At the heart of the row is the Brexit deal’s failure to spell out what proof French fishers need to get a permit
Britain and France have been at loggerheads over post-Brexit fishing licences for UK waters since the start of the year. Both sides are now threatening imminent action – and mistranslations have not helped.
Continue reading...UK PM says climate crisis talks at G20 over weekend only ‘inched forward’
The Cop26 climate summit is at serious risk of failure because countries are still not promising enough to restrict global temperature rises to below 1.5C, Boris Johnson has warned.
In a blunt admission after two days of preliminary talks at the G20 meeting of world leaders, the prime minister conceded little progress had been made – and the conference is not on track to achieve a deal that keeps the goal alive. He put the chances of success as “six out of 10”.
Continue reading...No 10 says ‘our stance has not changed’ after French officials state Macron and Johnson found path to de-escalating dispute
A dispute between the UK and France over post-Brexit fishing rights has escalated significantly after a meeting between Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, with Downing Street rejecting a French claim that the two leaders had agreed a path towards resolving the issue.
Johnson and the French president met alone for half an hour on Sunday morning on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome, where they discussed the fishing row, as well as tensions over Northern Ireland and this week’s Cop26 climate summit.
Continue reading...Scientists and experts in despair over fishing row, as prime minister declares summit will be ‘world’s moment of truth’
Leading scientists and environmentalists called on Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron to declare an immediate ceasefire in a bitter Anglo-French row over fishing rights on Saturday as fears grew that the UK’s arguments with its EU neighbours could overshadow the crucial Cop26 summit on climate change.
On the eve of the UK hosting 120 world leaders at the meeting in Glasgow, the prime minister said the summit would be “the world’s moment of truth” and could mark “the beginning of the end of climate change”. Speaking at a meeting of G20 leaders in Rome, he added: “The question everyone is asking is whether we seize this moment or let it slip away.”
Continue reading...Chris Riddell on ghouls, Brexit and the budget
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Continue reading...Ahead of G20 meeting, PM warns of ‘difficult geopolitical events’ echoing those that ended Roman empire
A failure by world leaders to commit to tackling the climate emergency at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow could prompt “very difficult geopolitical events” including mass migration and global competition for food and water, Boris Johnson has said.
Speaking before the start of a gathering of leaders from the G20 industrialised nations in Rome, where he will push for countries to arrive in Glasgow with fixed plans to cut emissions, Johnson said the chances of success hung in the balance.
Continue reading...The Labour politician is used to fighting battles – but can she win her latest: convincing her colleagues to back proper maternity cover for fellow members?
Stella Creasy is dodging people on the pavement as we talk. She apologises for the background noise but it’s hard finding time for a conversation when you have a newborn son, a toddler daughter, and no proper maternity leave from a full-time job as Labour MP for Walthamstow; this walk to an appointment is the only window she has. Last month, she spoke in a Commons debate on childcare, baby Pip in a sling, sounding astonishingly composed for someone who had given birth four weeks earlier. I ask how she’s feeling and she laughs briefly and says: “Tired as hell, mad as anything.”
And then it all comes tumbling out: the night before that debate, she’d been in hospital with an infection she thinks was brought on by doing too much. The day after her caesarean, she was dialling into meetings with the defence secretary from hospital – she has had about 200 cases in her London constituency of people seeking help getting family members out of Afghanistan – and has barely stopped since. “There wasn’t any alternative,” she says. “These are people ringing up my staff threatening to kill themselves because they’re so worried about family members. You can hear the terror in their voices.” Meanwhile, she’s grappling with “the mum guilt” for not taking more time off, while struggling to be patient with people in parliament who ask how she is, only to back away when answered honestly. Having lost a battle with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) this summer over the maternity leave cover she wanted, Creasy refuses to draw a polite veil over the consequences. And if that means breaking the working mother taboo against admitting that everything is not in fact fine, then so be it.
Continue reading...Prime minister says ‘too many countries doing too little’ amid last-minute talks before summit
World leaders have been warned that Cop26 must “mark the beginning of the end of climate change” amid last-minute talks that could help determine the future of the planet.
With the long-awaited environmental summit due to start on Monday, Boris Johnson issued his plea while saying “too many countries are still doing too little”.
Continue reading...French and EU vessels could face ‘rigorous checks’ in British waters if Paris carries out threats
Boris Johnson vowed to do “whatever is necessary” to protect British fishers, with French and EU vessels put on notice of “rigorous” checks when in British waters and even tariffs on goods if Paris acts on its recent threats.
As France prepared to act on its plan to tie up British goods in red tape at ports in a row over fishing licences, the prime minister said he intended to ask Emmanuel Macron to see past the “turbulence” in British-French relations.
Continue reading...As the bard of Barking tours a new album, he reflects on modern politics, his scraps with the Daily Mail and why he could do with listening a bit more
In an Exeter pub on a wet Monday morning, Billy Bragg is talking about a day at the Glastonbury festival in 2000. The BBC had signed up an unusual guest for its coverage – Boris Johnson. In the footage (still online), Johnson – then a year from becoming an MP – forgets to get off the train, gets a comedy henna tattoo in Sanskrit, and growls the Clash’s Bankrobber to Bragg in the car: “It’s your philosophy, isn’t it?” he says. “Leftwing approval of theft from capitalists?”
“He was trolling me the whole time,” Bragg remembers. “That’s what his MO still is. A wind-up merchant who became prime minister! How the fuck did that happen?” He shrugs. “Modern politics needs things he doesn’t have: accountability and empathy.”
