Ministers are to kick off a search for the inaugural chair of the new football watchdog, even as it faces growing hints of opposition to its establishment from the Premier League.

Sky News has learnt that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will launch the appointment process for the role at the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) as soon as this week.

The chair, who is expected to be paid a six-figure salary, will be responsible for overseeing a landmark period in the English game.

The regulator will have three primary objectives, including promoting clubs’ financial sustainability and the financial resilience of English football as a whole.

Money latest: New savings account offers 7% interest

It will also be charged with safeguarding the heritage of clubs, including their badges and traditional playing colours.

The IFR will have the power to prevent clubs from joining breakaway competitions, inspired by the putative efforts of English football’s big six clubs to join a European Super League.

Its establishment through primary legislation comes amid an ongoing impasse between the Premier League and English Football League about future financial distributions.

Read more from Sky News:
Boeing whistleblower claims 787 Dreamliner planes ‘defective’
Modern slavery helpline receives record number of calls

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, is among the names who have been touted as potential chairs of the IFR.

Last week, Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, warned in an article for The Times that more intrusive regulation could “undermine the Premier League’s global success, thereby wounding the goose that provides English football’s golden egg”.

A DCMS spokesman declined to comment on Thursday morning.

Crisis-hit Boeing has rushed to defend itself from fresh whistleblower allegations of poor practice, as the airline continues to grapple its latest safety crisis.

A Congressional investigation heard evidence on Wednesday on the safety culture and manufacturing standards at the company – rocked in January by a mid-air scare that saw an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight suffer a panel blowout.

One Boeing quality engineer, Sam Salehpour, told members of a Senate subcommittee that Boeing was taking shortcuts to bolster production levels that could lead to jetliners breaking apart.

Money latest: How to claim for pothole damage

He said of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, that has more than 1,000 in use across airlines globally including at British Airways, that excessive force was used to jam together sections of fuselage.

He claimed the extra force could compromise the carbon-composite material used for the plane’s frame.

“They are putting out defective airplanes,” he concluded, while adding that he was threatened when he raised concerns about the issue.

The engineer said he studied Boeing’s own data and concluded “that the company is taking manufacturing shortcuts on the 787 programme that could significantly reduce the airplane’s safety and the life cycle”.

Boeing denied his claims surrounding both the Dreamliner’s structural integrity and that factory workers jumped on sections of fuselage to force them to align.

Two Boeing engineering executives said this week that its testing and inspections regimes have found no signs of fatigue or cracking in the composite panels, saying they were almost impervious to fatigue.

The company’s track record is facing fresh scrutiny amid criticism from regulators and safety officials alike in the wake of the incident aboard the Alaska Airlines plane.

It has become a trust issue again after the worst period in Boeing’s history when two fatal crashes, both involving MAX 8 aircraft, left 346 people dead in 2018 and 2019.

All 737 MAX 8 planes were grounded for almost two years while a fix to flawed flight control software was implemented.

A separate Senate commerce committee heard on Wednesday from members of an expert panel that found serious flaws in Boeing’s safety culture.

One of the panel members, MIT aeronautics lecturer Javier de Luis, said employees hear Boeing leadership talk about safety, but workers feel pressure to push planes through the factory as fast as they can.

In talking to Boeing workers, he said he heard “there was a very real fear of payback and retribution if you held your ground”.

Pressure on Boeing to focus on safety has included restrictions placed on production, limiting its manufacturing output.

At the same time, it is still facing three separate investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Justice Department and the National Transportation Safety Board relating to the panel blowout.

A management shake-up announced amid the inquiries will see the chief executive depart the company by the year’s end.

Sky News has approached British Airways for comment.

It’s not quite a Mission Accomplished moment – the equivalent of that day in 2003 when George W Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and prematurely declared the Iraq war was over.

But Jeremy Hunt’s declaration in our interview in Washington DC that he had achieved a “soft landing” in the economy certainly has a whiff of wishful thinking about it.

Economists spend much of their time dreaming that, following a crisis, or a set of crises, they will be able to engineer a slow glidepath, ensuring there is no painful economic catastrophe. Yet it rarely actually happens.

Money latest: Tourist tax warning

In the UK’s case, most economists would hesitate before describing Britain’s situation as a “soft landing”.

The economy is, after all, still formally in recession. At best, gross domestic product is flatlining.

Factor in population growth, and it’s shrinking quarter after quarter.

Yet the chancellor was at pains to insist today that, in fact, the outlook is strikingly positive.

Of course, that confidence comes as he gears up for an election in which the economy is likely to be centre stage.

The polling suggests the Conservatives are heading for a decisive loss, and the absence of an economic “feel good factor” isn’t helping.

So one can understand why he wants to paint the picture of a strong economy.

Read more from Sky News:
Review ordered into another Post Office IT system
Almost one million renters given no-fault evictions

Yet peer at the data and it’s hard to share his confidence.

With interest rates still at 5.25% and inflation still above target, the squeeze families have been facing in recent years has barely abated.

The UK is expected to grow at a slower rate than nearly every other G7 economy this year, according to the latest International Monetary Fund forecasts.

Yet the chancellor is not alone in clinging to optimism.

👉 Listen above then tap here to follow the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts 👈

Here in Washington, most central bankers and finance ministers are quietly hoping that all the economic and military challenges facing them – from war in Ukraine and the Middle East to China’s tensions with America – do not crystallise into something more horrifying and all-encompassing.

They, like Jeremy Hunt, would much rather keep on talking about soft landings.