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      Trump Sues Over Steele Dossier on Russia in London Court

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      Former President Donald J. Trump is arguing that the document known as the Steele dossier was calculated to embarrass him and that it breached data protection laws.Donald J. Trump has claimed in a lawsuit in a London court that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, inflicted “personal and reputational damage and distress” on him by leaking a dossier detailing unsavory, unproven accounts of links between him and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.Lawyers for Mr. Trump argue that Mr. Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, breached British data protection laws with the dossier, which triggered a political earthquake when it was published just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017.The lawsuit, the first filed by Mr. Trump in Britain related to the dossier, could offer the former president more favorable legal terrain than the United States. Last year, a federal judge in Florida threw out his lawsuit claiming that Mr. Steele, as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, was involved in a concerted plot to spread false information about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.In a court filing last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said he was “compelled to explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue. This was extremely distressing” for him, the filing said, asserting that Mr. Steele had presented the claims in a “sensationalist manner” that was “calculated to cause tremendous embarrassment” to Mr. Trump. He is asking for unspecified compensation.The High Court judge Matthew Nicklin has scheduled a two-day hearing on Oct. 16 and 17, at which arguments will be heard and lawyers for Mr. Steele’s firm will move to throw out the case, which was originally filed last November.The dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, center, in 2020. He has accused Mr. Trump of engaging in “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” in the United States.Victoria Jones/Press Association, via Associated PressIn a witness statement, Mr. Steele accused Mr. Trump of “numerous public attacks upon me and Orbis.” He said the former president had initiated “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” against him and his firm in the United States, a conclusion echoed by the Florida judge’s ruling.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did his British lawyers, while Mr. Steele declined to comment.Mr. Trump’s foray into the British courts comes as he is facing a raft of criminal and civil charges in the United States, on accusations ranging from election interference to inflating the value of his real estate assets — all of which he has denied. He has experienced a string of legal setbacks in courtrooms from Manhattan to South Florida.But in London, Mr. Trump is the plaintiff, and legal experts said his lawyers were trying to seize an advantage from Britain’s comparatively tight controls on personal data. Winning a claim that his data had been compromised, these lawyers said, would be easier than winning a claim of defamation.“It avoids the obvious hurdles of a U.K. defamation claim,” said Jay Joshi, a media lawyer with the London firm Taylor Hampton. These include the statute of limitations for defamation, normally a year, and the fact that the dossier was published in the United States, not Britain. “Trump is clearly seeking some form of vindication,” Mr. Joshi said.In 2020, Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology entrepreneur who was cited in the dossier, lost a defamation suit against Mr. Steele. But in another case that year, two Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, won damages of 18,000 pounds ($22,900) each from Mr. Steele’s firm after they argued that allegations about them in the dossier violated data-protection laws.The court ruled that Orbis had “failed to take reasonable steps to verify” claims that Mr. Fridman and Mr. Aven, who controlled Alfa Bank, had made illicit payments to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though the judge dismissed several other claims.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are making a similar claim that Mr. Steele’s firm did not confirm the claims about him. Among other things, they said, Mr. Trump did not bribe Russian officials to advance his business interests.“The claimant did not engage in unorthodox behavior in Russia and did not act in a way that Russia authorities were provided with material to blackmail him,” the lawyers said. “The personal data is not accurate. Further, the Defendant failed to take all reasonable steps to insure the personal data was accurate.”Mr. Trump is being represented by Hugh Tomlinson, a leading London media lawyer who specializes in defamation, privacy and data protection. Among his former clients is King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, for whom Mr. Tomlinson argued successfully that a British tabloid should not be allowed to publish his private diaries, which contained astringent comments about the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.The Steele dossier grew out of an opposition research effort to dig up information about Mr. Trump, funded by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. Their law firm, Perkins Coie, contracted with a Washington research firm, Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Mr. Steele, an expert on Russia, to research Mr. Trump’s business dealings in the country.Mr. Steele shared some of the memos with the F.B.I. and journalists; they first came to light in January 2017 when Buzzfeed published 35 pages.His findings have been largely discredited by the F.B.I. and others who have investigated Mr. Trump’s relationship to Russia. Relying on anonymous sources, the dossier asserted that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and that Russian officials had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes.For much of his information, Mr. Steele relied on Igor Danchenko, a Russian researcher who told federal investigators that some of the claims were rumors that he had not been able to confirm. Mr. Danchenko was later indicted on a charge of misleading federal investigators, but he was ultimately acquitted.The F.B.I. concluded that one of the most explosive allegations in the dossier — that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the 2016 campaign — was false.In his witness statement, Mr. Steele said he wrote the memos on a computer that was not connected to a network and was equipped with security that prohibited any third party from extracting data stored on it. He also said that Orbis no longer held any copy of the dossier on its systems by the end of the first week of January 2017.Mr. Steele has not denied sharing the dossier with journalists. But he rejected the contention that he has sought to promote its contents since then.“I declined to provide any media interviews for three and a half years after the publication of the dossier by Buzzfeed, despite being asked multiple times by major international media organizations,” he testified. “If I had wanted to ‘promote’ the dossier as Mr. Trump suggests, I obviously would have taken up those media opportunities.” More

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      Legacy of Boris Johnson Looms Over By-election to Replace Him

