Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Is Trump set to get his revenge on Labour?
It is being suggested in a great many circles that one of the ways Trump will hit back is by refusing to accept the credentials of Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to the United States. The latest view on this in the Independent is that Trump is still threatening to reject Mandelson’s appointment unless the British government accept serious restrictions on his activities.
The paper says that Starmer is being placed under increasing pressure by the incoming Trump administration to bow to the undiplomatic demands or face a humiliating and unprecedented veto on his pick for envoy to Washington:
The Independent revealed over the weekend that Trump was considering the highly unusual move of rejecting Lord Mandelson’s credentials. No British ambassador in Washington or US ambassador in London has ever been refused in such a manner.
The biggest concern remains over Lord Mandelson’s support for close ties with China, fuelled by the UK Labour government being perceived as wooing Beijing following chancellor Rachel Reeves’ recent trip.
One Mar-a-Lago source told The Independent: “It seems that the Starmer government is trying to play a game where it sets China up as a fall back for a relationship with the US. Nobody is buying that here. It’s completely ridiculous but compromises the British government.”
Meanwhile, Downing Street has denied claims that there are splits among senior advisers in regards to Mandelson’s appointment among Sir Keir’s senior advisers.
It had been suggestd that chief of staff Morgan McSweeney had pushed the appointment and national security adviser Jonathan Powell had questioned it. But a senior Downing Street source this was “absolutely not” true.
Nevertheless, the UK embassy in Washington appear to be aware of the concerns regarding the Labour former European commissioner and cabinet minister.
Current UK ambassador Dame Karen Pierce surprised many by attending an inauguration party held by UK and US rightwing politicians on Friday evening. The Independent was told she was a late addition at her request and she was heard asking a number of guests what they thought of the appointment of Mandelson to replace her.
Her appearance also gave rise to speculation that she had attended to prevent Mandelson from going, because current and future ambassadors cannot attend the same event under protocol rules.
Lord Mandelson had been invited in an effort to allow him to meet some of Trump’s trusted inner circle and help build relations.
Trump’s inner circle have acknowledged that a rejection of Mandelson’s credentials would be “a humiliation” for the UK prime minister, who was not invited to the inauguration even though Trump has broken tradition by inviting several other foreign heads of government.
The row is linked to a wider context of strained relations between Sir Keir’s government and the incoming Trump administration, dating back to Labour sending 100 activists to help his Democratic rival Kamala Harris campaign during the presidential election.
Trump’s ally, tech billionaire Elon Musk, has also stoked a barage of social media criticism against Sir Keir and his government over the far-right riots in the UK last summer and jailed activist Tommy Robinson. There are claims in the US that Sir Keir and his government are “anti free speech”.
Given that the UK has already severed its close relationship with Europe, to lose the United States as well will leave us completely isolated. Let's hope that doesnt happen.
Monday, January 20, 2025
An alarming decline in Welsh nature
The paper says that Labour ministers have been accused of overseeing “delays, undelivered commitments and missed deadlines” by the Senedd’s cross-party climate change, environment and infrastructure committee, with one in six Welsh species threatened with extinction:
The Welsh parliament committee called on the government to publish firm proposals for how it intended to save nature, saying it currently lacked “a plan, action and investment”.
Conservation organisations who gave evidence to an inquiry set up by the committee said beloved species such as the curlew, which holds a cherished place in Welsh folklore and culture, were in danger because of a lack of effective action.
In June 2021, the Welsh government promised to set legally binding biodiversity targets, but it admitted to the committee that these targets were now unlikely to be set until 2029. The committee said England had already set its targets and Scotland was ahead of Wales in the process.
The committee found that important documents meant to guide the Welsh government’s biodiversity work, such as the natural resources policy (NRP), which sets out priorities and risks, were years out of date. The NRP was published in 2018.
Llŷr Gruffydd, the committee chair, said: “Wales’s nature is disappearing at an alarming rate. After decades of pollution, urbanisation and the impact of climate change, Wales’s nature is in trouble. One in six Welsh species are threatened with extinction.
“The unfortunate reality is that the Welsh government’s numerous plans, strategies and policies have failed to halt this decline. It’s clear that this is because there has been little investment or action to make good on promises.”
