Markus Andrews

Activists seeking compensation for Black people whose right to live in Britain came under question expressed disgust and disappointment Tuesday after they were blocked from freely attending the governing Conservative Party s annual conference despite being accredited for the event.Anthony Brown of the group Windrush Defenders said he was denied unfettered access to the conference in Manchester unless he agreed to be escorted by one of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisers. Another campaigner who works with families affected by what has become known as the Windrush scandal was allowed in Sunday but not Monday. Both were accredited to attend the event after paying a 225-pound ($307) fee each for the chance to network with delegates from around the country and to lobby for their cause, Brown said.Brown said he briefly entered the conference hall on Monday after being met by a member of Johnson’s staff who insisted on accompanying him. He said he left after about an hour when it became clear the aide was “trying to manage the whole situation.’’“I can’t figure out why I would be such a problem to the party machine. Why would a couple of people who want to talk about the Windrush scandal be such a problem?” he said. “We shouldn’t be surprised when we’ve seen such disgusting headlines about grandmothers being detained and not getting compensation.’’The Windrush scandal has rocked Britain since 2018, when the Guardian newspaper and other local media published reports about the troubles of long-term legal residents from the Caribbean who were caught up in a crackdown on illegal immigration starting several years earlier. Thousands lost jobs, homes and the right to free medical care, many because they arrived as children and couldn’t produce paperwork proving their right to live in the U.K. Some were detained, and an unknown number were deported to countries they barely remembered.The scandal draws its name from the Windrush generation of immigrants who came to Britain from its former colonies to help rebuild the country after World War II. The Empire Windrush was the ship that brought the first large group of migrants from the Caribbean to Britain.The government has apologized for the treatment of Windrush immigrants and set up a program to compensate victims of the scandal. But activists have criticized authorities for moving too slowly and are demanding that the government pass legislation that recognizes their rights to citizenship. Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee earlier this year said the compensation program was overly complex and too slow in handling claims.Brown said campaigners are seeking to have the compensation program declared unfit for purpose at a High Court hearing set for Nov. 18. He thinks that might have influenced the Conservative Party’s actions at the conference.The party did not respond to requests for comment. More

Liz Truss has said it is “dehumanising” for someone to be “treated as a woman” – calling for everyone to be seen as “individual humans” instead.Using the word “woman” is box-ticking that prevents a proper focus on “talents and ideas and hard work”, the equalities minister told a meeting at the Conservative party conference.The comments came as Ms Truss was challenged over the government’s treatment of transgender people, after a Council of Europe report linked it to a rise in hate crimes.On Monday, Ms Truss, who holds the equalities brief alongside being foreign secretary, said people should not have the right to self-identify as a different gender without medical checks.In Manchester, the rising Tory star dismissed calls for the equalities post to be a standalone job, saying: “I very much believe in the principle of individual humanity and dignity.The she said: “What is dehumanising is to be treated as a woman, rather than a person, as just a box to be ticked, rather than somebody with your own talents and ideas and hard work.“That’s what we really need to get the focus back on – rather than seeing people as part of an identity group, we need to see them as individual humans.”The Council of Europe report followed a sharp rise in transphobic attacks since 2015, calling the refusal to allow self-identification “a contradiction with international human rights standards”.“Such rhetoric – which denies trans identities – is being used to roll back the rights of trans and non-binary people and is contributing to growing human rights problems,” warned the body, of which the UK is a member.But Ms Truss said: “I think we have struck the right balance between making the process for gender recognition simpler and kinder, whilst also maintaining the checks and balances in the system.“And, under the Equality Act, it’s very clear that single sex spaces can be protected by organisations.”During the fringe meeting, organised by the Conservative Home website, Ms Truss also:* Declined to say whether the AUKUS pact meant the UK would step in to protect Taiwan from a China attack – while insisting it would “help prevent conflict”.* Brushed off Joe Biden’s lack of interest in a US-UK trade deal – saying “there are plenty of other trade deals for us to be working on”.* Denied any leadership ambitions – insisting that, in five years’ time “I still want to be in the Foreign Office”.* Said she is not “in the business of saying every country has to be democracy” – provided partner nations follow international rules. More

