UK news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 250 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Deepfakes are here and can be dangerous, but ignore the alarmists – they won’t harm our elections | Ciaran Martin

      by

      Sixteen days before the Brexit referendum, and only two days before the deadline to apply to cast a ballot, the IT system for voter registrations collapsed. The remain and leave campaigns were forced to agree a 48-hour registration extension. Around the same time, evidence was beginning to emerge of a major Russian “hack-and-leak” operation targeting the US presidential election. Inevitably, questions arose as to whether the Russians had successfully disrupted the Brexit vote.The truth was more embarrassingly simple. A comprehensive technical investigation, supported by the National Cyber Security Centre – which I headed at the time – set out in detail what had happened. A TV debate on Brexit had generated unexpected interest. Applications spiked to double those projected. The website couldn’t cope and crashed. There was no sign of any hostile activity.But this conclusive evidence did not stop a parliamentary committee, a year later, saying that it did “not rule out the possibility that there was foreign interference” in the incident. No evidence was provided for this remarkable assertion. What actually happened was a serious failure of state infrastructure, but it was not a hostile act.This story matters because it has become too easy – even fashionable – to cast the integrity of elections into doubt. “Russia caused Brexit” is nothing more than a trope that provides easy comfort to the losing side. There was, and is, no evidence of any successful cyber operations or other digital interference in the UK’s 2016 vote.But Brexit is far from the only example of such electoral alarmism. In its famous report on Russia in 2020, the Intelligence and Security Committee correctly said that the first detected attempt by Russia to interfere in British politics occurred in the context of the Scottish referendum campaign in 2014.However, the committee did not add that the quality of such efforts was risible, and the impact of them was zero. Russia has been waging such campaigns against the UK and other western democracies for years. Thankfully, though, it hasn’t been very good at it. At least so far.Over the course of the past decade, there are only two instances where digital interference can credibly be seen to have severely affected a democratic election anywhere in the world. The US in 2016 is undoubtedly one. The other is Slovakia last year, when an audio deepfake seemed to have an impact on the polls late on.The incident in Slovakia fuelled part of a new wave of hysteria about electoral integrity. Now the panic is all about deepfakes. But we risk making exactly the same mistake with deepfakes as we did with cyber-attacks on elections: confusing activity and intent with impact, and what might be technically possible with what is realistically achievable.So far, it has proved remarkably hard to fool huge swathes of voters with deepfakes. Many of them, including much of China’s information operations, are poor in quality. Even some of the better ones – like a recent Russian fake of Ukrainian TV purporting to show Kyiv admitting it was behind the Moscow terror attacks – look impressive, but are so wholly implausible in substance they are not believed by anyone. Moreover, a co-ordinated response by a country to a deepfake can blunt its impact: think of the impressive British response to the attempt to smear Sadiq Khan last November, when the government security minister lined up behind the Labour mayor of London in exhorting the British media and public to pay no attention to a deepfake audio being circulated.This was in marked contrast to events in Slovakia, where gaps in Meta’s removal policy, and the country’s electoral reporting restrictions, made it much harder to circulate the message that the controversial audio was fake. If a deepfake does cut through in next month’s British election, what matters is how swiftly and comprehensively it is debunked.None of this is to be complacent about the reality that hostile states are trying to interfere in British politics. They are. And with fast-developing tech and techniques, the threat picture can change. “Micro” operations, such as a localised attempt to use AI to persuade voters in New Hampshire to stay at home during the primaries, are one such area of concern. In the course of the UK campaign, one of my main worries would be about targeted local disinformation and deepfake campaigns in individual contests. It is important that the government focuses resources and capabilities on blunting these operations.But saying that hostile states are succeeding in interfering in our elections, or that they are likely to, without providing any tangible evidence is not a neutral act. In fact, it’s really dangerous. If enough supposedly credible voices loudly cast aspersions on the integrity of elections, at least some voters will start to believe them. And if that happens, we will have done the adversaries’ job for them.There is a final reason why we should be cautious about the “something-must-be-done” tendency where the risk of electoral interference is concerned. State intervention in these matters is not some cost-free, blindingly obvious solution that the government is too complacent to use. If false information is so great a problem that it requires government action, that requires, in effect, creating an arbiter of truth. To which arm of the state would we wish to assign this task?
      Ciaran Martin is a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, and a former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      US Declaration of Independence document bore arms of English king