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      The vote to pick a new member of Parliament in the ex-prime minister’s once-reliably Conservative district is just one of three by-elections on Thursday that will give a snapshot of Britain’s mood.When Boris Johnson paid a surprise visit last year to the Swallow pub and poured some pints, he seemed to leave the clientele more agreed on his skills as a barman than as a politician.“He asked me whether it was a decent pint — and it was,” said Tony O’Shea, 55, holding up a photo on his phone of the moment he was served a beer by Mr. Johnson, then the prime minister. Still a fan, Mr. O’Shea described Mr. Johnson as a “lovable rogue” whom he had voted for in 2019.On the other side of the pub, however, Jenny Moffatt, 73, had no complaints about the drinks she was served by Mr. Johnson. But she described him as “a buffoon,” with a tendency to “pontificate.”Love him or laugh at him, Mr. Johnson was an outsize presence both in British politics — and here in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the district of outer London that he represented in Parliament. Now he is gone: He was forced out of Downing Street last summer and chose to resign his seat in Parliament last month after a ruling by senior lawmakers that he had lied to Parliament about lockdown-breaking parties.That leaves voters in his constituency to determine on Thursday what kind of post-Johnson future they prefer — to stick with the Conservatives or flip to Labour. Since the district was created in 2010, there have only been Tory representatives in Parliament but the party now trails badly in national opinion polls.Mr. O’Shea, who runs a cleaning company, said he was unsure for whom he will cast his ballot on Thursday. “There are a lot of people, irrespective of what has happened, who would still vote for Boris because of his character,” he said.It is partly thanks to Mr. Johnson’s tarnished legacy, however, that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, faces three unwelcome tests on Thursday in so-called by-elections — contests in local parliamentary districts — that fall at a time of roaring inflation and economic stagnation.As well as Mr. Johnson’s seat on the fringes London, there is a vacancy in Selby and Ainsty, in northern England, where one of Mr. Johnson’s allies, Nigel Adams, also quit. In both these contests, the Labour Party, the main opposition, detects the scent of success.A third contest was called when David Warburton, another Conservative, resigned after admitting he had used cocaine. In the race to succeed him in Somerton and Frome, in southwest England, the centrist Liberal Democrats are seen as the main challengers.Steve Tuckwell, second from left, the Conservative candidate running for a parliamentary seat in Boris Johnson’s former district, at a debate with other candidates this month. Susannah Ireland/Reuters“There is a sense that the by-elections are the end of the Boris Johnson era — this electoral test wouldn’t have happened but for him,” said Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and a polling expert. He added that, because the three seats are being fought in three very different areas, they will give a rare snapshot of opinion across the country.“For the Conservatives, it will be a challenge and damaging if they lose all three,” said Mr. Hayward, while adding that “if they win even one it would substantially lift their spirits because expectations are so low.”Perhaps surprisingly, given their poor national poll ratings — trailing Labour by around 20 percentage points — the Conservatives are optimistic in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where in the 2019 general election Mr. Johnson won by a relatively modest majority.However, the party is relying on local issues to buoy them, rather than counting on affection for Mr. Johnson. Indeed, the former prime minister has largely been airbrushed from the Tories’ campaign literature, has not been asked (or offered) to campaign for the new Tory challenger in his former district, Steve Tuckwell, and has had only a brief phone call with him.“Boris Johnson was a marmite politician” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in the neighboring area of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, referring to a salty, yeasty paste that Britons tend to either love or hate.“There were people here who voted Conservative because they liked Boris Johnson and other people who stopped voting Conservative because they didn’t think he was the right person,” he added. “But that’s history, he’s not on the ballot paper at this election, I think people have moved on a while ago.”The résumé of Mr. Tuckwell is strikingly different from that of Mr. Johnson, who was educated at Eton College, Britain’s most famous private school, and Oxford University. By contrast Mr. Tuckwell stocked shelves at a supermarket as a part-time job when he was young, and then was employed as a postal worker. A protest against plans to extend an ultra low emission zone for vehicles, known as ULEZ, across all London boroughs, in London, in April.Maja Smiejkowska/ReutersMr. Tuckwell’s campaign stresses his local credentials in part because his main rival, the Labour Party’s Danny Beales, is now an elected councilor in Camden, an inner London municipality. (Mr. Beales was born and raised in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip district.)The Conservatives also have a pressing local issue because the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Labour member, plans to extend an ultra low emission zone across all of London’s boroughs, including Uxbridge, effectively levying a fee on drivers of older, more polluting, cars.The plan, known as ULEZ, already operates in central London and aims to improve the quality of the city’s air, which has been found to have contributed to the death of one girl in the city.The threatened new cost has alarmed many drivers in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and Mr. Tuckwell has likened the scheme to the tactics of a famed highwayman, Dick Turpin, an 18th century figure whose exploits were romanticized after his execution and who, according to legend, may have once lived locally.“After all, Turpin asked for a few shillings — not four-and-a-half grand a year,” Mr. Tuckwell wrote, totaling the cost of using a noncompliant car every day of the year to more than £4,500, or about $5,870.Mr. Beales has been under pressure on the issue and recently said that now is “not the right time” to extend ULEZ because of the squeeze it puts on incomes.But that is not enough to satisfy some. Outside his home, Neil Wingerath said the new rules would cost him £12.50 each time he drove his 13 year-old Land Rover SUV.“I’m not a Conservative but I am persuaded to vote Conservative because of ULEZ,” said Mr. Wingerath, 67, a retired accountant, who added that the resale value of his car had halved since the announcement of the ULEZ expansion to the area. “They are unsellable locally.”Even on this most local of issues, however, there is no escaping the legacy of Mr. Johnson who, in a newspaper article, recently condemned the “sheer bone-headed cruelty,” of the extension of ULEZ to outer London.His critics point out that the policy was introduced in inner London, by none other than Mr. Johnson himself when he served as the city’s mayor. More

