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      Your Wednesday Briefing

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYour Wednesday BriefingPoorer nations struggle to access a coronavirus vaccine.Dec. 15, 2020, 10:06 p.m. ETGood morning.We’re covering the gulf between wealthy and poorer nations for access to a coronavirus vaccine, new laws against civil liberties in Hungary and Brazil’s chaotic vaccine plan.[embedded content] Pillay Jagambrun, a Care home worker, received the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Croydon University Hospital in south London last week.Credit…Pool photo by Dan CharityRich countries are first in line for new virus vaccinesThe world’s wealthiest countries have laid claim to more than half of the doses of coronavirus vaccines coming on the market through 2021, as many poorer nations struggle to secure enough. If all those doses are fulfilled, the E.U. could inoculate its residents twice, Britain and the United States four times over and Canada six times over, according to our data analysis.In the developing world, some countries may be able to vaccinate, at most, 20 percent of their populations in 2021, with some reaching immunity as late as 2024.In many cases, the U.S. made its financial support for the vaccine’s development conditional on getting priority access. The country is heading toward authorizing another vaccine this week, from Moderna.By the numbers: Britain has claimed 357 million doses in total, with options to buy 152 million more, while the European Union has secured 1.3 billion, with as many as 660 million doses more if it chooses.Credit…The New York TimesHere are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:A second wave has brought a new surge in infections to Sweden, leaving Stockholm’s emergency services overrun and forcing the authorities to recalibrate their approach.Russia has released additional results from a clinical trial of its leading coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, showing an efficacy rate of 91.4 percent. AstraZeneca opened talks this month about combining efforts.President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa announced new restrictions as the country entered a second coronavirus wave, with infections expected to rise over the festive season.The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it would move forward a meeting to decide whether to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Dec. 21 from Dec. 29.The new amendment would also effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother.Credit…Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNew laws in Hungary further erode civil libertiesThe Hungarian Parliament on Tuesday passed sweeping measures that curtailed the rights of gay citizens, relaxed oversight of the spending of public funds and made it more difficult for opposition parties to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orban in future elections.The government justified its actions in a written explanation by saying that the Constitution “is a living framework which expresses the will of the nation, the manner in which we want to live.” Increasingly, “the will of the nation” is becoming indistinguishable from Mr. Orban’s own.Analysis: The new laws are cause for “grave concern,” said Agnes Kovacs, a legal expert. Over more than a decade in power, Mr. Orban has torn at the fabric of democratic institutions in pursuit of what he calls an “illiberal” state.Details: The legislation includes a constitutional amendment that would effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother. The amendment could also make it harder for single parents to adopt.Kenyan soldiers at their base in Tabda, inside Somalia, near the border with Kenya. As part of the African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia, Kenya has more than 3,600 troops stationed in the country.Credit…Ben Curtis/Associated PressSomalia cuts diplomatic ties with KenyaSomalia severed diplomatic ties with Kenya on Tuesday, accusing the neighboring East African nation of meddling in its internal political affairs. The move came weeks before a crucial general election.“The federal government of Somalia reached this decision as an answer to the political violations and the Kenyan government’s continuous blatant interference recently in our country’s sovereignty,” said Osman Dubbe, the minister of information.Context: The move injects an additional note of instability into an already shaky region, after the U.S. announced plans to withdraw troops from Somalia — which some fear will motivate the Shabab militant group to escalate its offensive across Somalia and the Horn of Africa.If you have 5 minutes, this is worth itBrazil’s chaotic vaccine planCredit…Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesWith its top-notch immunization program and strong pharmaceutical industry, Brazil should be well-placed to curtail infections domestically. But political infighting, haphazard planning and a rising anti-vaccine movement have left the nation without a clear vaccination plan, our reporters found. Above, a vaccine trial in São Paulo this month.Brazilians now have no sense of when a vaccine will come. The coronavirus has brought the public health system to its knees and has crushed the economy. “They’re playing with lives,” one epidemiologist said. “It’s borderline criminal.”Here’s what else is happeningBig Tech: In a bid for tougher oversight of the technology industry, the authorities in the European Union and Britain introduced regulations to pressure the world’s biggest tech companies to take down harmful content and open themselves up to more competition.Uighurs: Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court will not investigate allegations that China committed genocide and crimes against humanity over the mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, saying China is not a party to the court.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Joe Biden’s bid to rally the ‘free world’ could spawn another axis of evil