      by

      It is a founding document of the United States and inspired the Declaration of Independence and the purge of English power from the American colonies.But, ironically, George Mason’s seminal Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 was written on paper watermarked with the arms of the king of England, a British expert has discovered.As one of the most significant documents in American history, the Virginia declaration is held in a secure vault at the Library of Congress (LoC) in Washington, DC. Dr Ian Christie-Miller, a former visiting research fellow at London University and a specialist in paper analysis, has discovered a watermark that shows the Hanover crown and the emblem of King George III, under whose rule the American colonies were lost.He told the Observer: “The value of watermark research has been widely known but ignored for years. The evidence has been sitting there unnoticed until now.”Christie-Miller made the discovery while researching his forthcoming philosophy book, Conscience – The Restoration. “It is ironic that paper bearing the arms of the king was used by George Mason for his first draft declaration, which was to lead to the overthrow of English power in the American colonies. Apparently he had few qualms of conscience in using that watermarked paper.”View image in fullscreenThe US war of independence led to Britain’s 13 American colonies throwing off British rule to establish the sovereign United States of America.British attempts to impose unpopular taxes had contributed to growing tensions between the Crown and colonists, who resorted to armed rebellion. The king opposed their bid for independence, although he was not directly responsible for policies such as the Stamp Act of 1765, which was passed by the British parliament.Mason drafted his call for American independence from Britain in 1776. It was amended by Thomas Ludwell Lee, and the Virginia Convention and Thomas Jefferson drew heavily on it for the Declaration of Independence.Dr Peter Thompson, associate professor of American history at Oxford University, said: “The paper may have had to be compliant with the Stamp Act – which deepens the irony.View image in fullscreen“I wonder, if Mason had had a choice and there had been some alternative supply of paper, whether he would still have chosen stamped paper, so as to make a point of complying with the law, even though he didn’t agree with it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe LoC catalogue description notes: “This uniquely influential document was also used by James Madison in drawing up the Bill of Rights, 1789, and the Marquis de Lafayette in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789.”Mason wrote: “All men are born equally free and independant [sic], and have certain inherent natural rights … among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing [sic] and obtaining Happiness and Safety.”These beliefs did not extend to enslaved people, however, as Mason owned more than 100 enslaved people at the time, despite condemning slavery as “disgraceful to mankind”.The LoC said: “We’re always happy to help scholars with their research, but … we can’t comment on their finished work.” More

