Connect with us
DAPA Banner

Politics

Can Greenland join the EU?

Published

on

Can Greenland join the EU?

Catherine Barnard and Denzil Davidson look at the legal process Greenland would have to follow if it were to decide to try and rejoin the EU, as well as the potential political obstacles.

On 13 January 2026, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stood beside his Danish counterpart and told the world: ‘We choose the Kingdom of Denmark, we choose the EU, we choose NATO.’ It is not clear that Mr Nielsen meant that by choosing the EU he wanted Greenland to become part of the EU again, but if he did, what would it mean and how would it happen?

Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark; Denmark remains responsible for Greenland’s security and defence. In the 1951 Defence of Greenland Agreement with Denmark, the US unambiguously recognises ‘the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark’ over Greenland.

When Greenland was still part of Denmark, it, like the rest of Denmark, was subject to all EU law following Danish accession to the EU in 1973. However, after gaining home rule in 1979, and following a consultative referendum, Greenland left the EU in 1985. The Greenland Treaty of 1985 made it one of the EU’s overseas countries and territories (OCTs), now covered by Article 355 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

Advertisement

For our purposes, Article 355 identifies two groups of countries.

The first, described as Outer Regions (ORs), consist of the French overseas territories, such as Guadeloupe and Martinique, but also the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. As the Commission says ‘Despite the thousands of kilometres separating them from the European continent, these regions are an integral part of the EU. Therefore, EU law and all the rights and duties associated with EU membership apply to the outermost regions.’ In addition, Article 349 provides for ‘specific measures’ to be taken by the EU to address their ‘structural social and economic situation’ which is ‘compounded by their remoteness, insularity, small size, difficult topography and climate, economic dependence on a few products’.

The second, the OCTs, which includes Greenland (but also some of the Dutch territories), are subject to ‘special arrangements’ set out in Part Four TFEU and the Overseas Association Decision. According to Article 198 TFEU, the purpose of association is ‘to promote the economic and social development’ of the territories and ‘to establish close economic relations between them and the Union as a whole’. This is done by conferring advantages on the OCTs, which consist mainly of customs exemptions on imports into the EU of products originating in the OCTs. Greenlanders also continue to be Union citizens by virtue of being Danish citizens.

There is an additional provision in respect of Greenland on fish (Article 204 TFEU and Protocol 34), which has been used to maintain EU quotas in Greenland’s waters in return for a financial contribution. Tariff-free access for Greenlandic fisheries products to the internal market is subject to an agreement between the two parties. There is a separate Fisheries Partnership Agreement between the EU and Denmark and the Home Rule Government of Greenland.

Advertisement

Can Greenland join the EU? Since it is not a ‘state’ it cannot formally join under the general accession process under Article 49 TEU. However, it can move from OCT to OR status, meaning that it would again become part of the EU. As an OR, Greenland would become subject to provisions of the EU Treaties and may benefit from Article 349 ‘specific measures’, but it would not have the independent voting rights of a full member state.

The shift from OCT to OR is done via the simplified process in Article 355(6) TFEU, introduced by the Lisbon Treaty where the European Council may, on the initiative of, in this case, Denmark, and acting unanimously after consulting the Commission, ‘adopt a decision’ amending Greenland’s OCT status. Mayotte, a French island between Madagascar and the African continent, most recently changed from OCT to OR status.

That’s the law. What about the politics?

There are two potential obstacles to Greenland becoming an OR: opposition from President Trump’s European allies and access to fisheries. Because Article 355(6) TFEU requires unanimity, just one government seeking to curry favour with President Trump, such as Hungary’s, could block the process. Hungary did, after all, block a joint EU statement on Greenland. Hungary would pay a high political price for a veto, which would translate into potential costs for its access to EU funds, but it is a price it has been willing to pay in the past.

Advertisement

Access to fisheries would be the bigger problem. A leading reason why Greenland left the then EEC in 1985 was to gain control over its fisheries resources. Becoming an OR would reopen the fisheries question, and one of Brexit’s many lessons is the political importance of fisheries is out of all proportion to its economic weight. Once it became known that there was an opportunity to win greater access to rich fishing grounds, some might demand this as the price of admission.

