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U.S. keeps missile system in Philippines as China tensions rise

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U.S. keeps missile system in Philippines as China tensions rise


U.S. and Philippine troops fire a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System during live fire exercises as part of US-Philippines army-to-army joint drills on March 31, 2023 in Laur, Nueva Ecija, Philippines.

Ezra Acayan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

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The United States has no immediate plans to withdraw a mid-range missile system deployed in the Philippines, despite Chinese demands, and is testing the feasibility of its use in a regional conflict, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The Typhon system, which can be equipped with cruise missiles capable of striking Chinese targets, was brought in for joint exercises earlier this year, both countries said at the time, but has remained there.

The Southeast Asian archipelago, Taiwan’s neighbor to the South, is an important part of U.S. strategy in Asia and would be an indispensable staging point for the military to aid Taipei in the event of a Chinese attack.

China and Russia have condemned the first deployment of the system to the Indo-Pacific, accusing Washington of fueling an arms race.

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China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it was very concerned about the plan to keep the system in place.

“It seriously threatens the security of regional countries and intensifies geopolitical confrontation,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a press briefing.

The deployment, some details of which have not been previously reported, comes as China and U.S. defense treaty ally the Philippines clash over parts of the hotly contested South China Sea. Recent months have brought a series of sea and air confrontations in the strategic waterway.

Philippine officials said Filipino and U.S. forces continued to train with the missile system, which is on the northern island of Luzon, facing the South China Sea and is close to the Taiwan Strait. They said they were not aware of immediate plans to return it, even though the joint exercises end this month.

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A Philippine army spokesman, Colonel Louie Dema-ala, on Wednesday said training was ongoing and it was up to Philippine authorities and the United States Army Pacific to decide how long the missile system would stay.

“It is up to the higher headquarters to decide on its stay, and most importantly the USARPAC because they own this, it is not our capability,” he told Reuters.

A public affairs officer for USARPAC said the Philippine army had said the Typhon could stay beyond September and soldiers trained with it as recently as last week, engaging “in discussions over employing the system, with a focus on integrating host nation support.”

A senior Philippine government official and another person familiar with the matter said the U.S. and the Philippines were testing the feasibility of using the system there in the event of a conflict and how well it works in that environment. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

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The government official said the Typhon – which is intended to be mobile and moved as needed – was in the Philippines for a “test on the feasibility of deploying it in country so that when the need arises, it could easily be deployed here.”

The office of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr did not respond to a request for comment.

Second Thomas Shoal tensions: China may become 'a bit more aggressive,' analyst says

The U.S army flew the Typhon, which can launch missiles including SM-6 missiles and Tomahawks with a range exceeding 1,600 km (994 miles), to the Philippines in April in what it called a “historic first” and a “significant step in our partnership with the Philippines”.

A satellite image taken on Wednesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm, and reviewed by Reuters showed the Typhon at the Laoag International Airport, in Ilocos Norte province.

The senior government official who spoke to Reuters said there were no immediate plans to withdraw it.

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“If ever it will be pulled out, it is because the objective has been achieved and it may be brought (back) in after all the repairs or the construction would have been done,” the official said, adding that there was strategic value for the Philippines in keeping the system to deter China.

“We want to give them sleepless nights.”

The U.S. has been amassing a variety of anti-ship weapons in Asia, as Washington attempts to catch up quickly in an Indo-Pacific missile race in which China has a big lead, Reuters has reported.

Although the U.S. military has declined to say how many will be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region, more than 800 SM-6 missiles are due to be bought in the next five years, according to government documents outlining military purchases. Several thousand Tomahawks are already in U.S. inventories, the documents showed.

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China has denounced the deployment of the Typhon several times, including in May when Wu Qian, spokesperson for China’s defense ministry, said Manila and Washington had brought “huge risks of war into the region”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in June cited the deployment when announcing his country would resume production of intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo in July assured his Chinese counterpart the presence of the missile system in his country posed no threat to China and would not destabilize the region.

