Markus Andrews

Children not yet born “will not forgive” today’s world leaders if they fail to confront the climate emergency, Boris Johnson has told the Cop26 summit.Opening the landmark event in Glasgow, the prime minister pointed out the young had a far greater stake in the looming calamity than the people in the room – whose average age was “over 60”.“The people who will judge us are children not yet born – and their children,” Mr Johnson said, adding: “We mustn’t fluff our lines or miss our cue.“If we fail, they will not forgive us. They will judge us with a bitterness and a resentment that eclipses any of the climate activist of today. And they will be right.”The appeal came as the prime minister likened the climate crisis to a James Bond movie – except the “tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real”.The summit opens against the gloomy backdrop of the G20 group of the biggest economies failing to make fresh climate commitments after their two-day gathering in Rome.A final communique agreed merely to “enhance when necessary” plans to cut carbon emissions by 2030 – the cut-off point for averting disaster, scientists say.Far from agreeing to “consign coal to history” – the UK’s aim for Cop26 – it sets no date for phasing out the fossil fuel, which will happen only “as soon as possible”.And the G20 spurned the UK’s call to commit to net zero emissions by 2050 – but no date was set, because big emitters China, India and Russia have rejected itMr Johnson told the opening ceremony of the terrible consequences of failing to limit the global temperature rise since industrialisation to 1.5°C – something he has admitted cannot be achieved in Glasgow.“Two degrees more and we jeopardise the food supply for hundreds of millions of people, as crops wither, locusts swarm.“Three degrees and you can add more wildfires and cyclones – twice as many of them, five times as many droughts and 36 times as many heatwaves.“Four degrees and we say goodbye to whole cities – Miami, Alexandria, Shanghai – all lost beneath the waves.“And the longer we fail to act, the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act.”The prime minister pleaded: “If we don’t get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow.”But Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor, accused Mr Johnson of hypocrisy, after a budget that failed to fund the green transition while making flying and driving cheaper.“The PM says it’s one minute to midnight on climate, but he and the chancellor act like its 2.15 in the afternoon,” she tweeted.“The chancellor ignores the huge costs of not acting and won’t use green jobs to grow our economy – while the PM is all talk and no action.” More

The secretary general of the United Nations has told world leaders humanity must stop treating nature “like a toilet”.In a hard-hitting speech opening the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow António Guterres said “addiction” to fossil fuels was “pushing humanity to the brink”.Mr Guterres, who has held the position since 2017, said that some signs of progress were encouraging – and threw his support behind a “climate action army led by young people” – who he dubbed “unstoppable”.But the former Portuguese prime minister warned that current commitments by the nations attending the conference were not enough to avert catastrophe.”We are still heading for climate disaster,” he said. “Recent climate action announcements might give the impression that we are on track to turn things around. This is an illusion.”He told the audience of world leaders, including Boris Johnson: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it — or it stops us.“It’s time to say: enough. Enough of brutalising biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper,” said Mr Guterres, adding: “We are digging our own graves.”Mr Guterres added: “The last published report on Nationally Determined Contributions showed that they would still condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7 degree increase. “And even if the recent pledges were clear and credible — and there are serious questions about some of them — we are still careening towards climate catastrophe. Even in the best-case scenario, temperatures will rise well above two degrees.”He also pointed out that the years since the last crucial COP summit in Paris 2015 “have been the six hottest years on record”.Leaders have gathered in Glasgow with the aim of thrashing out national contributions to the fight against carbon emissions – but scientists are sceptical they will go far enough to hit crucial targets.Boris Johnson gave a keynote speech at the opening of the meeting on Monday in which he warned that future generations would react with anger if leaders did not turn the situation around. More