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      The Royals May Be on to Something

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      LONDON — With the thrill of coronation still in the air outside Buckingham Palace, it’s tempting for a Yankee to mock the British for the shop windows full of coronation plates and King Charles III coffee mugs. And how can we not roll our eyes when a slice of cake from the 2005 wedding between the new king and queen now sells for $1,600?Yet I won’t indulge in mockery for two reasons. First, many of the tourists buying the souvenirs have undeniable American accents.Second, I would never admit this in public — but I’ve come to think that maybe there are advantages to having a royal family.Britain is, like America, so polarized that any political leader is loathed by a sizable chunk of the population, sowing conflict and risking violence. But with the monarchy, the U.K. is guaranteed a nonpolitical head of state who amounts to a unifying force.“It helps to have someone who is above politics and can bring people together,” said Chris Patten, a longtime political leader who is now formally Lord Patten of Barnes.A May poll found that 62 percent of people in Great Britain favored remaining a monarchy, compared to 28 percent who preferred a republic. Young people were somewhat less enthusiastic about royalty than older people, but that has been true for decades: As they age, Britons appear to become more pro-monarchy.A monarch is not the only option for a nonpolitical head of state. Germany, Israel and other countries have non-royal largely ceremonial heads of state who can stand for harmony above the fray. President Isaac Herzog of Israel tried to do that this year to promote compromise, preserve democratic norms and calm the mass protests in Israel; he warned that the conflict could even lead to civil war.But even the nonpolitical presidents like Herzog are often former politicians and don’t seem to have the healing power of monarchs. King Charles declined to be interviewed (when I requested time with him, I think his staff giggled). But I’ve occasionally interacted with other members of his family and with royalty in other countries — and it’s funny how even we Americans go weak-kneed over even a measly duchess or, say, a Tongan king.When Japan gave up fighting in 1945 to end World War II, many in the Tokyo government bitterly opposed the decision. It was perhaps only Emperor Hirohito as the revered leader of Japan who could convince the army to stand down, even if his speech announcing surrender was royally elliptical: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”One study of 137 countries over more than a century found that monarchies perform better economically than republics over the long run. The authors concluded that this was in part because monarchs provided a national symbol of unity, reducing internal conflict and threats to property rights.Kings can be expensive, of course, and it can seem ridiculous to provide public housing in the form of palaces to one family, while countless others are homeless. But in Britain, the royal family may pay for itself with tourism income, and constitutes a useful tool of foreign policy: Every foreign leader wants tea with the sovereign, so when prime ministers ruffle foreign feathers the royals can smooth them.The royal family is “an integral part of our soft power strategy,” noted Arminka Helic, now the Baroness Helic, a foreign policy expert. Helic grew up in the former Yugoslavia and came to Britain only at the age of 24, but she says she still sees the royals as “the family to which we are all related no matter where we come from.”I’m not advocating for royalty in America, even if we may be more perilously divided than at any time in a century. George III soured us forever on kings. Which raises the question: What happens when a bad (or mad) king comes along?Britain dodged a bullet when King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, for he was a racist who was soft on Nazism, especially because he lived a long life, dying only in 1972. The United Kingdom hit the jackpot with Queen Elizabeth II and seems to have relatively reliable heirs in the form of King Charles and Prince William.Thailand is less fortunate. When the last, much revered Thai king died in 2016, he was succeeded not by the king’s widely admired daughter but by his scandal-plagued son — who has spent a great deal of time in Germany with his paramours and once promoted his poodle, Foo Foo, to the rank of “air chief marshal.”Bad kings are difficult to recover from. They’re one reason the number of monarchies has fallen from 160 in 1900 to fewer than 30 now.But today’s constitutional monarchies like Britain, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands may benefit by turning to an apolitical family that, in exchange for palaces, will supply a nation with gossip, tourism and a bit of harmony.So don’t tell a soul, but as I stand outside Buckingham Palace, I think: “God save the king!”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. More

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      Britain’s New Voter ID Rules Are Raising Hackles

