Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Can Boris Johnson emulate Donald Trump and make a comeback? No chance

      by

      There are two very big differences between the situation confronting Boris Johnson and that facing the man with whom he is frequently compared, Donald Trump – namely, popularity and context.Johnson is weaker than Trump. First, because he is less popular with Conservative voters than Trump is with his Republican supporters. About half of 2019 Conservative voters disapprove of Johnson’s performance in office. And at the time he left office, 40% or more rated him as untrustworthy, dishonest and/or incompetent.Things haven’t improved since. In polls conducted in recent weeks, about half of current Conservative voters have said they think Johnson misled parliament over lockdown parties, while a similar share consider the 90-day suspension he received either “about right” or “not harsh enough”.A majority of Conservative voters believe it is right that Johnson has resigned from the Commons, and less than half of them say they would like to see Johnson return as an MP.In short, about half of both 2019 Conservative voters and the party’s smaller base of current supporters take a low view of Johnson in various respects. The contrast with Trump is stark – between 70% and 80% of Republican voters approve of Trump, and more than half say they will vote for him as their candidate in the coming Republican primary contest.That brings me to the second big difference – Trump’s ability to disrupt politics is enhanced because America’s system is candidate centred, while Johnson’s ability to do the same is diminished because Britain’s system is party centred.Trump won direct personal mandates from Republican voters in 2016 and 2020, and most of them seem eager to do the same again next year. If Trump prevails in the Republican primary contest, there is little other Republicans can do to prevent him running for a third time as their candidate for the White House.The British system is very different. Johnson never received a direct personal mandate as prime minister from voters at large – there is no direct election of the executive in our system. Removing a directly elected president is very difficult. Removing a prime minister is considerably easier. If Conservative MPs had had enough of Johnson, they could – and did – remove him. The Conservative party – and Rishi Sunak, its current leader – have a lot more control over who gets to stand in Conservative colours, so it is much easier for them to keep Johnson out, particularly now he is no longer even an MP.The two factors also interact. If Johnson had Trump-style popularity with Conservatives, it would be harder and riskier to exclude him. But he doesn’t, so it isn’t.There’s also the question of whether local Conservative associations might be keener on Johnson than Conservative voters overall – perhaps keen enough to back him as a candidate, or to punish (or even deselect) their local Conservative MP if they vote for sanctions against the former PM.It is possible that Johnson has a stronger following among activists, but it is also plausible that he doesn’t. After all, these are the people who will have borne the brunt of the anger at Johnson’s antics when campaigning on the doorstep, and paid the heavy electoral price for his unpopularity in recent local election rounds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservative associations have also traditionally been fairly deferential to the party leadership. They have not gone in for local deselection campaigns. While trouble on this front cannot be entirely ruled out, it seems unlikely.So some sort of Trump-style hostile takeover is unlikely. The Conservative party has higher barriers to entry than American parties, and Johnson isn’t popular enough with current or 2019 Conservative voters to fuel an uprising capable of overcoming these barriers.Johnson will no doubt retain a lot of capacity for mischief, but this is more likely to play out on the front pages of Conservative-aligned newspapers rather than in the halls and bars of local Conservative associations.Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019 More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Rish! talks up his hectic schedule in bilat with Biden | John Crace

