Category Archives: Foreign policy

Sanctions only escalate tensions. It’s time to tackle the Uyghurs’ plight differently | David Brophy

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The west needs to make a credible case that its opposition to China’s policies is not geopolitical manoeuvring

“Wholly counterproductive”, was how Newcastle academic Joanne Smith Finley described China’s sanctions on her, along with a series of British politicians and lawyers, as punishment for their advocacy for the Uyghurs. That was putting it mildly. But is it the case that western sanctions on China will be, by contrast, productive? Sadly, that seems unlikely.

International outrage at China’s policies of incarceration and social coercion in Xinjiang continues to grow. As someone who has been engaged with the region for two decades, I see that as much needed. But it’s crucial the energy being generated is put to good use. The gloves may be off, but what is the strategy?

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From bikes to booze, how Brexit barriers are hitting Anglo-Dutch trade hard

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A new survey of UK and Netherlands firms shows two-thirds think our departure from the single market has had a negative effect

It is now three months since Boris Johnson declared that his Brexit deal would be unalloyed good news for UK businesses and consumers alike. But the true picture is graphically illustrated by a new survey of 125 UK and Dutch firms that do business between the two old and close trading nations.

Whether it be trade in chocolate bars, electric bicycles or malt whisky distilled in Scotland, the reality for exporters, importers and customers infuriated by orders being delayed is mostly negative.

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‘Lives will be lost,’ warn Syria aid groups as UK cuts funding by a third

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Reduced £205m offer at UN pledging conference comes with 90% of Syrians living in poverty

Syrians and aid organisations have warned that “lives will be lost” as a result of the UK’s decision to cut aid funding to the conflict-stricken country.

The UN hoped to raise $10bn (£7.3bn) from governments and donors at a virtual two-day pledging conference for Syria – the biggest appeal yet to help both people inside and those displaced outside the country.

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The Guardian view on China, Xinjiang and sanctions: the gloves are off | Editorial

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Beijing wants to silence critics of its treatment of Uighurs. But the impact will be broader

China’s response to criticisms of horrifying human rights violations in Xinjiang is clear and calculated. Its aims are threefold. First, the sanctions imposed upon individuals and institutions in the EU and UK are direct retaliation for those imposed upon China over its treatment of Uighurs. That does not mean they are like-for-like: the EU and UK measures targeted officials responsible for human rights abuses, while these target non-state actors – elected politicians, thinktanks, lawyers and academics – simply for criticising those abuses.

Second, they seek more broadly to deter any criticism over Xinjiang, where Beijing denies any rights violations. Third, they appear to be intended to send a message to the EU, UK and others not to fall in line with the harsher US approach towards China generally. Beijing sees human rights concerns as a pretext for defending western hegemony, pointing to historic and current abuses committed by its critics. But mostly it believes it no longer needs to tolerate challenges.

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Raab: Chinese sanctions will not stop UK ‘speaking up’ on abuse of Uighurs – video

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China has imposed sanctions on 10 UK organisations and individuals, including the former leader of the Conservative party Iain Duncan Smith, over what it called the spreading of 'lies and disinformation' about human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said the government stands 'in total solidarity' and  it will not stop it addressing 'industrial-scale human rights abuses'

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UK diplomacy masks private fury in Covid vaccine row with EU

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Tussles over supplies could last months despite commitment in public to work together

Tussles with the EU over vaccine supplies could continue for months, UK government insiders fear, despite a joint statement in which both sides committed to working together.

From Boris Johnson’s phone calls to EU leaders to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s discreet lobbying on the fringes of this week’s Nato meeting, a significant amount of senior government time and energy is being invested in trying to resolve the issue.

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US and Canada follow EU and UK to sanction Chinese officials over Xinjiang

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It is the first time for three decades UK or EU has punished China for human rights abuses

Britain and the EU have taken joint action with the US and Canada to impose parallel sanctions on a senior Chinese officials involved in the mass internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province in the first such western action against Beijing since Joe Biden took office.

The move also marked the first time for three decades the UK or the EU had punished China for human rights abuses, and both will now be working hard to contain the potential political and economic fallout. China hit back immediately, blacklisting MEPs, European diplomats and thinktanks.

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EU export ban would delay UK Covid vaccine drive by two months

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Exclusive: Halting distribution would hit Britain badly but not significantly help EU, analysis finds

Britain’s Covid vaccine programme faces a two-month delay in the event of an EU export ban, derailing the government’s plans to reopen the economy this summer, an analysis for the Guardian reveals.

A ban, due to be debated by leaders of the 27 EU member states on Thursday, would badly stall the UK vaccination effort, and would be likely to force the government to extend restrictions on people’s lives.

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UK aid budget cut unlawful, legal advice to Tory rebels says

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Government could face judicial review if it does not reinstate its spending commitment, advice adds

The government will be in clear breach of the law and exposed to a judicial review if it presses ahead with a multibillion-pound cut in the UK’s foreign aid programme, according to legal advice given to Tory backbenchers.

Advice issued by the QC and peer Ken Macdonald said No 10 had acted outside the law when it abandoned its commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.