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      Joe Biden’s big idea – a US-led global alliance of liberal democracies ranged against authoritarian regimes and “strongman” leaders – sits at the heart of his American restoration project. His proposed “united front” of the great and the good is primarily intended to counter China and Russia. Yet it could also antagonise valued western allies such as India, Turkey and Poland. For this and other reasons, it seems destined to fail.Biden pledged during this year’s election campaign to hold a “summit for democracy” in 2021 “to renew the spirit and shared purpose of the free world”. It would aim “to strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda”, he said. It was needed because, partly due to Donald Trump, “the international system that the US so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams”.It’s a laudable aspiration. Recent years have seen a marked growth in oppressive, mostly rightwing regimes that ignore international law and abuse UN-defined universal rights, including democratic rights. But how will Biden decide who qualifies for his alliance? Totalitarian North Korea and Syria’s criminal regime are plainly unwelcome. Yet illiberal Thailand, Venezuela and Iran all maintain supposedly democratic systems. Will they get a summit invite?Diplomats are already predicting Biden’s grand coalition will end up as a rehash of the G7 group of leading western economies – the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Japan. One wheeze is to add India, Australia and South Korea – a notional “D-10”. But that simply creates another elite club from which many actual or aspiring democracies are excluded.Part of the difficulty is Biden himself. Terms such as the “free world”, recalling his formative years during the cold war, sound outdated. His blithe assertion of American moral superiority jars with recent experience. “We have to prove … that the US is prepared to lead again, not just with the example of our power but also with the power of our example,” he says. It’s an old refrain. Yet the songsheet has changed, and so have the singers.China does not threaten global security in the existential way the Soviet Union once did. The fundamental challenge it poses is subtler, amoral and multi-dimensional – technological, ideological, commercial, anti-democratic. The idea that a cowed world is counting on the US to ride to the rescue is old-think. The age of solo superpower is over; the unipolar moment was squandered. Power balances were already shifting before Trump destroyed trust.Weak, divided Europe may prove to be the exception in welcoming Biden’s initiative. “We need to step up our action to defend democracy,” says Josep Borrell, EU foreign affairs chief, amid alarm over recent trends highlighted in the V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2020. It asserts that for the first time since 2001, autocracy is the world’s leading form of governance – in 92 countries in total, home to 54% of the global population.Britain’s international position is now so enfeebled that it will back almost anything Biden suggests. Germany will support his initiative too, as long as he does not endanger its lucrative China exports. Hungary and Poland are problematic. The Polish government’s disregard for judicial independence and abortion rights sits badly with a campaign promoting liberal values. According to V-Dem, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is no longer a democracy at all but an “electoral authoritarian regime”.Looking further afield, Biden’s democracy drive could be like trying to herd cats, with much clawing and spitting. India is a case in point. It calls itself the world’s biggest democracy. Yet under prime minister Narendra Modi, it has become one of the biggest rights abusers, oppressing political opponents, independent media, NGOs such as Amnesty International, and millions of Muslims. Modi has nothing to say about democracy, except how to subvert it.Strictly speaking, Biden should add Taiwan, a model east-Asian democracy, to his guest list. To do so would utterly enrage China, so perhaps he won’t. Including Sudan and Afghanistan, both striving for democracy, might constitute wishful thinking. Conversely, snubbing Turkey, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and a host of other flawed or pretend democracies would greatly offend otherwise friendly governments.The point here is that Biden, like all his predecessors, will in the end be obliged to deal with the world as it is, not as he would like it to be. As Barack Obama demonstrated in 2009, making a fine speech in Cairo about new beginnings in the Arab world feels good but ultimately signifies little. When the Arab spring faltered, the US backed the bad guys – in Egypt’s case, the dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – because it suited its selfish geopolitical interests.China and Russia, and other undemocratic outcasts such as Saudi Arabia, will count on rediscovered realism to temper Biden’s plan in practice, even if he persists with old-school American rhetoric about values and rights. Only if he and his allies attempt something meaningful, such as actively defending Hong Kong’s shattered freedoms, will Beijing feel the need to push back.Unlike Eritrea or, say, Belarus, there is much China can do if Washington’s pro-democracy tub-thumping grows unbearable. On issues such as the pandemic and the climate crisis, Beijing’s involvement is indispensable, and Biden knows it. All manner of economic, diplomatic and political leverage could be used to deflect US pressure. Most provocative is the suggestion, recently recycled by Vladimir Putin, that Russia and China may forge an anti-western military alliance, potentially drawing in lesser powers such as North Korea.This probably won’t happen. But it’s just possible that Biden’s well-meant but polarising “alliance of democracies” will deepen divisions and unintentionally spawn a new “axis of evil”. Unlike the much-hyped original, this one would be truly formidable. More