    • 238 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Beware the Biden factor, Keir Starmer: you can govern well and still risk losing the country | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.All of which partly explains why it’s a comparison to the US president that Starmer should be thinking about – even if it’s not nearly so encouraging.Start with those aspects of the Biden story that can give Starmer heart. The veteran Democrat showed it is possible to win office thanks less to a wave of popular enthusiasm than a hunger for change after years of chaos. He proved that you can make a virtue of a lack of swash and buckle, offering steady solidity as a respite after frantic drama. In 2020, Biden demonstrated that dependable and capable can be enough to win when voters have had enough of charismatic and crazy. It worked for him after the era of Donald Trump, just as it’s working for Starmer after an era that, for all Rishi Sunak’s efforts, is defined by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.In other words, in 2020, Biden showed that playing a hand much like the one dealt to Starmer can be enough to win. The trouble is, in 2024 he’s showing why that might not be enough to win twice.Take a look at the New York Times poll published this week. The headline findings are bad enough, with Biden trailing in five of the six battleground states where the election will be decided. Behind in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, he’s ahead in Wisconsin alone. The underlying numbers are worse still with, improbable as it may seem, Trump gaining among Black, Latino and young voters especially. Most alarming for Biden is the finding that 70% think the US political and economic systems need major change – or should be torn down altogether. It makes the 2024 contest a change election in the US, just as it is in the UK – and for an incumbent such as Biden, that is dangerously bad news.Put another way, the US appetite for change is so great that it is causing the unravelling of key parts of the Obama coalition – minorities and the young – and its reassembly behind Trump. Barack Obama offered himself as the change candidate in 2008, an outsider who would challenge the establishment, and Trump, even though he is a self-described billionaire and a former president less than four years out of office, is successfully making the same rebel pitch.What’s more, those Americans itching for something new are prepared to use as their agent of change a man who incited a violent insurrection against the US government, sought to overturn a democratic election, has made no secret of his dictatorial ambitions for a second term, has been found liable for sexual abuse and is now standing trial on criminal charges in New York. When so many Americans are willing to flock to that person as the alternative, it tells you how much they dislike what they have now.There is a warning here for Starmer. Not for his prospects in the coming election – Biden’s success in 2020 tells him he can be confident – but for the election after that. The former Conservative cabinet minister David Gauke thinks Priti Patel is a decent bet as the next Tory leader, perhaps offering to keep the seat warm for the return of Boris Johnson. If Trump makes the comeback to end all comebacks in November, do not think Johnson will not be tempted to repeat the trick.How is it that a second Trump presidency is even conceivable; how is it that Biden can be lagging behind such a flawed, widely loathed rival? The US economy is improving; the stock market is roaring; inflation is falling. The US is set to grow at double the rate of its fellow G7 nations this year. More to the point, through a series of landmark legislative achievements – a record that outstrips Obama’s – Biden has spread the jobs and investment around, even to those parts of the US left derelict by decades of post-industrial decline. Take his gargantuan infrastructure package, the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act: more than 80% of its green investment dollars have gone to counties with below-average wages. This is levelling up made real.And yet, Biden is struggling, even in those places he has helped most. It’s a reminder of a core fact that is so often forgotten. That politics is an emotions business, one that turns not on what people think but what they feel. All the economic data in the world won’t help you if voters feel squeezed and reckon the country is on the wrong track.As the US commentator Joe Klein puts it, politics often comes down to “the art of competitive storytelling”. The successful politician tells a story that goes beyond the practical matters of pay and public services, speaking instead to voters about the way they see their own lives and the future, for themselves, their families and the country. In that competition, Trump beats Biden. His story is dark and vengeful, pitting his people against a menacing other, but it is compelling. Biden has a narrative, too – he will protect democracy and abortion rights from the Trump threat – but it is defensive.This is the gap Starmer needs to plug – and you can see how he might do it. One Labour luminary says that too many Britons “don’t just feel a loss of income, but a deficit of dignity” and that politicians have to address that. Starmer gets close when he speaks of “dignity at work”, of the human need for respect. It sounds authentic, as if it might even be his animating purpose, when he recalls the way his father, a toolmaker who worked in a factory, “always felt … that he was looked down on. Disrespected.”Whatever the story is, he needs to tell it. Right now, what Keir Starmer offers will almost certainly be enough to get him into No 10. But the lesson of Joe Biden is that, if he wants to stay there, it will take much more.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump fangirl Liz Truss channels Maga menace at US conservative thinktank

