Category Archives: Politics

Sinn Féin designates deputy first minister to avert Stormont crisis

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Westminster-backed deal to legislate for Irish language protections saves Northern Ireland executive from collapse

Sinn Féin will nominate Michelle O’Neill as deputy first minister at Stormont after the party president, Mary Lou McDonald, said she received a commitment from the UK government to legislate for Irish language protections at Westminster.

McDonald earlier said she was going to meet the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, as her party and the DUP attempted to avert a fresh political crisis at Stormont.

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Matt Hancock says Delta variant accounts for 96% of new UK Covid cases – video

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The health secretary tells the House of Commons that the spread of the variant led the government to delay step four of its roadmap for easing restrictions in England. He said it spread more easily than the Alpha variant, and that there was some evidence that the risk of hospital admission was also higher

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UK criticises Leo Varadkar over united Ireland comments

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Irish deputy PM’s remarks ‘unhelpful and ill-advised’, says Northern Ireland secretary

The British government has rebuked Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Leo Varadkar, for saying he believed there could be a united Ireland within his lifetime.

Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the Commons on Wednesday the comments were “unhelpful and ill-advised”.

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Cummings texts show Boris Johnson calling Matt Hancock ‘totally hopeless’

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WhatsApp message published by former aide reveals prime minister’s scathing verdict on health secretary

Boris Johnson described Matt Hancock as “totally fucking hopeless” during the early stages of the pandemic, concerned by the health secretary’s promises on testing, text messages published by Dominic Cummings have revealed.

Writing on Substack, the prime minister’s former chief aide published a slew of texts and documents from emergency Cobra meetings that he said would combat what he called “lies” from Downing Street and the health secretary about the initial handling of the pandemic.

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UK asks EU to suspend Northern Ireland sausage ban

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Brexit minister Lord Frost asks for ‘a bit of breathing space’ to negotiate deal and head off trade war

The UK has asked the EU to suspend an imminent ban on the sale of British sausages in Northern Ireland to give both sides “breathing space” to negotiate an agreement on the Brexit protocol and avert a trade war.

Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, was speaking days after Boris Johnson warned he would do “whatever it takes” to protect Northern Ireland’s position as part of the UK.

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Home Office abandons plans to deport Osime Brown to Jamaica

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Family celebrate success of campaign to halt deportation of 22-year-old, who has autism

A 22-year-old man who has autism and his family are celebrating after the Home Office abandoned plans to deport him to Jamaica.

Osime Brown, who left Jamaica aged four to settle in the UK with his mother, Joan Martin, was facing deportation after being released from prison where he had been serving a sentence for stealing a friend’s mobile phone, though he and others said he did not do it.

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‘People have already forgotten Jo Cox’: Samuel Kasumu on why he quit as No 10’s race adviser

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He resigned amid the fallout from a government report that dismissed institutional racism. In his first interview since, he says some members of the government are waging a culture war – and endangering the country

Samuel Kasumu is worried about what is to come. The former race adviser to No 10 has watched, dismayed, as commentators and members of the government – who he believes should know better – engage in a bitter culture war. He warns that the consequences for the UK will be severe.

“There are some people in the government who feel like the right way to win is to pick a fight on the culture war and to exploit division,” he says. “I worry about that. It seems like people have very short memories and they’ve already forgotten Jo Cox.” Kasumu believes the man who killed the MP may have been radicalised and worked into a “frenzy” by the narratives in certain newspapers that are pushed by media commentators.

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Why is Israel lifting Covid restrictions as England extends them?

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Analysis: both are viewed as running successful vaccine campaigns, but case numbers are very different

Israel and the UK were viewed as world leaders in their coronavirus vaccine campaigns but whereas the former is lifting almost all pandemic limitations, the latter is now glumly extending its restrictions in England amid a sharp rise in infections.

Despite starting its mass inoculation programme after the UK in December, Israel has sped ahead and it reached a key milestone on Tuesday, scrapping a requirement to wear face masks indoors, one of the final Covid limitations.

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British nationals in France face losing rights if they miss residency deadline

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Call to extend 30 June deadline over fears Britons will lose access to healthcare and pensions

Campaigners have warned that tens of thousands of British nationals living in France and three other countries risk losing local healthcare, employment and other rights if they do not apply to remain resident in the next 14 days.

British in Europe, a group set up to protect the post-Brexit rights of about 1.2 million UK nationals living on the continent, have called on France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Malta to extend their 30 June deadline as the Netherlands has done, to 30 October.

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England’s Covid lockdown lifting: is a four-week delay enough?

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Analysis: Even a short pause is expected to reduce the number of people going to hospital as more people are vaccinated

The roadmap out of lockdown – England’s strategy to return to a life more normal – was heavy on dates from the start. The first three steps, in March, April and May, passed so smoothly that a crucial point was easily forgotten: reopening rested on data, not dates, at least that was what scientific advisers hoped. Well, now the data has spoken.