But fisheries remains by far Greenland’s most important industry, providing over 90% of its exports and 15% of employment, making it the largest private sector industry. It may be imagined that Greenland would want to maintain autonomy over its fishing policy under Article 204 TFEU and Protocol 34 and keep the current requirement for Greenlandic operators to be wholly Greenlandic-owned. There is the further complication that because the EU-Greenland and EU-Norway fisheries agreements are interrelated, a change to the status of one could affect the other. This would all be the subject of negotiations.

Other issues are not likely to cause problems. Greenland’s Inuit population is already covered by an EU exemption permitting them to place seal products on the market. It would be expected that Greenlanders could continue to hunt and consume whales as Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling under the International Whaling Commission’s regulations and, since Greenland does not export whale products commercially, this should not be a negotiating problem for Greenland’s re-entry.

Denmark could address other matters unilaterally: following Spain v United Kingdom (Case C-145/04) Denmark could enfranchise Greenlanders to vote in European parliamentary elections. Denmark could also follow the British precedent from its time as a member state of letting ministers from Scotland’s devolved government attend Fisheries councils.

Advertisement

So, although the legal process for Greenland to rejoin the EU would be relatively straightforward, the policy questions at stake mean that the re-entry would not be guaranteed or without difficulty. Whether Greenlanders decide that it should be attempted, and how such an attempt would be received in Washington, will be an important question for the geopolitics of the High North and the EU’s role in it.

By Catherine Barnard, Professor in European Union Law and Employment Law, University of Cambridge and Denzil Davidson, Director, Global Counsel.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Politics

Zack Polanski calls out BBC’s woeful protest coverage

Published

on

Zack Polanski calls out BBC's woeful protest coverage

Saturday 28 March saw a significant anti-far right protest take place in London. According to Green Party leader Zack Polanski, however, you probably wouldn’t realise this if you’d been locked to the BBC:

Zack Polanski — Numbers

The Guardian piece Zack Polanski links to above notes:

Advertisement

Organisers say half a million are taking part – though police disagree

Getting an accurate picture of the number of people attending a march is always difficult, but today’s organisers say they believe half a million people have gathered in London.

Rally co-organiser Kevin Courtney, chairman of the Together Alliance coalition, told crowds gathered on Whitehall:

“Our estimate is now that there are half a million people on this demonstration – the biggest demonstration ever against the far right. And it gives us all confidence to carry on. Thank you very much.”

The Met Police say their initial estimate is more like 50,000 people. They concede, however, that it is hard to get an accurate number as marchers are so dispersed throughout central London.

Advertisement

Polanski was a speaker at the protest:

While the BBC did cover the protest, it’s fair to say that other protests have received significantly more attention. A key example of this was the far-right ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest, which saw about 150,000 people hit the streets of London. An example of the BBC’s extended coverage was this piece in which they interviewed attendees to understand why they attended the Tommy Robinson-linked event.

As we previously reported, Generation Remigration spoke at Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom. ‘Remigration’ is the plan to mass deport migrants and their descendants from European countries. And as we said at the time:

We’re not quite sure how that will work in Britain given the continuous influxes of populations we’ve experienced since the Roman Empire, except we are sure, obviously – they’re talking about deporting Black and brown people.

Attention economy

Beyond the BBC, the Unite the Kingdom rally sent shockwaves through the UK media. This was because it was the largest far-right rally in years. Despite this – as Polanski said – even larger rallies regularly fail to capture media attention. This is especially true when they’re linked to issues that the establishment opposes, such as the liberation of Palestine.

Polanski is right to fight for all the attention this movement can get, because lord knows the media won’t offer it from the goodness of their hearts.