      by

      Was that Donald Truss? Or Liz Trump? A former British prime minister turned up in Washington on Monday channeling the Maga menace who once lorded it in the Oval Office and now spends his days in a dingy courtroom.Liz Truss was at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington, within sight of the US Capitol dome, to promote her grandly titled book Ten Years to Save the West. Why does she keep coming back to America? It was not hard to figure out.Far from the London literary critics sharpening their knives, Heritage offers Truss a happy place, full of gushing sycophancy with an audience hanging on her every word. In this regard the 48-year-old has gone all Trumpy: the ex-president loves to surround himself with oleaginous flatterers who dare not cross him.How divine that the politicians who whine about “groupthink” and “safe spaces” are the ones who cling to groupthink and safe spaces.To illustrate the point, Truss’s war on “the global left” establishment evidently includes the Guardian. Last Friday, this reporter received an email from Heritage about the Truss event that said: “Due to space limitations, we unfortunately must rescind your in-person invite.”Curiously, come Monday morning, Truss posted a tweet encouraging members of the public to register the event and enclosing a link. So much for space limitations. But those who did attend were informed they couldn’t get a signed copy of the book due to “supply chain issues”.Others were still able to watch a live stream on YouTube where, three hours after it ended, the event had just over 700 views. (Heritage’s biggest hit on the site is a Tucker Carlson speech that attracted a million views.)Heritage is the thinktank behind Project 2025, a sprawling plan for a second Trump presidency. Wearing a dark blue jacket and trousers, white blouse and shiny black shoes, Truss noted that when she was first invited to Heritage as environment secretary in 2015, she was warned against not to go by then British ambassador Kim Darroch.“He says to me, ‘You’ve got to be wary of this organisation. They’ve spoken out against President Obama. They’ve even been critical of Prime Minister Cameron. Are you really sure, minister, that you want to go and see them?’” Truss recalled, speaking from a wooden lectern against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and a blue wall dotted with Heritage Foundation logos.“And I said, yes, I’m sure because I’m a conservative and they’re a conservative thinktank in the United States of America, our closest ally. So eventually, I prevail because I am a determined person but the car from the embassy dropped me off two blocks away from the Heritage Foundation so that the British flag wouldn’t be sitting outside the building.”Making a lot of sub-Trump hand gestures with open palms, Truss proceeded to deliver her standard speech railing against left-dominated institutions, an anti-growth coalition, the IMF and Conservatives in name only. Naturally there was a swipe at wokery as “another bad neo-Marxist idea developed from Foucault and all those crazy postmodernists in the 1960s, the idea that biological sex is not a reality”.She blamed these forces for making her the shortest serving British prime minister in history (49 days that sparked mayhem on the financial markets). She reeled off a list of foes, foreign and domestic, who joined the “pile on”. Among them was Joe Biden, who had the temerity to criticise her radical mini-budget’s tax plans “from an ice cream parlour in Oregon”. There was some laughter in the auditorium. So vanilla!The Trump fangirl had some advice to impart: “I come today with a warning to the United States of America. I fear the same forces will be coming for President Donald Trump if he wins the election this November.”Truss repeated her plea from the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland for the right to grab a “a bigger bazooka” to combat the activist left with their money and “friends in high places”. She called for a “bonfire of the quangos” and, echoing Trump ally Steve Bannon, declared: “We need to dismantle the administrative state.”In her book, Truss writes that she was an early fan of the reality TV show The Apprentice and “enjoyed the Donald’s catchphrases and sassy business advice”. She also pays little heed to the convention that senior British politicians stay out of US elections.She told the audience on Monday: “I worked in cabinet whilst Donald Trump was president and while President Biden was president and I can assure you the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office… Getting a conservative back in the White House is critical to taking on the global left.”Praise for Truss was laid on think by Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and a former foreign policy researcher for Thatcher herself. He has been named one of the 50 most influential Britons in the US by the Daily Telegraph.In God we Truss; no lettuce jokes here. The baby-faced, bespectacled Gardiner proclaimed her book “an absolutely tremendous read”, “very robust”, “very gutsy”, “very courageous”, “a wonderful read”, “very powerful”, “a thrilling read”, “a tremendous book” and “a wonderful message”. He speculated that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, might be writing memoirs in the near future but “yours are far more conservative and interesting”.Truss and Gardiner sat on plush white armchairs with glasses of water on a table between them. Truss warned that another Biden term would mean “the promotion of leftwing ideology”, girls unable to use bathrooms in privacy and no policy to deal with immigration and the southern border. “Four more years of this would be a disaster for the US internally. I think Bidenomics has been a failure.”Gardiner wondered what a second Trump term would mean for Britain. Truss said free the world needs conservative leadership. “It’s only Britain that has a conservative government. We’ve got Biden in the US, we have Trudeau in Canada, we have Macron in France, we have Scholz in Germany and it’s not working. The west is not winning.”Trump has said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any Nato country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defence. But Truss echoed Trump’s call for Europe to spend more. “There are too many countries free riding at the moment who are in serious threat. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he won’t stop there… Donald Trump is right to say to Europe: you need to pay up.”Elise Stefanik? Kristi Noem? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Forget it. Trump-Truss 2024 would have been unstoppable. If only she had been born in Kansas. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      What does Liz Truss’s book tell us about her American ambitions?