The report said the environmental regulator, Natural Resources Wales, was already understaffed – and was planning to shed another 265 jobs because of budget cuts. It said: “Years of under-investment have stretched NRW too thin, and this has clearly limited its ability to lead biodiversity recovery effectively.”
NRW is responsible for monitoring protected sites but the committee said some had not been visited for more than 10 years.
RSPB Cymru welcomed the report, particularly a recommendation that a forthcoming bill should include a headline target to reverse biodiversity loss.
Examples of species it highlighted as being in deep trouble were the swift, whose numbers in Wales were down 76% since 1995. It said Wales had lost more than 90% of its curlews in the last 40 years. The charity said more than half the world’s manx shearwaters breed on Welsh islands, meaning effective plans to protect marine environments were vital.
After twenty five and a half years in charge, one would have thought that Labour might have grasped the problem by now and was in the process of putting in place measures to deal with it. This report says otherwise.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Rwanda scheme ICT costs revealed
The Guardian reports that the Conservative government spent more than £130m on IT and data systems for the scheme, which will never be used.
The paper adds that digital tools needed to put the forced removal programme into effect made up the second-largest chunk of the £715m spent in little over two years, behind only the £290m handed directly to Paul Kagame’s government:
They included a database for anticipated complaints to a “monitoring committee”, which was set up to oversee the deal’s compliance with human rights laws, and systems to enforce the Tories’ attempted legal duty to remove asylum seekers arriving on small boats.
Labour announced that it was scrapping the policy shortly after winning the general election, with home secretary Yvette Cooper calling it “the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money I have ever seen”.
A Home Office official said data protection laws had caused spending to increase and new systems were needed to send Rwandan authorities biometric information, such as fingerprints.
“The Home Office had to deploy people and technology to Rwanda so that they were compliant with data protection,” the civil servant added.
“If people were sent to Rwanda and had an appeal going, the system meant they would have to wait for the decision while in Rwanda.
“If their appeal was successful, they would have been flown back to the UK, so part of those costs was setting up the IT infrastructure to get them visas and transport to come back.”
The £134m spending on IT programmes was not disclosed as part of a breakdown of spending released by the Labour government last month because it was grouped with a wider £280m pool of “other fixed costs”.
A detailed breakdown obtained by the Observer under freedom of information laws shows that £87m was also spent on staff working directly on the Rwanda scheme who have since been redeployed to other tasks.
A further £57m spent since 2022 was classed as “programme and legal costs”, which covers the court battle that culminated in Supreme Court judges declaring the Rwanda scheme unlawful in 2023, as well as the Home Office’s fight against individual challenges brought by selected asylum seekers. The Home Office source said it paid for both government legal department lawyers and external counsel, adding: “Some were solicitors crafting those agreements [with Rwanda] or dealing with legal challenges, and a few were barristers instructed in judicial reviews or appeals.
“The Home Office basically appealed every ruling against them, so the costs went up and up.”
The category also includes spending on setting up the Conservatives’ wider “new plan for immigration”, which saw external consultants hired to help plan and design the programme.
The Home Office source said the plan was organised into many “projects”, each assigned several staff.
“The law was poorly written and difficult to implement,” they added. “It required a lot of policy people hired for these jobs – mostly consultants or people on temporary promotions.”
Previously disclosed spending on the Rwanda scheme included £95m on increasing capacity in immigration detention centres, which were not large enough to hold the number of asylum seekers the Conservatives wanted to force on flights to Kigali.
An attempted flight in June 2022, and planning and preparing for further flights, cost £50m.
With that sort of profligacy, it is little wonder that new government inherited a financial black hole.
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Tories in disarray as Badenoch wings it on pensions
The paper says that the Conservative leader suggested she could back a major policy shift away from the universal promise introduced by the Liberal Democrats when in coalition with her party that the state pension will rise each year by whichever is highest out of 2.5%, inflation, or earnings:
When asked during an LBC phone-in whether she would look at the triple lock, Badenoch said: “We’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”
However, she criticised the Labour government’s move to means-test the winter fuel payment, saying it meant “people who are actually on the breadline actually have had their winter fuel payment taken away”.