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      With Donald Trump gone, Brexit Britain will be very lonely on the world stage | Afua Hirsch

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      After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, an American friend compared the nativist populism of the United States with the state of Brexit Britain. “You think it’s bad that Britain voted to leave the EU,” he told me. “America has voted to leave itself.”
      Four years later, things look a little different. Having indeed taken leave of its senses, America has now been rescued – not for the first time – by its citizens of colour. Polling data shows that without minority-ethnic voters, many of whom had to overcome deliberate and systemic attempts to suppress their participation – the nation’s constitutional and political integrity would have endured a further four years of Trump’s wrecking ball.
      Under cover of the past four years of regression, the British government has been running riot. However badly our leaders behaved, though, they knew there was a larger, more powerful democracy behaving even worse. Conservative attacks on the independence of the judiciary, for example, may represent an unprecedented assault on our constitution. But for Trump, lashing out personally at individual judges on Twitter became routine.
      The British government’s relaxed attitude about violating international law has prompted the condemnation of nearly all living former prime ministers. But Trump led the way in tearing up international agreements and withdrawing from multilateral organisations.
      And then there is race. In Britain we have had to endure an equalities minister who suggests anti-racism reading materials are illegal in school, a foreign minister who derided Black Lives Matter as a Game of Thrones spoof, and Boris Johnson himself, as ready to insult black children in Africa as he was the black president in the White House. Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris is said to “hate” Johnson for claiming Obama held a grudge against Britain because of his “part-Kenyan” heritage. The prime minister’s comments have not aged well.
      The Kenya reference was not accidental. Much of Johnson’s political strategy rests on foundations of imperial pride and colonial nostalgia. That was compatible with the “special relationship” when the American president was, like him, similarly smitten by an imagined great white past. Lamenting the decline of this relationship has become a national pastime in Britain – traditionally at just such moments as this, when a change of guard in the White House threatens the status quo. What is clear is that, insofar as the special relationship does exist, it’s rooted in “shared cultural values”. This phrase, whenever deployed by Britain, is almost always code for: “We colonised you once, and how well you’ve done from it.”