      by

      In her new book, the former British prime minister Liz Truss directs scathing attacks and mockery at Joe Biden, president of her country’s closest ally. Biden was guilty of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance”, Truss writes, when the US leader said he “disagree[d] with the policy” of “cutting taxes on the super wealthy” in the mini-budget Truss introduced in September 2022, shortly after taking power.“I was shocked and astounded that Biden would breach protocol by commenting on UK domestic policy,” Truss adds. “We had been the United States’ staunchest allies through thick and thin.”Such harsh words between British and American leaders, in or out of office, would normally seem unusual. But Truss has scores to settle. By the time Biden spoke, in an ice-cream parlor in Portland, Oregon, Truss’s mini-budget had already caused panic over British pension funds, threatened to crash the UK economy and been withdrawn – a humiliating reversal for any prime minister, let alone one little more than a month into the job. Six days later, Truss was forced to resign.A year and a half later, offering the public her version of what went so terribly wrong, Truss still manages to thunder: “What the Biden administration, and the [European Union], and their international allies didn’t want was a country demonstrating that things can be done differently, undercutting them in the process.”Perhaps. Either way, Biden is still president while Truss is now a mere backbench MP for a constituency in rural Norfolk. But the release of her book, Ten Years to Save the West, alongside her founding of Popular Conservatism, a new pressure group, says a lot about where she sees her future.Far from taking her allowance and pursuing traditional, relatively sedate pursuits – lobbying, say, or trying to achieve peace in the Middle East – Truss wants to remain relevant on the global populist right, particularly in the US.Truss’s book is published in the US and UK on Tuesday. The American jacket carries praise from two hard-right senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, both vocal enemies of Biden. It also carries a different subtitle from the British edition. In the UK, Truss is said to offer “Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room”. In the US, she is “Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment”.It’s a lot to pack in between the school run – Truss has two daughters – and her duties as a Norfolk MP. But it all points to a clear ambition to carve out a presence in rightwing US media, long on plain display.In February, Truss attended the CPAC conference in Maryland, giving an address to an audience of what Politico called “bewildered conservatives” before appearing with Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign chair and White House adviser, a leading far-right voice who pitched Truss into controversy with remarks about the jailed far-right figure Tommy Robinson.View image in fullscreenTruss will soon be back, visiting Washington to promote her book at the Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind Project 2025, a vast and controversial plan for a second Trump administration.Truss’s relationship with Heritage is well established. She spoke there in 2015, as trade secretary and over the objections of the British ambassador, and accepted an award named after Margaret Thatcher there last year. Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage, also blurbs the US edition of Truss’s book.The foundation is a couple of miles from the White House, but Truss is hardly likely to seek contact with Biden or his administration. That may be just as well. Elsewhere in her book, she describes meeting the president at the White House in September 2021, when she was foreign secretary under Boris Johnson.“Our Oval Office meeting lasted around an hour and a half,” Truss writes, adding that this was not a sign of favor.“The truth was it owed more to Biden’s penchant for telling extended anecdotes in response to any issue that came up. ‘Ah, that reminds me …’ he would say, as his officials looked at each other with knowing smiles. Ten minutes later, the story would end and he would move on to something else.”Biden’s age, 81, and mental capacity to be president are the source of constant media speculation and political attack – and strong White House pushback. But Truss has more to say. At the Cop 26 climate conference in Glasgow, later in 2021, she “bumped into Joe Biden again. He remembered our meeting at the White House, telling me he’d never forget ‘those blue eyes’, even though we’d both been wearing Covid masks.”It is not clear if the reader should think Biden or Truss was under the impression mouth coverings also obscure the eyes.Truss is still not done. She includes the president with the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi among US politicians deemed “unhelpful” over Northern Ireland issues, their interventions “generally on one side of the argument, doubtless egged on by the Irish embassy in Washington”.She also describes how in September 2022, as prime minister, she attended the UN general assembly in New York. There, she says, “Biden regaled me with tales of the Democrat campaign trail, including an incident in which he had fallen over. He said, ‘I can see them thinking, ‘You can’t get up, grandpa’, but I got up.’