that "Plebgate was the fit-up of the century" and demands "a drastic solution". She believes current commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has been "lamentably weak on police wrongdoing" and "it is high time the mayor or London was given responsibility for policing."

Making people click

Observer - Jermain Defoe heading for a dead end moving from Tottenham to Toronto

Independent on Sunday - Shia LaBeouf retires from public life after plagiarism scandal sparks bizarre (also plagiarised) apology spree

Mirror - Battle of the bums! Kendall Jenner photobombs Kim Kardashian's gym belfie - and steals the show

Sunday Telegraph - Winner of crime novel prize turns out to be killer