Ros Altmann, a non-affiliated peer who previously sat as a Conservative pensions minister, told Sky News on Friday that Badenoch needed to reconsider her comments. “What we urgently need is clarification of what on earth she means,” Altmann said. “What does she mean by means testing the triple lock?”
She added: “The problem we have in going down the route implied – and I don’t think she probably means it – is that every pensioner would start getting a different state pension again. Whereas the whole point of state pension reforms is that there should be a basic flat rate minimum state pension and then encourage people to top it up with private pensions.
“As soon as you introduce means testing to the state pension system, you disincentivise from bothering to save in their private pension.”
One does get the impression that Badenoch is making this sort of thing up as she goes along, which makes her remarks even more damaging for the Tories. There is certainly a need to reform the state pension system so that every pensioner gets a single payment comparable to the minimum wage, but this is not the way to do it.
As one paper pointed out, what makes it worse is that by the time of the next General Election it is possible that about a third of those pensioners who voted Tory last year may no longer be with us, while a large proportion of more conservative, younger voters are being sucked into voting Reform. Badenoch cannot afford to alienate pensioners.
Friday, January 17, 2025
A looming trade war?
The paper says that Reynolds admitted that Trump’s presidency will be a “challenging time for anyone responsible for trade”, amid fears of a global trade war:
In the run-up to his election, the Republican promised to implement 10 to 20 per cent tariffs on all goods coming into the country – a figure that rises to 60 per cent for those from China.
Asked about his incoming presidency, Mr Reynolds told Sky News: “I think it’s going to be a challenging time for anyone who is responsible for trade in a big economy because of some of those pledges that were made in the campaign.”
But he added that there are also “opportunities for the UK”, insisting there are lots of things he would “like to see the UK doing more closely with the US in areas like
“If there’s an offer from the US to talk about how we can collaborate closer together on that, of course we would take a look”, the business secretary said.
Asked if he is worried about the threat of tariffs, Mr Reynolds said: “I am, because the UK is a very globally orientated economy, so the danger to the UK is actually greater than some comparable countries.
“So a lot of our work has been preparing for that, engaging early with the new administration.”
He added that the UK is in a “different position” to the EU and China, as the US doesn’t have such large trade deficits with Britain. But, he added, “we can’t be complacent, and we’re very well prepared”.
Elsewhere in the Independent, Ed Davey has urged Sir Keir Starmer to negotiate a UK-EU customs union to “turbocharge the economy” and strengthen the UK’s hand against possible tariffs from president-elect Donald Trump.
Giving a speech in London on Thursday, the Liberal Democrat leader will say such a deal would help the UK to negotiate with Mr Trump “from a position of strength”.
He will also criticise Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch for wanting to go “cap in hand” to the new US president and “beg for whatever trade deal he’ll give us”, as well as taking a swipe at Reform UK leader Nigel Farage for “fawning over Trump and licking his boots”.
Mr Farage is “more interested in advancing Trump’s agenda over here than the UK’s interests over there”, Sir Ed is expected to tell an audience in London in his first major speech of the year.
Ed Davey is right of course. The UK is not strong enough to stand alone against a protectionist USA. Only the EU has that sort of clout.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
The past continues to haunt the UK's anti-corruption ministers
The Independent reports that the Treasury has become embroiled in a new row with questions mounting over the appointment of Emma Reynolds as minister, who previously lobbied on behalf of Chinese interests.
The paper says that until last year’s election, Reynolds served as managing director at banking trade group TheCityUK, a role which saw her lobby ministers to water down proposed restrictions on Chinese business activity. She also served as the Treasurer for the All Party Parliamentary Group on China.
They add that last month, sources told Bloomberg that Reynolds had campaigned to keep China off the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme’s “enhanced tier”, a categorisation which would have increased transparency obligations for dealings with Beijing, though Labour said Ms Reynolds “was not involved in the government’s China policy”:
The row over her Chinese links comes just weeks after Beijing was accused of spying on the Royal family and days after chancellor Rachel Reeves was heavily criticised for visting China.
Pressed on whether Ms Reynolds would make any decisions on China – the world’s second largest economy - in her new role, the prime minister’s official spokesperson repeatedly refused to say.