China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the South China Sea, which it mostly claims in full despite a 2016 arbitral ruling that backed the Philippines, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. has said.

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China says its military facilities in the Spratly Islands are purely defensive, and that it can do what it likes on its territory.



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‘Nail in the coffin’: family farmers respond to inheritance tax changes | Inheritance tax

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Gerallt Lloyd on his farm

For more than 100 years, the family of 56-year-old Andrew Smith has had a cattle farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Smith, who now runs the farm, sees chancellor Rachel Reeves’s changes to inheritance tax rules as a grave betrayal of British farmers.

Working with his three sons, the farm produces about 2,000 sheep and 30 to 40 cows each year, yet makes “no profit”, he says. “We just pay the bills.”

Last Wednesday, Reeves announced that, from April 2026, farms and other business property, which had been passed on to heirs tax-free, will fall within inheritance tax (IHT). Inheritors will have to pay 20% of their value above £1m, half the headline inheritance tax rate of 40%.

“The boys have been in the business with me since they left school,” Smith says. “They have been bred to look after stock on the moors, which is a very difficult terrain to earn a living on. They were expecting to take it over from me, but this is the final nail in the coffin for family farms.”

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“Once my sons are gone, you can’t replace them, nobody else will have the experience on these hills, the food will just not get produced. It’s the end of the line.”

Smith believes that the fact that UK family farming today is by default asset-rich but cash-poor has been entirely ignored by the chancellor’s new rules.

“If my farm is worth £5m, my sons won’t be able to pay £800,000 in inheritance tax, of course, they’ll just have to sell half their land when I die. Then the farm will be unviable. Starmer has 100% broken a promise; they lied.”

Smith is one of scores of farmers who responded to a Guardian callout asking about the planned changes. They raised concerns that Labour’s policy will harm family farms, force them to stop food production, prevent investment in new technologies and break the chain between farming generations.

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Many said the policy would mean selling off land to larger, corporate agricultural businesses, or investors with limited interest in environmental concerns or communities and who would probably, as one farmer put it, “simply watch balance sheets”.

The National Farmers’ Union has labelled the plans “disastrous” for the industry. The government said the change will only affect about 2,000 estates a year.

‘Why do we bother to produce food?’

Jonathan Bell’s family has been involved with farming going back at least to his great-grandfather. In 2018, he began running the 250-acre Devon farm in partnership with his wife and parents.

“Rachel Reeves has destroyed our farm business and also our cold-pressed rapeseed oil business,” says Bell, 55.

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Jonathan Bell’s rapeseed crop. He says the changes could close his farm. Photograph: Jonathan Bell/Guardian Community

Bell estimates that the family could face a £400,000 inheritance tax bill. “On a business making £30,000 profit, there is no way I could service a debt of that magnitude,” he says. “We would have to sell part of the farm, making us even more uneconomical,” raising the “very sad” possibility of being forced to give up farming entirely.

“We work in one of the most dangerous professions in the country to produce food to feed everyone,” he says.

Bell says the changes hurt because farming is as much a service for the nation as an industry. “We look after the countryside and provide the food to keep people alive,” Bell says. If this is how the government treats farmers, he feels, “Why do we bother to produce food?”

‘Good in principle, but the threshold is too low’

Andrew Brown, from Rutland in the East Midlands, owns about 100 acres of land, but he is mainly a tenant farmer producing wheat.

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He feels more ambivalent about Reeves’s new rules. “I think this is ultimately a good idea, because some of the very, very rich landowners aren’t farmers, they’re people who just bought land to take advantage of the IHT rules.

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“So, if this stops very wealthy people from buying farmland to avoid taxes, then all the better, as those people could afford to pay the tax anyway,” he says.