      But empires, inconveniently, have a habit of striking back. And so the victims of British colonial abuse in Ireland have, through a twist of fate, lent their ancestral memory to the new US president. When Joe Biden visited County Mayo in 2016, he heard how his home town experienced the worst of the potato famine – even by the catastrophic standards of the nation as a whole – the entire population “gone to workhouse, to England, to the grave”.
      Kamala Harris’s heritage gives her more in common with many British people than it does with most Americans. Her grandfather worked for the British colonial government in India, where he strived for independence from the white supremacist ideology of the British empire. The power behind this empire earlier pioneered the enslavement of Africans that led Harris’s father, Donald Harris, to be born in Jamaica.
      Tories pumped with pride from this same history – gloriously bragging in song that “Britons never shall be slaves” – are unlikely to find its seductive power holds much sway within the incoming US administration. The government ignored British ethnic minorities when we offered the truth of our own lineages to counter this propaganda. Ignoring the president and vice-president of America is slightly harder to pull off.
      That leaves Johnson looking particularly fragile and exposed. This week one of his predecessors, John Major – no stranger to strained relations with America when he was in office – warned that “complacency and nostalgia are the route to national decline”. Britain needed a reality check, Major cautioned. “We are no longer an irreplaceable bridge between Europe and America. We are now less relevant to them both.”
      Much of Britain’s decline is structural, set in motion long before Johnson took office. But if you wanted to exacerbate it, you’d struggle to find a more effective path than the one we are currently on. We have never in modern times endured anything quite as extreme as the toxic assault on America’s political culture left behind by Donald Trump. As usual, ours is a poor imitation. And like all cheap fakes, it’s not built to last.
      • Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist More

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      A toxic UK-US deal is just as likely under President Biden | Nick Dearden

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      “I think there’s a good chance we’ll do something,” Boris Johnson said on Monday, notably less bullish than usual on the subject of a US trade deal with the president-elect, Joe Biden. Johnson grinned awkwardly, like a schoolboy who knows he’s done something incredibly foolish, as he talked down the prospects of an agreement that was once considered the jewel in his Brexit crown.But while Johnson’s embarrassment might be enjoyable, let’s not pretend this is the last we will hear of the US trade deal. Even if Britain has slipped back in the queue, we could still be lining up for the chlorine chicken slaughterhouse under the likely terms of a deal with the US.It’s true that Johnson may struggle to form a good relationship with Biden. This goes beyond the fact that Biden sees Johnson as a mini Trump, with backbenches replete with hardliners who sounded like Trumpists last week. But far more important is that Trump had a clear rationale for negotiating a US trade deal. Trump sees everything as a zero-sum game. He believed the US gained only when its “opponents” – China and the EU – lost. For Trump, a US trade deal was a means of weakening EU standards and protections, and of pulling a major economy into the US orbit.Biden sees things differently. He has no truck with Brexit, and wants to mend fences with Brussels. And he quite rightly thinks his priority should be dealing with the worst pandemic in a century and the serious economic fallout heading his way. Chatting to Johnson about matters of more marginal interest is unlikely to reach the top of Biden’s to-do list. What’s more, his economic strategy for recovery – boosting “buy American” in government procurement, for instance – runs directly counter to Britain’s interests in this deal. The pitifully small gains for Britain’s economy are likely to fall still further.But all is not lost for Johnson’s attempt at a deregulatory trade deal. Last week the trade secretary, Liz Truss, said that “almost all chapter areas are now in the advanced stages of talks”. Truss will now race to complete the deal, building as much Democrat support as possible before April, when there is a deadline on the president’s power to hurry a trade deal through Congress. After that point, ratification gets much more difficult.In fact, if Biden’s victory dampens the criticism towards a trade deal here, including on Labour’s frontbench, it could potentially make a toxic US trade deal easier to finalise. After all, who wouldn’t prefer to do a deal with Biden than Trump? But sadly we can’t assume that a Biden deal would be much different. Trade deals are driven by big business interests. The demand that we import chlorinated chicken comes from US agribusiness. The demand that the NHS pay higher charges for medicines comes from the pharmaceutical industry. The demand to drop our digital services tax comes from Silicon Valley’s big tech corporations.That’s why it was the Obama-Biden administration that pushed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the US-EU trade deal that caused controversy across Europe, and that looked very similar to the US deal currently under discussion. If that deal is really so close to being completed, and should Johnson find a way of preserving the Good Friday agreement, it will be enticing for Biden to just push it over the finish line and satisfy the corporate demands.The arguments against a US trade deal are not about our overall relationship with the US, or how many goods we trade per se. They’re about exporting a fundamentally different, more market-driven regulatory model into Britain, replacing the standards and protections we’ve developed over many years and entrenching corporate power. That’s what Johnson, Truss and the rest always wanted.In that sense, the main negotiation over a US deal is still between Johnson and the British public. It is us, not Biden, who need to stop him. Johnson’s failure to put our food standards into law in the agriculture bill means keeping chlorinated chicken out of future trade deals remains a matter of trust, not law. And with Johnson still willing to break international law over a trade deal with the EU, there is no reason to trust mere manifesto pledges.But there is a big challenge for Biden here, too. Whatever the reality of Trump’s trade policy, he attracted support in the “rust belt” by promising to unwind the free market trade deals negotiated by his Democratic predecessors. It was a popular message. That’s because people have seen the damage done by modern trade deals. Handing over massive new powers to big business while constraining the power of governments to deal with the fallout has created anger, frustration and desperation across former industrial heartlands, in rural areas, and for low-paid workers. While it doesn’t explain all of Trump’s appeal, it’s a factor the left needs to reflect on to keep a future Trump out of office.Trade is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What matters is the rules under which we trade. The capitulation of the centre-left in the 1990s to a set of trade rules under which the market makes major decisions that govern how our society is run, is largely responsible for the political crisis we find ourselves in. Both Biden in the US and Keir Starmer here need to fundamentally rethink what trade is for and how we should do it. Both will come under significant pressure from big business, so we cannot put our placards away yet.We need to keep fighting against the threat of a toxic US deal, but as part of a bigger push that demands the transformation of a trade system that currently treats the whole world as a gigantic marketplace, and in which everything we care about – be it food, healthcare, our rights online – are seen as irritating impediments to be stripped away in the interests of global capital.• Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement) More