Advertisement

Featured image via Richard Burgon

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

Iran has said the war ends when they say it ends

Published

on

Iran has said the war ends when they say it ends

Responding to their aggressors, Iran has said that the war isn’t over until they say it’s over:

The Iran quagmire

The message comes as Donald Trump has expressed his disinterest with continuing the war:

As noted above, the US did indeed strike a school, killing hundreds of children. People disputed this at the time, and some even claimed that Iran had blown up the school itself. What’s gone less reported is all the carnage since then:

This continued assault has included more strikes on schools:

Advertisement

Trump has now claimed the US will pause strikes on Iran for 10 days, as reported by the BBC:

Donald Trump’s decision to pause any attack on Iranian energy plants for a further 10 days could be a pivotal moment in a conflict that has now lasted almost four weeks.

The US president’s commitment to deadlines is fluid – this is his second extension of this particular threat – but he uses them nonetheless for a purpose: to send signals, to distract attention and to buy time.

Take this latest promise to hold off a threatened “obliteration” of Iran’s energy infrastructure, a massive escalation that could trigger both Iranian retaliation against similar Gulf facilities and damage chances of a sustainable peace and global economic recovery.

Advertisement

It may be Trump wanted again to calm international markets; it has not gone unnoticed this latest pause was announced minutes after trading closed on Wall Street.

The boys who cried negotiation

Because the US and Israel have repeatedly attacked the countries they’re supposedly holding peace talks with, there is no reason for Iran to trust Trump. At the same time, there’s clearly a good reason for them to make the global economy hurt, because doing so will force their enemies to think twice before launching another attack.

In other words, Iran may be speaking honestly when they say this ends when they say it does.

That is unless Trump becomes convinced that wrecking the global economy is a price worth paying for a victory that takes decades to achieve and provides no actual benefits.

Advertisement

Featured image via Amwaj

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

Reform ‘s Matt Goodwin on the receiving end of GB News laughter

Published

on

Reform 's Matt Goodwin on the receiving end of GB News laughter

It’s been a bad month for Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin. First he lost the Gorton & Denton by-election, and then he lost what little remained of his credibility. Now, things, have gotten so bad that his right-wing colleagues at GB News are mocking him too:

Hostile workplace

Goodwin is a GB News contributor, as they state on their site at the top of this unsettling mosaic of Matts:

As we reported on 28 March, Goodwin went on GB News to defend himself against the accusation that he wrote his book Suicide of a Nation with the help of ChatGPT. This went incredibly poorly for Goodwin:

Advertisement

In the video at the top, a panel of five of Goodwin’s colleagues talk about the “many painful moments” from the debate — all of which were felt by Goodwin himself. The man inflicting that pain was journalist Andy Twelves, who has now said the following:

Given his past commentary, we suspect Goodwin probably won’t be joining a union any time soon:

It’s not just GB News who are going for Goodwin either. The allegedly unsavoury Dan Wootton called Goodwin out for his plastic Brexiteer credentials (the image is clipped, but it notes Goodwin backed Remain in the EU Referendum):

And this is what Restore leader Rupert Lowe said in response to one of those patriot-bait nationalist accounts on Twitter:

Reform — Good riddance

As we covered at the start of the Gorton & Denton by-election, Matt Goodwin is a longtime establishment insider pretending to be an outsider.

Advertisement

Or he was, anyway.

Now that he’s soiled his reputation, he’s actually on the outside of the media career he’d built for himself.

Featured image via GB News

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Reform has a new problem with women

Published

on

Reform has a new problem with women

As reported by Reform Exposed, Nigel Farage‘s party is struggling to attract women candidates:

Given Reform’s politics, this is entirely unsurprising.

Reform’s Victorian mindset

On 25 February, we reported that Reform have been talking about ending no-fault divorce. This would mean people can only get divorced if they’re able to cross the right government tick box. Obviously this would leave many — mostly women — vulnerable to abusive partners.

Advertisement

This is what Andrew Marr said to Reform’s Richard Tice:

Danny Kruger, you’ll have seen his speech today, and he wants to find government measures to oblige women or persuade women to have more children. And he’s also interested in getting rid of no-fault divorces. A lot of female voters around the country will look at this and say, there’s a lot of kind of quite posh white men telling us what to do, and we won’t like it.

