Category Archives: Sadiq Khan

UK Brexit negotiator accused of treating Britain and EU as ‘two different planets’

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Verhofstadt says it would be a ‘hell of a job’ to achieve success using David Frost’s approach

Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator has been accused of treating the EU and the UK as if they are “living on two different planets” after vowing to break all regulatory ties with Brussels.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who has led the European parliament’s approach to Brexit, said it would be a “hell of a job” to secure a successful outcome from the negotiation using the British approach.

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Brexit: no-deal exit edges closer as key Tories refuse to back Corbyn

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Oliver Letwin becomes latest figure to reject call for unity government led by Labout leader

Splits in the anti-no deal alliance of MPs in parliament threatened to stymie plans to stop a no-deal Brexit on Friday, as Conservatives and independent MPs ruled out backing plans brokered by Jeremy Corbyn.

The row between the Liberal Democrats and Labour deepened as the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, urged the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, to seriously reconsider Corbyn’s offer to head a temporary government to stop a no-deal Brexit. The Lib Dem’s former leader Vince Cable demanded Corbyn name a unity figure whom he would back if his plan failed.

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Donald Trump in new attack on Sadiq Khan with Katie Hopkins retweet

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US president refers to message about Met police twitter account, calling London mayor ‘incompetent’

Donald Trump has retweeted the British far-right commentator Katie Hopkins and launched another attack on Sadiq Khan.

Referring to a message from Hopkins that the Met’s Twitter account had been targeted by hackers on Friday night, in which she said officers had “lost control of London streets” and “lost control of their Twitter account too”, Trump tweeted: “With the incompetent mayor of London, you will never have safe streets!”

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Police stop and search is working in London, says anti-violence chief

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Lib Peck insists tactics are succeeding despite Londoners ‘feeling powerless’ over crime

The head of London’s newly formed violence reduction unit has said Londoners feel powerless about levels of street crime but insisted that increased use of stop and search powers had been successful.

Lib Peck, the former leader of Lambeth council who was appointed to the role in January, made the comments while on a two-day fact-finding trip to Glasgow, visiting some of the Scottish unit’s key projects and meeting senior officials.

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Hunt defends Trump quoting Katie Hopkins in attack on Sadiq Khan

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Foreign secretary says he agrees 150% with sentiment of tweet which quoted Katie Hopkins

Jeremy Hunt has vigorously defended Donald Trump for quoting the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins in an attack on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as Downing Street declined to condemn the US president’s words.

The foreign secretary said that while he would not have used the same words as Trump he would “150% agree” with the overall sentiment.

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Trump visit avoids major pitfalls despite usual blunders

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US president’s behaviour seemed tame in comparison with disastrous visit last year

He insulted London’s mayor, abused an American actor on Twitter at 1.20am, turned Brexit into a threat to the National Health Service, described Meghan Markle as nasty, and behaved as if he was a kingmaker offering audiences to aspirants from the 51st state, and yet to Whitehall’s diplomats Donald Trump’s state visit was by no means the worst in living memory.

It may be that the bar had been set vertiginously low, or that Trump, as a repeat visitor, has lost some of his capacity for shock and awe. Somehow, it seemed tame and normalised in comparison with his previous disastrous visit a year ago. Even the protests felt familiar, and like Trump’s insults aimed at Sadiq Khan, heartfelt but formulaic.

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Sadiq Khan to Trump: you stand for the opposite of London’s values – video

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The mayor of London has recorded a video message to the US president as Donald Trump spent his first day in the UK. Earlier on Monday, Trump tweeted that 'Kahn [sic] reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, [Bill] de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job'. Trump is only the third US president to have had a state visit to the UK

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Donald Trump: send in Nigel Farage to negotiate with the EU

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US president makes second intervention in British politics, saying UK should ‘walk away’

Donald Trump has called on Britain to leave the European Union without a deal if Brussels refuses to meet its demands, as he urged the government to send Nigel Farage into the negotiations.

In his second extraordinary intervention into British politics ahead of this week’s state visit, the US president suggested the UK should “walk away” from talks and refuse to pay the £39bn divorce bill if its requests were not met.

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Donald Trump is like a 20th-century fascist, says Sadiq Khan

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London mayor hits out at US president before his state visit to Britain

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has compared the language used by Donald Trump to rally his supporters to that of “the fascists of the 20th century” in an explosive intervention before the US president’s state visit to London that begins on Monday.

Writing in the Observer, Khan condemned the red-carpet treatment being afforded to Trump who, with his wife Melania, will be a guest of the Queen during his three-day stay, which is expected to provoke massive protests in the capital on Tuesday.

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Labour panics as remain voters switch to Liberal Democrats

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Polls makes Vince Cable’s party the favourite for remainers and puts it in first place in London

Senior Labour figures were engaged in a desperate battle to shore up the party’s support on Saturday night, amid warnings that its stance on Brexit was helping to “detoxify the Lib Dems”.

With just days left before the European elections at which Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is expected to triumph, shadow cabinet ministers are among those concerned that Labour’s ambiguous position on Brexit has helped revive the Lib Dems. It comes as new polling seen by the Observer suggests Vince Cable’s party is running in first place in London and could even beat Labour overall.

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Trump baby blimp back and could be even bigger for UK state visit

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Balloon depicting nappy-wearing US president could be five times size of predecessor

The Donald Trump baby blimp, which became the focal point of protests against the US president’s visit to the UK in July, will rise again for the state visit and could be accompanied by a bigger version, activists have revealed.

Related: What happened next? The Trump baby blimp: 'In retrospect, we should have ordered a bigger balloon'

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Corbyn’s team split over soft Brexit

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Shadow cabinet will clash this week over Norway-style deal or second referendum

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet is set to clash again over Brexit this week, with supporters of a second referendum concerned that the Labour leadership will opt to facilitate a soft Brexit. With senior Labour figures openly calling for another public vote at the anti-Brexit march in London on Saturday, other influential MPs believe Corbyn’s inner circle is actually warming to a Norway-style Brexit that would see Britain leave the EU, but remain closely aligned to it.

Tensions between Labour and its pro-Remain activists are already high after the party released a tweet on Friday evening asking if supporters had any “big weekend plans” and called on them to go out leafleting for May’s local elections.

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Sadiq Khan angers Brexiters with pro-EU fireworks display

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Mayor uses New Year’s Eve event to send message London remains open to Europeans

If the festive season can sometimes involve trolling relatives with different political views, Sadiq Khan has arguably taken the tradition to a grand scale with a New Year’s Eve fireworks display which has prompted apoplexy among Brexiters with its pro-EU message.

The mayor hailed the event, in which the London Eye was lit up in the blue-and-yellow colours of the EU flag, as part of a wider message to Europe that the capital would stay “open-minded” and “outward looking” after Brexit.

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