Category Archives: Politics

Fleeing Afghans should try to get to border, says UK defence secretary

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Ben Wallace signals few places remain on UK rescue flights as fears of attack grow and deadline looms

Afghans who want to flee to Britain may be better off “trying to get to the border” than awaiting RAF evacuation, the defence secretary has said as British troops made last-ditch attempts to airlift at least 1,500 remaining interpreters and others who have supported the UK.

Ben Wallace, in a briefing to MPs, signalled there were few places left on British rescue flights, which have evacuated more than 10,000 people from Kabul since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan less than two weeks ago.

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German Greens under fire over 19th-century folk song in election ad

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Greens go for wide appeal with reworked campfire song with no mention of devastating floods

Germany’s Green party has been accused of attempting to revive its hippyish origins rather than tackle the challenges of the present with the release of a campaign ad for next month’s federal election that revives a 19th-century folk song.

Five weeks before a general election, in which at one point the party was leading in the polls, the one-minute-long commercial is being seen by some critics as a deliberate and last-ditch attempt to appeal to as wide a constituency as possible as it battles for second place against the resurgent Social Democrats.

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Biden pours salt into wounds of relations with Europe at G7 meeting

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Analysis: US president dashes hopes he might acknowledge damage done by handling of Afghan withdrawal

In the end it took only seven minutes for Joe Biden to pour salt into the wounds of his fractured relationship with European leaders, telling them firmly on a video call that he would not extend the 31 August deadline for US troops to stay in Kabul, as he had been asked by the French, Italians and most of all the British. The rebuff follows Biden’s earlier decision in July to insist on the August deadline previously set in 2020 by Donald Trump for the withdrawal, a decision the US president relayed to his EU colleagues as a fait accompli.

For Europe the episode has been a rude awakening, and a moment of sober reassessment. Only on 25 March Charles Michel had afforded Biden the chance to address a meeting of the European Council, the first foreign leader given the honour since Barack Obama 11 years earlier. Biden after all had said his foreign policy would only be as strong as his system of alliances, the true shield of the republic, and Europe would be at the heart of that system.

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Britain’s military must learn from its mistakes

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Britain’s armed forces are dodging responsibility for failings in Afghanistan and Iraq, argues Prof Paul Dixon. RC Pennington fears military history is doomed to repeat itself. Plus letters from Margaret Phelps, Diana Francis and Jim Golcher

Simon Akam is right, the military does want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan (Britain’s military will want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan. It must face reality, 22 August), but it does so by deflecting responsibility on to the politicians.

There is also a strong reluctance to publish books and articles that are critical of the military, even by those who served. All three books cited by Akam are by journalists who are ex-military.

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Scotland to hold its own coronavirus public inquiry by end of year

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Move follows pressure from grieving families to begin investigation before end of year

The Scottish government will hold its own public inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by the end of the year, after pressure from relatives who lost loved ones to the virus.

The announcement came after the deputy first minister and cabinet secretary for Covid recovery, John Swinney, met representatives of the Scottish branch of the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice.

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Afghanistan: what does each nation hope to get out of the G7 meeting?

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Analysis: Tuesday’s meeting called by Boris Johnson may include postmortem on Joe Biden’s handling of crisis

The emergency meeting of G7 nations on Tuesday – called by Boris Johnson as this year’s chair of the G7 – is in essence a gathering of the vanquished but faces a threefold agenda: how to ensure as many Afghans as possible can leave Kabul, and whether the US is prepared to stay beyond the original 31 August deadline for the withdrawal of all US forces; how a resettlement programme can be coordinated for the medium term; and finally, how to encourage the Taliban to form an inclusive government, including by threatening sanctions or withholding recognition.

But each country will bring its own concerns and an ugly postmortem on Joe Biden’s handling of the crisis cannot be ruled out.

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UK scrambles to complete Kabul airlift as envoy flags risk of provoking Taliban

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Exclusive: Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan says continuing evacuations after 31 August could spark reaction from militants

Britain has begun a last-ditch scramble to get people out of Kabul amid warnings from the senior diplomat on the ground that staying past the current 31 August deadline may not be realistic and risks provoking the Taliban.

Speaking to MPs from Kabul, Sir Laurie Bristow, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, said trying to hold Kabul’s airport any longer would be fraught with risk. He was speaking before Tuesday’s G7 meeting, which is expected to discuss a request from the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to the US president, Joe Biden, to stay longer.

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‘Devastating’: how UK’s foreign aid cuts could hurt the world’s poorest

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Data analysis highlights the human cost if thousands of overseas projects lose funding

Experts have warned of “devastating” consequences of the UK’s foreign aid cuts after Guardian analysis revealed the UK is cutting funding at a time when major recipient countries are at risk of becoming more politically unstable.

Thousands of activities providing life-saving support are being cut due to the government’s decision to reduce aid spending to 0.5% of gross national income.

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Ministers accused of failing to secure rights of Britons with foreign spouses in EU

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Campaigners say Britons are facing problems with Home Office over rights to return to UK

Ministers have been accused of breaching their promise to secure the post-Brexit rights of thousands of British nationals who settled in the EU and married foreigners.

Campaigners at British in Europe (BiE) have written to the Foreign Office minister Wendy Morton and the immigration minister Kevin Foster telling of the “heartbreak” and “distress” endured by British citizens who are facing problems with the Home Office over their rights to return home to the UK.

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Nosedive in UK-US relations is another casualty of Afghanistan’s fall

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Ministers are becoming openly critical of Joe Biden after being left in the dark about major decisions

So much for the special relationship. As the Afghanistan crisis has unfolded, it has precipitated a high-speed deterioration in Anglo-American relations.