Tice failed to provide any sort of answer:

There was also the case of the councillor who reposted that a female Labour MP ‘should be shot’:

It’s additionally the case that Nigel Farage was accused of using grooming gang victims for political capital (accused by the victims themselves, in fact).

As we reported at the time:

On 28 October, we reported that Nigel Farage had inserted himself into the latest UK grooming gangs inquiry. In that piece, we covered that a former employee had accused him of opportunism. We also highlighted that Farage may not be the best person to speak out on this topic given his support for convicted rapist Donald Trump, or the fact that he refused to clearly condemn the alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate:

Since then, Farage’s involvement has further toxified the potential inquiry, with several abuse victims demanding an apology from the Reform leader:

Reporting on the party’s “problem with women”, Alexandra Topping wrote in the Guardian:

Advertisement

When Nigel Farage told a journalist this week she should “write some silly story … and we won’t bother to read it”, it provoked an instant – and divided – reaction. For some it was a “masterclass” in dealing with mainstream media, but for others it was “rude, dismissive, misogynistic, arrogant”.

Behind the scenes, Farage’s treatment of the Financial Times’s Anna Gross – which was met with mirth and applause among Reform diehards in the room – provoked disquiet and anger among lobby journalists across the political spectrum.

As the Reform UK leader was leaving the event, a Guardian political reporter suggested he had been rude and had upset the journalist. “Good,” Farage responded.

It is not the first time Farage has been accused of patronising a female journalist. When the former BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Mishal Husain asked him about the potential consequences of shooting down Russian planes last October, Farage responded: “Listen love, you’re trying ever so hard.” A month later he accused the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey of playing a “silly little game” when she asked who his chancellor would be.

Unsurprising

Because of the above, it’s unsurprising to see Reform are doing significantly less well with women:

Advertisement

Reform polling with women

It’s also unsurprising to learn that they are struggling to attract female candidates.

Going forwards, it will be interesting to see if Reform try to appeal to women, or if they simply hope that legions of new, resentful men magically appear out of nowhere.

Featured image via Estitxcu Carton (Wikimedia)

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Wings Over Scotland | Sicknote Slippers

Published

on

The turnout at the “independence march and rally” yesterday was so abysmally poor that it seems almost unfair to pick on any of the scores of SNP elected representatives who didn’t bother to show up.

But dear old Cosy Feet Pete Wishart had the most chef’s-kiss excuse of all.

The reason he didn’t fancy getting his wee Billy Whizz quiff blown about a chilly Calton Hill was that he had important business “taking on the far right” – who were of course nowhere to be seen – with “half a million” (50,000) of his British besties, a convenient short Tube ride away from his London residence, at an event called… UK Together.

Now there’s some more irony you can’t buy.

Advertisement

Just like Mick McCann from Preacher guarding New York from the Kaiser in 1917, the MP for Perth and Kinross-shire has done a heroic job defending Britain from the far right and fighting for Scottish independence from the plush safety of the Palace Of Westminster for the last 25 years – even though we’re out of the EU, independence is nowhere in sight and Nigel Farage is set to be the next Prime Minister.

But time and tide waits for no man, and as Farage enters No.10 and Wishart walks off to retirement, (having handily reached the requisite age by the next election), Slippers will just have to wipe his tears over quarter of a century of total failure on his fat UK Parliament pension of around £50,000 a year for the rest of his life.

Thanks for your service, Pete.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

TV Review: Power – The Downfall of Huw Edwards (Channel 5)

Published

on

Last night, John and I sat down to watch the Huw Edwards drama which Channel 5 showed last week. It was that or Virgin River or the Hotel Inspector.

Watching a drama about someone you vaguely know was bound to be a strange experience. What I wasn’t expecting, but should have, was that it was a profoundly uncomfortable viewing experience.