Conservative chairman Oliver Dowden has faced criticism from members of his own party for pushing “anti-woke rhetoric” and for the government pursuit of draconian legislation “antithetical” to Tory values.During a fringe event at the party’s annual conference, Mr Dowden was also urged to consider making his position directly elected by the Tory faithful amid claims the members’ voice had been “wiped out”.The comments came after Mr Dowden, who until last month was culture secretary, stepped up his attack on so-called “woke” culture with a warning to government-funded organisation they could lose funds.“If they go too woke, they risk going broke,” the Conservative chairman told the event hosted by the Daily Telegraph.But Mr Dowden was challenged by one party activist from the Conservatives against Racism and Equality group during the question and answer session, who told him: “I really don’t like the culture war, and I really don’t like all of this anti-woke rhetoric.“The chancellor alluded to that in his speech yesterday by saying if you pit people against each other we can’t make progress,” Albie Amankona added.“Was women suffrage woke? Was universal suffrage woke? Were gay rights woke? We couldn’t even suggest that people shouldn’t boo our national football team on the global stage. Have we learnt anything from the progress of the last 100 years?”In response, Mr Dowden said: “When I make interventions in this area as I have done I genuinely ask myself exactly that question — am I just standing in the way of change in a reactionary way? I genuinely do not believe that is the case.”He added: “What worries me about some of this woke argument it’s sort of reinterpreting our history to the extent of saying we should see shame when we used to see pride in these things.”A second Tory member at the event said the Online Safety Bill and the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill currently being pushed by ministers were “very authoritarian” and “antithetical to Conservative values of liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of protest, freedom of thought”.The member from the Conservative youth wing also asked the party chairman “why on earth” the party was pushing through the “draconian” legislation.Mr Dowden, however, argued the Online Safety Bill was being introduced because of “appalling cases” of young people with algorithms pointing them to harmful content on the internet. “I think it’s always been the responsibility of Conservative governments to intervene in to protect people in those circumstances,” he said.The party chair added: “I’m absolutely clear in doing so we should uphold freedom of speech, freedom of expression. I put in strong safeguards in regards to freedom of speech and expression. It is a challenge to tread that line.”Another Conservative member also expressed frustration at the voice of the membership being “wiped out” during the conference.“This used to be the members’ conference,” he said. “We used to have motions for debate on which members could vote and they could speak on the platform.“The latest absurdity is now that when questions are taken from the audience in the main auditorium they are filtered through a WhatsApp programme.”The audience member also pressed Mr Dowden on whether the party would shift to a directly elected chairman — rather than one being appointed at the behest of the leader of the Conservative Party.However, Mr Dowden said: “We’ve never had an elected chairman and I think we’ll keep it that way”.During the event on Tuesday, the party chairman also suggested that a shift to state-based funding for political parties at Westminster, rather than private donations, would be a “massive retrograde step”.“I think that would be profoundly wrong,” the party chairman said. “I actually want to pay tribute to our donors — most people give money to political parties as part of their civil duty and civic sense of responsibly and they care about their country and they do it from exactly the right place.“I would far rather have that free and open system which I see as part of our liberties in this country that we don’t have the state interfering. I think it would be a massive retrograde step for the state to intervene.He added: “It would ossify politics because you would not be able to have new incumbents because you would always have your state funding determined by how many seats you’d already got.” More

The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to send MEPs to a new joint parliamentary assembly with the UK parliament.The new assembly will be comprised of 70 members – 35 from the continent and 35 from the UK.It will oversee and scrutinise UK-EU trade relations, and has the power to make formal recommendations to the UK government and European Commission. The new body, which will host parliamentary debates, could be a flashpoint for disputes over the EU-UK trade relationship – which has been far from straightforward.Depending on the composition of the UK delegation, it is likely to contain staunch Brexiteers, as well as passionate European federalists from the continent.On Tuesday MEPs voted 686 votes in favour, 2 against and 4 abstentions to set up a so-called “standing delegation” to the assembly – effectively giving 35 MEPs a full-time brief analysing the UK.The possibility of an assembly was established by the EU and UK’s trade and cooperation agreement – which governs the economic relationship between the country and the bloc. It said that “the European Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom may establish a Parliamentary Partnership Assembly consisting of Members of the European Parliament and of Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as a forum to exchange views on the partnership”.But the agreement has little to say about the specifics of the assembly’s, with barely a dozen lines dedicated to it in the treaty text.Questions like when and where it will meet, and crucially who will sit on it, remain undecided. The UK parliament and European Parliament have got as far as agreeing that it will consist of 70 members.The European Parliament says it will draw up lists of names to attend in the coming weeks to be voted on at its next plenary meeting. Asked about UK Parliament preparations for the assembly, a spokesperson for the House of Commons said discussions remained ongoing but that they were as yet unable to comment on specific details. More