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      The Guardian view on Johnson's Biden problem: not going away | Editorial

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      The Irish question has played havoc with the best-laid plans of hardline Brexiters. Since 2016, successive Conservative governments have struggled to square the circle of keeping the United Kingdom intact, while avoiding the reimposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The border issue has been the achilles heel of Brexit, the thorn in the side of true believers in a “clean break” with the EU. So the prospect of an Irish-American politician on his way to the White House, just as Boris Johnson attempts to finagle his way round the problem, is an 11th-hour plot twist to savour.
      Joe Biden’s views on Brexit are well known. The president-elect judges it to be a damaging act of self-isolation; strategically unwise for Britain and unhelpful to American interests in Europe. But it is the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU on Ireland that concerns Mr Biden most. This autumn, he was forthright on the subject of the government’s controversial internal market bill, which was again debated on Monday in the House of Lords. The proposed legislation effectively reneges on a legally binding protocol signed with the EU, which would impose customs checks on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. In doing so, it summons up the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland, undermining the Good Friday agreement. Mr Biden is adamant that the GFA must not “become a casualty of Brexit”. He is expected to convey that message, in forceful terms, when his first telephone conversation with Mr Johnson eventually takes place.
      This is somewhat awkward for the prime minister. Mr Johnson badly needs to establish good relations with the new regime in Washington, ahead of crucial trade negotiations. In light of that, Mr Johnson may choose not to insist on the clauses relating to Northern Ireland when the bill goes back to the Commons. That would certainly be the wise move, although the noises coming from the government remain defiant. But the prime minister’s challenges in dealing with the coming regime change in Washington go well beyond Brexit.
      The personal dynamics between Mr Johnson and Mr Biden and his team are, to put it mildly, unpromising. The prime minister’s insulting remarks four years ago, about Barack Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, have not been forgotten. Mr Johnson seems to be viewed by many senior Democrats as a kind of pound-shop Donald Trump. There is also little regard for the consistency or sincerity with which Mr Johnson holds his views. At the weekend, when the prime minister instagrammed his congratulations to Mr Biden on his victory, a Biden ally witheringly referred to Mr Johnson as “this shape-shifting creep”.
      So in the race to make friends and influence people in the new Washington, Britain has the very opposite of a head start. The smart money is on Paris becoming the first European capital to receive President Biden. That reflects both good relations with Emmanuel Macron and a concern to rebuild diplomatic bridges, after four years in which Mr Trump rarely ceased to disparage and seek to undermine the EU. Mr Biden means to bring back a sense of diplomatic propriety and integrity to America’s relations with European friends and allies.
      Britain, having left the EU, cannot be a central player in this restoration project. But it can avoid making unforced errors. The government should urgently start to read the runes of new, more internationalist times. The politics of disruptive confrontation, as exemplified by the internal market bill, suddenly looks dangerously dated. When the Northern Ireland minister, Brandon Lewis, confirmed in September that the bill would break international law, senior Conservatives such as Sir Michael Howard and Theresa May expressed their dismay at the damage to Britain’s reputation that would result. They were ignored.
      But faced with an Irish-American president who is determined to rehabilitate relations with the EU, and is deeply suspicious of Mr Johnson’s Trumpian tendencies, to continue with the bill as it stands would be folly. With Mr Trump on his way out, Mr Johnson needs to sober up and start shifting some shapes on this and other matters. More