“I formed the view that he was running again in 2024,” Truss writes, before risking a self-own by writing about a faux pas at the same event, when she called out “Hi, Dr Biden!” to “a blonde lady” who turned out to be Brigitte Macron, the wife of the president of France.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope she didn’t hear!” Truss writes.The vignette about Biden at the UN is not the only one in Ten Years to Save the West in which Truss uses “Democrat” to refer to the Democratic party. It is a telling choice. Republicans have long used the incorrect term as a term of political abuse. Nor is it the only instance in which Truss – or her US editors – must adapt or explain her language.When writing about UK politics, as in most of the book, Truss must often offer translations or explanations for US readers. For one small but telling example, in referring to her distaste for National Insurance – a payroll tax that supports state pensions and unemployment and incapacity benefits – she calls it “a social security entitlement”. On the US right, “entitlement” is almost as dirty a word as “Democrat”.At least until the eve of publication day, Truss had shied from saying Donald Trump’s name but said she wanted a Republican in the White House in 2025. She says so in her book but abandons any pretense of subtlety when it comes to praising Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar penalties for tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Calling herself “an early fan of the TV show The Apprentice” who “enjoyed the Donald’s catchphrases and sassy business advice”, Truss says that when Trump entered politics in 2015, colleagues in parliament and “elderly ladies” in Swaffham, a town in her constituency, were united in “seem[ing] genuinely animated by the disruptive Republican candidate”. She makes a common link between support for Trump and support for Brexit – which she campaigned against before becoming its hardline champion on her way to leading her country.View image in fullscreenWhen Trump was president, Truss writes, she “chased” Boris Johnson “down a fire escape” in New York, to demand inclusion in a meeting between the British and American leaders. According to Truss, who was then trade secretary, that meeting saw Trump urge her and his own trade representative, Bob Lighthizer, to get on with talks for a UK-US trade deal – only for Johnson to try to make Trump focus on restoring the Iran nuclear agreement, a tactic that did not work.Truss never got her trade deal. In part, she blames “many in Number 10” Downing Street who “seemed to want to hold Trump at arm’s length for political reasons”.“The UK media provided universally negative coverage of Trump, and leftists in the Conservative party were keen to insult him at every opportunity,” Truss writes. “My view was that he was the leader of the free world and an important ally.”That view stands in stark comparison to her abuse of Biden, who beat Trump conclusively in an election Trump still refuses to concede. Furthermore, when it comes to the deadly fruits of that refusal – the attack on Congress Trump incited – Truss keeps her observations to a single paragraph.On 6 January 2021, Truss writes, she was “on a phone call with Bob Lighthizer”, “working on” removing a US tariff on Scottish whisky. From the Executive Office building, next to the White House, Lighthizer “remarked … in passing that the street was full of people with huge American flags walking towards Congress. Little did I realise how seismic that event would turn out to be.”Truss eventually saw the whisky tariff removed – in summer 2021, after “talks with the new Democrat administration”.“But with Joe Biden as president,” Truss writes, “it was made quite clear that a trade deal with the United Kingdom was no longer a priority. We had missed the boat.” More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Liz Truss says in book Queen told her to ‘pace yourself’, admits she didn’t listen