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      Critics say the Conservative government’s new requirements are meant to discourage voting by young people and members of minority groups, who are likely to be Labour voters.The rituals around voting have changed little for decades in Britain, where electors give their names and addresses to polling station staff, are checked off a list and then handed a paper ballot to mark and cast in a box.But on Thursday a new requirement will be added for those choosing thousands of elected representatives for municipalities in England: proof of identity.And while voters in many countries take that obligation for granted, the move has unleashed a political storm in Britain.Critics claim the change could reduce turnout, discourage young people from voting and disenfranchise some minority voters and others who are less likely to have a passport or driver’s license.Requiring proof of ID could deter people either from going out to vote or from actually doing so if the new checks lead to long delays at polling stations, they say.And one quirk of the new system that has particularly incensed the critics is a concession allowing some older people to use as ID the cards that entitle them to free or reduced-fee travel, while preventing younger folk to use their travel cards in the same way.Given that older voters are statistically more likely than the young both to vote and to support the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, some opposition politicians fear a finger on the scales. The leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, accused the government of “undermining our democracy.”Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, said the new regulations on voter ID would undermine democracy.Henry Nicholls/ReutersEven one senior Conservative lawmaker, David Davis, has reservations. “The introduction of Voter ID has been shown to reduce turnout. This is bad for our democracy,” he wrote on Twitter.A similar push has proved contentious in parts of the United States. Several states where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s seat have introduced new identification requirements as well as broader voting restrictions.But in Britain the furor also reflects the country’s longstanding resistance to identity cards, which are a common feature in many of its continental European neighbors.A 2005 effort by Prime Minister Tony Blair to introduce national identity cards was abandoned in the face of staunch opposition. (Mr. Blair still urges their adoption, although now in digital form.)Britons did carry identity cards during World War II, though they were abandoned in 1952 after a famous case in which Clarence Willcock, a dry cleaner from north London, refused to show documentation to a police officer who pulled over his car. When the matter came to court, a judge ruled in Mr. Willcock’s favor.Acceptable documents for modern-day voters will include a driver’s license or passport, and the government says it is simply following standard practice in most Western nations to protect the integrity of the electoral system.An official survey found that 96 percent of the electorate held a form of ID with a photo that respondents thought was still recognizable. That number fell to 91 percent when including only those with ID cards that had not expired.Those who lack the necessary documentation could apply for a new form of photo ID that the government calls a voter authority certificate.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the regulations in Parliament on Wednesday, saying they were “commonplace” throughout Europe and in Canada.Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesHowever, there were just 85,689 applications for those cards, representing 4.3 percent of the estimated two million people who did not have valid photo ID, according to openDemocracy, an independent media platform that focuses on the political process.In requiring proof of identity, the government is offering a solution to a nonexistent problem, critics say. The Electoral Commission, the independent body that governs elections in Britain, said that in recent years there had been “no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.”Of the 1,386 suspected cases reported to police between 2018 and 2022, nine led to convictions and six cautions were issued. In most instances, officers either took no further action or resolved the matter locally, it said.Critics fear that any barrier to participation in the electoral process will particularly affect minority groups. Clive Lewis, a Labour lawmaker, argued that those people already felt excluded from the political process, adding that “voter ID will make it even harder for marginalized groups to vote.”And a parliamentary committee noted “the widely voiced concerns about the potential impact of the introduction of mandatory voter ID on certain societal groups and for some with protected characteristics, including people with disabilities, members of LGBTQ+ communities, Black and ethnic minority groups and older people.”Questioned in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak said that a voter ID requirement was “common in European countries, it’s common in Canada and it’s absolutely right that we introduce it here too.”John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would expect people to show ID when they vote, as they must in Northern Ireland, where rules were introduced to deal with voting irregularities there.“From an international perspective you could say you should be doing it. From a domestic perspective the issue is, what’s the problem?” he said, noting that few cases of electoral fraud had been successfully prosecuted.Professor Curtice added that some categories of acceptable identification “look a little curious,” in particular the use of travel cards by older people.Ideally, such changes should have been made on a cross-party basis with the agreement of opposition politicians, he said.Another risk is that turning away voters who fail to provide valid ID could spark disputes, perhaps raising the suspicions about the fairness of election results that they were designed to allay. That is most likely in municipal elections, where turnouts tend to be low and just a handful of votes can decide the outcome of some contests.As to the likely scale of any impact, Professor Curtice said it was hard to predict.“The honest answer is that we don’t know and that we may never know,” he said, “unless there is an enormous drop in turnout, and that is particularly in places where fewer people have passports.” More

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      Keir Starmer Is Quietly Bending the U.K. Labour Party to His Will