Andrew Brown feels ambivalent about the chancellor’s new IHT rules for farmers. Photograph: Paul Tonge/Guardian Community

“I don’t disagree with the principle, but there were better ways of doing it. The threshold is too low, which will affect a lot of people, and it should be gradual, so 5%, say, for up to [a farm value of] £5m, then 10% until £10m, and so on, to a maximum inheritance tax rate of 50% for farms worth over £50m. That would have been fairer.”

‘If you sell the farm, you lose the home as well’

When Gerallt Lloyd was growing up on his parents’ dairy, sheep and beef farm near Aberystwyth, he remembers pouring out fresh cups of cow’s milk to drink.

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Decades later, Lloyd, now 47, still works for his 77-year-old father on the same land in west Wales, and hoped one day to pass it on to his children, aged 17 and 14. He owns 120 acres, but in addition rents 150, which he says “helps to make the farm viable”.

Gerallt Lloyd on his farm
Gerallt Lloyd says the value threshold of £1m is too low and will hit family farms. Photograph: Gerallt Lloyd/Guardian Community

But Lloyd fears the chancellor’s decision to change agricultural property relief will mean his children will be deprived of that opportunity.

“It feels awful,” says Lloyd, who estimates being hit with a tax bill of about £100,000 when he takes over from his father. “This could be the death knell for many family farms.”

Lloyd says it’s “a pity they’ve put this threshold at such a low point. I know £1m sounds like a lot,” but the proposals will mostly hit small farms and should have targeted assets upwards of £3m or £5m, he says.

Gerallt Lloyd’s cows, on his family’s farm in west Wales, coming in for milking. Photograph: Gerallt Lloyd/Guardian Community

The prospect for Lloyd, he says, is potentially selling parcels of the land he grew up on to account for the tax bills. “And farming is different to many other businesses, it’s also a home,” says Lloyd, whose wife and parents live on the farm. “They’re not big or expensive houses, but they’re a roof over our heads. If you have to sell the farm, or part of it, you lose the home as well.”

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Can Kemi Badenoch make the Tories electable again? – podcast | Kemi Badenoch

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Kemi Badenoch smiling and standing behind a lectern labelled 'Conservatives'

After almost four months, the Conservatives have finally elected a new leader – their sixth in nine years. Kemi Badenoch, a former software engineer who prides herself on “straight-talking”, said it was an “enormous honour to lead the party I love”. But the party she joined in her 20s was very different to the one she leads today, left with just 121 MPs after a historic defeat and an ageing membership. Yet Badenoch insists she can make the party win again – by the next election.

The Spectator columnist Isabel Hardman explains how Badenoch’s background has shaped her principles. From a childhood in Nigeria to university in the UK to working at the Spectator where, Hardman says, it was clear she was someone who had “huge ambition” and “clearly felt [she] had a lot to offer national politics”.

Helen Pidd hears how Badenoch’s reputation for not suffering fools gladly may cause problems when she has to soothe sensitive Tory MPs and how difficult it may be for her to appoint a shadow cabinet with so few MPs to choose from. “I think it is going to look like a very fresh frontbench,” says Hardman. But will it be enough to win back Tory voters?

Kemi Badenoch smiling and standing behind a lectern labelled 'Conservatives'
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

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Government could miss cladding removal target date

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Is Reform UK's plan to get Farage into No 10 mission impossible?
Getty Images Image showing two workmen in white hardhats and hi-vis vests removing external cladding from Burnham Tower on the Chalcots Estate in Camden in 2017Getty Images

The National Audit Office (NAO) said up to 60% of buildings with dangerous cladding still haven’t been identified by the government

The government could miss its own cladding removal completion date if progress is not made to speed up the process, the UK’s spending watchdog has said.

In a new report, the National Audit Office (NAO) said up to 60% of buildings with dangerous cladding had still not been identified by the government, and at its current rate of progress it was due to miss its own estimated completion date of 2035 for the works.

The report follows the conclusion of the Grenfell Inquiry in September, which found risks had been ignored and there was “systematic dishonesty” from those who made and sold the cladding involved in the fire in west London in 2017, in which 72 people died.