Rob Roberts has been given his Conservative Party membership back despite a warning the move would let the disgraced MP “off the hook” for sexually harassing a member of staff.The Conservatives confirmed on Monday morning that Mr Roberts was a member again following his 12-week suspension.The MP for Delyn in North Wales will continue to sit as an independent, since the Tories are still withholding the party whip in the House of Commons.Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said on Monday that the end of Mr Roberts’ suspension was a “disgrace”, adding: “Rob Roberts has no place in parliament, politics or public life.”Labour chair Anneliese Dodds described the move as “scandalous” and said he should have resigned. “That he is now set to return to the Conservative Party shows they’ve let him off the hook,” she added.Mr Roberts was stripped of the whip after parliament’s Independent Expert Panel (IEP) found he broke the sexual misconduct policy by making repeated and unwanted advances to a man.The former staff member who made the complaint in June last year told BBC Wales that the MP had repeatedly propositioned him, leaving him feeling “uncomfortable”, “shocked” and “horrified”.Mr Roberts, who became an MP in 2019, apologised for the “completely improper” behaviour but insisted his actions were “romantic” rather than sexual.The Commons approved a motion to suspend Mr Roberts from the House for six weeks in May, in line with the recommendation from the independent panel.The Conservatives suspended him from the party for twice that duration, while senior figures including Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg urged Mr Roberts to do the “honourable” thing and stand down as an MP.A loophole meant the MP was able to avoid a recall petition because the length suspension was recommended by the IEP, rather than a Commons committee.Earlier in October the government closed the loophole for future cases, but voted down a motion from Labour to make the change retrospective.A Tory Party spokeswoman said: “Rob Roberts’ membership suspension concluded on Monday November 1 after serving a 12-week suspension. The whip will remain suspended.” More

The owners of the British trawler seized by France during the escalating row over fishing licences will have to pay bail of more than £125,000 before being allowed to return the UK.News of the sum emerged on Monday and follows the Scottish skipper of the Cornelis Gert Jan being told that he faces a fine of more than £63,000 if convicted following a criminal trial next year.It also came as the the British Foreign Secretary increased the rhetoric over the squabble, by giving the French government a 48-hour deadline to withdraw threats against Britain over post-Brexit fishing licences.Liz Truss blasted “completely unreasonable threats” to the fishing industry and threatened to sue France under the terms of the Brexit deal.“They need to withdraw those threats, or else we will use the mechanisms of our trade agreement with the EU to take action,” she said, as the Anglo-French relationship was heading for Brexit meltdown on the first day of the UN COP26 climate summit, which the UK is hosting.She was speaking after the Seine-Maritime prefecture confirmed that the Cornelis would remain in the Normandy port of Le Havre unless its crew paid “a 150,000 euros deposit” – the equivalent of more than £125,000.A spokesperson said: “The boat will not be allowed to leave until that sum is paid.”It far outweighs anything the boat might have earned during what started off as a five-day trip to France to fish for scallops.The boat was detained by gendarmes last Wednesday, and escorted to the quayside at Le Havre, where they have remained every since, sparking a diplomatic incident.Its skipper, who has not been formally named, has been charged with “acts of unauthorised sea fishing in French maritime salt waters by a third-party vessel to the European Union”.Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the growing diplomatic row at the G20 in Rome at the weekend.Mr Johnson said he had been “puzzled” to read a letter from Paris to the EU which, he claimed, asked “for Britain to be punished for leaving the EU”.Referring directly to Brexit, the Prime Minister said: “I don’t believe that is compatible either with the spirit or the letter of the Withdrawal Agreement of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and that’s probably all I’ll say about that.”In turn, Mr Macron said: “I don’t want escalation. We need to be serious. I don’t want to have to use retaliation measures because that wouldn’t help our fishermen.”Mr Macron said Paris had offered proposals to London and “now the ball is in Britain’s court”.France’s European minister Clement Beaune said the current row was “a breach” of the Brexit agreement and that it was a “political choice” on London’s part.With no side backing down and stalemate looming, Tuesday could see a major escalation in the crisis.Andrew Brown, director of Scottish firm MacDuff Shellfish, which own the Cornelis, said the boat was being used as a “pawn” by the French, and had not acted illegally.Mr Brown said last week: “We are looking to the UK government to defend the rights of the UK fishing fleet and ensure that the fishing rights provided under the Brexit fishing agreement are fully respected by the EU.”On Monday morning, the Cornelis was still moored in Le Havre, with its crew of eight on board.The boat headed out from Shoreham, Sussex, early last Tuesday morning.Her seizure is the latest move by France in an ongoing row with the UK over who has rights to fishing grounds in the Channel now Britain has left the EU.Clement Beaune, France’s Europe minister, has said “we need to speak the language of force” to Britain because it is “the only thing this government understands”.He was immediately accused of “sabre rattling” by British critics, as was Annick Girardin, the Maritime Minister in Paris, who said: “It’s not war, but it is a fight.” More

