Boris Johnson sought to play down reports of a rift with the EU over Northern Ireland at the end of the G7 summit, although he insisted it was the job of the government to protect the UK’s territorial integrity. Speaking at an end-of-summit press conference, the prime minister was careful not to escalate a row that had intensified following a report that France’s Emmanuel Macron had suggested that Northern Ireland was not wholly part of the UK
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G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma
Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.
Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison denied one-on-one with Joe Biden as Boris Johnson joins meeting
Labor’s Penny Wong says it’s disappointing the Australian prime minister did not secure a private meeting with the US president
Scott Morrison has met with Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit and agreed to work closely on challenges in the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region including China.
Regional issues dominated the Australian prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with the US president late on Saturday – but the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, also attended in what became a trilateral engagement.
Continue reading...‘Mistrusted’ Johnson feels full force of EU fury as Brexit wrecks G7 summit
European leaders made their feelings about the Northern Ireland protocol known to a PM desperate to score a PR victory
The setting is a small English village on the Cornish coast, but the message that Boris Johnson wants projected from the beachside summit in Carbis Bay is one of big British influence across the globe.
The three-day G7 meeting of world leaders, which ends on Sunday, was identified months ago by the prime minister as the moment to launch his vision of a confident post-Brexit “global Britain”.
Continue reading...Delay ending lockdown: majority of public back Boris Johnson
Observer poll reveals most people believe prime minister should wait past proposed 21 June date
The majority of the public back delaying the end of legal restrictions on social contact in the wake of rising cases of a more transmissible Covid variant, according to a new poll.
With Boris Johnson poised to announce a delay to his plan to remove the remaining restrictions on 21 June, an Opinium poll for the Observer found that 54% think the move should be postponed, up from 43% from a fortnight ago.
Continue reading...Brexit bust-up torpedoes Johnson’s bid to showcase ‘global Britain’ at G7
Northern Ireland border row hits summit in Cornwall as prime minister tells other leaders UK is ‘a single country’
Boris Johnson was embroiled in an extraordinary public spat with EU leaders over Northern Ireland on Saturday as tensions over Brexit boiled over at the G7 summit in Cornwall.
After a series of tense bilateral meetings at which the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told their summit host the UK must implement the Brexit deal in full, an unrepentant Johnson said he had urged his EU colleagues to “get it into their heads” that the UK is “a single country”.
Continue reading...Drop Covid vaccine patent rules to save lives in poorest countries, Britain and Germany told
G7 summit hears move would slash the cost of jabs and accelerate rollout of programmes across the developing world
Britain and Germany were under intense pressure on Saturday to drop their resistance to proposals that would slash the cost of Covid-19 vaccines, following accusations that an agreement at the G7 summit to fund a billon doses will give the world’s poorest countries “crumbs from the table”.
Aid agencies said rules that protect drug patents from being illegally copied must be waived during the pandemic to accelerate the rollout of vaccines and save lives across the developing world.
Continue reading...Should England open up on 21 June? The factors Johnson must consider
The prime minister has a host of problems to weigh up before deciding to remove all legal restrictions on social contact
The key issue is the extent to which infections of the Delta variant first detected in India will lead to hospitalisations and deaths. The problem is that it’s too early to say. Because of the lag between cases and admissions to hospital, many experts say a short delay could be a major benefit to understanding that relationship. “With the current knowledge about Delta, we can’t really predict the size of that wave,” said Anne Cori of Imperial College London’s modelling group. “Delaying the easing allows time to accumulate more evidence about the characteristics of Delta. And I hope in a few weeks, we would be in a better position to predict what the epidemic may look like in the next few weeks or months.”
Continue reading...G7: Emmanuel Macron tells Boris Johnson UK-France relations need ‘reset’ – live updates
Leaders of the G7 industrialised countries are meeting in Cornwall this weekend to discuss vaccines, the pandemic recovery and the climate crisis
- Boris Johnson to face pressure from EU on Northern Ireland
- Calls for G7 spending restraint misguided, warns Lord Stern
- Boris Johnson appears to repudiate Tory austerity at summit opening
- See all our G7 coverage
The Duchess of Cambridge and US first lady Jill Biden have written a joint article on the importance of early childhood, following their visit to a primary school in Cornwall, where the G7 is taking place.
The two women met for the first time on Friday at Connor Downs Academy in Hayle, where they took part in a round-table discussion with experts on the importance of the early years of childhood for future outcomes.
In the article, published by CNN, they say there must be a fundamental shift in how the UK and US approach the earliest years of life. “If we care about how children perform at school, how they succeed in their careers when they are older, and about their lifelong mental and physical health, then we have to care about how we are nurturing their brains, their experiences and relationships in the early years before school,” they write.
The European Union has been urged to back down in a dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Boris Johnson was holding talks with the EU’s key players on Saturday as the dispute threatened to overshadow his hosting of the G7 summit.
The prime minister was meeting European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, European Council head Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the margins of the gathering in Cornwall.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged the EU to take a more “pragmatic” approach to the Northern Ireland issue.
The main summit agenda will see the leaders of the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy commit to a new plan aimed at preventing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johnson also faces a potentially tricky series of meetings with the EU’s senior representatives. Downing Street has indicated the UK would be prepared to unilaterally delay the full implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol to prevent a ban on chilled meats crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.