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Threat of no-deal Brexit remains, peers say, as EU relations sour

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Exclusive: Lords committee chair highlights concern EU parliament may delay trade deal ratification

The Brexit deal signed in December has been thrown into jeopardy because of the recent breakdown of relations with the EU, an influential House of Lords committee is warning.

The European Union committee says “the threat of no deal remains”, with the European parliament now declining to set a date for its vote on the trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve.

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Dominic Raab ‘totally misunderstands’ Northern Ireland Brexit terms, warns EU

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European vice-president Maroš Šefčovič says claim about Brussels trying to erect barrier down Irish Sea undermines UK’s reputation

Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has been accused by Brussels of displaying a “total misunderstanding” of the Brexit deal after claiming the EU was trying to erect a barrier between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Maroš Šefčovič, the European commission’s vice-president, said Raab’s comments raised major questions, and warned that Britain was tarnishing its global reputation by ignoring the terms of its agreements with Brussels.

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China may need Britain more than it cares to admit | Jeevan Vasagar

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The value of British cultural capital in China makes the souring of relations all the more painful

When it is fully open later this year, the Londoner Macao hotel will be a kitsch recreation of tourist Britain, with a facade modelled on the Houses of Parliament, actors in bearskin hats performing the changing of the guard, and an English fried breakfast served at a restaurant called Churchill’s Table.

The new casino resort in China is one of the more tacky examples of the country’s fondness for British culture. Alongside the US and the Gulf, China is a crucial overseas market for English Premier League football broadcast rights. Britain’s heritage attractions, private schools and designer brands are immensely popular with China’s elite. The UK is also a favoured destination for higher education: numbers of Chinese students at UK universities soared by 56% from 2015 to 2019.

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Boris Johnson says UK wants to work with China, though it poses ‘great challenges for an open society’ – live

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Latest updates: PM says UK’s greatest ally will be US as he makes statement to MPs on defence review

In his Sky News interview Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, said the security and defence review said that the UK could use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. That was a “big change” in policy, he said.

He was referring to this passage on page 77 of the document (pdf).

The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT). This assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations. However, we reserve the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary.

Here is the Scottish government’s summary of the latest plans for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. And here is a graphic summarising what it says.

Scotland’s indicative route out of lockdown. If we all stick with it and get the virus more under control as the vaccines do their work, there is hope for a much better summer on the horizon ☀️ pic.twitter.com/gTKHtJTNn5

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Biden urges UK and EU to preserve Northern Irish peace amid Brexit row

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Remarks follow EU formally launching legal action over protocol arrangements in the region

The White House has urged London and Brussels to work together to preserve the peace in Northern Ireland, after the EU formally launched legal action against the UK over Brexit arrangements in the region.

Joe Biden’s spokesperson said: “We continue to encourage both the EU and the UK government to prioritise pragmatic solutions to safeguard and advance the hard-won peace in Northern Ireland.”

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Why Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific region

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Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real

Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.

Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in court in Tehran on second set of charges

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Lawyer for British-Iranian dual national held since 2016 ‘very hopeful’ she will be acquitted

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national detained since 2016, faced a second set of charges on Sunday in Iran’s revolutionary court in Tehran.

She was freed from house arrest last Sunday at the end of a five-year prison sentence, but because she had been summoned to court again on the other charge, she has not been allowed to leave the country to return to her family.

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PM demands Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return in call to Iran president

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Boris Johnson tells Hassan Rouhani the British-Iranian dual national must be allowed home immediately

Boris Johnson has told Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in a phone call that the British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be allowed to return home to be with her family.

“The prime minister raised the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other British-Iranian dual nationals detained in Iran and demanded their immediate release,” a statement from Johnson’s office said on Wednesday.

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Aid spending cuts may not get put to Commons vote, No 10 suggests

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Denying MPs their say could head off Tory rebellion but potentially open government to legal action

A planned reduction in aid spending may not go to a vote in the Commons, Downing Street has indicated, which would head off a likely rebellion by Conservative MPs but could expose the government to legal action.

Pressed repeatedly on whether the cut in the aid budget from 0.7% of national income – which is set out in law under the 2015 International Development Act – would be subject to a Commons vote or a new act, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson declined to confirm this.

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UK ‘balancing books on backs of Yemen’s starving people’, says UN diplomat

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Exclusive: former DfID secretary Mark Lowcock shocked by decision of Johnson’s government to cut aid

Ministers have decided to “balance the books on the backs of the starving people of Yemen” in an act that will see tens of thousands die and damage the UK’s global influence, the head of the UN’s Office for Humanitarian Affairs has said.

Speaking with rare bluntness after the UK more than halved its funds to help Yemen, the former permanent secretary at the Department for International Development Mark Lowcock said he was shocked by the decision. It is understood he was given no chance to appeal to the UK to rethink.

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Leak reveals UK Foreign Office discussing aid cuts of more than 50%

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Internal reports show projected cuts including 59% in South Sudan, 60% in Somalia and 67% in Syria

Some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden countries in the world will have their UK aid programmes cut by more than half, according to a leaked report of discussions held in the last three weeks among Foreign Office officials.

The cuts include slashing the aid programme to Somalia by 60% and to South Sudan by 59%. The planned cut for Syria is reported at 67% and for Libya it is 63%. Nigeria’s aid programme would be cut by 58%.

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