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      Political observers from his own side say he has been “ruthless” in reshaping the party as it looks to reclaim power.LONDON — The leader of Britain’s opposition, Keir Starmer, can often seem more like the technocratic human rights lawyer he once was than the no-holds-barred politician now reshaping the Labour Party with an eye toward making it more electable.But as his former allies on the left wing of his party have discovered, appearances can be deceptive.Mr. Starmer prompted a bitter rift recently when he banned his leftist predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, from running as a Labour lawmaker, leaving the former leader claiming democratic procedures had been trampled and warning that his supporters were “not going anywhere.”But beneath the ugly media brawl, the unceremonious purging of Mr. Corbyn was a substantive victory for Mr. Starmer, strengthening his already firm grip over the party. Three years after taking over, he has quietly but efficiently marginalized Labour’s once ascendant left-wing, enforced strict discipline over his top political team and grabbed control of the party machinery, including its selection of Labour candidates for Parliament.“So far the processes that he has put in place have been utterly ruthless, and the left underestimated him,” said John McTernan, a political strategist and onetime aide to the former prime minister, Tony Blair.The lesson for his enemies is perhaps not to mistake Mr. Starmer’s courteous and mild-mannered bearing — or absence of fanfare — for a lack of willingness to play political hardball.“Keir Starmer is not narrating what he’s doing,” Mr. McTernan added. “He’s just doing it.”Mr. Starmer banned his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, center from running as a Labour lawmaker.Henry Nicholls/ReutersTom Baldwin, a senior adviser to another former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, agrees. “In his absolute determination to remove all obstacles to victory, Keir Starmer is more ruthless and competitive than any Labour leader I’ve ever seen,” he said.He added: “Tony Blair had a very clear view about where he wanted to go, but did he chuck any of his predecessors out of the party? No.”A spokesman for Mr. Starmer did not respond to a request for comment.Under Mr. Corbyn’s leadership, Labour’s 2017 general election campaign scored an upset by depriving the prime minister at the time, Theresa May of the Conservative Party, of her parliamentary majority, signaling her political decline. At that zenith of his political career Mr. Corbyn, often likened to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, basked in the adulation of enthusiastic young supporters, some of whom sang his name at the Glastonbury rock festival.Two years later the bubble burst and Labour suffered its worst general-election defeat since 1935, while Mr. Corbyn’s leadership was tarnished by cases of antisemitism in his party.There followed a highly critical report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints. In 2020, when Mr. Corbyn claimed that the scale of the problem was “dramatically overstated” by opponents, Mr. Starmer suspended him from Labour’s parliamentary group, forcing him to sit as an independent.It was at Mr. Starmer’s behest that Labour’s governing body, its National Executive Committee, completed the political purge of the former leader last month, provoking a surprisingly muted reaction from the party’s left wing that underscored its dwindling influence.Jon Lansman, a founder of Momentum, a left-wing pressure group within the Labour movement, told Times Radio that Mr. Starmer “unfortunately is behaving as if he was some kind of Putin of the Labour Party. That is not the way we do politics.”But asked if he would campaign for Mr. Corbyn were the former leader to run for election not as a Labour Party candidate but as an independent, Mr. Lansman replied: “No, I certainly wouldn’t. I want to see Keir Starmer elected as prime minister of this country, and we need a Labour government.”Keir Starmer is widely expected to become the next occupant of 10 Downing Street.Henry Nicholls/ReutersOther internal critics have kept a low profile sensing that they, too, might fall victim to the purge. After all, Mr. Corbyn was not the first left-winger to be exiled to Labour’s equivalent of Siberia. In 2020, Mr. Starmer fired a lawmaker, Rebecca Long-Bailey, from his top team after she shared on Twitter an interview with Maxine Peake in which the actress claimed that the U.S. police tactics that killed George Floyd were learned from Israeli secret services.The silence from internal critics spoke of the political transformation Mr. Starmer has achieved seemingly out of public sight.Elected to Parliament in 2015, Mr. Starmer never adhered to the hard left of the party but nonetheless served in Mr. Corbyn’s top team and campaigned to make him prime minister.When Mr. Corbyn quit as leader in 2019, Mr. Starmer straddled the internal factions, reassuring the left by arguing that Labour should not “oversteer” away from his predecessor’s agenda.Mr. Corbyn’s supporters say that is exactly what Mr. Starmer has done, while other critics argue he has offered no vision to excite voters, seeming content to capitalize on the current Conservative government’s unpopularity.But breaking with Mr. Corbyn, as part of a wider “detoxification” strategy, seems to have helped opinion poll ratings that now put Labour well ahead of the Conservatives.National voting must take place by January 2025. With Mr. Starmer in a seemingly commanding position to become the next prime minister after four successive general-election defeats, Labour lawmakers have found a new discipline, reinforcing their leader’s authority.Mr. Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, canvassing last month in Swindon, England.Isabel Infantes/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Mr. Starmer there are some dangers in purging his predecessor. Were Mr. Corbyn to run as an independent in the constituency in north London that he has represented since 1983 (including for more than a decade when Mr. Blair led the party), he might win. Even if he lost, Mr. Corbyn could attract media attention and distract from Labour’s wider campaign.Another risk is that the party loses some of the young, enthusiastic supporters that Mr. Corbyn attracted.James Schneider, a former aide to Mr. Corbyn, described Mr. Starmer’s approach as a “barefaced political attack on the ideas and social forces that were mobilizing to redistribute wealth and power in this country, and that came quite close to taking office” in the 2017 general election.The assault on the left had, Mr. Schneider conceded, been “in a technical sense extremely effective and swift,” catching that wing of the party off guard, adding, “I don’t think anyone thought it would be quite so dramatic and quite so total as it has been.”Such is the stifling control exercised by Mr. Starmer’s allies that only one candidate from the left has so far succeeded in dozens of Labour internal selections for parliamentary candidates, Mr. Schneider said.Critics have accused the party leadership of fixing the process, weeding out candidates it dislikes with “due diligence” checks (claims it denies).But ensuring that Mr. Starmer can rely on those elected on a Labour ticket could be critical if the next general election is close, and if the party wins a small majority.Allies say Mr. Starmer’s uncompromising tactics have paid off. Mr. McTernan, the former Blair aide, described his hold over Labour as “undislodgeable,” adding that he has tight control over its lawmakers, the National Executive Committee and the shadow cabinet — Mr. Starmer’s top team.“He also has the trade unions loyally lined up behind him, so it’s hard to know what else he needs to do,” Mr. McTernan said. More

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      Ron DeSantis Usually Avoids the Press. For Murdoch, He’ll Make an Exception.