      by

      Rishi Sunak: Good morning, Mr President.Joe Biden: Er … good morning … er … I’m sorry, who are you?Sunak: It’s…Biden: No, don’t tell me … It’s on the tip of my tongue. I’m sure I recognise you. I never forget a face. You’re that guy who bought me that coffee in Belfast when I was over in Ireland.Sunak: That’s right, your excellency. We also met in San Diego and HiroshimaBiden: Are you stalking me?Sunak: No. I’m just a bit needy. We have a special relationship, remember?Biden: Do we? News to me … No. It’s no good. You’ll have to jog my memory.Sunak: I’m the prime minister of the United Kingdom …Biden: Of course you are. Good to see you again, Rashi Sanook.Sunak: It’s Rishi. Rishi Sunak.Biden: Whatever. So what brings you over to Washington?Sunak: I’m not sure really. A combination of things. Nothing’s going well at home. My polls are rubbish, I can’t do anything about inflation, hospital waiting lists are up, you know the kind of thing …Biden: Not really.Sunak: Anyway, I just fancied a break. Plus I had loads of free air miles after my brilliant ‘Take Your Helicopter to Work’ scheme. And I wanted to catch a ball game. Go, Nationals! High five!Biden: Glad, you’re having a nice time.Sunak: So, what have you been up to since I last saw you, your highness?Biden: Not a lot … Just a $1tn infrastructure act, fixing a two-year debt ceiling deal, fighting off the Republican crazies and a host of other minor stuff …Sunak: Gosh!Biden: So how about you? What have you been doing?Sunak: I’ve been rushed off my feet … I don’t really know where to start, but here goes. First and foremost, I have been working on my five priorities. To halve inflation, grow the economy-Biden: Sure. But what have you actually been doing?Sunak: As I said, I have been working on my five priorities for the British people which I have promised to deliver on. Let me tell you what my five priorities are. They are the five priorities on which I want the British people to judge me-Biden: So, you haven’t really been doing that much.Sunak: As I said, my five priorities-Biden: But what else?Sunak: Apart from my five priorities? Well, let me see … I’m taking the Covid inquiry my government set up to court because it keeps asking for information that I want to keep secret. And I’m just about to OK Boris Johnson’s honours list.Biden: So a disgraced prime minister still gets to do the honours?Sunak: Sure.Biden: You Brits crack me up. What else shall we talk about?Sunak: How about a US-UK trade deal? Back in 2016 I and the Vote Leave team promised that an improved trade deal would be a Brexit bonus.Biden: No.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunak: What do you mean, ‘no’?Biden: I mean it’s not happening. There is no trade deal to be had any time soon. The UK is just not that big a deal for us since you left the EU.Sunak: Not even a little deal? We’ll take the chlorinated chicken …Biden: No. Not a chance. Maybe in five or 10 years. If then.Sunak: OK. I get the message. But can we at least say that we agreed not to talk about a trade deal? Or maybe we could just sign something vague and meaningless.Biden: If you like …Sunak: It would look good for my end-of-visit communique to the British media. Make it look like we had in fact talked about a trade deal a bit. Even though we haven’t. By the way, have I told you about my five priorities?Biden: I don’t have a lot of time, is there anything else you want to say?Sunak: There is. I want to talk about artificial intelligence.Biden: What about it?Sunak: That I’m very worried about it. Apart from AI that is obviously beneficial. Did I mention my five priorities?Biden: Sounds like you could do with an AI upgrade yourself. Unless you really are a halfwit. But what are you suggesting?Sunak: Well, seeing as I’m a world leader in AI …Biden: Since when? You had scarcely mentioned it until a few AI experts raised their concerns a few weeks ago.Sunak: But I am the expert! I had read something about it on my MBA at Stanford. Did you know I had an MBA from the States?Biden: You may have mentioned it before …Sunak: So here’s the thing. Because I know more about AI than anyone else and also have a lot of spare time on my hands, I am proposing the UK takes a leading role in regulating the industry.Biden: But you know that since you left the EU, the UK is no longer a member of the US-EU council that regulates AI-related policies …Sunak: Really? Never mind. What I mostly want is a PR exercise. We won’t actually regulate anything. We’ll just have a conference to talk about regulating AI. It will all be pointless as by the time anything happens, AI will have evolved to take over the world. So we’ll all just meet a few times, have a nice jolly and then forget about it. But we need the US to come. We’ll pay your air fares and hotels. It’s just that without you no one else will come. So please say you will.Biden: If we must …Sunak: Just a couple more things: Ukraine. Can we agree that we are both still committed?Biden: You didn’t need to come to Washington for that…Sunak: And, my green card … Is there any chance it can be renewed? I might need it again in a year or so.Biden: Is that the time? Must be getting on. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Sunak’s foreign policy: a Europe-shaped hole | Editorial