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      How will the election affect US relations with allies?: Politics Weekly Extra

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      As reports suggest that No 10 Downing Street has been preparing for Trump’s exit from the White House, Jonathan Freedland and Rafael Behr look at how the election might affect America’s relationship with the rest of the world

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      At the weekend, we saw reports that No 10 Downing Street has concluded that Donald Trump is going to lose the US presidential election (paywall) and that it’s time to cosy up to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. The story had Jonathan Freedland thinking: “How will the US election affect America’s relationship with the rest of the world?” How will leaders who have enjoyed Trump’s approach to international diplomacy adapt if Joe Biden takes office? And for American allies who have failed to warm to the president, could another four years of Trump take ties that have already been frayed and snap them altogether? Here to help him try to answer all that is Guardian columnist Rafael Behr. Buy tickets for the Guardian Live Event, where Jonathan Freedland and others will be discussing the upcoming election. Let us know what you think of the podcast. Send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Angry Tory MPs reject Joe Biden's comments on UK-EU Brexit talks

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      Conservative MPs have reacted angrily to an intervention by Joe Biden, the US Democratic presidential candidate, in the UK Brexit talks, accusing him of ignorance of the Northern Ireland peace process.In a tweet on Wednesday, Biden warned the UK there would be no US-UK free trade agreement if the Brexit talks ended with the Good Friday agreement being undermined. He tweeted: “We can’t allow the Good Friday agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.“Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”His intervention was welcomed by Richard Neal, the chairman of Congress’s ways and means committee.The backlash was led by the former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, who told the Times: “We don’t need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden. If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the US to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.”Donald Trump has made law and order a key theme of his re-election campaign after months of unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “Perhaps Mr Biden should talk to the EU since the only threat of an invisible border in Ireland would be if they insisted on levying tariffs.”Biden spoke out after the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, met the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Washington in a bid to reassure her that the British government was not seeking a hard border on the island of Ireland via measures in its internal market bill, a move that is seen by the US pro-Irish lobby as potentially fatal to the peace process.Q&AWhat is the UK internal market bill?ShowThe internal market bill aims to enforce compatible rules and regulations regarding trade in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.Some rules, for example around food safety or air quality,  which were formerly set by EU agreements, will now be controlled by the devolved administrations or Westminster. The internal market bill insists that devolved administrations  have to accept goods and services from all the nations of the UK – even if their standards differ locally.This, says the government, is in part to ensure international traders have access to the UK as a whole, confident that standards and rules are consistent.The Scottish government has criticised it as a Westminster “power grab”, and the Welsh government has expressed fears it will lead to a race to the bottom. If one of the countries that makes up the UK lowers their standards, over the importation of chlorinated chicken, for example, the other three nations will have to accept chlorinated chicken too.It has become even more controversial because one of its main aims is to empower ministers to pass regulations even if they are contrary to the withdrawal agreement reached with the EU under the Northern Ireland protocol.The text does not disguise its intention, stating that powers contained in the bill “have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent”.Martin Belam and Owen BowcottRaab has argued that the measures in the UK internal market bill are proportionate, precautionary and necessary due to the EU’s politicising of the stuttering talks on a trade deal between the UK and the EU.However, the EU hit back on Thursday, saying an agreement on a trade and security deal remained conditional on the government pulling the contentious clauses in the internal market bill.The