Politics
Trump: 'Pretend That I'm On The Ballot' During Midterms
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If it wasn’t for Israel, if it wasn’t for that monstrous, marauding state, there’d be peace in the Middle East. This is the Great Lie of Israelophobia. It’s the truthless, venomous current powering the global loathing for the Jewish State. You hear it on the street, on campuses, in mosques: that peace demands the muzzling, if not the outright destruction, of the bloodthirsty Jewish nation. Yesterday, staggeringly, we heard a version of this lie from the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.
For me, this was the most striking thing about Ed Miliband’s statement to parliament: his propagation of the falsehood that the Jewish State is the prime barrier to a two-state solution and something like peace. With its war in Gaza, which Miliband said was unjustified in its barbarity, and its green-lighting of yet more settlements in the West Bank / Judea and Samaria, Israel has nuked the possibility of peace, he said. It has created ‘a set of facts on the ground’ that have made ‘the two-state solution unviable’. MPs giddily murmured their approval.
Contrast this with how he spoke about Hamas. He condemned Hamas, of course. All politicians engage in a spot of anti-Hamas throat-clearing before piling on the real monster of the Middle East: Israel. Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ outfit, he said. It caused Israel and Jews great ‘trauma’ with its attacks of 7 October 2023. The violence of that day was ‘vile’. And it must now ‘decommission its weapons’.
Spot the difference? Hamas is a pain in the arse, but Israel is the true menace to future peace. Hamas causes trauma, but Israel creates ‘facts on the ground’ that make peace and equality all but impossible. Hamas, in this twisted telling, becomes a bit-part player, albeit a ‘vile’ one, in a horror story authored by a murderous, expansionist Jewish State that is well and truly off its leash. And that’s why, said Miliband, we are rolling out a stringent package of sanctions against the Israeli settlements: to tame Israel’s ‘expansionist’ lunacy that creates ‘facts’ which torch all hopes of peace.
What Miliband said wasn’t only untrue – it was the public execution of truth. He didn’t only spread misinformation – he also inverted reality itself, depicting the seekers of peace as the destroyers of peace, and the Islamofascists who truly jeopardise our civilisation as mere causers of trauma. Like the keffiyeh mob, only in more moderate language, he infantilised Hamas and monstered Israel, presenting the former as a pest but the latter as a threat to all that is decent. It is one of the most misleading speeches a modern politician has given.
The very war that Miliband so stingingly condemned – the Israel-Hamas War – was born not from Israel’s hatred of peace but from Hamas’s. It is well established that Hamas’s carnival of Nazi-like violence on 7 October was designed to destroy not only Jewish life but also the Abraham Accords. These are the accords initiated by Donald Trump and signed in Washington, DC, in September 2020, with the aim of bringing about ‘normalisation’ between Arab states and Israel. The UAE and Bahrain recognised Israel for the first time. Sudan and Morocco followed. Then something extraordinary was reported: Saudi Arabia was considering signing up, too.
It would have been a region-changing development. More than that: a global quake. But it infuriated Hamas’s masters in Tehran, the theocratic freaks devoted to the fascistic annihilation of the Jewish homeland. Internal Hamas documents confirm that the October pogrom was in part designed to ‘thwart the Saudi kingdom’s process of normalisation’. Other documents gloat that Hamas’s savagery during the Second Intifada – when a thousand Jews were shot, stabbed and burnt to death – had helped to stall the Arab Peace Initiative, which Iran also hated.
It is misinformation on steroids to depict a war that sprang from the brutish Islamist instinct to frustrate ‘normalisation’ in the Middle East as proof of Israel’s hostility to peace. The Gaza conflict is the bloody handiwork of an Islamic Republic that fears all peace deals with Israel because they undermine its own genocidal dream of destroying Israel. Israel relentlessly pursued the repairing of relationships with the Arab world as Iran and its armies of anti-Semites – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis – plotted the violent thwarting of those relationships. Anyone who looks back on the past three years of war and says it was caused by the obstinacy and lunacy of the Jewish State is either a liar or a fool. Or both.