“The declaration process for ministers has been followed in the usual way… I’m not getting into the established process for declarations”, the spokesperson said.
The official was repeatedly pressed on whether Ms Reynolds has recused herself from making decisions on Beijing, but declined to provide an answer.
The PM’s official spokesperson denied that failing to answer the question demonstrated a lack of transparency, saying: “This government has strengthened the powers of the independent adviser. We’ve increased the regularity of transparency publications”, insisting that details on Ms Reynolds’ appointment will be published in the usual way.
It seems that Starmer can't catch a break.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Have cyber criminals been swindling taxpayers?
The paper says that Dan Jarvis has suggested that hostile actors could have extorted thousands from organisations like the NHS without the Government knowing because there is no mandatory reporting regime.
Now the Home Office has launched a consultation on how to crack down on ransomware, with plans under consideration to ban all public sector bodies from making any payments:
Proposals also include a mandatory reporting regime and payment prevention system, designed to increase the National Crime Agency’s awareness of live attacks and block payments to known criminal groups and sanctioned entities.
Speaking to broadcasters on Tuesday’s morning media round, Mr Jarvis said cyber criminals based in countries like Russia are “quite literally holding our country to ransom” and warned the problem was “extensive.”
Asked how much public bodies had paid out in recent years, Mr Jarvis said “significant” sums had been handed over, telling Times Radio: “Millions of pounds have been paid.
“It’s a huge problem internationally.”
On how much the NHS had given, Mr Jarvis said: “The truth of the matter is we don’t know the precise figures, because there isn’t a mandatory reporting regime.”
Asked whether that meant that a trust could have paid out thousands of pounds to criminals to get its computers back without the Government knowing about it, he said: “In theory, that is the case, and that’s why we’re looking to change the law to bring in a mandatory reporting regime so we’ve got much more visibility of these kind of activities.
“But fundamentally, this is about putting measures in place that will ensure that we are much less vulnerable to these attacks in the future.
“We are working internationally with our allies as well, but these cyber criminals are incredibly devious in the tactics that they use, but it is the wrong approach for public sector authorities to actually pay these ransoms, because… there’s absolutely no guarantee even if they were to pay the ransom, they get the information that they require.”
Internet fraud is a massive concern, but if the government doesnt know if it has been a victim then how are they going to stop it in future?
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
An online conspiracy?
The paper claims that Cummings is helping Musk in his aggressive attacks on Keir Starmer and the Labour government:
The pair, who are both fiercely anti-establishment, are said to be scheming on WhatsApp to derail politics in the UK, according to unconfirmed reports in the Mail on Sunday. Sources told the newspaper that Mr Cummings has been fuelling Mr Musks’s attacks calling for Mr Starmer to be removed as PM and thrown in jail in relation to the grooming gangs scandal.
Mr Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former aide, is also reportedly advising Mr Musk - soon to be Donald Trump's government efficiency tsar - in his bid to cut trillions of pounds of government spending in the US. He has been increasingly engaging with the tech billionaire on X/Twitter - including reposting Mr Musk's posts to his own account.
An ally of Mr Musk told the Mail on Sunday: “It is 100% true that they [Musk and Cummings] are talking about smaller government and the end of the traditional party system. It is not just Elon – Dom is in constant contact with major Silicon Valley figures, who are becoming increasingly anti-woke.”
Mr Cummings, who was embroiled in a scandal over his infamous trip to Barnard Castle during lockdown, is planning a new ‘StartUp Party’ to challenge the status quo in Westminster.
Fears over Mr Musk’s interference in UK politics increased last week after reports emerged that he was looking at ways to replace Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Sources told the Financial Times Mr Musk believes that “western civilisation itself is threatened” and is examining how he can destabilise the Labour government beyond his aggressive X posts.
The Mirror revealed last week that Mr Musk’s tweets were being monitored by counter-extremism officials at the Home Office’s Homeland Security Group.
It will be interesting to see if being a US government official will slow Musk down in anyway. If he doesnt then the Prime Minister really will have to make official complaints.
Monday, January 13, 2025
Will Reeves be forced to break her own fiscal rules?