European commission’s vice-president for the economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, said: “If the UK does not comply with the exit agreement, there will no longer be a basis for a free trade agreement between the EU and the UK. The UK government must correct this before we continue to negotiate our political and economic relations.”The dispute between Biden and Downing Street poses a broader threat to UK interests if Biden, a pro-EU and pro-Ireland politician, decides to turn against Boris Johnson, who has made a virtue of his close relations with the Trump administration.The former UK trade minister Conor Burns tweeted: “Hey JoeBiden would you like to discuss the Good Friday agreement? It is also called the Belfast agreement so it doesn’t offend both traditions. Did you actually know that? I was born in NI and I’m a Catholic and a Unionist. Here if you need help.”The Conservative MP for Beaconsfield, Joy Morrissey, replied that “Biden is shamelessly pandering to the American Irish vote while refusing to engage with the UK government or UK diplomatic channels. Nice.”She later deleted her tweet, but added: “Clearly it’s all about the Irish American vote.”Burns added: “The error those of us who supported Brexit was to assume the EU would behave rationally in seeking a free trade agreement with a large trading partner like the UK..”Alexander Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley, tweeted: “Is this the same JoeBiden who once described Britain’s position in Northern Ireland as ‘absolutely outrageous’. And who hit the headlines in the 1980s for his stand against the deportation of IRA suspects from the US to Britain?”John Redwood, a leading Brexiter, said: “Trade deals are nice to have but not essential. We did not have a trade deal with the US when we were in the EU. Getting back full control of our laws, our money and our borders is essential.”Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy rejected the frenzy, dismissing “the sudden discovery that Democrats don’t like Brexit and prefer the Irish”.Other Tory MPs including Stewart Jackson tweeted articles claiming that two of the representatives criticising the UK over the Good Friday agreement were overt IRA sympathisers, and a third was a supporter of Martin McGuinness, the now deceased former deputy first minister for Northern Ireland.The shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “This shows the scale of the damage the government have done to Britain’s standing in the world. They’ve lost trust and undermined cooperation at the moment we most need it – and all to tear up an agreement they negotiated. Reckless, incompetent and utterly self-defeating.”Daniel Mulhall, the Irish ambassador to the US, has been working the corridors in Washington for the past fortnight, lobbying to lessen the threat the Irish perceive to the Good Friday agreement posed by the British proposals. He has been tweeting his gratitude to those representatives issuing support for the Good Friday agreement.No free trade deal between the UK and the US can be agreed unless it is supported by two-thirds of Congress.In a sign of Trump administration concern about the row, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former acting chief of staff, will shortly make his first trip to the the UK in his new role as the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.The Foreign Office, criticised by some for failing to anticipate the likely US backlash, will argue Raab’s visit to Washington may have drawn a predictable reaction from some corners, but was necessary to reassure and counter Irish propaganda.But UK diplomats will be anxious that the UK is not seen to adopt a partisan stance in the US elections, especially since Biden currently holds a fragile poll lead. More

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      Boris Johnson Pushes Unreason to an Extreme

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      The Guardian offered its readers what is certainly the most comic and hyperreal sentence of the week when it reported that “Boris Johnson accused the EU of preparing to go to ‘extreme and unreasonable lengths’ in Brexit talks as he defended breaching international law amid a mounting rebellion from Tory backbenchers.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Go to extreme and unreasonable lengths:

      An expression that those who habitually go to extreme and unreasonable lengths in everything they do like to apply to those who oppose any of their extremely unreasonable acts

      Contextual Note

      We live in an era in which extreme and unreasonable discourse and action have become the most reliable tool for those seeking political, economic or social success. It explains how purveyors of extreme and unreasonable discourse have won recent elections in nations as diverse as the US, the UK, India, the Philippines and Brazil, to mention only those countries. 