As to Miliband’s claim that Israel is the author of a ‘set of facts’ that make a two-state solution ‘unviable’ – what is he smoking? As Jon Mendelsohn says at the Spectator, numerous offers of a Palestinian state have been made since the start of the so-called peace-process era in 1993, but all crashed against the ‘rejectionist architecture’ of Iranian theocracy and its proxy manifestations. Hamas has reiterated time and again its ‘rejection of the two-state solution’, and even the dogs in the street know why: because it desires the Nazi-like erasure of Israel and the expulsion of Jews from the Holy Land. Palestinian Authority incompetence in the West Bank alongside Islamist genocidalism in Gaza did far more to thwart two-state peace than Israel did. It is an act of neocolonial infantilisation, of imperious pity for Arabs, to refuse to acknowledge their contribution to the conflicts of the region. Do you think they are children?
What else might have made two states ‘unviable’? What about 7 October itself? Did that historic atrocity, a pogrom of the like we hadn’t seen since the Nazis, not also lay waste to that old political vision? Certainly many people will think it unreasonable, or at the very least impractical, to ask the seven million Jews of Israel to live next to a state that would have people in it who carried out a Hitleresque assault on the Jewish people with the aim of destroying the Jewish nation. ‘We will repeat 7 October again and again’, Hamas has said. Only the most hopeless dunce would wonder why Israelis aren’t super-keen right now on having a two-state solution.
The anti-Israel mania has long been fuelled by a double bigotry. The bigotry of seeing the Jewish State as uniquely wicked and the bigotry of seeing Arabs as fundamentally blameless. The Jews become the demonic authors of war, the Arabs their wide-eyed victims. One side is monstered, the other robbed of agency. Kipling notoriously described the non-West as being ‘half devil, half child’ – such imperial hubris finds expression today in the treatment of the Jews of Israel as devilish barbarians and their foes as child-like innocents. The Big Lie of Israel-hate.
It’s one thing to see bourgeois pricks in keffiyehs hawk such half-truths and calumnies about Israel. But the foreign secretary? Miliband brought shame on Britain with his fallacious fingering of Israel as the block to peace. This is the low-information appeasement of Islamo-voters at home, with little to no regard for truth or, indeed, peace. Our government has burnt global diplomacy at the altar of domestic sectarianism. It is sickening.
Argentine president Javier Milei finally went there. Addressing the nation last week, he reasserted Argentina’s claim on Las Malvinas – known to the rest of us as the Falkland Islands, the British Overseas Territory 300 miles off the coast of mainland Argentina.
‘The Malvinas are Argentine, historically and legally… there’s no debate about that’, Milei said of this remote South Atlantic archipelago, which was seized by Britain from a then newly independent Argentina in 1833. He was not threatening an invasion, like that undertaken by Argentina’s vicious right-wing military junta in 1982 – a move that led to war with Britain. Rather, he was threatening sanctions against any companies engaged in ‘oil-extraction initiatives’ in the North Falkland Basin.
The embrace of the cause of the Malvinas is something of an about-turn for this proud libertarian. Over the past two decades or so, his left-leaning predecessors all rhetorically exploited the Falklands issue as a righteous, anti-imperial cause of the Global South – and they were backed by their Latin American allies on the left, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. But the right-wing Milei was different. An avowed fan of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher (one of ‘the great leaders in the history of humanity’ as he put it in 2023), he used to downplay the significance of the Falklands War. In fact, he even echoed the British line that it was up to the 3,000-plus Falkland Islanders themselves to determine their own future, although he hoped that they might ‘one day decide to vote for us’.
So what’s changed? Why is Milei now eyeing up the Falklands?
Partly, there are domestic factors at play. Milei’s popularity ratings have plunged over the past year. His chainsawing cuts to state spending have brought sky-high inflation down to more manageable levels, but unemployment is still rising amid continuing economic struggles. So, with national elections now just over a year away, it seems Milei has pivoted to a rally-round-the-flag cause that has long proved popular among the Argentine public.
