Category Archives: Foreign policy

UK aid cuts will put tens of thousands of children at risk of famine, says charity

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Save the Children’s analysis finds Britain will spend 80% less on nutrition abroad this year, as hunger levels rise around the world

Britain is set to spend 80% less on helping feed children in poorer nations than before the pandemic, according to a charity’s analysis.

Save the Children said the British government will spend less than £26m this year on vital nutrition services in developing countries, a drop of more than three-quarters from 2019. The estimate of aid cuts to nutrition comes after UN agencies called for urgent action to avert famine in 20 countries including Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria.

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‘We’re piggy in the middle’: Brexit has made life impossible, say Jersey fishers

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Their families have been fishing here for decades but despite promises of frictionless trade, the market for their fish is disappearing

Steph Noel, who has been fishing the waters off Jersey for almost four decades, could not see the point of chugging out to sea in his 8.5-metre boat, Belle Bird, this weekend.

“There’s no value in it for me,” he said. “It’ll cost me in bait and diesel but even if I have a good day there’s no market there for what I bring back.”

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French fishers’ protest over Jersey rights is over but the dispute will go on

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New restrictions and deep cuts to allowances mean both French and Jersey boat owners feel betrayed by Brexit

Dawn was still four hours away and the small Normandy port of Carteret was alive, some boats hurriedly unloading their catch for a rapid turnaround, others turning on their lights and firing up their engines for the first time that night.

Minutes after 3am on Thursday they had left the quayside and, in pitch darkness and a gentle swell, were pushing smartly out to sea to join a growing armada of 60-odd boats from Cherbourg right the way round to St-Malo.

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UK sends navy vessels to Jersey amid post-Brexit fishing row with France

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Boris Johnson dispatches two gunboats to protect island from feared blockade

Boris Johnson has dispatched two Royal Navy patrol boats to protect Jersey from a feared blockade by French fishing vessels, in an escalation of a dispute over post-Brexit access to waters around the Channel island.

The move followed talks on Wednesday evening between the prime minister and the chief minister of the British crown dependency, John Le Fondré, who had warned Downing Street of imminent movements by French fishing boats to cut off the island’s main port.

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Jersey hits back at ‘disproportionate’ French threat to cut electricity

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Paris threatens to take retaliatory measures in row over post-Brexit licences for French fishing boats

Jersey has accused France of making “disproportionate” threats after Paris warned it could cut off electricity to the island in a row over post-Brexit fishing rights.

The maritime minister, Annick Girardin, warned on Tuesday France was ready to take “retaliatory measures” after accusing the Channel Island of dragging its feet over issuing new licences to French boats.

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Tory quarrels determined UK’s post-Brexit future, says Barnier

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Revealed: EU chief negotiator’s diaries, The Great Illusion, give blow-by-blow account of moves behind UK’s departure

Britain’s post-Brexit future was determined by “the quarrels, low blows, multiple betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a certain number of Tory MPs”, the EU’s chief negotiator has said in his long-awaited diaries.

The UK’s early problem, writes Michel Barnier in The Great Illusion, his 500-page account, was that they began by “talking to themselves. And they underestimate the legal complexity of this divorce, and many of its consequences.”

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EU ‘suspends’ ratification of China investment deal after sanctions

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Massive trade agreement stalls after tit-for-tat sanctions prompted by Chinese policy in Xinjiang

The European Commission has said that efforts to ratify a massive investment deal with China have been in effect suspended after tit-for-tat sanctions were imposed over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in March.

“We now in a sense have suspended … political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” said the commission’s executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Tuesday. He said that the current state of relations between Brussels and Beijing was “not conducive” for the ratification of the deal, which is known as EU-China comprehensive agreement on investment.

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France threatens to cut off power to Jersey in post-Brexit fishing row

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French minister raises electricity supply as point of leverage in dispute over access to UK waters

The French government could cut off the electricity supply to Jersey in an escalating row over post-Brexit fishing rights, a French minister has suggested.

Responding to questions in the national assembly, Annick Girardin, the minister for maritime affairs, said she was “revolted” by the UK government’s behaviour over its waters and France was ready to retaliate.