I had lunch with Huw Edwards back in 2021, when all this woeful saga was going on. I can’t quite remember how it came about, as I had never met him before, but I dutifully turned up at the Langham hotel, opposite Broadcasting House in Portland Place, looking forward to having a chat with the man who was Britain’s premier news broadcaster. In all honesty, I was flattered to be asked.

While I never suspected him of doing anything like the things he has been found guilty of, the whole lunch was a profoundly weird experience. He seemed to be on edge the whole time. I knew he had had depression, but he was acting very oddly. Admittedly, at times he was quite funny and entertaining, but kept obsessing about various of his BBC news colleagues and how incompetent or ghastly they were. Jeremy Vine copped it more than most. When I left the Langham, I remember thinking ‘well that was weird’.

Advertisement

When The Sun story broke about a famous BBC personality, I just somehow knew it was him. I have a terrible Gaydar, but I do remember wondering about his sexuality, despite knowing he had five children. I also had a number of younger gay friends who told me how attractive they found him, way before the scandal became public.

In some ways. Martin Clunes played a blinder. He looked far more like him than I expected him to, and got his voice quite well too. I thought at times he ventured a little into caricature, and played up to dramatic necessity to make him appear monster-like. We could certainly have done without the w*****g scene, but overall the drama stayed just the right side of the taste line and didn’t go too far into prurience.

When the scandal first broke, I will admit to having some sympathy with Huw, but that soon disappeared when it was revealed that he had accepted and scene nearly 400 images of underage children, some of whom were under ten.

Huw had lived the secret of being gay, or bi, for all his life. He’s not alone in that. He came from a small Welsh village and inevitably led a closeted existence. By the time he acted on his feelings, he was well into middle age. He’s not alone in that. He was also clearly flattered by the attention of young men. He’s not alone in that. However, what he has done is enabled people who have a stereotypical view of dirty old gay men to be reenforced, and that is unforgiveable. Some people still assume all gay men are happy to sleep with anyone else that has a penis, including those who are underage. It is simply untrue. Gay people are no more susceptible to paedophilia than straight people are, yet the myth still persists. And Huw Edwards is partly responsible for that.

Advertisement

So, it’s Virgin River on Netflix tonight…

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Reform activist accuses party of ‘sewer’ politics in resignation letter

Published

on

Reform activist accuses party of 'sewer' politics in resignation letter

With the local elections fast approaching, Reform UK are gearing up for a fight. The problem is they keep punching themselves in the face — most notably by borrowing a Jimmy Saville catchphrase and by refusing to dismiss a would-be candidate who did a Nazi salute. Shockingly, however, it seems like things are even worse under the surface than they are on top:

Sewer politics

The above message reads in full:

Having been an active member of Reform since it was founded, and the Brexit Party before that, it is with some sadness that I resign. In truth, Reform has left me.

The party I joined and helped build had a clear vision of how to solve our country’s problems: better politicians who care more about the people they serve than their careers. That’s how we fought the 2024 general election, winning 14.3% of the vote across the UK. In Swansea, I came in second, with 17.5% of the vote.

The “professionalisation” of the party has led it to take its members and candidates for granted. Communications that once began “Thank you” now more often start “You are required to…”. The party’s employees in Millbank forget that branch officers and candidates are unpaid volunteers.

Advertisement

Some will call my resignation petulance or sour grapes at my lowly placing on the list (fifth to an ex-Tory on the make and three novices). That rankles, but it has also confirmed to me what I feared; Reform is no longer open or honest. Politics is a dirty game, but Reform has sunk deep into the sewer when it should have been a beacon of decency.

Across Wales the candidate appointment does not reflect how people performed in the selection process; I know because I was there. In many constituencies those at the top of the list are not the best. Far too many are Tories – and the Reform vote will suffer.

Politics should be about openness, decency and serving the country, which it once was in Reform. Politics is (or should be) about people, not process. Principles, not opportunism. Passion, not career building.

The Reform Party has betrayed its early members’ vision, labour and achievements. I won’t be a party to that, so I resign.