Continue reading...UK environment secretary accuses France of using ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric in escalating dispute
Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of being re-elected president may be driving the diplomatic row with France over post-Brexit access to Britain’s fishing waters, the UK’s environment secretary has claimed.
George Eustice accused Paris of using “inflammatory” rhetoric in an escalating dispute over a shortfall in licences for French fishing vessels seeking to operate in the coastal waters of the UK and Jersey.
Continue reading...Ex-UK PM and almost 200 global figures write to G20 summit host calling for 240m vaccines to be shared
Gordon Brown has called on the British government and other G20 countries to urgently arrange a military airlift of surplus Covid vaccines to poorer countries before they expire, saying it is their “moral responsibility” to do so.
The former prime minister has organised a letter from more than 160 former world leaders and global figures calling for richer countries to send 240m vaccines stored in the US, Europe and Canada to countries struggling to vaccinate their populations.
Continue reading...Equalities minister Liz Truss will consult on plans to allow counselling for non-vulnerable adults
Consenting adults should be able to undergo so-called conversion therapy, the government has recommended.
Setting out proposals for how they plan to crack down on “coercive and abhorrent” practices that seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity, the Government Equalities Office said: “We recognise there is a plurality of experience in this area and that there are adults who seek counselling to help them live a life that they feel is more in line with their personal beliefs.”
Continue reading...Comments from French EU affairs minister come as British trawler is detained in France amid dispute
France will “now use the language of force” in an escalation of a row over post-Brexit fishing rights, France’s EU affairs minister has said, as French maritime police seized a British trawler found in its territorial waters without a licence.
One vessel was stopped off Le Havre in the early hours of Thursday morning, then rerouted to the quay and “handed over to the judicial authority”, while a second was given a verbal warning.
Continue reading...Analysis: chancellor left with little choice but to go PM’s way, though one passage of his speech was telling
Rishi Sunak may see himself as a future prime minister but this budget confirmed he is very much Boris Johnson’s chancellor.
Rumours about ructions between the pair have gripped Westminster for months. Sunak, who told last year’s Tory conference his party had a moral duty to fix the public finances, was known to be queasy about the government’s national insurance increase, for example.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak will be looking at key indicators such as GDP growth, public debt levels and inflation as he draws up his autumn budget
Britain’s economic recovery from Covid is at growing risk from severe shortages of workers and materials, as well as mounting living costs for households, as Rishi Sunak prepares his budget and spending review.
Here are five key charts that will underpin the chancellor’s statement on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Chancellor to strike upbeat tone despite cost-of-living crisis, with spending pledges worth billions
Rishi Sunak will use his budget to insist the UK is entering an economic “age of optimism” despite a looming cost-of-living crisis, after making a deluge of promises to spend billions more on health, transport and skills.
In an attempt to strike an upbeat tone during his second budget on Wednesday, the chancellor will say his aim is to create a “new economy post-Covid”.
Continue reading...Chief scientific adviser for Department of Health refers to tougher proposal beyond ‘plan B’ that has ‘not been extensively worked up’
A “plan C” for tougher coronavirus restrictions has been discussed in official circles, a senior civil servant has confirmed, despite ministers denying that tougher measures are an option this Christmas should the rate of new cases continue to rise.
The indication of planning for potentially harsher restrictions comes as senior scientists and Labour push for the rollout of “plan B”, an existing package of “light-touch” measures including advice to work from home and compulsory face masks in some settings.
Continue reading...Exclusive analysis of 540,000 wealthiest individuals in the UK shows effects of low capital gains tax
The government could raise an extra £16bn a year if the low tax rates on profits from shares and property were increased and brought back into line with taxes on salaries.
Exclusive analysis of data on the 540,000 wealthiest individuals in the UK – the top 1% – shows how decades of low taxes on capital gains, a type of income mainly available to the wealthiest in society, is creating a new breed of “super-gainers”.
Continue reading...In England, masks are expected and recommended in crowded and enclosed spaces – but not legally required. Many have abandoned them altogether. What would convince everyone to put them back on?
Dave stopped wearing his face mask “the second I didn’t have to. I grudgingly wore it, because it was the right thing to do and because it was mandatory,” says the teacher from East Sussex. “But I felt, and still do, that the reason we were told to wear masks was to make scared people feel less scared.” He didn’t feel awkward abandoning his mask, he says, as “hardly anybody bothers”, but he will put one on when visiting the vet, pharmacist or doctor, because he knows they want him to. “I feel it’s the respectful thing to do, but it’s a bit of theatre.”
Every month since July, when the legal requirement to wear face masks – along with other restrictions – ended in England, the number of mask-wearers has dropped. In figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) last week, 82% of adults reported they had worn a mask outside their home in the previous seven days – a drop from 86% the previous month. But that seems high to me. In my own highly unscientific survey of people coming out of a shopping centre in a south coast town centre last week, only around one in 25 were wearing a mask and overwhelmingly they tended to be older people – the most vulnerable social group. “When everyone else stopped, I stopped,” says Holly. Her friend Chantelle works in a supermarket and also hasn’t worn a mask since July. Does she mind customers not wearing masks? “Not really,” she says, “because I’m not wearing one. Doing an eight-hour shift in it was horrible.” Would they go back to wearing masks? “If we had to, then yeah, I would,” says Holly, but neither would by choice.
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