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Iran’s treatment of Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounts to torture, says Raab

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Foreign secretary says it is ‘difficult to argue against’ suggestion the dual national is being held state hostage

Iran’s treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounts to torture, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said, as the Foreign Office downplayed an Iranian state TV report saying Britain would pay a £400m debt to secure her release.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the family had “heard nothing” about a deal to secure her release, as hopes were raised by the suggestion that the long-running dispute had been resolved.

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Two pandemics: as we ease up, virus sweeps the world’s poor

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Latin America and Africa face new wave as politicians and scientists urge rescue packages

World leaders have been warned that unless they act with extreme urgency, the Covid-19 pandemic will overwhelm health services in many nations in South America, Asia, and Africa over the next few weeks.

Only billions of pounds of aid and massive exports of vaccines can halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding rapidly across the planet, scientists and world health experts said.

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UK’s aid cuts hit vital coronavirus research around world

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Leading UK expert says loss of funding certain to damage attempts to tackle virus and variants

Vital coronavirus research, including a project tracking variants in India, has had its funding reduced by up to 70% under swingeing cuts to the UK overseas aid budget.

One of Britain’s leading infectious disease experts said the UK government cuts were certain to damage attempts to tackle the virus and track new variants.

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Biden’s world: how key countries have reacted to the US president’s first 100 days

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The new administration has signalled a sharp break in foreign policy from the Trump era – but how is that playing globally?

At the opening of Joe Biden’s online climate summit last week, Europe’s relief was was palpable: “It is so good,” gushed the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, “to have the US back on our side.”

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UK to slash funding for overseas water and sanitation projects by 80%

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Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’

The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.

The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.

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European parliament votes through Brexit deal with big majority

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UK and EU senior figures hail moment as a ‘new chapter’ of friendly relations after four years of division

The European parliament has given its overwhelming backing to the Brexit trade and security deal, prompting senior figures on both sides to speak of hope for a “new chapter” of friendly relations after four years of division.

Five MEPs voted against the deal, with 660 in favour and 32 abstentions, although in an accompanying resolution the chamber described the referendum result of 23 June 2016 as a “historic mistake”.

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Boris Johnson accused of ‘dismal failure’ to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

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Tulip Siddiq MP says PM did not even send UK officials to recent trial where Iran jailed dual national for further year

Boris Johnson has been accused of a “dismal failure” in his diplomatic efforts after Iran sentenced Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a further year in jail on top of the five-year sentence she has already served.

Labour’s Tulip Siddiq, the British-Iranian dual national’s MP, questioned the effort the prime minister had put into releasing Zaghari-Ratcliffe, telling the Commons: “From where I’m standing, I’ve seen no evidence on the part of the prime minister so far.

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UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

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Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions

The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.

The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.

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‘Shortsighted’: UK cuts aid to project preparing cities for natural disaster

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From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say


UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.

Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.

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Johnson must push G7 to pay billions more in climate aid, say experts

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Rich countries urged to stump up to help developing nations cut greenhouse gas emissions

Boris Johnson must push rich countries meeting in Cornwall in June to come up with tens of billions of dollars more in aid for poor countries to deal with climate breakdown, or face the failure of vital UN climate talks to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November, according to leading climate experts.

The UK holds the presidency this year both of the annual meeting of the G7 group of the world’s economic superpowers, and of the Cop26 climate summit.

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Iran sentences Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to further one-year jail term

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British-Iranian aid worker has also been banned from leaving country for a year, her lawyer has said

An Iranian court has sentenced the British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a one-year jail term and banned her from leaving the country for a year after, according to her lawyer.

She had been charged with attending a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in 2009 and speaking to a BBC Persian journalist at the gathering.

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UK aid cut seen as unforced error in ‘year of British leadership’

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With UK hosting G7 and Cop26 this year, decision threatens Britain’s status as a ‘soft power’ superpower

Boris Johnson is said to be having “queasy second thoughts” about a long-term cut to the UK aid programme, faced both by the surprising unpopularity of the measure with his own backbenchers and the fact that most other G7 countries will come to the British-hosted summit in June increasing theirs – in the process endangering the UK status as a soft power superpower.

The official government line remains not to look at the falls in aid spending but the size of the budget as a proportion of gross national income, which is still in excess of most G7 countries. The reduced £10bn budget still puts the UK third in the aid spending league table and if anyone has doubts about the UK’s soft power status, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, likes to cite an Ipsos Mori poll finding for the British Council in 2020 that found the UK was the most attractive country in the G20.

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