She says that last week’s market moves, which drove 30-year gilt yields to their highest level since 1998, probably had more to do with the chaos to come in the US than Reeves’s budget plans, but whatever the cause, if it is sustained, the jump in yields will push up the interest bill on the government’s vast debt pile, and that would jeopardise Reeves’s hopes of meeting her fiscal rules:
Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, once warned that the UK was “reliant on the kindness of strangers” (specifically foreign investors) to fund its deficits – and therefore subject to the whims of the markets. It is all the more true post-pandemic, given the sharp surge in government debt.
When the mood of those strangers swings against the government, it is hard to ignore. Some analysts even fear investors may be influenced at the margins by Elon Musk’s obsession with what he seems to think is the dire state of the UK.
Take all this into account, and imposing a tougher spending squeeze on Whitehall departments in the later years of the upcoming spending review than Reeves sketched out in the autumn may seem a reasonable response. It is certainly the one government officials have been pointing to, alongside dark hints about the benefits bill and the need for public sector pay restraint.
Yet as the Resolution Foundation pointed out on Friday, kneejerk spending cuts are not just digits on a spreadsheet but will have material implications (see last year’s decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance for the vast majority of pensioners – also made with fretful markets in mind).
The thinktank warned Reeves against “taking permanent and concrete policy decisions with real-life impacts on households, in reaction to bond market movements that may turn out to be temporary”, urging her to “keep calm and carry on” until the autumn budget.
Doing nothing at all could rile the gods of the bond markets – risky for any chancellor, as Kwasi Kwarteng can attest.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the projections for the final years of the spending review period already look eye-wateringly tight, with growth of only 1.3% a year pencilled in after 2025-26. The margin for error is very narrow indeed.
Labour went into the election promising not to raise taxes. At the same time, public services are approaching crisis point and desperately need new investment.
Unless economic growth picks up, Reeves is going to find herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Will she be forced to cut spending, or will she break her election promise once again and put up taxes? It isn't a very comfortable place to be in.
Unless economic growth picks up, Reeves is going to find herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Will she be forced to cut spending, or will she break her election promise once again and put up taxes? It isn't a very comfortable place to be in.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Pruning the money tree
The paper says that they have been been told that talks on further tightening rules on MPs’ outside interests, including media contracts, will be started by leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, at a hearing of the all-party standards committee on Tuesday:
Current and former MPs, including Reform UK’s Lee Anderson and the Conservative former MP and minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, have pulled in six-figure sums as regular presenters on GB News while having seats in the House of Commons. Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, is also receiving large sums from the channel.
Anderson has listed income of £100,000 a year for eight hours a week for his on-screen work from 1 March 2023, while Rees-Mogg registered well over £300,000 a year for his role as a presenter between February 2023 and March 2024 before he lost his North East Somerset seat at last July’s general election.
David Lammy, now the foreign secretary, topped Labour’s list of highest paid MPs in opposition with additional income of £243,800 between 2019 and 2023. This included £99,300 from his regular radio show on LBC.
In its first few weeks in office, the government tightened the rules on MPs’ outside interests so they would no longer be able to be paid for giving advice on public policy or guidance on how parliament works.
But many MPs, whose salary is now £91,346 a year plus expenses, have still been able to bring in large amounts of extra income. Now ministers are keen to gain cross-party agreement in committee on plans to limit media and other earnings before putting the ideas before the House of Commons.
In December Nigel Farage, who became MP for Clacton last July, was paid £189,300 for working an estimated four hours a month as “brand ambassador” for a gold bullion company in addition to receiving £98,000 a month as a GB News presenter. After winning the election, the government set up the all-party modernisation committee to look at how to improve standards and working practices, and to make the Commons more effective. It is now working with the standards committee to examine ideas on reform.
Speaking to the Observer before this week’s meeting, Powell said: “Trust in politics is depressingly low, as people see parliament as remote and out of touch. The last parliament was one of the worst on record for standards – to the detriment of us all. We were elected on a manifesto commitment to put politics back to service.
This move is to be welcomed. MPs are elected to represent their constituents not to use their position to supplement their income from lucrative outside gigs, that can often be perceived as a conflict of interest.