Advertisement

As we’ve been saying for some time, Reform is morphing into the Conservative Party 2.0, and its early members can’t stomach it. The question is whether voters will realise this before or after they have the opportunity to vote in the 2029 election.

Candidate collapse

As reported by Reform Exposed, the above is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their candidate chaos.

There was also this mess:

And they’re are struggling to hold on to sitting councillors too:

‘Reform Will Fix It’

When we said that Reform have borrowed a Jimmy Saville catchphrase, this is what we were talking about:

That’s right — ‘Reform Will Fix It’.

We’re not sure what the ‘It’ refers to, but Reform’s key fault is their inability to field a normal candidate.

Featured image via emap

Advertisement

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

Morgan McSweeney defence gets minister ridiculed

Published

on

Morgan McSweeney defence gets minister ridiculed

As we’ve covered extensively, Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson to be our ambassador to the US despite knowing that the man enjoyed a weird friendship with the dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Further revelations led to Mandelson being sacked; they also led to Starmer’s chief of staff and Mandelson protege Morgan McSweeney resigning in disgrace.

All of this is known and on the record.

And yet Labour politicians want you to believe that people who speculate on the finer details are ‘conspiracy theorists’:

We’re sorry, but if you didn’t want conspiracy theories, maybe you shouldn’t have appointed the guy who was best pals with Jeffrey Epstein — the man at the centre of the 21st century’s most far-reaching conspiracy.

Morgan McSweeney — Conspiracy

We’ve covered the latest intricacies of the scandal here, but the TLDR is:

In the clip above, host Trevor Phillips said to Bridget Phillipson:

Advertisement

Let me ask you about the story of the week. Why is Morgan McSweeney the only person in the modern world who doesn’t have his messages automatically backed up to the cloud so that we can recover them and see what traffic there was between him and our former ambassador to the United States?

Smirking as ever, Phillipson responded:

I think your question’s a bit of a reach in terms of that.

When asked why, she said:

It’s hyperbole and you know it.

Oh, sorry — she’s right — some people don’t backup their messages. That’s the real issue here — somewhat exaggerated language.

After confirming that Phillipson’s messages were backed up in line with government guidelines, Phillips asked:

Advertisement

Why aren’t Morgan McSweeney’s?

Phillipson answered:

What happened here, which we all know, is that Morgan McSweeney was mugged

Oh yeah, we’re all 100% confident that the famously dishonest McSweeney was truthful about this ‘theft’ which happened at the maximum moment of benefit to himself.

She continued, noting that McSweeney:

reported that to the police, followed all of the processes that were asked of him.

“That were asked of him” — ignoring the fact that the police didn’t ask him to do more because they weren’t told he was the prime minister’s chief of staff.

Advertisement

Getting to the truly offensive part, Phillipson said:

And I do think some of this wider coverage is drifting into… conspiracy theory territory here.

Oh, is that right?

Do you think that’s because the official narrative is so full of holes that people need to use their imagination to make it make sense?

Phillipson got a similarly harsh response from Lewis Goodall on LBC:

Advertisement

A big club

Interestingly, Phillips would later turn the conspiracy logic on Kemi Badenoch:

By ‘best friend’, what Flying Rodent means is that Mandelson was the best man at Phillips’ wedding.

Advertisement

This isn’t a conspiracy; this is what it looks like when your political and media establishment are so firmly entwined that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

Featured image via Sky

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Kuenssberg just laundered a disgraced minister’s reputation

Published

on

Kuenssberg just laundered a disgraced minister's reputation

Josh Simons is the ex-cabinet minister who had to resign in disgrace because he’d been running a spying operation on UK journalists. Or, if you’re the BBC or in specific Laura Kuenssberg, he’s a naive young man who simply didn’t realise it was wrong to do blatantly bad things in secret:

What the above headline doesn’t convey is that Laura Kuenssberg raised the idea that Simons was simply “naive” and “foolish”. And she suggested it in one of those wretched moments in which an establishment journalist provides an answer and then asks the interviewee if they’d like to claim it as their own.