      by

      The alliance between Britain and the US, resting on deep foundations of shared history and strategic interest, is not overly affected by the personal relationship between a prime minister and a president.Sometimes individual affinity is consequential, as when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were aligned over cold war doctrine, or when Tony Blair put Britain in lockstep with George W Bush for the march to war in Iraq. But there is no prospect of Rishi Sunak forming such a partnership – for good or ill – with Joe Biden at this week’s Washington summit.Viewed from the White House, the prime minister cuts an insubstantial figure – the caretaker leader of a country that has lost its way. That doesn’t jeopardise the underlying relationship. Britain is a highly valued US ally, most notably in the fields of defence, security and intelligence. On trade and economics, Mr Sunak’s position is less comfortable. The prime minister is a poor match with a president who thinks Brexit was an epic blunder and whose flagship policy is a rebuttal of the sacred doctrines of the Conservative party.Mr Biden is committed to shoring up American primacy by means of massive state support for green technology, tax breaks for foreign investment and reconfiguring supply chains with a focus on national security. Mr Sunak’s instincts are more laissez-faire, and his orthodox conservative budgets preclude interventionist statecraft.The two men disagree on a fundamental judgment about the future direction of the global economy, but only one of them has a hand on the steering wheel. Mr Sunak looks more like a passenger, or a pedestrian, since Britain bailed out of the EU – the vehicle that allows European countries to aggregate mid-range economic heft into continental power.London lost clout in the world by surrendering its seat in Brussels, but that fact is hard for Brexit ideologues to process. Their worldview is constructed around the proposition that EU membership depleted national sovereignty and that leaving the bloc would open more lucrative trade routes. Top of the wishlist was a deal with Washington, and Mr Biden has said that won’t happen. Even if it did, the terms would be disadvantageous to Britain as the supplicant junior partner.If Mr Sunak grasps that weakness, he dare not voice it. Instead, Downing Street emits vague noises about Britain’s leading role in AI regulation. But, in governing uses of new technology, Brussels matters more to Washington. London is not irrelevant, but British reach is reduced when ministers are excluded from the rooms where their French, German and other continental counterparts develop policy.Those are the relationships that Mr Sunak must cultivate with urgency. But his view of Europe is circumscribed by Brexit ideology and parochial campaign issues. His meetings with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, have been dominated by the domestic political obsession with small-boat migration across the Channel. The prime minister has no discernible relationship with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. He has not visited Berlin.Negotiating the Windsor framework to stabilise Northern Ireland’s status in post-Brexit trade was a vital step in repairing damage done by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to UK relations with the EU. But there is still a gaping European hole in Britain’s foreign policy. It is visible all the way across the Atlantic, even if the prime minister refuses to see it. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Ron v Don / Britain’s numbers game: Inside the 2 June Guardian Weekly

      by

      Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.The Guardian Weekly has a split cover this week, depending where in the world you get the magazine.Our North America edition puts the cover focus on the US race for the Republican presidential nomination. Ron DeSantis finally confirmed his candidacy, despite a nightmare launch on social media platform Twitter, which means the Florida governor is already playing catch-up with his arch-rival, Donald Trump.To capture the schoolyard-rumble feel of the race, illustrator Neil Jamieson tried to channel his 10- and 13-year-old kids who, he says, love to press each other’s buttons. “This cover leans in to the work of my hero George Lois, the legendary American creative director of Esquire whose acerbic wit and eye for composition redefined the American magazine cover in the 1960s,” adds Neil.Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest the Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.For readers elsewhere, the cover reflects the record figures of people migrating to Britain – a subject that affects the lives of many around the world, more recently from countries such as Hong Kong, India and Ukraine, to name but a few.As our big story explores, one of the main talking points is not that the numbers are so high but why, when migration is such a dynamic and enduring reality of the modern world, successive Conservative governments have perpetuated the simplistic notion that UK immigration can easily be reduced.Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal breaks down the figures, while south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen finds out why Indians studying abroad are so keen on British universities. Finally, Daniel Trilling outlines how the UK’s controversial policy to stop small migrant boats crossing the Channel is partly inspired by Greece’s hardline crackdown, one area in which post-Brexit Britain seems happy to emulate its European neighbours.If you’ve wondered what inspires people to stand on one leg blindfolded for hours, or to attempt the loudest burp, don’t miss Imogen West-Knights’ long read on how the weird and wonderful Guinness World Records is still thriving in the digital age.In Culture, as the TV series Succession ended this week, writer Jesse Armstrong discusses the show’s genesis and the real-life characters who inspired its fearsome media mogul protagonist, Logan Roy.Get 12 issues of the Guardian Weekly magazine for just £12 (UK offer only) More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Boris Johnson tried to persuade Donald Trump to back Ukraine on US tour