There is also a more material consideration in the shape of the vast, untapped oil fields in the seas around the islands. Indeed, Milei used his state address to announce sanctions on the firms planning to drill in the Sea Lion field – the Israeli company Navitas and its British partner, Rockhopper. Largely, one would surmise, because his administration wants Argentine companies in on the action, too.
Arguably, however, it is the geopolitical context that has done most to embolden Milei’s government, helping to turn this familiar Argentine flex into a major international flashpoint.
After all, his predecessors made similar statements, but these could comfortably be ignored. Milei’s intervention, however, arrives amid an increasingly violent rebalancing of global power, in which longstanding, postwar alliances and institutions are being pulled apart at the seams. This is partly what Milei meant in his national address, when he talked about the ‘winds of change’ blowing around the world favouring an Argentine claim on the Falklands.
The decay of NATO, in particular, is relevant here. Washington has long been irritated by European allies’ relative lack of investment in their own military and defence capabilities. What were once just cracks in this decades-old alliance have threatened to become ruptures since both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, above all, the US-Israel war in Iran. In both cases, the White House has felt that Europe is not pulling its weight. Indeed, it now seems that Britain’s failure to support the Trump White House in its assault on the Islamic Republic has prompted the US to explicitly cast doubt on the UK’s claim on the Falkland Islands.
In April, just over a month into the US’s Iranian venture, an internal Pentagon email, seen by Reuters, suggested the White House was considering withdrawing its formal recognition of Britain’s administration of the Falklands. This clearly sent a message to Milei, a Trump ally. Prior to this, any assertion of Argentine power – legal, military or otherwise – towards the Falklands would have risked damaging relations with the US. But no more. From that point on, the Malvinas have potentially been on the table for Argentina in a way they’ve not been for decades.
And then, just a few days before Milei addressed the nation last week, Trump told GB News that Britain was ‘not there to help me’ in Iran, before he brought up the Falklands, claiming that he doubted Britain would be capable of defending the islands in 2026 in the way it could in 1982. You didn’t have to be a Trumpographer to understand what The Donald was getting at – namely, that the UK will have to defend its claim on the Falklands without US support. Little wonder that when Milei said that the global ‘winds of change’ were behind Argentina’s sails, he explicitly cited ‘President Trump’s [declaration] that the US is re-evaluating its historic position in relation to the Malvinas’.
Milei’s national address also touched on another key factor that has helped reignite the Falklands row: the weakness and disorientation of the British state. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Britain has either the means or the will to defend these distant islands any more.
After all, Britain’s military strength is widely known to be at an all-time low. Its army is depleted, and its navy diminished – a worrying reality revealed to the entire world in March when Britain had to rely on French naval forces to defend a British airbase on Cyprus from a Hezbollah drone strike. And there’s little sign that the UK’s new government is committed to reversing this military decline.
But Britain’s weakness goes deeper than defence capabilities. It is intellectual and ideological, too. Britain is a nation whose political class is imbued with identitarian ideology and has little sense of the national interest, preferring instead to cleave to globalist institutions.
After all, Milei has already seen Britain try to relinquish its sovereignty over another of its overseas territories: the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, hosts a critical joint UK-US airbase. Yet even this hasn’t stopped the UK government from trying to hand over the islands to Mauritius, a close ally of China, while paying billions to the Mauritians for the pleasure, all supposedly in the name of satisfying ‘international law’.
UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband has said of the Falklands that ‘the Islands are British and will remain so’. But his defiance is not very convincing. After all, this is a politician saturated in the globalist, legalistic thinking of New Labour.
Deeper still, there is now a profound indifference among the British public towards the status of a set of islands that are thousands of miles away. A YouGov poll in 2023 asked Brits how upset they’d be if the Falkland Islands stopped being British. Nearly half said ‘It wouldn’t bother me either way’. Among the young, the indifference is endemic, which is hardly surprising given they’ve grown up in a cultural and educational climate dominated by anti-Westernism and the ideology of decolonisation. According to a recent Telegraph poll, just 10 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds want to keep the Falklands British.