Police fired tear gas and water cannons at anti-government protesters in Slovenia’s capital on Tuesday, the eve of a major European Union summit.Hundreds of protesters were opposed to the government’s tough anti-coronavirus measures in the small EU nation and this was the third such incident in Ljubljana within a month.EU leaders have been gathering for a summit with Balkan officials on how to keep engaging with their Western Balkans neighbors. The 27-nation bloc’s once-successful enlargement policy faces an impasse.The protest isn’t directly linked with the EU summit, but protest leaders apparently sought the opportunity to get more media attention from reporters covering the event.Slovenian police have placed checkpoints and limited traffic and movement in Ljubljana and at the venue where Wednesday’s summit will take place a few miles away from the capital. A leader of the protest has reportedly been detained and police stopped about 30 buses from bringing in the protesters from other Slovenian cities.A police helicopter hovered over the capital’s downtown as police fired tear gas and water cannons as protesters tried to march through downtown Ljubljana.Slovenian authorities have introduced tough requirements for the use of COVID-19 passes, including for going to work in all state-run firms. People must show that they are either fully vaccinated or that they have taken an expensive PCR test The protesters carried banners reading “Stop Corona Fascism” and demanded equal rights for both those who are vaccinated and those who are not.Like much of Central and Eastern Europe, Slovenia in recent weeks has seen a rise in new coronavirus infections. The country of 2 million people has fully vaccinated nearly 48% of its population, a smaller share than in many other EU nations.Slovenia currently chairs the EU presidency. More

Boris Johnson has been dragged into a conference row with the road haulage industry over who is to blame for the shortage of lorry drivers wreaking havoc on Britain’s economy. Doing the rounds with broadcasters on Tuesday morning the prime minister said conditions were too poor for lorry drivers and claimed employers were responsible for the low uptake of emergency visas.Just 127 people have applied for the government’s temporary visa scheme to recruit more fuel tanker drivers – whose absence is causing empty shelves and fuel shortages across the UK. The UK has an estimated shortfall of 100,000 HGV drivers.The main factor behind the labour shortage is the government’s hard Brexit deal, which ended free movement and stripped workers of their rights to come to Britain on a permanent basis.The government claims there is a “global shortage” of drivers but no such effects have been seen in other European countries.After the problems began to emerge the government offered temporary three month visas for drivers – but the industry warned that it was unlikely many people would uproot their live at short notice lives for temporary, difficult work.The prime minister told BBC Breakfast: “What we said to the road haulage industry was: ‘Fine, give us the names of the drivers that you want to bring in and we will sort out the visas, you’ve got another 5,000 visas’ They only produced 127 names so far. What that shows is the global shortage.”But the Road Haulage Association said the prime minister’s account was false and that this was not the way recruitment had worked.”There isn’t a database of lorry drivers with names attached to them and want to work in Britain that British lorry firms can tap into and say, ‘we’ll have that one, that one, that one or that one’. It doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t exist,” said RHA policy chief Rod McKenzie. “The only way it works is the government advertises that short-term visas are available, Europeans think about it, decide whether they want to or don’t want to, and act accordingly. And, clearly, only 127 to date have acted accordingly.”He added: “Why would you give up a well-paid job in Europe to come and drive a truck in Britain for a very short period of time when you have to get a six-month let on a flat and go through all the hassle, initially to be chucked out on Christmas Eve, but now, we’re told, for a bit later?”It is not an attractive offer and, effectively, what Europeans have done is kind of vote with their feet on that.”Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal ended free movement as well as the UK’s membership of the single market and customs union, adding extra frictions to trade with Europe. More