England is not in lockdown today. Children are back at school. Cafes, restaurants and pubs are open. People can mix indoors, albeit in small numbers. Thousands can watch football matches. As the country moved from one step to another, more contact between people was expected to fuel cases, hospitalisations and even deaths. To keep them to a minimum, we have the vaccination programme.

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Losing ‘Freedom Day’ is galling for Boris Johnson, but things could get worse

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Analysis: The PM will get a media pasting, but backtracking would be more painful than delaying

Boris Johnson has once again been persuaded that he must do the inevitable and cancel “Freedom Day” – a decision that will deeply rankle with him.

The prime minister is said to have complained to aides over the weekend about briefings to newspapers at the end of last week that a four-week delay was the likely outcome, saying he had technically not made the decision yet. But one thing matters more to Johnson than being able to join crowds in a packed pub on 21 June: not having to close them again a few weeks later.

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UK and EU try to settle standoff over Northern Ireland Brexit checks

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Brexit minister and EU Commission official to meet this week as tensions remain high

The Brexit minister Lord Frost and the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, are expected to meet virtually this week to try to break the deadlock over Brexit checks in Northern Ireland.

But as the countdown begins to a 30 June ban on the sale of chilled meats, including sausages, from Great Britain in Northern Irish supermarkets, tensions between the EU and Boris Johnson’s government remain heightened.

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Irish-language row threatens to derail Northern Ireland government

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Standoff between DUP and Sinn Féin blocking ratification of Arlene Foster’s designated successor

A dispute between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) over an Irish-language act is threatening to derail the Northern Ireland assembly and executive.

Arlene Foster formally resigned as first minister at 1pm on Monday but a standoff between the two biggest parties at Stormont is blocking her designated successor, Paul Givan, 39, from taking the post.

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Home Office condemned for forcing migrants on bail to wear GPS tags

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Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rights

More than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process.

The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which can track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor.

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UK aid cuts to Bangladesh NGO a ‘gut punch’, says charity head

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Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme poverty

The UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.

Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support.

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Delaying England’s Covid reopening ‘could keep thousands out of hospital’

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Research backs four-week delay on lifting restrictions to allow more people to get jabs

Ministers have been told that a four-week delay to easing all Covid restrictions would probably prevent thousands of hospitalisations, as Boris Johnson prepares to tell the English public they will have to wait up to another month for “freedom day”.

The government roadmap out of lockdown earmarks 21 June for the last remaining coronavirus restrictions to be lifted in England, but the prime minister is expected to announce on Monday that the timetable will be pushed back by two to four weeks amid a rapid rise in cases of the Delta variant first detected in India.

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G7 partners survive small talk at ultimate office awayday | Helen Pidd

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Some summit spouses must have trust issues – why else would they turn up?

It could be said that anyone who voluntarily attends their partner’s office party is either a masochist or has trust issues. So, why, then, do the spouses of world leaders feel obliged to turn up to global summits?

Ordinarily, it appears that their only duty is to make small talk with their fellow spare parts while their other halves chew over the big issues of the day. At the G7 meeting in Cornwall this weekend, the Wags and Habs were also required to admire Boris Johnson’s latest child when he was rolled out before their beachfront BBQ.

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Boris Johnson doesn’t quite get his big moment in the Cornish sunshine

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Analysis: an unseemly spat over Brexit derailed the UK prime minister’s chance to impress on the global stage

Delivering his closing press conference in the Carbis Bay hotel on Sunday, pale golden sand and azure sea visible behind him, Boris Johnson sought to play down the unseemly diplomatic spat that had marred his moment on the world stage.

“Actually, what happened at this summit was that there was a colossal amount of work on subjects that had absolutely nothing to do with Brexit,” he insisted.

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Johnson defends G7 deal amid criticism of final communique

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Green campaigners and anti-poverty groups say Cornwall summit failed to address challenges facing the world

Boris Johnson has sought to defend the deal struck by G7 leaders at the Cornwall summit, as green groups and anti-poverty campaigners said the rich nations’ club had failed to match the scale of the challenges facing the world.

The final communique contained no early timetable to eradicate coal-fired emissions, offered only 1bn extra coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poor over the next 12 months and made no new binding commitments to challenge China’s human rights abuses.

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Boris Johnson closes G7 summit with vow to protect UK integrity – video

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Boris Johnson sought to play down reports of a rift with the EU over Northern Ireland at the end of the G7 summit, although he insisted it was the job of the government to protect the UK’s territorial integrity. Speaking at an end-of-summit press conference, the prime minister was careful not to escalate a row that had intensified following a report that France’s Emmanuel Macron had suggested that Northern Ireland was not wholly part of the UK

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