None of this is to suggest that Argentina is actually about to make good on its claim on the Falklands. Milei’s focus is, for now, solely on the oil-drilling licences. Besides, the islands are actually far better able to defend themselves today than they were in 1982, with a garrison of 1,500 troops, backed by a state-of-the-art air-defence system, several fighter jets and a small naval force. And Argentina is far, far weaker militarily than it was under the rule of the junta.
But the Falklands row is not going away. Western fragmentation and Britain’s weakness have effectively advanced Argentina’s geographical and historical claim on the territory in a way that Javier Milei could never manage by himself. The future of these distant islands has rarely been as uncertain.
Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Dan McKee became the first governor in eight years in the U.S. to lose a primary, falling on Wednesday to former CVS executive Helena Foulkes and becoming the latest victim of a rough year for incumbents.
McKee’s campaign was bogged down by the botched handling of a years-long project to rebuild the Washington Bridge, which transports more than 70,000 drivers through Providence each day. The project has suffered from delays, cost overruns and disputes between state officials and former contractors that have raised questions about transparency and accountability for the project.
Foulkes spent much of the primary hammering McKee over his handling of the bridge project — a strategy that ultimately proved successful.
McKee had partially closed the bridge in 2023, and estimated at the time that it would fully reopen this summer. But last year, he said the bridge likely won’t be completed until 2028. Construction began in June.
Throughout his campaign, McKee continued to insist that the bridge project was handled well. He told The New York Times in August that “people are going to realize we did the right thing.”
The last incumbent governor to lose a primary was Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer in 2018. McKee’s loss Wednesday adds to the substantial list of Democratic incumbents ousted in primary challenges, though this race didn’t feature the same generational and ideological contrasts as other primaries that have felled Democrats this cycle. Foulkes and McKee, both baby boomers, both ran center-left campaigns.
Foulkes’ victory adds a chapter to her family’s long political lineage. Her grandfather, Thomas J. Dodd, and her uncle, Chris Dodd, were both senators from Connecticut. She worked as an executive at CVS for over 25 years before launching a 2022 run for governor.
McKee won that round, but she got the final word on Wednesday.
DALLAS — Republicans are panicking that President Donald Trump’s policies are drowning out their cost-of-living message — and that it may be too close to the election to fix it.
GOP lawmakers and candidates woke up in Texas on Wednesday to an alarming reality: Trump deepening his trade war with Canada as oil hit $100 per barrel, following new military strikes against Iran.
Publicly, Republicans plan to downplay their latest woes — or blame the Democrats. But several of them at the midterm convention this week are privately strategizing with GOP leaders and Trump administration officials to shore up vulnerable candidates in battlegrounds and in states the president won by double digits in 2024.
Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to address a breakfast Thursday with the delegations from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Republicans are eager to hear how he will navigate the party’s economic woes, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to share private plans. Others are pushing to use the convention to reclaim the cost of living issue that’s haunting Republicans after it buoyed them two years ago, planning to argue in their speeches that their party can still be trusted to bring down prices.
In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, a group of top senators and candidates in tough races — including Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley and Georgia Republican Senate nominee Rep. Mike Collins — huddled with leaders from the Senate GOP-aligned super PAC met to discuss a battleground map increasingly under pressure as the party tries to fend off voters’ ire around the economy.
“You can’t hide the fact of what the price of gasoline is, we know that,” Collins told POLITICO in an interview after the closed-door meeting, as he reiterated his support for Trump’s efforts to neutralize Iran as a nuclear threat, arguing that the U.S. has long been at war with Iran but “we’re putting an end to it with this president.”
Many Republicans didn’t want to talk about economic concerns amid the party at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where MAGA hats cost $47 (a discount from the $55 online) and water went for $8 a bottle.
“We are going the wrong direction,” said one GOP lawmaker attending the convention granted anonymity, like others in this story, to speak candidly of the spiraling economic indicators and the challenges they were creating. “We don’t have a lot of time left.”
Senior Republicans are quietly dismayed about the pileup of Trump economic moves that have rattled voters and key industries in their states — including the worsening trade war with Canada that threatens the auto and farm sectors in the Midwest, his step to import more foreign beef ahead of the midterms that’s infuriated ranchers and farmers from Texas to Iowa, along with spiking oil prices amid the war in Iran that are cutting across the map.