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      The Florida governor granted a rare interview to The Times of London, one of several Murdoch media properties he’s spoken with as he prepares a possible presidential bid.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a sulfurous critic of the news media, has all but shunned one-on-one interviews with mainstream political reporters, speaking almost exclusively in recent months with friendly conservative pundits.But he has finally granted an interview to a major establishment newspaper — just not one in the United States.Mr. DeSantis’s face is on the cover of Thursday’s edition of The Times of London, whose American correspondent recently conducted an extensive interview with the governor at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Tallahassee. “The Man Who Might be President,” reads the headline.Presumably, few Republican primary voters reside in Britain. But The Times of London, one of England’s oldest and most respected papers, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire has already thrown its considerable influence behind the prospect of a DeSantis presidential bid.The governor appears to be returning the favor.As he kicks off a promotional tour for his new memoir (published by Mr. Murdoch’s HarperCollins), Mr. DeSantis took Salena Zito, a conservative columnist at The New York Post (owned by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp), on a tour of his hometown in Florida, and he appeared on Fox News (owned by Mr. Murdoch’s Fox Corp) for interviews with Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Jesse Watters and the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends.” Excerpts from his memoir appeared in The Post and on FoxNews.com.Mr. DeSantis, left, appearing on “Fox & Friends” as he kicked off a promotional tour for his new memoir. Fox NewsBy contrast, Mr. DeSantis’s press secretary recently said the governor would not engage at all with journalists at NBC News or MSNBC. The DeSantis camp cited its frustration with an imprecise question asked by the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell about Mr. DeSantis’s restrictions on how racism is taught in Florida public schools. (Ms. Mitchell later offered a clarification.)Gov. Ron DeSantis and His AdministrationReshaping Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into cultural battles.Challenging Trump: As former President Donald J. Trump lobs insults, Mr. DeSantis is carefully avoiding conflict. But if he runs for president in 2024 as expected, a clash is inevitable.Rift with Disney: In the latest development in a battle between the governor and Disney, Mr. DeSantis has gained control of the board that oversees development at Walt Disney World, a move that restricts the autonomy of Disney over its theme-park complex.Education: Mr. DeSantis, an increasingly vocal culture warrior, is taking an aggressive swing at the education establishment, announcing a proposed overhaul of the state’s higher education system.Mr. DeSantis, however, has not given carte blanche to employees of Mr. Murdoch. While the governor is willing to appear with Fox News’s conservative hosts, he has not been interviewed recently by Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, or Shannon Bream, host of “Fox News Sunday,” anchors who would be more inclined to ask him tough questions.Mr. DeSantis’s presence in Murdoch-controlled news outlets comes as his prospective rival for the Republican nomination, former President Donald J. Trump, has seemed to vanish from the same media properties. Mr. Trump has not appeared on a Fox News broadcast since declaring his candidacy in November, although Fox News’s website has published interviews with him.The Post, whose coverage is often viewed as a distillation of Mr. Murdoch’s id, took direct aim at Mr. Trump when he announced his presidential run, relegating the news to the mocking headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement.” And after last year’s midterm elections, The Post featured Mr. DeSantis on its front page with the admiring headline “DeFUTURE.”Mr. Trump has expressed displeasure with the situation, deriding Ms. Zito’s interview with Mr. DeSantis as a “puff piece” and calling The Post a “dying” publication, a far cry from his warm attitude toward the tabloid in the past. In a post on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, Mr. Trump combined three Murdoch media properties into a single insult: “I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!”Mr. DeSantis’s interview in The Times of London was conducted by David Charter, the newspaper’s U.S. editor, a veteran foreign correspondent who is viewed as a straight-ahead journalist and not an opinionated pundit.Mr. DeSantis’s face is on the cover of Thursday’s edition of The Times of London, whose American correspondent recently conducted an extensive interview with the governor at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Tallahassee.The Times of LondonThe two-page spread appears under a splashy quote rendered in British spelling: “Ron DeSantis: ‘Don’t we need a little more vigour and punch?’”The article is presented as a feature, observing at one point that Mr. DeSantis has “a firm handshake and a neat crop of chestnut hair.” In the interview, Mr. DeSantis muses about a golf vacation with his wife to Scotland and Northern Ireland. He calls himself a “big supporter” of Brexit, although he offered a light critique of Britain’s pro-Brexit Conservative Party, saying the party “hasn’t been as aggressive at fulfilling that vision as they should have been.”Asked if he had written his memoir because he wanted to be president, Mr. DeSantis demurred: “What I would say is, I was well known. I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity. And I thought that the book would do well, I think it is doing well. I think you’re gonna see it’s going to do very well. We’ve had a great, great response.”Despite the seemingly cordial tone of the interview, Mr. DeSantis at one point became irritated with his interlocutor.Mr. Charter writes that when he asked Mr. DeSantis how he would handle American relations with Ukraine, the governor referred “to Biden being ‘weak on the world stage’ and failing at deterrence.”Mr. Charter pressed for more detail: How would a President DeSantis handle the conflict in Ukraine?“Perhaps you should cover some other ground?” the governor replied. “I think I’ve said enough.” More

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      Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak Among Top Contenders to Replace UK Prime Minister