‘Enjoying yourself?’: Queen jokes with G7 leaders in family photo – video
The Queen caused G7 world leaders to break out into laughter as she cracked a joke when they posed for a photo at an evening reception hosted by the monarch on Friday. ‘Are you supposed to be looking as if you're enjoying yourself?’ she asked as they posed for photographers, to which Boris Johnson could be heard replying: ‘Yes, definitely. We have been enjoying ourselves in spite of appearances’
Continue reading...Johnson accused of hypocrisy over G7 girls’ education pledge
Announcement of £430m funding for 90 countries came only weeks after ‘inexcusable’ foreign aid cuts
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
Boris Johnson was accused of hypocrisy after announcing at the G7 leaders summit he would provide £430m of extra UK funding for girls’ education in 90 developing countries only weeks after his government made “inexcusable cuts” of more than £200m set aside for the same cause from its bilateral programme this year.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced in April that he was providing only £400m from the main UK aid budget for girls’ education in 2021, down from £600m in 2019. Johnson has dismissed stories of aid cuts, and their consequences as “lefty propaganda”, but refused to hold a Commons vote on the issue.
Continue reading...Wish you were here? 13 photos that reveal what the G7 summit is really like
Jill Biden and Carrie Johnson play happy families, Justin Trudeau channels Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, giant Pikachus descend on a beach – and more
It’s that time again – the G7 summit. It was previously the G8 summit, until the Russians went full Russia and, rather than receiving coordinated international condemnation and effective sanctions, were kicked out of this faintly ridiculous rigmarole as “punishment”.
This year’s is being held in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Very rarely are things achieved at these summits. The best thing about them is the opportunity to laugh at the photographs, which somehow are even more excruciating than the usual political photo ops.
Continue reading...Senators reach agreement on $1tn infrastructure package – as it happened
- New deal comes after negotiations between Biden and GOP stall
- Christopher Wray called the Capitol attack an act of domestic terrorism
- US president and first lady meet PM and wife in Cornwall
- G7 leaders to call for fresh Covid investigation, leaked memo suggests
Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man who was shot by North Carolina deputies in April, died of a gunshot to the head, a state autopsy confirmed.
An independent autopsy commissioned by Brown’s family had found the same. But a North Carolina prosecutor said Brown’s death at the hands of officers “while tragic, was justified”. The prosecutor also would not release body-camera video of the confrontation.
Continue reading...G7: taste of laid-back Cornwall on the menu for leaders
Boris Johnson’s guests are set to enjoy buttered rum, an indoor rainforest and a beach barbecue with local sea shanties
Sea shanties, buttered rum and toasted marshmallows on the beach: away from the tense negotiations at this weekend’s G7 summit, Boris Johnson is hoping to give the assembled leaders a taste of Cornwall at its laid-back best.
Emmanuel Macron hosted the 2019 G7 summit in Biarritz, but Johnson’s team believe the dramatic Cornish scenery can match the glitzy riviera resort – although not necessarily the balmy sunshine of the south of France.
Continue reading...UK and US gird for a titanic struggle – if they can avoid falling out first
Analysis: Mundane conflicts over sausage exports have no place in high-flown plans for new Atlantic charter
Whatever precise pressure US diplomats put on Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost, ahead of Joe Biden’s rather chaotic first photocall with Johnson at the G7 summit at Carbis bay, both sides were keen at their bilateral meeting to put the ugly genie back in the bottle.
The US side claimed there was nothing it had been saying to the British in private about the sanctity of the Good Friday agreement that it had not said in public, adding there had been no presidential directive to the US embassy to heighten the issue via a demarche to Frost, a florid piece of diplomatic jargon of French origin normally reserved for something akin to Russian diplomats caught spying.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson plays down Brexit issues after G7 talks with Biden
PM calls US president a ‘breath of fresh air’ and strikes optimistic tone about Northern Ireland tensions
Boris Johnson sought to play down any differences with Washington over the way Brexit could affect Northern Ireland after talks with Joe Biden at the G7 summit, as he called the US president “a breath of fresh air”.
Speaking to TV reporters after bilateral talks with Biden at the summit venue in Cornwall, where according to Downing Street the pair discussed Covid and the climate emergency, as well as Northern Ireland, Johnson called the discussions “very good”.
Continue reading...Brexit rains on Boris Johnson’s G7 parade
Analysis: Northern Ireland row dashes Johnson’s hopes of greeting world leaders as PM of a newly emboldened and nimble UK
When Boris Johnson selected Cornwall as the venue for this weekend’s G7 summit, he must have imagined greeting the world’s leaders against the backdrop of a blazing blue sky on the English riviera, while getting to grips with the great global challenges of climate breakdown and Covid.
Instead, his first face-to-face meeting with Joe Biden on Thursday had to be moved from the picturesque St Michael’s Mount to the conference hotel in Carbis Bay, because of the Cornish mizzle – and Brexit was frustratingly high on the agenda.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson must respect rule of law and implement Brexit deal, says EU
Bloc leaders say UK must fully implement post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland
Boris Johnson must respect the “rule of law” by fully implementing the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, EU leaders have said ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said the behaviour of the prime minister was of increasing concern to EU member states. “It’s paramount to implement what we have decided – this is a question of rule of law,” he said.
Continue reading...G7 leaders in the UK: what are their agendas?
Joe Biden wants alternative to Chinese belt and road offer while Japanese PM’s interests are more domestic
Leaders of the world’s seven leading industrialised nations will meet in Cornwall this weekend to agree a communique on how to redraw the world post-Covid, but also to pursue their own agendas and try to forge new personal relations after nearly 18 months apart.
1. Joe Biden has restored order, calm and direction to US international alliances, but now has to show what he will do with that goodwill.
Continue reading...Can we vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of 2022?
Achieving herd immunity is possible – and necessary – but requires quick action, say experts
As ambitious declarations go – even for Boris Johnson – it was a big one. At the weekend, the UK prime minister said he would urge the G7 leaders to vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of next year.
But is this feasible? That rather depends on your definition. No country will vaccinate every adult. Vaccinating enough to achieve herd immunity, which could be 60% or 70%, is the real aim. It is possible to achieve that by December 2022, say experts, but only if the G7 leading economies move immediately to make it happen.
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