“We’re putting Iowa in play,” one frustrated senior House Republican said on the sidelines of the convention of the Senate map. “We’re putting Texas in play. They shouldn’t be.”
The one advantage they have: money. Battleground Republicans and GOP leaders have been itching for Trump to unleash his massive war chest to help them fend off Democratic attacks over voters’ concerns about gas and everyday costs among the ongoing war. Trump’s orbit started to make good on its promises Wednesday morning, doling out millions in spending for key Senate races through an affiliated Super PAC known as No Going Back PAC Inc., two people with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed.
But Republicans know that campaign funds can’t solve everything.
“We got to talk about the issues that people are dealing with. Families can’t afford their house, they can’t afford the food, they can’t afford health care, they can’t afford child care,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview in the convention hall.
He placed most of the onus on Congress to tackle those issues and cut spending, but admitted Trump’s war with Iran had economic consequences.
“We have higher gas prices now as a result of the president trying to keep us safe as a result of what Iran wants to do,” Scott said. “So that’s hopefully a short-term problem that he’s going to deal with by destroying the regime.”
In a statement, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales argued that Democrats “created the affordability crisis.”
“President Trump has spent every day in office working to undo their mess and lower costs for working families by signing the largest middle class tax cuts in history, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, permanently expanding the child tax credit, fueling wage growth, and reshoring American manufacturing to create more high paying jobs,” Wales said.
Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the RNC, similarly blamed Democrats for surging prices, adding that “Republicans are cutting taxes, lowering drug prices, and putting money back in families’ pockets.”
Several Republicans plan to use their convention addresses to blame their Democratic opponents for voters’ price pains and argue it’s Republicans who are putting more money in Americans’ pockets — like Mike LiPetri, who’s running to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York. Others plan to paint a rosier picture of the economy than many voters say is the case right now.
That’s been a hard message for Republicans to sell. An August POLITICO Poll shows that a 34% plurality of Americans hold Trump fully responsible for the state of the current U.S. economy, compared with just 17% who say the same for former President Joe Biden.
And the very real time crunch — with less than two months until the November election — was a tangible pressure throughout the day in Dallas, as Republican lawmakers, battleground candidates and party officials gathered for what was planned to be a grand event to celebrate GOP accomplishments and drive turnout.
“Look, I think obviously we want to continue to drive down costs, whether it’s energy, whether it is housing, whether it is groceries,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the most at-risk House Republicans in November, said in an interview. “We’re seeing, you know, obviously continued volatility in the oil markets, and we want to bring that down.”
Lawler, who is speaking at the convention Thursday night, touted Trump’s deal over Venezuela oil and largely blamed policy moves by New York Democrats for his state’s higher energy costs.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that oil prices are set to drop amid the ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran — but not until after the midterms, which is much later than those anxious Republicans would hope.
Some GOP hopefuls point to the overall goal to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities as a necessary national security posture. The uptick in oil prices, therefore, is a short-term consequence for a greater long-term foreign policy success.
“We [have] to be patient with the fluctuations, especially with oil and what’s happening in the Gulf now,” said Marty O’Donnell, the Republican looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee from her Las Vegas seat.
And the Republicans assembled in Dallas were the ones most likely to support the president — plenty of other lawmakers, including members running in tough races, stayed away, as did some rank-and-file Republicans.
“We have to hope that in six weeks the price per barrel goes down because it’s a big deal,” said one Georgia-based Republican strategist who is not attending the Dallas convention. “The Dems have been beating the daylights out of us on that for a while now.”
A GOP county chair in a region with House races that have been made more competitive by Trump’s unpopularity echoed those concerns.
“There’s no other commodity that when you drive down the street, you see the price,” said the county chair who also wasn’t in Dallas. “I know what gas costs because it’s on a fucking billboard on every intersection, and I’m forced to see it. It’s the most visible indicator of the economy, where we stand.”