It was predictable – and it was predicted – that Brexit would not be a “clean break” with the European Union, and that leaving would merely be the start of never-ending negotiations. So it has proved, with the talks to resolve differences over the Northern Ireland protocol now complicated by a simultaneous dispute over fishing rights in the Channel.Over the weekend Boris Johnson and David Frost, his Brexit negotiator, warned the French that they would launch dispute settlement proceedings under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement if they carry out threats to our fishing industry and energy supplies.Meanwhile, last week’s official update on the talks about the Northern Ireland protocol had a familiar feel: “The week’s talks have been conducted in a constructive spirit. While there is some overlap between our positions on a subset of the issues, the gaps between us remain substantial.”The biggest remaining gap, now that the EU side has tabled proposals to take a more relaxed view of goods traffic going to Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, is the British demand to rewrite the protocol to remove any role for the European Court – a role to which Mr Johnson and Mr Frost agreed when they signed the withdrawal agreement just two years ago.The British side implies, but does not state explicitly, that this change is needed to ensure that the protocol has the support of the Northern Ireland assembly under the consent mechanism that requires a vote in 2024. The protocol is unpopular with some unionists, and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has demanded that it be scrapped.However, a Lucid Talk poll last week found that 52 per cent of Northern Irish residents think the protocol is “a good thing for Northern Ireland”; 41 per cent disagree. Asked about the British government’s threat to suspend the protocol under its article 16, which allows either the UK or the EU to put it on hold if it leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade”, 53 per cent are opposed, while 39 per cent say invoking article 16 would be justified.If you have questions about Brexit, I will be on hand on Tuesday lunchtime to answer as many as I can about what will happen next between the UK and the EU.If you have a question, submit it now, or when I join you live at 1pm on Tuesday 2 November for an “Ask Me Anything” event.To get involved all you have to do is register to submit your question in the comments below.If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments box to leave your question. Don’t worry if you can’t see your question – they may be hidden until I join the conversation to answer them. Then join us live on this page at 1pm as I tackle as many questions as I can. More

The Foreign Secretary has given the French government a 48-hour deadline to withdraw threats against Britain over post-Brexit fishing licences.The Anglo-French relationship was heading for Brexit meltdown on the first day of the UN COP26 climate summit – which the UK is hosting and supposed to be focusing on.But Liz Truss took to the airwaves first thing on Monday to blast “completely unreasonable threats” to the fishing industry and threatened to sue France under the terms of the Brexit deal.”They need to withdraw those threats, or else we will use the mechanisms of our trade agreement with the EU to take action,” she said.Ms Truss said the UK would use the dispute resolution mechanism in the post-Brexit trade deal to seek “compensatory measures” against Mr Macron’s government. She did not elaborate on how she believed the warnings from France breached the agreement.”That is what we will do if the French don’t back down,” she added. “Stop threatening UK fishing vessels, stop threatening the Channel ports and accept we are entirely within our rights to allocate the fishing licences in line with the trade agreement.”The foreign secretary told Sky News she would “absolutely” take legal action in the coming days if France does not back down, stating: “This issue needs to be resolved in the next 48 hours.”The row between Britain and France is over which French vessels can fish in the British waters off the Channel Islands after Brexit.Under the Brexit deal, every French ship that fished in these waters before can continue to do so – but many who say they have been there have had their applications for licences rejected.The Jersey authorities, supported by the UK, say they need evidence in the form of GPS navigation data for ships to prove that they fished in the waters before. France says this requirement was not included in the Brexit deal, is too difficult to meet, and breaches the Brexit deal.French fishermen have held sporadic