Boris Johnson has said there is “no alternative” to wage-fuelled inflation and interest rate rises, as he urged businesses to pay workers more to beat the supply chain crisis.In a series of TV interviews at the Conservative conference in Manchester, the prime minister brushed off concerns that increasing pay for HGV drivers and other shortage occupations will drive up prices in the shops.His comments came amid warnings of 1970s-style inflation driven by shortfalls of workers resulting from the Covid pandemic and the removal of free movement rights from EU nationals following Brexit. Inflation is currently running at 3 per cent and forecast to spike higher.Mr Johnson argues that, following Brexit, the UK is going through a “transition” from a low-wage, low-productivity economy reliant on cheap labour from overseas to a higher-wage, higher-productivity model in which businesses are forced to improve the pay of home-grown workers and invest in innovation and skills.ITV’s political editor Robert Peston challenged the PM over whether his approach risked reducing productivity and fuelling inflation, with the result that interest rates – and consequently housing costs and the price of borrowing – could spike.Mr Johnson replied: “In a famous phrase, there is no alternative. There is no alternative.“The UK has got to – and we can – do much, much better by becoming a higher-wage, higher-productivity economy.”The PM’s “no alternative” quote came from Tory predecessor Margaret Thatcher, who came into power in 1979 with price rises running out of control at around 15 per cent a year, and devoted much of her premiership to bringing rates down by reining in wage inflation.In a sharp break from Mrs Thatcher’s approach, Mr Johnson and other ministers have in recent days suggested that rising pay for workers such as HGV drivers is a benefit of Brexit, and have accused business leaders of wanting to reopen the doors to cheap migrant labour.Asked by the BBC whether he was worried about inflation, Mr Johnson replied: “I believe that supply will match demand. That is what we want to encourage, and we want to encourage people to invest in.”Investment in skills and infrastructure would boost productivity and growth and produce a “higher-wage, higher-skill economy”, he said.And asked on Sky News whether the danger of inflation concerned him, he replied: “People have been worrying about inflation for a very long time. I’m looking at robust economic growth. And by the way, those fears have been unfounded.“I’m looking at robust economic growth. I think that the supply systems that we have, logistics, the supply chains we have are incredibly clever and robust and supply will meet demand.”Mr Johnson again made clear that he regards it as the job of business, rather than government, to resolve issues in the supply chain which have seen petrol stations run dry, left supermarket shelves empty and forced farmers to prepare to cull animals and let fruit rot in the fields.“I’ve got every confidence that, rather than government stepping in to patch and mend every bit of our supply chains, what you’ve got in this country is fantastic expertise, a fantastic skill in logistics,” he said.“You listen to some of the supermarkets – they will manage this. We will help with visas and all the rest, we’ll help with all the supplementary labour that is requested.“But in the end, this is a problem of global growth. The UK has got the fastest-growing economy in the G7. And that’s putting some pressure on some parts of the system.”Despite having imposed a pay freeze on 2.5m public sector employees, Mr Johnson claimed that the government had done “everything we can to increase pay”.“We’ve increased nurses’ pay very considerably, butt as everybody knows, times have been very, very tight, we’ve had to spend £407bn supporting people through the pandemic, and overwhelmingly in the last few years public sector pay has outstripped private sector pay,” he said.“I’m not relaxed by anybody’s feeling of hardship and we’ll do everything we can to help.” More

The French government has threatened to use energy supplies as a way to “put pressure” on Britain to comply the Brexit agreement. Speaking on Tuesday morning the country’s Europe minister Clement Beaune told Europe 1 radio that France was exasperated by restrictions on French fishing fleets.”Enough already, we have an agreement negotiated by France, by Michel Barnier, and it should be applied 100 percent. It isn’t being,” Mr Beaune said.”In the next few days, and I talked to my European counterparts on this subject yesterday, we will take measures at the European level or nationally, to apply pressure on the United Kingdom.”He said: “We defend our interests. We do it nicely, and diplomatically, but when that doesn’t work, we take measures.”The minister did not elaborate on exactly what action could be taken, but added: “For example, we can imagine, since we’re talking about energy, … the United Kingdom depends on our energy supplies. It thinks that it can live all alone, and bash Europe.”According to the latest UK government statistics France exported a net 8,700 gigawatt hours of energy to Britain in 2020. The warning by France comes as Britain is set to enter what ministers have called a “difficult winter” – with soaring energy prices and shortages of some products including fuel.But any action on energy may come with practical issues for France, given Britain is also effectively a transit point for electricity exported to other countries like Ireland.The warning from the French minister was triggered by a row over access for French fishing fleets to territorial waters around Jersey, a British Crown dependency.A large chunk, around a third, of French boats applying for licences to fish around Jersey have been turned down.Jersey says the 75 rejected French boats were not granted licences as “they do not meet the criteria and have either not fished in Jersey waters during the relevant period or have not been able to evidence their activity”.The island government says the vessels are being “given 30 days’ notice of the end of the transitional arrangements, after which they will no longer be able to access Jersey waters”.This row over fishing around Jersey comes as Britain demands renegotiation of other parts of the agreement, relating to Northern Ireland.Brexit minister Lord Frost on Monday reiterated that the government was prepared to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, effectively suspending the agreement. The EU says the deal must be implemented as agreed by the UK says the EU should be more flexible. More