And while Republicans are hoping that Trump can get his party’s economic messaging on track in his convention keynote address Thursday, some aren’t holding their breath for a major breakthrough.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the president delivers a coherent speech that is clear, that is direct, that is policy oriented, that is forward-looking, and they can cut that up in social media and post that up all over the place,” said the GOP county chair. “Will he do that? Absolutely not.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Politics
Politics Home | TUC Head Urges Government To Reject Choice Between Defence Spending And Public Services
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, addressing a rally in 2023 (Alamy)
6 min read
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), has urged the government to “reject the right-wing argument” that there is a choice to be made between increasing defence spending and investing in public services.
Speaking ahead of the TUC conference that begins on Sunday, Nowak told PoliticsHome: “We should fundamentally reject the right-wing argument that somehow it is a choice between investing in our national and collective security, and investing in our schools and hospitals and infrastructure. I just reject that choice out of hand.”
Andy Burnham told MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday: “Yes, we do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.”
Although the Prime Minister restated the government’s commitment to defence as “absolute”, his comments were criticised by the Conservatives, who accused him of “prioritising the ballooning benefits bill over our national security”.
The TUC passed a “Wages not weapons” motion at its conference last year, which opposed immediate rises in defence spending and noted that “in the current political context, ever-higher expenditure on arms will inevitably mean less money for our education, health, and councils, and the green transition”.
Asked whether he had since been lobbying the government not to increase defence spend, Nowak replied: “That wasn’t what we agreed last year, and I, the TUC, we are not going to campaign on ‘this is the right level of spending on defence’. I’m not a defence expert.”
Trade unions including the University and College Union (UCU), which proposed the motion at TUC last year, would like to see a clearer position against government increases to military budgets.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “TUC policy is clear and we will be looking to reaffirm that this year via the unions movement’s democratic processes. We would then expect the TUC to fully support the democratic will of the movement.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Nowak – who is from Merseyside – welcomed Burnham as Prime Minister, joking: “I’m always keen to see Evertonians in positions of power… We’re finally getting the recognition on the international stage that we deserve.”
He said that under Keir Starmer’s leadership trade unions had a “sense” of “being managed as political stakeholders” by the government, but with Burnham at the helm he hoped “unions feel that this is a government that sees them as legitimate partners”.
Nowak warned Burnham against calling a general election before the Employment Rights Act changes are implemented, however.
The union leader described himself as “pretty agnostic” about the possibility of an early snap election, but added: “Do I think that the public is champing at the bit for another general election? I really don’t…
“It’ll be down to Andy Burnham as Prime Minister and his government to think, ‘Have we got enough room for manoeuvre within the manifesto commitments that we’ve got?’
“I certainly think on things like employment rights, for example, there is still a huge amount of unfinished business, and what I wouldn’t want to see is that business remaining unfinished because we had an early general election.”
Nowak said he wanted the Employment Rights Act to be implemented “further and faster”, flagging that “the first big test for the government” will be on guaranteed hours for workers.
“It would be an absolute travesty if we ended up in the situation where people, for example, on nine-hour contracts are excluded from the scope of the guaranteed hours provision,” he said.
“There will be some employers who are just addicted to one-sided flexibility… and they are going to fight tooth and nail against proper right-guaranteed hours. I think the Prime Minister’s got to be prepared to face them down.”
The TUC general secretary said the other “unfinished business” included “the biggest wave of public sector insourcing”, “the fair pay agreement in social care” and “the school support staff negotiating body”.
He added that the unions are “serious about Employment Rights Act Two” – the demand for a second instalment of the workers’ rights legislation already passed – which he specified should include measures on corporate governance.
“It’s bizarre that 19 European countries have some sort of provision for workers on boards, but we don’t,” he said.
Speaking to PoliticsHome, Nowak also urged Chancellor John Healey ahead of the Budget to give himself “more flexibility to invest in our infrastructure and in public services because we are desperately going to need it”.
The TUC head advised that the bank surcharge should be increased, saying: “If you put it up to 35 per cent – which is the level the Tories put the windfall tax on the energy companies at the height of the energy price spikes – that generates £60bn over the next four years.”