      by

      Boris Johnson has held discussions with Donald Trump about Ukraine during his tour of the US, in an apparent attempt to make the Ukrainian case to the sceptical former US president.Johnson met Trump “to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the vital importance of Ukrainian victory”, his spokesperson said. It is understood that they held the talks on Thursday.The former prime minister – who faces continued questions at home over allegations about lockdown-breaking parties at Chequers and No 10 – has been in Dallas, where he met Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, and Las Vegas, where he made the latest in his recent sequence of highly lucrative corporate speeches.The discussions with Trump, the location of which has not been divulged, probably centred on Johnson, a vehement international cheerleader for the Ukrainian cause, trying to impress his ideas on the former president.Trump, who is the favourite to win the Republican nomination and take on Joe Biden in next year’s presidential election, has repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin and appears agnostic on the issue of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.During a question-and-answer session aired on CNN earlier this month, Trump declined to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” he said. “And I’ll have that done. I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”Speaking earlier, Keir Starmer said Johnson has questions to answer about the Chequers allegations, despite the public being “fed up to the back teeth” with stories about his lawbreaking.The Labour leader said there were people who were feeling hurt and fed up about the continuing saga, but there were “questions now about why these allegations have not come out before”.Starmer weighed in on the controversy after the Cabinet Office passed fresh allegations of wrongdoing to the police this week. They did so after seeing diary entries about guests who visited Chequers during the pandemic, which Johnson handed to lawyers representing him as part of the Covid inquiry.Police fined Johnson more than a year ago in relation to an event in June 2020 to mark his birthday. More than 100 fines were handed out to others over events held in and around Downing Street.The Partygate saga contributed to the demise of Johnson’s premiership, but he has since been mulling whether a comeback is possible. Johnson is still facing an inquiry by the privileges committee of MPs into whether he misled the House of Commons by saying all Covid rules were followed in Downing Street.On Friday, Starmer told broadcasters: “I think people are fed up to the back teeth with stories about Boris Johnson. The heart of this is a simple truth that, across the country, people made massive sacrifices during Covid.“Some people not going to the birth of their baby, not going to the funeral of one of their close family members. These are deeply personal things, and increasing revelations about Boris Johnson, I think, just add to that sense of hurt, and people are fed up with it.“I do think there are questions now about why have these allegations not come out before … Obviously, there will be investigations, I understand that. The core of this is a very human feeling of one rule for us, which we obey, another rule for Boris Johnson and those at the top of the Tory party.”The diaries, showing about a dozen events at both the prime minister’s grace-and-favour mansion, Chequers, and No 10, between June 2020 and May 2021, were provided to Johnson’s government-appointed lawyers.However, the Cabinet Office, which paid for the lawyers, also received the diaries, and officials then decided that under the civil service code, they should refer the matter to the police.Downing Street denied that Johnson was the victim of a politically motivated “stitch-up” after his allies reacted with fury to the news of the latest police involvement.No 10 stressed that Rishi Sunak had no involvement in the decision to hand over Johnson’s pandemic diaries, saying he had “not seen the information or material in question” and that ministers had “no involvement in this process and were only made aware after the police had been contacted”. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      China wants to subordinate west, US politician claims on UK visit