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      Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the man who helped oust him from his job, the former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, are seen as two of the top contenders within the governing Conservative Party.LONDON — The race to succeed Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister was already gathering pace on Friday morning, potentially pitting the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, against the man who helped oust him from Downing Street just a little more than three months ago, the former finance minister, Rishi Sunak.Penny Mordaunt, now a senior minister, was also seen as a serious potential contender in an election that will be conducted within the governing Conservative Party, which controls the government and can select a prime minister without calling a general election.The next government leader faces a formidable task as Britain heads into an economic slowdown with inflation surging, borrowing costs rising and a winter likely to be dominated by labor strikes and worries about energy supplies.Ahead of what could be a head-on battle against Mr. Johnson, Mr. Sunak’s supporters are presenting him as the safe pair of hands, the man who can restore stability following the crisis precipitated by Ms. Truss’s government when it announced unfunded tax cuts last month, sending financial markets into a tailspin. The British pound plummeted and borrowing costs soared.Less than seven weeks after she took office, Ms. Truss resigned on Thursday — the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.This summer, after Mr. Johnson was forced to resign, Mr. Sunak ran to succeed him but lost out to Ms. Truss. During that leadership contest he gave a prophetic warning of the risks of her economic program, including the tax cuts that ended up rattling the markets.So the appointment of Mr. Sunak, an experienced former chancellor of the Exchequer, might reassure financial markets enough to give a new government more leeway when it comes up with a new budget plan.“Rishi is the experienced leader to sort the economy, lead effectively, get us back into political contention and unite the Party and country,” wrote Bim Afolami, a Conservative lawmaker, on Twitter.Rishi Sunak, one of the possible candidates for prime minister, meeting with supporters in August in Birmingham, England.Susannah Ireland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the prospect of an extraordinary return for Mr. Johnson, who left Downing Street less than two months ago under a sizable cloud, has galvanized the looming contest.Reinstalling him would be a risk for the Conservative Party because he quit after a succession of ethics scandals and is still being investigated by a parliamentary committee over claims he misled lawmakers about lockdown-busting parties at his Downing Street office and residence.More on the Situation in BritainA Rapid Downfall: Liz Truss is about to become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. How did she get there?Lifelong Allowance: The departing prime minister is eligible for a taxpayer-funded annual payout for the rest of her life. Some say she shouldn’t be allowed to receive it.Staging a Comeback?: When Boris Johnson left his role as prime minister in September, he hinted he might return. He is now being mentioned as a successor to Ms. Truss.Mr. Johnson has been on a Caribbean vacation. But his father, Stanley Johnson, did little to dispel the impression that his son was preparing a comeback attempt. He told Britain’s ITV television network on Friday: “I think he’s on a plane, as I understand it.”By the time he left office, Mr. Johnson, always a polarizing figure, was deeply unpopular with voters, according to opinion polls. He tarnished his party’s reputation and dozens of members of his government resigned.But since then, the Conservative Party’s support has collapsed. A new opinion poll showed the party plunging to a new low in support of just 14 percent.Mr. Johnson’s supporters argue that because he won a landslide election victory in 2019, he has a mandate from the voters, and his brand of optimism could help rally the Conservatives.If he were to run, he would be seen as the clear favorite as he remains popular among party members who could make the ultimate decision.Boris Johnson on his last day in office in September.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesIt was they who, during the summer, rejected Mr. Sunak in favor of Ms. Truss when the two reached the final stages of the last leadership contest. One of the main reasons for his failure was the perception among party members that Mr. Sunak betrayed Mr. Johnson by resigning from his cabinet, prompting the crisis that destroyed his leadership.Even before formal declarations by any candidates, their allies were canvassing lawmakers, who in some cases offered their public support.Among those urging Mr. Johnson to run are Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, who wrote on Twitter that he was supporting the former prime minister under the hashtag #BORISorBUST. Nadine Dorries, another strong supporter in Parliament, described him as a “known winner.”More centrist lawmakers might also be tempted to support Mr. Johnson because of his history of success in elections before his recent ethics scandals. But his critics say he would struggle to unite his colleagues, and one Conservative lawmaker, Roger Gale, has said he would resign from the party if Mr. Johnson returned.Ms. Mordaunt, who finished third in the summer leadership contest, has good communication skills and has raised her profile in recent weeks, including this week when she appeared in Parliament to defend the government.She is relatively untested at the highest reaches of government. But her supporters argue that she has more experience than former prime ministers like Tony Blair and David Cameron who never held ministerial positions before taking power, having been in opposition.And Ms. Mordaunt might be the best placed of the possible contenders to manage a fractured Conservative Party.“Penny is the best candidate to unite our party and lead our great nation,” said Bob Seely, one of her supporters and a member of Parliament.Britain’s leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, is another potential candidate for prime minister. Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNone of the likely front-runners have yet declared, but by Monday afternoon, contenders must have nominations from at least 100 of the 357 Conservative lawmakers, a number intended to speed up the contest by limiting potential candidates to a maximum of three.If only one politician passes that threshold, he or she will become prime minister on Monday. If there are two or three, Conservative lawmakers will vote on Monday and the top two will then go for a final decision on Oct. 28 in a vote by about 170,000 Conservative Party members — unless one withdraws voluntarily.Other possible candidates include the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who was fired by Ms. Truss on Wednesday, and Kemi Badenoch, the international trade secretary. However, on the evidence of their performance in the summer leadership contest, neither is seen as likely to reach the threshold of 100 nominations.On Friday, the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, ruled himself out of the contest, and said he was leaning toward support for Mr. Johnson. More

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      Prime Minister Liz Truss’s Dizzying First Week