While refusing to “prejudge” the upcoming TUC conference debate on changing the fiscal rules, he called on the government to reform the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), describing the watchdog as being “established by George Osborne as a tool of austerity”.
“I want the remit of the OBR reviewed. I think at the moment it’s acting as a break on growth rather than a driver of growth,” he said.
Nowak also criticised the National Wealth Fund’s aim to break even by 2031, saying: “Infrastructure investments don’t pay off in three or four years, or even five years, or sometimes 10 years… You’ve got to take a much longer-term view.”
And he said the government should ensure that when it takes a stake in a company through GB Energy or the National Wealth Fund, it is counted as a public sector asset – enabling more investment.
The TUC general secretary backed further action on the water industry, including putting Thames Water into special administration.
“Why the hell are we rewarding big outsourcing companies with hundreds of millions of pounds in dividends each and every year when they are failing to deliver our basic public services?” Nowak asked.
“I think especially Thames Water should be placed into a special administrative regime. I am absolutely convinced that that not a single pound of taxpayers’ money or bill payers’ money should be spent on rewarding Thames water shareholders and senior management for continued failure.
“You’ve got to put in place safeguards for the taxpayer, you’ve got to put in place safeguards for the people reliant on Thames Water services, and you’ve got to put in safeguards for the workforce as well because there’s big issues about pensions and pay. But I don’t think anyone thinks that we should bail them out with another single pound.”
New Environment Secretary Angela Eagle recently said the move would be more complicated than assumed by some activists, saying: “Whatever people think of Thames at the moment, it isn’t technically insolvent.”
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Detectives have launched an investigation after an undercover Channel 4 investigation into donations to Reform UK.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said they had “assessed the information provided and determined that there are potential offences requiring investigation”.
Detectives are “seeking to obtain relevant footage” from last Thursday’s Channel 4 broadcast, the force said.
The statement added: “Detectives continue to liaise closely with the Electoral Commission and Crown Prosecution Service as inquiries progress.”
Heather Rolfe aruges that campaigners for a closer relationship with the EU will find it challenging to engage young people in a debate that has passed them by.
In the months following the Brexit vote it was widely noted that older people had swung the vote to Leave while young people had largely voted to remain. Almost three-quarters (73%) of 18–24-year-olds voted Remain, and only 27% Leave, compared to a 60%/40% split among the over 65s. Media articles talked of baby boomers ‘messing things up’, or ‘snatching away’ young people’s freedom of movement.
It is often assumed that the 2016 vote division by age remains, and even that anti-Brexit feeling among young people has become stronger. Recent research by British Future on public attitudes to a future UK-EU relationship casts doubt on this narrative. Findings suggest that pro-EU campaigns cannot take the youth vote for granted.
It’s true that 18–24-year-olds are more likely to believe it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU (57% vs 49% for all age groups), but they are much more likely than others to say they don’t know (31% vs 19%). Across a range of other questions on the future UK-EU relationship they are also more likely to lack an opinion or to lack understanding of key aspects, including free movement.
Nearly a quarter of young people (23%) say they don’t know whether the UK should hold a second referendum or not, compared to 15% across all age groups. When asked how they would vote in a future referendum, they are least likely to support staying out (17% vs 29% of all age groups). But they are also much more likely than others to say they don’t know or would not vote (39% vs 25% of all ages).
‘Don’t know’ responses to key questions on the UK’s membership of the EU by age group
As recorded by many other surveys on immigration, ours found that young people aged 18-24 have more positive attitudes to immigration than other age groups and are less likely to favour reductions in immigration numbers. But this does not necessarily mean they are more in favour of EU migration or free movement. They are less likely than those in other age groups to say it should be easier to work in another EU country (46% vs 53%). They are also more likely than others to say they don’t know whether post-Brexit immigration controls should be kept, whether they would accept free movement if it meant less trade or if they would support a range of measures to manage free movement (for example restrictions on state benefits).