The government has been contacted for a response.

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PA Media File photo from 2021 showing a covered Grenfell Tower with grey billboards  at the top featuring green hearts and the message 'Grenfell - forever in our hearts'PA Media

Cladding on Grenfell Tower was made of highly flammable polyethylene, which was added to the sides of the 1970s building in 2016

The report assessed how fast the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) was completing work to replace dangerous cladding from tower blocks in England, and aimed to provide an update to a previous NAO report in 2020.

It found there had been “a substantial increase in remediation activity” since then, with 4,771 buildings taller than 11 metres being brought under the government’s remedial works scheme as of August.

However, an estimated 7,200 more buildings in England with such cladding still had not been identified and some “may never”, the NAO continued.

Progress with replacing the cladding was also slow, it found.

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Although the MHCLG spent £2.3bn carrying out work on identified buildings, the report said work had only been completed on roughly a third of them and was yet to start on half.

The government’s suggested end date for completing cladding works on these buildings was 2035 but it was not on course to meet this deadline and “there are significant challenges to overcome”, the report stated.

‘Financial and emotional stress’

The NAO recommended that if progress with identifying buildings with dangerous cladding did not improve by the end of 2024, the government should consider other measures.

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These include mandatory registration for medium-rise buildings – and as with high-rise buildings under the Building Safety Act 2022, tougher enforcement activity and action to help with disputes between residents and building owners.

“Many people still do not know when their buildings will be made safe, contributing to residents suffering significant financial and emotional distress,” the report said.

The watchdog also highlighted there were issues with keeping taxpayers’ contributions to the works capped at £5.1bn.

The MHCLG’s estimate for costs for all the works amounted to £16.6bn and the NAO said although the government planned to recoup about £3.4bn from a new Building Safety Levy, this was not expected to be introduced until autumn 2025 at the earliest.

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In London, more than £1bn has been paid out to take dangerous cladding off tower blocks in the past six years.

The Greater London Authority, which manages the schemes on behalf of government, said 58% were now either fully remediated, or work was under way.

Getty Images Image showing an apartment building which had its cladding removed in 2018 but was waiting for it to be replaced in July 2024. Brown boards and the internal struts and clips for the cladding are visible next to the black windows of the buildingGetty Images

Some buildings which had cladding removed, like this one in London, are still waiting for it to be replaced years later

The report findings come after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the Budget that the government would invest more than £1bn for repairs to buildings with dangerous cladding in 2025-26, which includes new investment to speed up remediation of social housing.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “There is a long way to go before all affected buildings are made safe, and risks MHCLG must address if its approach is to succeed.

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“To stick to its £5.1bn cap in the long run, MHCLG needs to ensure that it can recoup funds through successful implementation of the proposed Building Safety Levy.”

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, who previously met survivors of the Grenfell fire, said “the programme is falling behind schedule and MHCLG needs to pick up the pace to get it back on track,” adding “the government must take steps to better protect the taxpayer”.

“It urgently needs to ensure its fraud controls are working and that developers contribute their fair share to the costs.”

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PM announces extra £75m to tackle people smuggling

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PM announces extra £75m to tackle people smuggling

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is to announce an extra £75m to tackle people-smuggling gangs.

The Interpol general assembly is being held in the UK for the first time in more than 50 years as Sir Keir seeks to reset the country’s approach to border security.

The cash boost takes funding for the UK’s new Border Security Command (BSC) to a total of £150m for new tech hubs, and expanding staffing for enforcement, intelligence and prosecution staff.

Sir Keir is expected to warn the Glasgow summit, which brings together senior police and ministers from nearly 200 Interpol member countries, that “the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge”.

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Sir Keir will set out how he plans to draw on his experience as Director of Public Prosecutions, bringing together agencies to tackle international terrorist and drug-smuggling gangs.