symbolic blockades of Channel Islands ports, while the French government has threatened retaliatory measures such as cutting off energy supplies or refusing to let UK vessels land fish in French ports.Last week the French maritime ministry sent gendarmes to perform checks on UK boats fishing in French waters. One was fined for apparently resisting a search while another was seized and impounded in the port of Le Havre after French authorities said it did not have the right licences. It emerged today that the owners of seized trawler will have to pay bail of more than £125,000 before she is allowed to return the UK. The Scottish skipper of the vessel has also been told that he faces a fine of more than £63,000 if convicted following a criminal trial next year.Emmanuel Macron on Sunday night said he did not want to escalate the situation, but added: “The ball is in Britain’s court.” France has appealed to the EU to take action at a European level.This dispute over fishing comes at a torrid time for cross-channel relations, with the UK and Brussels also locked in a dispute over Northern Ireland. The UK wants to rewrite the Brexit agreement it negotiated for the territory and implemented just 10 months ago, arguing that it is causing problems. Lord Frost, the Brexit minister who negotiated the accord, upped the rhetoric in that row this morning, warning that the EU had acted “without regard to the huge political, economic and identity sensitivities” in Northern Ireland.In a forward to a new paper for the right-wing Policy Exchange thinktank the minister said Brussels’ “overly strict’” enforcement of arrangements has “destroyed cross-community consent”. More

Stocks advanced in Asia on Monday, with Tokyo’s benchmark up 2.2% after the ruling Liberal Democrats won a stronger than expected majority in an election Sunday. Shares rose in all regional markets except Hong Kong. The regional gains followed further milestones on Wall Street where the three major indexes set records. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%; the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.3% and the Nasdaq closed 0.3% higher. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s coalition kept a comfortable majority in Sunday’s parliamentary election despite losing some seats as his weeks-old government grapples with a coronavirus-battered economy and regional security challenges.“This removes a key political overhang that has been weighing on market sentiments . . . and drives risk-on moves in the Japanese market,” Jun Rong Yeap of IG said in a commentary. Kishida is expected to draw up a package of government spending and other measures to boost growth. He has backed away from earlier comments suggesting he favors raising the capital gains tax, a move that would largely tax the wealthy. Suggesting that might be one way to address growing inequality in Japan wilted share prices just after he took office. Shares have since rebounded amid signs Kishida’s administration will likely continue the market-supporting policies of his predecessors Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 645.46 points to 29,538.15, while the Kospi in Seoul gained 0.4% to 2,983.59. In Sydney, the S&P/ASX 200 picked up 0.7% to 7,371.10. The Shanghai Composite index edged less than 0.1% higher, to 3,549.61. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.2% to 25,084.11 as investor concerns over financial risks for property developers added to worries over the economic outlook. Wall Street logged its best month in nearly a year in October, as investors balanced encouraging company earnings growth against concerns over rising inflation and supply chain disruptions.The S&P 500 rose 8.96 points to 4,605.38 — another new high. The Dow added 89.08 points to 35,819.56, while the Nasdaq gained 50.27 points to 15,498.39. The Russell 2000 index of small companies slipped less than 0.1% to 2,297.19. A wide range of companies, most recently Apple and Amazon have flagged challenges due to rising costs or supply chain problems. Apple fell 1.8% a day after the iPhone maker reported that its fiscal fourth-quarter revenue fell short of analysts’ forecasts because supply shortages are making it difficult to meet demand. Internet retail behemoth Amazon shed 2.2% after higher costs and supply chain problems crimped its third-quarter financial results and its revenue forecast.The latest data from the Commerce Department showed American consumer spending grew just 0.6% in September, a cautionary sign for an economy that remains in the grip of a pandemic and a prolonged bout of high inflation.Outside of earnings, investors were looking ahead to this week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve as the central bank moves closer to trimming bond purchases that have helped keep interest rates low.Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 40 cents to $83.17 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gave up 24 cents to $83.57 per barrel on Friday.Brent crude, the basis for international pricing, lost 31 cents to $83.41 per barrel.The U.S. dollar rose to 114.19 Japanese yen from 114.07 yen on Friday. The euro weakened to $1.1554 from $1.1566. More

