Category Archives: Politics

‘Warren’s to lose’: who won the first Democratic debate? | Panelists

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Bold ideas on the debate stage in Miami – and an unexpected breakout star. Here’s the verdict from our panelists

Generously speaking, Democratic presidential candidates tonight spent a little less than 10 minutes after nearly an hour and a half had gone by answering a handful of direct questions about a climate crisis that could make large swathes of the planet horrifically uninhabitable by the end of this century. (NBC’s technical difficulties took nearly as long.) The best you can say is that tonight’s climate bit was still longer than the time spent on climate during the entirety of the 2016 debates.

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Boris Johnson: chances of no-deal Brexit are ‘a million-to-one against’

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Tory leadership frontrunner’s claim comes one day after he said UK will leave EU ‘come what may, do or die’

Boris Johnson has said the chances of a no-deal Brexit are a “million-to-one against”, despite promising to leave on 31 October whether or not he has managed to strike a new agreement with the European Union.

Johnson, the frontrunner to be prime minister, told a hustings that the chances of a no-deal Brexit were vanishingly small, as he believed there was a mood in the EU and among MPs to pass a new Brexit deal.

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Theresa May to meet Vladimir Putin at G20 summit in Japan

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Russian president aiming to improve relations with Britain, Kremlin says

Vladimir Putin will meet Theresa May at this week’s G20 summit in Japan with a view to seeking improved relations between the countries, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

The outgoing UK prime minister’s spokesman stressed that the meeting with the Russian president did not represent a normalisation of ties.

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Rory Stewart: Boris Johnson win would bring DfID tenure to ‘heartbreaking’ end

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Development minister fears impact of no-deal Brexit on UK role in reducing global poverty

Rory Stewart has said it would be “heartbreaking” to leave his job as international development secretary were Boris Johnson to become the next prime minister.

Stewart, an anti no-deal candidate who was knocked out of the Tory leadership contest after last week after a television debate, has vowed not to serve in a Johnson cabinet.

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Jeremy Hunt says Boris Johnson can’t be trusted on Brexit promises

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Foreign secretary says Conservative leadership rival cannot fulfil promises

Jeremy Hunt has suggested there is “no trust” in Boris Johnson to fulfil his promises on Brexit, telling the BBC he believes he has the better personality to be prime minister.

Speaking after a war of words with his Conservative leadership rival, whom Hunt branded a coward for turning down a debate with him on Sky News on Tuesday night, Hunt said 31 October was a “fake deadline” and could lead to a snap general election.

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Boris Johnson will not say who released photo with partner, or when it was taken

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Frontrunner to be PM refuses to comment on picture that emerged in wake of row

Boris Johnson has repeatedly refused to say whether his campaign team passed a photograph of him and his partner to newspapers as a PR strategy during a radio interview which saw the Tory leadership frontrunner quizzed again about his personal life.

Speaking to LBC, Johnson refused at least half a dozen times to comment on the photo of himself and Carrie Symonds seemingly sitting in the garden of a pub. He would not answer when the host, Nick Ferrari, pressed: “This is quite an old picture isn’t it?”

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Boris Johnson begins media blitz but refuses to discuss family life

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Tory leadership frontrunner has faced mounting criticism that he has been dodging public scrutiny

Boris Johnson broke cover on Monday night, vowing he would never reveal the events that led to the police being called to the home of his partner Carrie Symonds last week, after neighbours reported a loud row between the couple.

Amid mounting criticism that the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership campaign has been dodging public scrutiny, Johnson is now understood to be rolling out a “media blitz” for the coming days, beginning with five closely controlled events on Tuesday, in an attempt to defy accusations that he is in hiding.

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Woman ‘poses as dead cyclist’s aunt’ to oppose new London bike lane

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Heather Cairns says woman ‘masqueraded’ as her daughter Eilidh’s aunt at council meeting

A woman posed as the aunt of a cyclist who was killed in London in order to oppose plans for a new segregated bike lane, according to the victim’s mother.

Eilidh Cairns, a television producer from Alnwick in Northumberland, died aged 30 in 2009 after being hit by a tipper truck while riding in Notting Hill in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

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German Greens are on the rise. But the nation is divided | Anna Lehmann

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The party has to address the concerns of groups beyond its urban base if it is to ultimately succeed

The Greens in Germany could hardly believe it. Leading party members were bouncing up and down when the public broadcasters sent the first, still uncertain results on the evening of the European Union elections. The green column rose to 20% and above, close to the black column of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, which ended up with 22.6%. Party manager Michael Kellner was beaming as the numbers came in.

Over the course of the evening it became clear that the Green party had nearly doubled its seats in the European parliament and had overtaken the Social Democrats, the former “people’s party”. A historic victory for us, a historic disaster for them.

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Brexit: alternative to Irish backstop ‘feasible in three years’

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Report on keeping border open, backed by Nicky Morgan and Greg Hands, suggests special economic zones

Alternative arrangements for keeping the Irish border open in the event of a no-deal Brexit or the collapse of future trade talks with the EU could be up and running within three years, a report concludes.

The interim report by a non-government organisation calling itself the Alternative Arrangements Commission will be unveiled at a special conference on the Irish border in London on Monday.