He will say: “I was elected to deliver security for the British people and strong borders are a part of that – but security doesn’t stop at our borders.

“There’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the Channel.

“This is a vile trade that must be stamped out – wherever it thrives.”

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The PM wants to apply a counter-terrorism approach to border security and end “fragmentation” between policing, Border Force and intelligence agencies.

The BSC, led by Martin Hewitt, will be provided with enhanced powers through a new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill – to make it easier to detect, disrupt and deter those involved in organised immigration crime.

The BSC will also coordinate the work of intelligence agencies and law enforcement with European counterparts and will be getting extra funds for:

  • An extra 300 BSC staff to strengthen global partnerships and deliver new legislation
  • An extra 100 specialist investigators and intelligence officers for the National Crime Agency (NCA), to tackle criminals involved in people smuggling.
  • New NCA technology around advanced data exploitation, to boost collaboration with European partners investigating trafficking networks
  • Creating a new specialist intelligence unit examining information from key police forces.
  • Boosting the Crown Prosecution Service’s ability to deliver charging decisions more quickly on international organised crime cases.

Sir Keir will also announce that the UK government has increased its support for Interpol’s global operations with an extra £6m this year to tackle serious organised crime affecting the UK through drug crime.

The Home Office will also invest £24m in the new financial year to tackle international organised crime affecting the UK including drugs and firearms, fraud, trafficking and exploitation.

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Funds will in part be used to bolster work done by special prosecutors and operational partners in the Western Balkans.

There were 5,448 deaths related to drug poisoning registered in 2023, marking an 11% rise on a year earlier, and the highest level since records began in 1993.

NCA director General Graeme Biggar said there are currently 70 investigations into the gangs or individuals.

“Serious and organised crime causes more harm, to more people, more often than any other national security threat,” he said.

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“Distance, borders and languages are meaningless to criminals. This is why collaborations with Interpol have never been as important as they are today.”

The Conservatives have been contacted for comment.

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Slavery reparations not about transfer of cash

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BBC David Lammy in a suit with a red Remembrance poppy on his lapel. He is talking and moving his hands as he talks.BBC

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the concept of reparations for former colonial nations affected by slavery “is not about the transfer of cash”.

In his first comments since 56 Commonwealth leaders in October signed a joint letter saying “the time has come” for a conversation about reparations, Lammy told the BBC that was not “the debate people are wanting to have”.

“I’m keen to emphasise that there’s a sort of simplistic press debate in part of the media that thinks this is about the transfer of cash,” he said.

Speaking in Nigeria, Lammy said instead the UK wanted to look to developing relations with the continent based on the sharing of skills and science.

“It’s not about the transfer of cash, particularly at a time of a cost of living crisis around much of the globe, and certainly in the UK,” Lammy said.

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“That is not the debate I think that people are wanting to have. They’re wanting to think about the future.”

Speaking in Lagos, a Nigerian port city once central to the transatlantic slave trade, during his first visit to Africa as foreign secretary, Lammy said it was right the UK had previously apologised for its role in slavery.

He said: “When we look back on that period, there were many horrors. It was horrific and horrendous in many, many ways. And there are scars that were left, and let’s be clear – I am the descendant of enslaved people, so I recognise that.

“When we were last in government, we said sorry, and we commemorated the abolition of the slave trade.”

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Lammy acknowledged that Caribbean nations had made a 10-point plan for reparatory justice.

But he said he believed developing nations would benefit as part of that through things such as the transfer of technical skills and science expertise from the UK.

The foreign secretary’s remarks on reparations follow the issue’s discussion last month at CHOGM in Samoa.

The UK has faced growing calls from Commonwealth leaders to pay reparations for the country’s role in the slave trade.

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Before the Samoa summit, Downing Street had said the issue was not due for discussion but Sir Keir Starmer later signed a document calling for talks on “reparatory justice” alongside other Commonwealth leaders.