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says Japan should revitalize its economy through “new capitalism.” Many in this avidly capitalist country are puzzled over exactly what he has in mind. Kishida has said he believes a more equal distribution of wealth is needed to prevent the world’s third largest economy from sinking into stagnation. That sounds dramatic, but analysts say he doesn’t stand for drastic change. The conservative, pro-U.S. and pro-business Liberal Democrtic Party, which has ruled Japan almost continuously since World War II, won a better-than-expected 261 seats Sunday in the lower house of Parliament comfortably exceeding the 233 seats needed and giving Kishida a mandate, at least for now. “With this definite support from the people, I will dedicate myself to working on policies and parliamentary efforts,” said Kishida, chosen as head of the governing party just a month earlier. The Liberal Democrats prevailed over weaker opposition parties despite widespread unhappiness, until a recent drop in cases, with the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, perennial corruption scandals and a failure to deliver on promises for sweeping reforms intended to drive much faster growth. Kishida appears unlikely to stray far from the pro-market policies of the past decade. Under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who stayed in office from late 2012-mid-2020, the economy limped along with massive help from the central bank’s ultra-cheap credit and government spending. Abe’s successor, Yoshihide Suga, stuck with that “Abenomics” program. Now, Japanese are waiting to see what “Kishidanomics” will bring. “Kishidanomics remains a complete mystery to me,” said Kinuko Kuwabara, a free-lancer in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. What people really want tackled are coronavirus pandemic measures and corruption in high places, she said. “Maybe Kishida himself isn’t sure what he plans to do,” said Hideo Kumano, executive chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute. “All we have are slogans. It’s unclear how much you can really believe them and how they can be realized.” Topping Kishida’s to-do list is another big dose of government spending to help Japan recover from the COVID-19 shock. The economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.9% in the April-June quarter, a tepid pace considering the severity of the pandemic downturn in 2020.When taking office, Kishida said he believed raising the tax on capital gains would help to rebalance an economy that is growing increasingly unequal. Although the disparity of wealth is greater statistically in the U.S. than in Japan, Americans have access to more generous social welfare programs, according to OECD data. That means poverty is a growing problem in Japan, especially among single mothers struggling to make a living wage. Kishida backtracked from talk of raising taxes after a few days of stock market sell-offs, saying a higher capital gains tax — which would help redress Japan’s highly regressive tax regime — would have to wait until the economy was growing at a much stronger pace. He now says he hopes to drive growth by slashing corporate taxes — which Abe also did — in the classic “trickle down” strategy of encouraging companies to raise wages. That approach has fallen flat, however, as companies hoarded their earnings. Instead, a growing share of workers are employed part-time or on contracts that don’t provide full benefits. The tax system, meanwhile, penalizes families with two full-time incomes. In the era of rapid growth that followed World War II, workers were promised jobs for life. With “lifetime employment” a vanishing dream, people need to freely job-hop and find new opportunities and skills. Economists say that apart from boosting wages to encourage consumer spending, what Japan really needs for sustainable growth is deregulation and a freer labor market. That’s daunting and politically risky because such changes require reforms that would shake up vested interests, angering the constituencies, such as farmers and big businesses, that have helped keep the Liberal Democrats in power for so long.The current system protects and rewards old-guard under-performing companies while failing to drive innovation.None of this was headline news in the run-up to Sunday’s election, when opposition parties campaigned on promises of cash handouts and lowering taxes. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, promised more spending in coronavirus research, carbon neutrality, hydrogen energy and efforts to restart nuclear plants — not better social safety nets and redistributing wealth. “We don’t know for sure what he plans to do, but we know his approach will not be that different from ‘Abenomics,’ ” said Hideaki Tanaka, a professor of public policy at Meiji University in Tokyo “What we have is a to-do list. Without a real analysis of why Japan isn’t growing and lacks innovation, and a real diagnosis of what’s behind this sickness, there can be no cure,” he said. ___Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama More