Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
When Rutger Bregman and Winnie Byanyima spoke out about taxes at Davos they went viral. They talk with Winners Take All author Anand Giridharadas about why change is coming
Rutger: Winnie, why did the comments you and I made about billionaires and taxes at Davos go viral? Why do things seem to be changing right now?
Winnie: Why did we go viral? I think we said things that people have wanted to hear, especially on a big stage where powerful politicians and companies are represented. And they are rarely said. People go there and speak in coded words and praise themselves and spin out the stats that suit them, but for once we spoke plainly about the challenges that people face.
Nationalism has been sold as ‘a war for the little guy’ but Brooke Harrington argues that it serves the interests of elites
We know that politics makes strange bedfellows, but few alliances are more surprising than the one linking the ultra-rich to ultra-nationalists. What could the wealthiest people in the world have in common with those upending politics in the name of the “forgotten man”? As I have found in over a decade of research on global elites and tax havens, a shared political project unites them: both seek to weaken or dismantle international alliances that constrain them.
For ultra-nationalists, this project means “taking back control” of their governments from foreigners. For the ultra-rich, it means eliminating the controls that international organizations and alliances have imposed on them individually and as a class: a world without the EU, or without the Global Magnitsky Act, is one in which the people who appeared in the Panama Papers can get even richer and expand their influence over an increasing share of the world’s governments and resources.
Joint committee on human rights says people should be held for no longer than 28 days
Indefinite detention in immigration centres is traumatic and the practice should be stopped, with people ideally held for no longer than 28 days, a parliamentary committee has recommended.
In a highly critical report, the joint committee on human rights (JCHR), made up of MPs and peers, described the UK’s immigration system as “slow, unfair and expensive to run”, and said detention should be authorised only by decision-makers independent of the Home Office.
Letter offers Labour’s support if PM makes five binding commitments – including joining a customs union
Jeremy Corbyn has written to the prime minister, offering to throw Labour’s support behind her Brexit deal if she makes five legally binding commitments – including joining a customs union.
Not only were the Brexiters clueless: they didn’t give a stuff about Ireland. But this will come back to haunt the Tories
Donald Tusk should be criticised not for his malice, but his moderation. The European council president triggered a tsunami of confected outrage from leavers today when he observed, with some justice, that there should be a special place in hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan. But he should have said far more. He should have added that, within that special place, there should be an executive suite of sleepless torment for those politicians who promoted Brexit without ever giving a stuff about Ireland.
Keith Williams criticises micromanaging by government as one of the failings driving passengers away
Britain’s rail industry will “drive passengers away” if it continues to operate as it does now, according to the man leading the government-commissioned review into the working of the railways.
Keith Williams, the former British Airways chief executive, also suggested that the government had compounded problems by “micromanaging the industry” through ever more specific rail franchises.
Brexiters fear PM’s Belfast speech steps back from previous assurances
Theresa May fired a warning shot at Brexit supporters on Tuesday, insisting there was “no suggestion” Britain would leave the EU without an insurance provision to protect against a hard border in Northern Ireland.
At a speech in Belfast, May would only accept that technology could “play a part” in any alternative arrangements and that she would not countenance anything that would disrupt the lives of border communities.
Prime minister’s speech in Belfast to underscore pledge to avoid hard border
Theresa May will attempt to reassure businesses and Northern Irish politicians by insisting during a visit to Belfast that she can find a way to deliver a Brexit deal MPs can support.
The prime minister is due to chair a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning before departing for a two-day visit to Northern Ireland to underscore her commitment to avoiding a hard border with Ireland.
Turning back to Marin Selmayr for a moment, Mina Andreeva, the European commission’s deputy chief spokeswoman has posted a tweet that seems intended to mollify Brexiters upset by the tone of his intervention earlier. She was responding to Fraser Nelson, editor of the pro-Brexit Spectator.
Lord Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist party leader who won a Nobel peace prize for his role in the Good Friday agreement, has announced that he and others “are planning to take the government to court over the protocol on Northern Ireland - which includes the so-called “backstop” - as it breaches the terms of the Good Friday agreement.”
The announcement came in a three sentence press statement from Global Britain, a pro-Brexit thinktank. It said:
The Nobel peace prize winner and architect of the Good Friday agreement plans to initiate judicial review proceedings to ensure that the protocol is removed from the withdrawal agreement.
Lord Trimble says that alternative arrangements - as outlined in A Better Deal And A Better Future - should be put in place instead.
Cross-party group unable to tell EU official that MPs would back deal with added protocol
A suggestion by one of the EU’s most powerful officials of possible further legal assurances on the Irish backstop has failed to win over Brexiter MPs, leading to heightened talk of the UK leaving the bloc with no deal.
After a meeting with Martin Selmayr on Monday, the cross-party Brexit select committee emerged clear that the European commission secretary general had floated the possibility of a legally binding adjunct to the withdrawal agreement.
Labour MPs and MEPs call on home secretary Sajid Javid to act over ‘digital discrimination’
Seventy-one Labour MPs and MEPs have accused the Home Office of “digital discrimination” for creating an Android-only app for EU citizens to apply for settled status.
In an open letter to home secretary Sajid Javid, frontbenchers including Luke Pollard, shadow environment minister, and Paul Blomfield, shadow Brexit minister, say the system “flies in the face of fair treatment of EU nationals”.
For 300,000 UK citizens in Spain, which does not allow dual citizenship, pension and healthcare worries are hard to resolve
A couple of years ago, Michael Soffe seemed to have a charmed life. A gourmet tour guide and wedding planner, he’d made a home and built a business in sun-soaked Málaga, the increasingly hip city at the heart of Spain’s southern coast.
Now he fears that everything he’s worked for is hanging in the balance as heedless politicians push Brexit negotiations to the brink. His biggest worry is that his partner, a two-time cancer survivor still in treatment, could lose his right to public healthcare.
Cold war plans revived to move royals to safe locations away from London if unrest follows no deal
British officials have revived cold war emergency plans to relocate the royal family should there be riots in London if Britain suffers a disruptive departure from the European Union, two Sunday newspapers have reported.
“These emergency evacuation plans have been in existence since the cold war but have now been repurposed in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit,” the Sunday Times said, quoting an unnamed source from the government’s Cabinet Office, which handles sensitive administrative issues.
Firm plans to move production claims Sky News, raising concerns about Brexit impact
Nissan has refused to comment on reports that it is abandoning plans to build a new model of one of its flagship vehicles at its Sunderland plant.
The Japanese car manufacturer said in 2016 it would be building the new version of the X-Trail SUV at the factory along with its next-generation Qashqai, prompting claims that Nissan and the government had struck a “sweetheart deal” to protect the company from any post-Brexit EU tariff wall.
Shadow chancellor criticises May over reports she pledged extra cash for leave-voting areas if MPs back Brexit deal
John McDonnell has criticised Theresa May’s rumoured approach to persuading Labour MPs to vote for her Brexit deal as “pork-barrel” politics, saying: “If there is money there to spend on our constituencies, it should be done anyway.”
The shadow chancellor’s accusation follows reports that the government is preparing to plough extra funding into deprived areas that supported leave, with the Nottinghamshire MP John Mann claiming that a set of job-creation measures targeted at former industrial towns would make it “very difficult for Labour MPs in leave areas to vote against the deal unless they want a second referendum”.
The whole world waded in after Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, but the global tug-of-war is dangerous and unhelpful
All crises are global, all solutions are local – and Venezuela is the latest case in point. No sooner had the young pretender, Juan Guaidó, declared himself interim president last month, ostensibly supplanting the corrupt old revolutionary, Nicolás Maduro, than the world piled in. The Trump administration insisted all countries must “pick a side” and back the “forces of freedom”. Russia denounced a US-backed “coup”. China, Latin American neighbours, Britain and the EU all scrambled for position, in accordance with their particular interests and prejudices.
In the past week, this international tug-of-war over Venezuela’s future has grown increasingly dangerous – and unhelpful – as protesters and security forces face off on the streets and the political impasse deepens. John Bolton, the US national security adviser, is threatening “serious consequences” (meaning military intervention) should Guaidó be harmed or opposition supporters attacked. Maduro warns that the US could face a second Vietnam.
Exclusive: leaked emails show officials planning crisis centres to manage halt in waste exports to EU
Government officials are preparing to deal with “putrefying stockpiles” of rubbish in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, export licences for millions of tonnes of waste will become invalid overnight. Environment Agency (EA) officials said leaking stockpiles could cause pollution.
Proposals to refocus aid as private investment could weaken support for vulnerable people worldwide, says Claire Godfrey
Proposals by the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, to refocus UK aid towards for-profit investment risks weakening support for the people who need our help the most, and compromising the work Britain does to make the world a safer, healthier and more just place to live in (Report, 30 January). The Department for International Development has a long-standing history and reputation as a world leader in helping millions of people worldwide to access clean water, healthcare, better jobs and education. DfID’s focus on ending extreme poverty has secured a global reputation that Britain is proud of and one which we continue to champion. Any move to expand the role of private investment in international development must reflect the basic and shared human values underlying charity, humanitarian aid and development, and not prioritise the pursuit of profit over tackling poverty. Claire Godfrey Head of policy and campaigns at Bond, which represents over 400 UK NGOs working in humanitarian aid and development
Footnote attached to EU regulation on insistence of Spain
A straightforward change in EU law guaranteeing visa-free travel for Britons in Europe after Brexit has sparked a diplomatic row after Brussels described Gibraltar as “a colony of the British Crown” in its no-deal legislation.
The footnote containing the contentious description of the Rock has been attached to the EU’s regulation on the insistence of Spain, with whom the UK has been in dispute over Gibraltar for three centuries.
Weyand, who this week shot down UK hopes of reopening talks, has a reputation for being ‘direct, quick, with no bullshit’
MPs voted this week to send Theresa May back to Brussels to restart Brexit talks, but the Commons apparently missed the message delivered in crisp English one day earlier: the talks were over.
The messenger was the EU’s deputy Brexit negotiator, Sabine Weyand: the German official with a British sense of humour who loves Shakespeare comedies and Harry Potter, and has been known to describe any outlandish idea as “bollocks”.