      The Tug of War in Washington Around the War in Afghanistan

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      Whether their names are Johnson, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duterte, Elon Musk or Kanye West, each in his own patented way has perfected the art of outrageous hyperreality that thrives on projecting a personality that is extreme and unreasonable. The phenomenon goes beyond politics. In fact, it originates in the world of entertainment. West, an American rapper, did as much to inspire President Trump’s approach to politics as Trump did to convince West he could have a future in politics.

      The Guardian’s readers may be left wondering what kind of exceptionally outrageous behavior could merit Johnson, the British prime minister, calling European negotiators’ behavior “extreme and unreasonable.” Even during his career as a journalist before moving into politics, Johnson specialized in extreme and unreasonable exaggeration in his reporting of the news.

      In 2016, Johnson also went from the extreme of preparing an article for publication in The Telegraph in which he argued in favor of Britain remaining in Europe and warned that leaving the EU would provoke an “economic shock,” to leading the wing of the Conservative Party in the “leave” campaign for Brexit. That permitted him to identify himself with the cause of Brexit and assume the leadership of that faction of a party officially committed to remaining as a member of the European Union. He sensed that it would be the shortest route to Downing Street as he witnessed the wavering fortunes of David Cameron, the prime minister at the time.

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      So, what terribly extreme and unreasonable actions are the Europeans guilty of in Johnson’s eyes? Very simply, they disapprove of his proposed “internal market bill,” which calls for unilaterally overturning the withdrawal agreement Johnson signed last year to presumably settle the initial political conditions of the UK leaving the European Union. On Johnson’s own initiative, that agreement drew a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which together make up the United Kingdom. 

      The law he is now proposing would permit him to effectively erase that border, leading to the necessity of creating a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Keeping that border open as provided by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement — a deal that ended the violence between Catholics and Protestants — was the required condition for reaching any kind of permanent solution to the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.

      Now, key members of Johnson’s cabinet have begun to revolt, as this is a clear violation of the terms of the withdrawal agreement that took so long to hammer out. Britain’s former ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, now points out that the bill will be “hugely damaging to our international reputation.” He warned that “it could deter other countries from entering into agreements with the UK in the future.” He wasn’t alone. Five former British prime ministers have also expressed concern over the move. Darroch speculated on what might happen “if people think the Brits are just going to say: we didn’t like this on reflection, and we would like to rewrite this part unilaterally.”

      Historical Note

      During the centuries when the British dominated the world and owned an empire on which the sun never set, as a people they acquired the reputation of being committed to “fair play.” The French, who never had an entente with the British that was deeper than merely cordial, to this day identify the British as a people who want to be respected for maintaining the cultural value of fair play, at least as it applies to sports.

      The French have never been naive. They have always recognized that their British neighbors were perfectly capable of perfidy. To this day, the French will ironically trot out the expression “perfide Albion” to explain Britain’s positions concerning other nations. But Albion’s traditional perfidy was always subtle, carrying an air of reasonableness and delivered with what appeared to be a complicit smile. Boris Johnson’s is both extreme and unreasonable.

      Empires will always be suspected of perfidy, if only because everyone understands that they can, on a whim, betray treaties and agreements — and even their own stated principles and values — as they rely on their military prowess and financial clout to carry them through. To some extent, this becomes the law of empires, their way of indicating that the countries they deal with have a greater interest in being nice to them than they do in being nice to the others. 

      The irony this time — and some see it as a tragedy — lies in the fact that Britain hasn’t been an empire for at least 70 years. Johnson has become little more than Shakespeare’s “poor player who struts and frets his hour upon a stage” and someday soon will be heard no more. The burning question, when it comes to Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump — whose exit may be announced in November — is this: What will the damaged landscape look like when those leaders specialized in upending their own cultures are gone?

      As the world breathlessly awaits the major events that affect every nation in the world — starting with the US presidential election in November and including the unabating drama of the waxing and waning of hopes to see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — the British have the added angst of speculating about just how irreparably damaging what appears to be an inevitable “hard Brexit” on January 1, 2021, is likely to be. One thing seems to be sure: it will be both extreme and unreasonable. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More