What began as a muted disagreement on whether it was right for the US to withdraw militarily has reached the point where UK government sources are openly briefing against President Joe Biden as the situation in Kabul worsens.

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Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

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Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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Wrong to label Extinction Rebellion as extremists, says Home Office adviser

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Peer at odds with Priti Patel over climate activists on eve of more protests

A government extremism adviser has admitted during a private meeting that it is wrong to label Extinction Rebellion (XR) supporters as “extreme”, despite the home secretary, Priti Patel, condemning the group as “criminals” who threaten the nation’s way of life.

John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who was asked by the Home Office this year to examine disruption and violence by extreme political groups, sought to reassure XR activists that he did not regard the movement as uniformly extreme during a Zoom video conference call last month. “You’re worried that I want to label everyone who supports XR as extremists and that is certainly not the case,” he said.

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9,000 Covid cases linked to Euro 2020 games in mass events scheme

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Study paper says England’s progress to final ‘generated a significant risk to public health across the UK’

More than 9,000 Covid infections were linked to Euro 2020 football games monitored for the government’s mass events test scheme, and scientists have said the tournament generated “a significant risk to public health”.

An analysis of the third and final stage of the research programme, released on Friday, found that more than 85% of all the infections connected to the 49 days of various outdoor sport, music and entertainment events came from the eight Euros games involved, and mainly the semi-final and final.

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UK imposes sanctions on seven Russians over Navalny poisoning

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FCDO says the individuals, said to be FSB members, will be subject to travel bans and asset freezes

Sanctions have been imposed on seven Russian nationals accused of involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of the key Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, the UK government has said.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that the individuals, said to be members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), would be subject to travel bans and asset freezes.

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UK regulator approves ‘first of its kind’ Covid antibody treatment

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Sajid Javid says green light for Ronapreve – which was used to treat Donald Trump – is ‘fantastic news’

The antibody cocktail used to treat Donald Trump for Covid has been approved by the UK’s medicines regulator, becoming the first treatment in Britain using artificial antibodies to tackle the virus.

The drug, developed by the US biotech company Regeneron, has received the backing of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Clinical trials showed it helped to prevent Covid infection as well as to reduce the risk of hospitalisation or symptoms in severe cases, when given soon after exposure.

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UK wrestles with effects of Taliban rule on terror, drugs and aid

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Analysis: whether Britain should recognise Afghanistan’s new regime, and how soon, is a fraught question for officials

With the Taliban now firmly in control of most of Afghanistan, British government figures have been wrestling with what that means for everything from counter-terrorism to the drugs trade and aid.

How soon should Britain’s battlefield foes be recognised as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan? What attitude should the UK take to the burgeoning resistance coalescing around former Afghan government figures as the threat of renewed civil war looms?

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The Afghanistan debate showed that Boris Johnson’s flaws lead directly to tragedy | Zoe Williams

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For Starmer, the point was ‘what are the human consequences when power is held by someone so unfit?’

The initial shock of a packed House of Commons, recalled in recess for an emergency debate on Afghanistan, was how unfamiliar the packed green benches now look. Even before the pandemic, arguably since the prorogation of parliament, there’s been a question mark over the point of it all; does a debate have to end in a vote, in order to have meaning? Is it otherwise just theatre, and if so, what democratic purpose does it serve?

The answer used to be very simple: it was to test and challenge the policy of the executive. It may have been ritualistic, but the ritual was dense with significance, indicating that no prime minister had the power simply to announce, every one must persuade.

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‘A perfect storm’: UK beet growers fear Brexit threatens their future

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They produce half the country’s sugar needs, but expect new trade deals to make their tough situation worse

In a field in Norfolk, the sight of lush green leaves sprouting from the soil are giving farmer Ed Lankfer cause for optimism. “I think this is one of the best crops we have ever grown,” he says, surveying one of his fields of sugar beet.

The signs are promising so far for this year’s harvest – known in the trade as a campaign – which takes place later than for other crops, during the autumn and winter. It would mark quite the turnaround from 2020’s terrible harvest, when bad weather and pests caused yields of the white sugar-yielding root to plummet by as much as 60%, leaving Lankfer with a £12,000 loss.

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Boris Johnson struggles to justify Afghanistan stance to hostile MPs

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Analysis: PM fails to make convincing defence of foreign policy amid criticism from across the Commons

Other leaders have had the luxury of being able to deliver an uninterrupted televised address. But Boris Johnson had to justify the ignominious retreat from Afghanistan in front of a testy, and at times hostile, House of Commons – dominated by critics from his own side asking if Britain could have been better prepared and if the collapse of the Kabul government could have been averted.

It was an occasion the UK prime minister struggled to rise to, not helped by the format that Downing Street had opted for: a general debate, which meant MPs were allowed to rise and seek to intervene as Johnson spoke, generating a crescendo of background noise after he had completed a line or two.

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Daphne Caruana Galizia murder: life term sought for alleged mastermind

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Malta’s attorney general formally lays charges against businessman Yorgen Fenech over journalist killing

Malta’s attorney general has called for a life sentence for the businessman Yorgen Fenech for allegedly masterminding the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which rocked the country four years ago.

The attorney general, Victoria Buttigieg, laid formal charges against Fenech, who was arrested in November 2019 trying to leave Malta on his yacht, accused of complicity in the murder and criminal conspiracy. He has since been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence where he pleaded not guilty.

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