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Ekrem İmamoğlu defeats AKP in Istanbul mayoral election

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Voters embrace CHP party campaign bridging religious, class and ethnic divides

Turkey’s opposition has won a high-stakes rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election, a serious blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a landmark victory in a country where many feared democracy was failing.

Shortly after initial results pointing to a landslide win for the opposition coalition candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, emerged on Sunday evening, the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), Binali Yıldırım, conceded and congratulated his rival.

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Jeremy Hunt piles pressure on Boris Johnson to explain police visit

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Tory leadership candidate says his rival ‘needs to show he can answer difficult questions’

Jeremy Hunt has joined calls for Boris Johnson to explain why police were called to his home after an argument with his partner by warning that his Conservative leadership rival “needs to show he can answer difficult questions”.

The foreign secretary followed cabinet ministers, backbenchers and a major party donor in demanding that the frontrunner to succeed Theresa May speak out about the loud, late-night altercation with his partner, Carrie Symonds, which was heard by several neighbours.

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Tory faithful trust Johnson more than Hunt, says poll

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Conservative voters regard the favourite as better at making decisions and negotiation

Boris Johnson is more trusted by Tory members to make big decisions and negotiate with the EU than Jeremy Hunt – as well as being regarded as more competent than the current foreign secretary – according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer.

The findings reinforce Johnson’s position as the strong favourite to succeed Theresa May when Tory party members vote on who should be the next prime minister in the coming weeks. Last week Conservative MPs voted to send Johnson and Hunt into the final round of the contest.

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Boris Johnson under fire over row with partner as top Tories raise fears

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Leadership campaign falters as he refuses to respond to questions at hustings about late-night argument with Carrie Symonds

Boris Johnson was struggling to keep his campaign to become prime minister on course on Saturday night as he repeatedly refused to explain why police had been called to his home after a loud, late-night altercation with his partner.

Senior Tories were quick to raise fresh concerns over the former foreign secretary’s suitablity for No 10 as the favourite to succeed Theresa May stonewalled question after question about the incident at the first hustings of the leadership contest in front of party members.

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Labour must back Remain to survive, warns Tom Watson memo

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Deputy leader fears ‘catastrophic’ vote loss to Lib Dems and Greens

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has warned MPs and peers that an analysis of the party’s losses in recent local and European elections that was presented to the shadow cabinet last week dangerously underestimated the crisis it will face if it fails to back another Brexit referendum.

In a briefing document circulated to more than 100 Labour MPs and peers yesterday, Watson says sections of the analysis leaked to the media have “skewed” understanding of the party’s plight. He warns that if Labour does not face the actual lessons and become a Remain party, it risks electoral disaster.

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The problem with Johnson? ‘You never know what can happen next’

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Advisers worked to keep him on message all week, but Friday night underlined why he remains a ‘grade one liability’

It was the moment the “Back Boris” team had dreaded but half-expected – when months of careful campaign planning were thrown off course by revelations about their man’s private life. As votes were being counted on Thursday afternoon in the final ballot of MPs for the Tory party leadership, a member of Johnson’s inner circle was upbeat but still on edge. As he paced the Commons corridors he knew Johnson would come top by a mile and reach the final two candidates – but there was no way he would lower his guard.

Asked how it was all going, he replied: “Yes, well, thanks. But you never know what can happen next, do you?”

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In Moscow, Riyadh and Washington, this is the age of the shameless lie

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As David Miliband argues in his Fulbright lecture, world leaders have found they can lie with impunity. We must not be complicit in their mendacity

Truth or consequences, a parlour game in which players are penalised for dishonesty or wrongdoing, is mostly fun – but it also reflects a broad moral consensus about the unacceptability of lying. This long-held belief is deeply rooted in popular culture. Truth or Consequences was the title of a postwar American TV quiz show whose success was so great that a New Mexico town was named after it. Put simply, and as a general rule, most people expect that if you tell whoppers, you get punished.

Why, then, do so many modern leaders seem to think they can lie and get away with it? A propensity to deny, dodge or disown the consequences of political actions is spreading globally like a toxic virus. There was a time, as David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, argues in this year’s Fulbright Lecture, when public accountability was on the rise. Not any more. In what he calls the age of impunity, “those engaged in conflicts around the world believe they can get away with anything, including murder”.

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Police called to loud altercation at Boris Johnson’s home

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Neighbour records shouting and banging at flat potential PM shares with Carrie Symonds

Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging.

The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative party head of press.

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Greenpeace activist: ‘Mark Field needs anger management’

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Janet Barker recounts assault by suspended MP and says it will not stop her activism

Bruised and still shaken, Janet Barker is incredulous at the violent reaction of the Foreign Office minister Mark Field to her peaceful protest with fellow Greenpeace activists at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.

However, she has no plans to press criminal charges over the physical assault. “I think it is something best dealt with in the court of opinion,” she said, while welcoming his suspension as a minister.

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Mark Carney dismisses Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit trade claim

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Bank of England governor says UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to EU

The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has said that the UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to the EU in a no-deal Brexit, rejecting a claim made by Boris Johnson that this could be avoided.

Tory leadership candidate Johnson said this week that tariffs would not necessarily have to be paid if the UK left the EU without a deal because the UK could rely on article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt).

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