      by

      Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns.Beijing’s goal, Gallagher argued, was “to render us subordinate, humiliated and irrelevant on the world stage and make the CCP [Chinese Communist party] the dominant global power”. He thanked the UK for adopting a “forward posture” in the Indo-Pacific after Britain deployed an aircraft carrier there two years ago.Gallagher was speaking alongside Haley Stevens, the China committee’s lead Democrat. She said the US was overly reliant on the Chinese market, particularly when it came to commodities and green technology. That was “not a preparedness strategy” when thinking about a conflict over Taiwan, she said.Gallagher said he believed the world was “in the window of maximum danger” for “a potential kinetic confrontation” – a possible war – over Taiwan, and he hoped the UK’s commitment to supplying nuclear submarines to Australia would “help prevent world war three before it’s too late”.He said the long-term goal of the US was to “win the competition” with China, which he defined as “reclaiming our economic independence”. Stevens said the US and China both “want access to one another’s markets” but the US-China trade deficit was “egregious”.Xi has accused the US of pursuing a policy of “containment” against China, and has criticised what he describes as the “new cold war” mentality of the west. The Biden administration has introduced a number of policies designed to prevent China from accessing advanced technologies, such as semiconductors, the supply chains of which are concentrated in the US and its allied countries.Gallagher suggested the US should instead pursue a policy of “constrainment”, which “recognises the fact that … we’re not going to totally decouple, but we want to constrain [the CCP’s] worst behaviour”.The Republican, who has not been to China himself, argued against “relentless engagement”, saying “30 years of experimentation with that hypothesis” had proven unsuccessful.He is leading a delegation of eight Republicans and three Democrats, who met Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, for lunch on Friday and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), a cross-party group of MPs and peers concerned about Beijing’s rising assertiveness and treatment of its Uyghur minority.At a joint press conference of the US delegation and Ipac on Friday, MPs criticised the British prime minister for failing to take a tough enough stance on China.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavid Alton, a crossbench peer, said: “Only a few months ago, Rishi Sunak himself was saying that he regarded the CCP as a threat to this country.”However, Sunak was now “backing off”, Alton said, adding: “If you go on feeding the crocodiles, then one day the crocodile will come and eat you.”Concern at the rise of China is a rare issue of bipartisan consensus in the US, although some European lobbyists argue that the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations is provocative and risks inching the two sides closer to a new cold war. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US China hawks to press UK minister for tougher line on Beijing

      by

      A Republican-led group of China hawks from the US Congress will visit Westminster on Friday where they are expected to meet the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for lunch and press for the UK to take a tougher line on Beijing.The 11-strong delegation is led by the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs a high-profile, newly created China committee. Some fear a strident anti-Beijing tone will alienate centrist and left-leaning politicians in the UK.Gallagher has called for a total ban on the Chinese-owned app TikTok, and argued in the committee’s first prime-time hearing that the US and China were locked in an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”.The group of eight Republicans and three Democrats – one senator and 10 from the House – will see Wallace informally in a restaurant away from the Ministry of Defence building, where they are almost certain to lobby him in person.The MoD declined to say whether the meeting meant Wallace supported Gallagher’s anti-China positions. “Ministers routinely engage with elected representatives from different governments to discuss our respective policy positions on the key issues,” an official said.Heavy Republican-led China lobbying has been seen as counterproductive in Europe, where critics of Beijing’s authoritarianism, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), want to build a cross-party consensus for firmer action against Beijing.One British-based China expert said: “The US select committee has a reputation for being exceptionally hawkish on China, and it’s clear the energy comes from the Republican side.” They warned there could be a clash with Ipac when they meet.A group of eight British MPs and peers, including members of the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, are due to hold a joint event with Ipac on Friday before the lunch with Wallace. They are expected to include the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, Labour’s Rushanara Ali and the Lib Dem peer David Alton.A statement released by Gallagher before the visit set out the visiting delegation’s aspirations. “Chinese Communist party aggression is global, and the United States and United Kingdom face common economic, military and ideological threats posed by the CCP,” the congressman began.“For the sake of both our nations and the sake of the free world, we must work hand in hand to stand up to CCP tech theft, united front work [Beijing’s global influence operation], transnational repression and flagrant violations of our sovereignty.”The US delegation’s arrival in the UK comes shortly after the former prime minister Liz Truss began a five-day visit to Taiwan, where she gave a speech calling for an “economic Nato” to tackle Beijing’s authoritarianism and growing military strength.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTaiwan’s independence from China could only be protected by “hard power”, Truss said, arguing that the answer was greater defence cooperation between western nations in the Indo-Pacific.Leaked Pentagon papers from February show that Wallace was considering whether to base one of the UK’s two aircraft carriers in either Japan or South Korea after 2025, which the US said would demonstrate Britain was committed to a previously announced Indo-Pacific tilt in foreign policy.Worries about the economic and military rise of China are a rare bipartisan issue in the US, with the Pentagon closely monitoring the development of Beijing’s armed forces and sabre-rattling over Taiwan. But in the UK, Labour has argued that Britain should show realism and focus on Russia and the Euro-Atlantic rather than the Indo-Pacific. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Will Democracy Survive the Rise of China?

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More