      by

      In a new memoir, Liz Truss recounts the advice she was given by Queen Elizabeth II when they met in September 2022 to confirm Truss as Britain’s new prime minister, the 15th and as it turned out last, to serve under Elizabeth II.“Pace yourself,” the 96-year-old queen said – a suggestion Truss admits she failed to heed after the queen died, leaving Truss unsure if she could cope.Truss later introduced radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy and saw her ejected from office just 49 days after winning an internal Conservative party vote to succeed Boris Johnson, making her the shortest-serving prime minister of all.“Maybe I should have listened” to the queen, Truss writes.Replaced in Downing Street by Rishi Sunak, Truss still sits as an MP for South West Norfolk. Just 48, she has increasingly sought to carve out a prominent position on the hard right of British politics and turned her sights on the US, in particular its rightwing thinktanks and lucrative speaking circuit.Truss’s book, Ten Years To Save The West, will be published in the US and UK next week.Though Truss writes that the book is less a memoir than a manifesto for her continuing participation in global politics, it does contain extensive descriptions of her time as an MP, a member of successive Conservative cabinets, a minister of state, foreign secretary and finally, briefly as prime minister.Of her historic meeting with the late queen at Balmoral in Scotland in September 2022, Truss says the 96-year-old monarch “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics,” Truss writes. “She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”Elsewhere, Truss often writes of struggling with the pressures of high office, including an instance in Spain when she was foreign secretary in which motorcade delays saw her “beginning to lose my rag … on account of constant travel and pressure”, causing her to try to get out of her official car to “remonstrate with police”.That episode was quelled, Truss writes, with an intervention by her staff and “a cooling off period at a sherry bar”.But when the queen died so soon after Truss had become her 15th and final prime minister, Truss writes, the news, though widely expected after the monarch’s health had deteriorated, still came “as a profound shock” to Truss, seeming “utterly unreal” and leaving her thinking: “Why me? Why now?”Insisting she had not expected to lead the UK in mourning for the death of a monarch nearly 70 years on the throne and nearly 100 years old, Truss says state ceremony and protocol were “a long way from my natural comfort zone”.Other prime ministers, she writes without naming any, may have been better able to provide “the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary”. She herself, she writes, predominantly felt profound sadness.Truss describes carrying out duties including giving a Downing Street speech about the queen’s death and having a first audience with King Charles III. A subsequent Buckingham Palace meeting between the King and his prime minister was widely noted for its stilted nature – Charles being heard to mutter: “Back again? Dear oh dear”. But Truss says their first official meeting made her feel “a bizarre sense of camaraderie between us, with both starting out in our new roles and having to navigate unfamiliar territory”.As the UK went into mourning, so Truss watched on television with her family as the queen’s coffin was brought from Balmoral to Edinburgh. Truss describes being “suddenly overwhelmed by the emotion of it all”, and breaking down “into floods of tears on the sofa”.“Once again,” she writes, “the grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact that it was happening on my watch.”That watch turned out to be shorter than anyone could have expected. But after a period out of the public eye Truss has re-emerged, especially in the US where Donald Trump is seeking to return to the White House as a far-right Republican.Last April, she delivered the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. This February, in Maryland, she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC, telling a pro-Trump audience the Anglo-American right “need[s] a bigger bazooka” to take on its leftwing enemies.At that event, Truss stirred controversy by appearing with far-right figures, including the former Trump White House counselor Steve Bannon and allies of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.Truss announced her book in September last year, saying she would use it to “share the lessons” of her time in government, in which she claimed often to have been “the only conservative in the room”, fighting a supposedly authoritarian left.In the event, she repeatedly blames the so-called “deep state” for her failures, from being excluded from meetings with Trump when Boris Johnson was prime minister to her own short-lived spell in that role.Popular on the US right, the deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart the ambitions of populist leaders. Bannon is one of its chief propagators. He has, however, said it is “for nut cases”. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