FCDO Foreign Secretary David Lammy meets with Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa of Samoa at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in SamoaFCDO

David Lammy with Samoa PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa at the recent CHOGM summit at which some Commonwealth leaders called for a conversation about reparations

Lammy spoke to the BBC at the beginning of a trip in which he will visit Nigeria and South Africa – among the continent’s biggest economies.

He said he wanted to launch a five-month consultation period with African nations.

“I think the UK needs a new approach to Africa,” the foreign secretary said.

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“Much has changed since the last time my party was in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, where there was a huge commitment to the continent but it was largely based on development.

“The dynamism, the energy here in Lagos. The potential for growth and opportunity in a range of areas. There is so much potential.

“What I hope over the coming months and years is that the UK can partner more, here in Nigeria and on the continent.

“And that the UK is present once more, because what I’ve heard is that the UK has stepped back somewhat over the last few years, it reflects on our trading figures.

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“There’s much that I think we can do together over the coming months and years.”

Asked about other issues relating to Africa, Lammy said the conflict in Sudan was of “tremendous concern” and said the UK planned to make that a priority during November, when it has the rotational presidency of the United Nations Security Council.

He said: “The loss of life is unbelievable and outstrips other conflicts around the world.

“The humanitarian catastrophe that has now been unfolding for many months is something of tremendous concern.

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“We have just become the chair of the UN Security Council and I intend to make Sudan my priority over the course of this next month.

“I will be in New York raising the issues – both the humanitarian issues, but also how we bring the parties together to try and reach a peaceful outcome.

“It’s been a subject of huge concern that Sudan has not commanded the international attention that it requires, given the way that it’s not just the suffering involved, but the way that it is frankly unpicking stability in the wider region, and will have huge implications potentially if Sudan is to be a a totally failed state.

“Huge implications not just for east Africa and the African continent, but of course for Europe as well.”

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With Kemi Badenoch as leader, the Tories and Labour are on different political planets | John Harris

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Kemi Badenoch announced as new leader of the Conservative party – video

As Kemi Badenoch takes control of the Conservatives and tries to somehow restore their credibility and coherence, one thought remains inescapable: that trying to make sense of the Tory party can be a fast route to a migrainous headache.

Badenoch is the sixth Conservative leader in only eight years. From the Brexit referendum onwards, her party’s default setting has been all about division, mishap and scandal. Floating above the enduring mess are two spectral gods who seem to lead their worshippers down no end of blind alleys: that grim British nativist Enoch Powell, and Margaret Thatcher, whose free-market credo still forms the core of most Tories’ beliefs. More centrist past figures are never mentioned: one of the party’s few concrete certainties, in fact, is that its old one nation element is now all but dead and buried, killed by the forces that have pushed Conservatism squarely into the realms of the radical right.

A Toryism wary of ideology, cool in its collective temperament and wedded to established institutions – think of, say, Harold Macmillan, and his party’s domination of the 1950s – seems like something from a galaxy far, far away. The party is now full of flailing anger – focused on, among other targets, its own 14 years in office. There is a lot of support in Tory circles for Donald Trump. Even if many Conservative MPs want to concentrate on the comparatively small politics of UK living standards, jobs and tax rates, the wider Tory family – which goes beyond the party, into GB News, the Mail and Telegraph, and loud voices online – would sooner fixate on an ever-wilder array of enemies: Islam, multiculturalism, “woke” universities, the civil service, “identity politics”, the heretical National Trust.

The result is a remarkable asymmetry between the centre left and centre right. Two decades ago, David Cameron and Tony Blair fought on much the same terrain; even with two leaders as diametrically opposed as, say, Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, there was still a sense of a battle about the essential economic condition of the country. Now, reflecting our polarised age, the UK seems to be moving towards a politics that simultaneously happens on two different planets.