All of this might be understandable given that they were children or adolescents at the time. However, it might also be expected that as young adults they would be more inclined than others to support the types of mobility that they, or their siblings, could benefit from. However, they are no more likely than others to support a closer UK-EU relationship for school trips or for study. And, strikingly, they are less likely than other age groups to support the Youth Experience Scheme, currently under negotiation, by 45% compared to 57% of all age groups.
To understand attitudes in more depth, we held eight focus groups – two of them with young people who could not vote in 2016. Participants said that Brexit was not their decision, whether they thought it had been a good idea or not. The idea that young people have disproportionately lost out was a stronger theme of the all-age groups than those with young people. However, when potential opportunities for young people were discussed with 18–24-year-olds, they did feel that they had few opportunities to study and work in the EU.
Participants of all ages liked the idea of Erasmus+, the EU’s funding scheme for education, training, youth, and sport which the UK will join in 2027. They also liked the idea of the Youth Experience Scheme. For both, support came with the condition that they are inclusive and available to young people facing financial or other barriers. Older people believed that Erasmus had largely benefited those from advantaged backgrounds. Young focus group participants said they would not know how to go about looking at study or work opportunities abroad and wanted help with this if they were to participate.
We had expected young people to be more in favour than they were of a closer UK-EU relationship in their survey responses and to be more engaged in the focus group discussions. Their detachment from the issues is partly because, as they said in the focus groups, they were too young to absorb the arguments around free movement, sovereignty and rule taking vs rule making. Few also said they had learned about the EU at school or discussed with family or friends. Wider research suggests they are not disengaged from politics in general, but are more interested in issues such as job insecurity, cost of living and housing affordability.
Are today’s 18–24-year-olds fundamentally different to those of 2016? Research before the referendum found similar levels of disengagement to now: only half said they were certain to cast a vote, compared to more than two-thirds in other age groups. Turnout in the referendum was also lower in areas with a higher proportion of young people.
The planned reduction in the voting age to 16 is seen as an opportunity to encourage interest in democratic engagement. However, more is needed if young people are to engage in the UK’s place in the EU. Their lives and opportunities are rarely part of the narrative of campaigners, politicians and the media and many do not see it as relevant to their lives. On the issue of youth mobility which offers them opportunities, the focus of the debate is on inward migration: how many EU citizens will come to the UK for work or study? Should numbers be capped and who will pay their study fees?
It might also be that opportunities to study and work abroad appeal to relatively few young people, even if barriers were removed. But we can only be certain if they are more involved in discussions about what a closer future relationship might mean for them.
By Dr Heather Rolfe, Director of Research, British Future.
The Met has launched an investigation following the Channel 4 broadcast (Alamy)
2 min read
The Metropolitan Police have launched an investigation into allegations that Reform UK breached donation rules by using foreign funding.
On Wednesday, the Met said that it had received several reports “relating to donations and polling involving a political party” following a broadcast by Channel 4 on Thursday.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Met said: “Detectives have assessed the information provided and determined that there are potential offences requiring investigation.”
They added: “The potential offences are similar in nature to matters already under investigation by the Met’s Special Enquiry Team relating to donations made to the same political party. As a result, these matters will form part of that ongoing investigation. “
It comes after a Verbatim and Channel 4 investigation appeared to show senior officials discussing how to disguise donations from foreign sources.
Under UK electoral law, foreign companies are not permitted to fund party activities.
A Met spokesperson said: “Following a broadcast by Channel 4 News on Thursday, 3 September, the Met received a number of reports relating to donations and polling involving a political party.
The statement added: “All allegations under investigation relate to potential offences under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
“As part of enquiries, detectives are seeking to obtain relevant footage relating to the broadcast on Thursday 3, September.
“Detectives continue to liaise closely with the Electoral Commission and Crown Prosecution Service as enquiries progress.”
When the investigation was first broadcast on Channel 4 last week, Reform UK said that the party had been the target of a “hoax”. But on Friday morning the party announced an investigation following the broadcast, with senior officials James Orr and Dan Jukes stepping down.
While Reform had hoped to use its party conference in Birmingham over the weekend to regain its momentum after a difficult few months, senior figures were instead forced to face questions about the revelations.
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