Young, dumb, and full of shit

Simons resigned from the government on 28 February. As Skwawkbox reported for the Canary:

Advertisement

Just in case readers are unfamiliar with the case, or are tempted to take anything Simons says at face value, Labour Together were caught paying tens of thousands to a firm run by a fellow Labour right-winger’s wife to spy on independent journalists.

This has been known for months, but the ‘mainstream’ media only started to pay attention when two of MSM-aligned journalists were targeted.

Additionally:

From 2022 to 2024, Simons ran the sabotage outfit, Labour Togther. He took over after disgraced Morgan McSweeney moved on to become Keir Starmer’s (now former) chief of staff.

As we reported, the Canary was among those who Labour Together spied on.

The following is the clip in which Kuenssberg furnished Simons with his excuses.

Advertisement

In the clip above, Kuenssberg says:

Do you now think that you were naive? Do you think you were foolish? You say you weren’t meaning to do anything wrong – it wasn’t what you intended for a journalist to be investigated. But, if you went to a PR firm saying, ‘please, can you find out about where this story came from?’ – surely, actually, it was inevitable they were going to look into what the journalists had been doing, if you’re asking where a story comes from.

So looking back now, do you think, were you naive? Were you foolish? Were you mistaken? How do you characterise it?

We’re going to write this in capitals so it’s clear:

Advertisement

THIS IS NOT HOW INTERVIEWS SHOULD WORK.

You can’t give someone a helpful answer and then ask if they want to claim it.

And of course he did want to claim it, because it presented him in the most flattering light possible.

This was how he answered:

Advertisement

Absolutely, I was naive. And there’s a lot I’ve learned from it. And there’s things that I would have done differently.

And this is how the BBC wrote it up:

A Labour MP who resigned as a Cabinet Office minister has said he was “naive” and “so sorry” in his first full interview since leaving his role.

This should read ‘Laura Kuenssberg suggested he was naive, and Simons agreed‘.

Abysmal stuff.

Kuenssberg — Form

As academic Nicholas Guyatt added, Kuenssberg has a history of laundering the reputation of Britain’s worst politicians:

Advertisement

Guyatt also provided further commentary:

The Fraud

You can read a serialisation of the first chapter of Paul Holden’s The Fraud here. It covers the dirty tactics that Labour Together used to maneuver Keir Starmer into Downing Street — tactics they sorely needed because Starmer has all the political competence of a quiche.

To be absolutely fair, though, when they did all the bad stuff, many of these career politicians could simply have been a bit naive.

Featured image via BBC

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

‘Asinine BS’: RFK Jr. Blasted Over This ‘Genuinely Crazy’ Trump Claim

Published

on

'Asinine BS': RFK Jr. Blasted Over This 'Genuinely Crazy' Trump Claim

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, who once flexed his disdain for Donald Trump and his base of “belligerent idiots,” stressed on Saturday that he “drank the Kool-Aid,” and the president wasn’t as “ill-informed” as he once believed.

In remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Kennedy claimed Trump has “encyclopedic, molecular knowledge” across a “wide range of very, very eclectic interests” before recalling a time the two dined on McDonald’s aboard his plane during the 2024 campaign.

“We started talking about Syria and he got a placemat and he turned it on its back and then he took a Sharpie and drew a perfect map of the Mid East,” said Kennedy of Trump, who claimed that he “never wrote a picture” in his life last year while denying that he gave a racy 2003 birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.

Kennedy continued, “Then he put the troop strength of every country on every border on that map. It challenged a lot of the assumptions that I had been told about him.”

Advertisement

He added that Trump has an “extraordinary depth of knowledge” about what’s happening in each agency alongside an “instinct for making good choices” before concluding that the president is better than his uncle, John F. Kennedy, at understanding the use of power in the White House.

Social media users swiftly clowned Kennedy over his Trump story, with one user on X calling out the health secretary over his “asinine BS” and another writing that it’s “genuinely crazy to watch the North Korean level hero worship manifest in real time.”

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2025