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As chancellor Rachel Reeves’s budget showed, Labour’s governing project is basically about navigating the UK’s fiscal and economic problems, while trying to upgrade public services, with tax rises marketed to voters using the slight whiff of class struggle: traditional meat-and-potatoes social democracy done modestly and nervously. The Tories, by contrast, have flown off somewhere much more in keeping with the 21st century, a change now confirmed by the new leader of the opposition.

Who is Badenoch, and what does she want? The arrival at the top of this zealous culture warrior, Brexiter and self-styled “net zero sceptic” proves her party is a lot more restless and modern than some of its leftwing critics would like to think: given that Labour has never elected any leaders who were not white men, the fact her party’s fourth female chief, its second leader of colour and the first black Briton to take charge of a UK party is hardly insignificant. Neither is the fact that she essentially ties together the Thatcherite and Powellite strands of contemporary Conservatism into one unified package, which might explain why she won. Robert Jenrick presented himself as a kind of middle-of-Lidl Nigel Farage, consumed by fury about immigration and multiculturalism. Badenoch, by contrast, echoed some of that stuff, but emphasised much wider horizons.

Kemi Badenoch announced as new leader of the Conservative party – video

Back in September, her campaign published a rambling treatise titled Conservatism in Crisis, which was mostly ignored, until its shameful comments about autism (a diagnosis of which apparently offers “economic advantages and protections”) made it into the news. The rest of it is not exactly great literature, but it stands as a clear elaboration of her core conviction: that identity politics and a swollen and overbearing state are part of the same problem, and it falls to the Tories to slay them both, via a watershed attack on a layer of society demonised with a biting passion.

She and her supporters call the people she has a problem with “the bureaucratic class”. Though it rather pains me to point it out, they sound distinctly like Guardian readers (and journalists). The text blames them for “a constant focus on economic and social redistribution to support the ‘marginalised’, the ‘oppressed’, ‘victims’ and ‘the vulnerable’” – categories that include “the poor”, as well as “women, LGBT people, ethnic or religious minorities, the disabled or neurodiverse, and migrants”. This mindset, the text goes on, leads inexorably to “the endless policing of our economy and society”.

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What she offers as a remedy brings us to the other set Badenoch text: the climactic speech she gave at the Tory conference’s leadership hustings. “We are going to rewrite the rules of the game,” she said, serving notice of “a once-in-a-generation undertaking … The sort of project not attempted since the days of [Thatcher’s guru] Keith Joseph in the 1970s.” She aims, she said, at nothing less than “a comprehensive plan to reprogramme the British state. To reboot the British economy … A plan that considers every aspect of what the state does … A plan that looks at our international agreements. At the Human Rights Act. The Equality Act. At judicial review and judicial activism, at the Treasury and the Bank of England. At devolution and quangos. At the civil service and the health service.”

God only knows what that would look like as the programme of a government: a dystopian epic directed by Dominic Cummings, perhaps. For now, the main issue is how Badenoch will bring those ideas to her role as the leader of the opposition. To no one’s great surprise, she is already zeroing in on Rachel Reeves’s tax hikes and their still-unravelling consequences, not least the idea that a high-taxing state is now chronically crowding out entrepreneurialism and initiative. But this other agenda, loudly endorsed by her backers in the Tory party and beyond, will also be at the forefront of what she does.

Not unlike the US Democrats, Keir Starmer and his colleagues are betting everything on the idea that theirs is by far the bigger political planet, and ordinary meat-and-potatoes politics will prevail. But the nervousness sparked by projections of the budget’s consequences surely highlights the risks of that gamble failing. What if modest Labourism can do nothing about stagnating wages and a flatlining economy? Will such outcomes not show millions of voters that our existing model of power and politics is simply bust, and Badenoch’s claim that Starmer’s government is just “doubling down on this broken system” is true?

If that happens, with a bit of populist tweaking, her ideas might be an effective basis for a sprawling politics of grievance and resentment, channelling blame for the UK’s failures onto a grimly familiar range of targets. Amid all the pantomime of modern Toryism, here is one prospect worth taking very seriously indeed.

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