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      Ms. Truss took over a British government facing an economic emergency. But those problems have been eclipsed by the queen’s death, an epochal event that has put politics on hold.LONDON — Last Tuesday, Prime Minister Liz Truss was moving into Downing Street and puzzling over how to help people pay their soaring gas bills. Two days later, she stepped out of her new home to pay tribute to a revered queen, Elizabeth II, and tell the country that Britain’s new king would henceforth be known as Charles III.Has any British leader had as head-spinning a first week on the job as Ms. Truss?Anointed by the queen in the last act of her 70-year reign, Ms. Truss took over a government facing an economic emergency. But those problems have been all but eclipsed by the queen’s death, an epochal event that has put Parliament on hold, moved the spotlight from the cost-of-living crisis to a monarch’s legacy, and handed Ms. Truss, 47, an unexpected new job as the government’s chief mourner.It’s a delicate assignment, one that could elevate Ms. Truss’s stature internationally but also trip her up at home. The crosscurrents were evident on Monday, when Downing Street walked back a news report that she would be joining King Charles on a mourning tour of the four nations of the United Kingdom.The report had raised eyebrows among some opposition lawmakers, who viewed her plans as presumptuous. A spokesman for Ms. Truss quickly clarified: The prime minister, he told The Guardian, would attend memorial services for the queen in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, along with Charles, but would not be “accompanying” the king on a tour.King Charles III and Prime Minister Liz Truss last week, during their first meeting at Buckingham Palace.Pool photo by Yui Mok“I don’t know what led to anyone thinking it was a good decision for either of them that she go to the capitals of the U.K. nations with Charles,” said Alastair Campbell, who was director of communications for Tony Blair when he was prime minister, and advised him on his response to the death of Princess Diana in 1997.“It’s not as though he is a novice at these kinds of visits,” Mr. Campbell said of the 73-year-old king. “She would have been far better advised getting her feet under the table in No. 10 and beginning to focus on the enormous challenges that are going to be there when the mourning is over.”Among those challenges: double-digit inflation, a looming recession, labor unrest and deteriorating public finances. On Monday, new data showed that Britain’s growth stagnated in the three months through July. Hours before the news of the queen’s death, Ms. Truss announced a sweeping plan to freeze energy rates for millions of households for two years at a probable cost of more than $100 billion in its first year.It was a startling policy response right out of the gate, underscoring the depth of the crisis. But the round-the-clock coverage of the queen has meant the plan has barely been mentioned since. Parliament has been suspended until after the queen’s state funeral on Sept. 19. Lawmakers are scheduled to go into recess again on Sept. 22 for their parties’ conferences, putting politics on hold even longer.Fears about how the government plans to finance the aid package — with huge increased borrowing rather than by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies — are wearing on the bond market and the pound, which has recently plumbed its lowest levels against the dollar since 1985.“It is a problem that there has effectively been no proper public scrutiny or political debate around a spending package of 5 to 6 percent of G.D.P.,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London.Shoppers at a supermarket in London last month, when inflation rose to 10.1 percent.Frank Augstein/Associated Press“In principle, that could be remedied after the funeral,” he said. “But I do worry a bit that the government will get used to the lack of scrutiny of their proposals and will attempt to carry on the same vein.”A lack of scrutiny can provide a temporary respite, but over the long term it can be lethal: Jill Rutter, a former official in the Treasury, recalled that the government published details of a new poll tax in January 1986, hours before the Challenger space shuttle exploded in the United States. It was utterly lost in the news of that disaster, and when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher later imposed the tax, it proved so unpopular that it triggered her downfall.There is no question that Ms. Truss’s role in the 10 days of national mourning will give her rare visibility for a new leader. She has become a dignified daily fixture on television, shaking hands with the king at an audience in Buckingham Palace, walking out of Westminster Hall after his address to Parliament on Monday and speaking at Downing Street about the dawn of a new Carolean age.She will get a big introduction on the global stage when dozens, or even hundreds, of leaders converge on London for the funeral, putting her at the center of one of the greatest such gatherings since the funeral of John F. Kennedy.Like Ms. Truss, Mr. Blair was quite new in the job when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris. His description of her as the “people’s princess” become one of the most memorable phrases of his decade in office. He also reaped credit for nudging a reticent queen into a more public display of sorrow over Diana’s death.How the World Reacted to the Queen’s DeathQueen Elizabeth II’s death elicited an array of reactions around the globe, from heartfelt tributes to anti-monarchist sentiment.In Britain: As Britons come to terms with the loss of the woman who embodied the country for 70 years, many are unsure of their nation’s identity and role in the world.In the U.S.: In few places outside Britain was the outpouring of grief so striking as in the faraway former British colony, which she never ruled and rarely visited.In Scotland: At a time of renewed mobilization for Scottish independence, respect for the queen could temporarily dampen the heated debate.In the Commonwealth: For nations with British colonial histories, the queen’s death is rekindling discussions about a more independent future.In Africa: Though the queen was revered by many on the continent, her death reignited conversations about the brutality the monarchy meted out there.But this time, the royal family does not seem to need public-relations advice. Prince William, Prince Harry, and their spouses appeared in a carefully managed walk outside Windsor Castle on Saturday. A day earlier, Charles stepped out of his vintage Rolls-Royce at Buckingham Palace to shake hands with well-wishers.The Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex paying their respects on Saturday to Queen Elizabeth outside Windsor Castle.Mary Turner for The New York Times“You could argue it helps her to be visible at these events,” Mr. Campbell said, “but in all honesty, the public are very focused on the royals and not the politicians.”For Ms. Truss, experts agree, the success of her economic policy will matter far more in the long run than her performance over the next week.“It’s almost impossible to predict the impact of the queen’s passing and the long period of mourning on Truss’s political fortunes, mainly because we’ve got little to compare it with,” said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.The last leader in this position was Winston Churchill, who was in office when Elizabeth’s father, George VI, died in 1952 and played the role of mentor to the young queen in their weekly meetings. But as Professor Bale noted, “He was already firmly entrenched in the public mind as an iconic national hero.”Based on the limited polling data available from that period, he said, the government’s approval ratings did not rise in the transition from George to Elizabeth.“Those assuming there might be some kind of rally round the flag effect for Truss and the Tories might need to think again,” Professor Bale said.Eshe Nelson More