      by

      A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up ­policy briefings for politicians.The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.The ADF’s efforts to boost its UK influence are revealed as part of an Observer analysis that shows a surge in activity within the wider anti-­abortion movement.Ahead of a historic vote on abortion later this spring, in which MPs will vote on a law that would abolish the criminal offence associated with a woman ending her own pregnancy in England and Wales, several anti-abortion campaign groups have expanded their teams, ramped up advertising and coordinated mass letter-writing campaigns targeting MPs.The findings have led to calls for greater transparency and accountability over the groups’ funding and lobbying activities. The ADF in particular is an influential player on the US Christian right and part of a global network of hardline evangelical groups that were a driving force behind the repeal of Roe v Wade – the supreme court ruling that gave women the constitutional right to abortion and was overturned in 2022.The group – which also supports outlawing sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults and funds US fringe groups attacking gay, trans and abortion rights – has faced claims its funding is not transparent due to its use of donor advised funds: a loophole in US charity law that allows people to give millions anonymously.The latest financial accounts for its UK entity ADF International UK, published last week, show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.ADF International UK, which has argued publicly against decriminalising abortion, has sought to develop closer relationships with MPs. Its latest accounts show a focus of its UK activity has been attempting to engage with “significant decision-makers” and that staff provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to several MPs ahead of a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.In September 2023 it spent £1,737.92 flying the prime minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and beliefs, Fiona Bruce MP, paying for her hotel and travel to attend an unspecified conference. Last month Bruce – who reports directly to Rishi Sunak – appeared at an event sponsored by ADF International on religious freedom, speaking remotely alongside two members of the charity.Number 10 did not respond to questions about the links between the ADF and Bruce, who declared the donations in the MPs register of interests and previously voted against legalising abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Calls and emails to her office went unanswered late last week.View image in fullscreenHeidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the ADF had “ramped up its spending” in the UK and Europe “aggressively” in recent years and that there was “no transparency” around “where the money’s actually coming from”. She said its relationship with MPs raised “huge concerns”. “Why are politicians openly working with an organisation that has such a hateful agenda?”Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said the donations to Bruce raised questions about conflicts of interest and that her association with the group could give it credibility in the UK.Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said it was “very concerning” that the UK’s envoy on religious freedoms was “accepting donations from organisations that use religious liberty as a way of denying others their human rights”. “The Christian nationalist movement is increasingly investing in the UK on a number of fronts, and all supporters of freedom and choice should take seriously the threat to human rights that this represents,” he said.ADF International UK said it was committed to protecting “liberties dear to the British people” including free speech and freedom of religion, and that its stance on abortion aimed to “protect the lives of both mother and baby in every pregnancy”. “Like much of the British public, we are concerned about political initiatives to further liberalise abortion law,” a spokesperson added.The charity, which has an office in Westminster, said it received funds from many countries, like “many UK charities on both sides of the abortion debate”; that claims it was not transparent about its funders were “baseless” and that it complied with all charity regulations. It did not comment on its link to the PM’s special envoy.View image in fullscreenJonathan Lord, co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and a consultant gynaecologist, said: “We’ve known for some time that these extreme groups from America are infiltrating the UK, having been emboldened following the US supreme court’s actions removing women’s right to abortion there. However the scale of their spending and influence in the UK is disturbing, especially as we know they are actively lobbying MPs and want to restrict women’s reproductive rights, whether that is fertility treatment, contraception or access to abortion.”Other anti-abortion groups have also ramped up activity here in recent months. Right to Life, a leading UK anti-abortion charity, has been coordinating a lobbying campaign encouraging people to write to their MPs to tighten abortion laws, and spent £117,000 on Facebook ads in 2023, 10 times the amount in 2020.The charity – whose overall spending overall has risen from £200k in 2019 to £705k last year – also provides the secretariat to the Pro-Life all-party parliamentary group and aims to “deepen and expand relationships with parliamentarians”, according to its latest accounts. It is currently advertising vacancies for eight full-time staff and says in one ad that the role will include “producing briefings” for MPs and peers.The Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK – another anti-abortion group, which notoriously launched a billboard campaign featuring graphic images in pro-choice MP Stella Creasy’s constituency – has increased its staff numbers from four to 12 since 2017. Due to its status as a small company, it does not have to publish details of its income but said it was happy to engage in public debate about its “funding, growth and activities” and that its targeting of Creasy “does not equate to animosity towards her as a fellow human being”.MPs are due to vote in the coming weeks on proposed changes to abortion law that would see abortion decriminalised in England and Wales, as it is in Northern Ireland, Australia, France and New Zealand. Under a Victorian-era law that remains in place today, it is an offence to procure your own abortion. There are exemptions under the 1967 Abortion Act, which permits abortion in cases where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman. But the old law was never repealed and is still used today to prosecute and jail women for terminating pregnancies without sign-off from medics or after the 24-week limit.The proposal on decriminalisation from backbench Labour MP Diana Johnson has cross-party support and is expected to pass. However some in the Labour party fear it could be counterproductive and further embolden anti-abortion campaigning on related issues, such as the remote access to abortion that was introduced during the pandemic.A government spokesperson said abortion was an “extremely sensitive issue” with “strongly held views on all sides of the discussion”, and that MPs would have a free vote on the proposed law change. “By longstanding convention, any change to the law in this area would be a matter of conscience for individual MPs rather than the government,” a spokesperson said. More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Cameron: Aukus and Nato must be in ‘best possible shape’ before potential Trump win – video

      by

      The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has suggested the Aukus pact and Nato alliance must get into the best possible shape to increase their chances of surviving Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House. Speaking after high-level talks in Australia, Cameron was careful to avoid criticising the former US president and presumptive Republican nominee for 2024, saying it was ‘up to America who they choose as their president’. The comments were in response to a question about whether the election of Trump in November would affect the Aukus agreement that was sealed with the Biden administration in March last year More