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    Donald Trump expected to announce framework of US-UK trade deal – UK politics live

    Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up from Martin Belam.Here is a timetable for what we are expecting today. We will be mostly focused on the US-UK trade deal announcement, but there will be some other politics too.9am: Keir Starmer gives a speech at the London defence conference. He is not expected to take questions.9.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, takes questions on next week’s Commons business.11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.Noon: Starmer and other political leaders join the king and queen in Westminster Abbey for the service to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day.After 12pm: After the two minutes’ silence to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the Bank of England announces its interest rate.After 12pm: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.3pm (UK time): Donald Trump is due to make his announcement in the White House about the US-UK trade deal. He posted this on his Truth Social account earlier.Afternoon: Starmer is expected to make a statement about the trade deal.There will be a ministerial statement in the Commons this afternoon on the US-UK trade deal, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, told MPs at the start of business questions. But he said he did not know yet when this would be.Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has accused the opposition of trying to “weaponise” tragedy after his Tory opposite number claimed farmers are taking their lives because of Labour’s inheritance tax policy.The government announced in the budget last year that more valuable farms will lose their exemption from inheritance tax. Older farmer have complained that, having planned on the basis that they will be able to leave their farms to their children without an inheritance tax liability, they have had little time to make alternative arrangements before the tax change comes into force in April next year.Speaking during environment questions in the Commons, Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, said:
    Before Christmas, I warned the secretary of state that a farmer had taken their own life because they were so worried about the family farm tax. He responded with anger and later stopped the farming resilience fund, which helped farmers with mental ill health.
    This week, I have received the devastating news that several more farmers have taken their own lives because of the family farm tax. This is the secretary of state’s legacy, but he can change it, because it is not yet law.
    Will he set out these tragedies to the prime minister, demand that Labour policy is changed, or offer an appointed principal his resignation?
    In his reply, Reed said he was sorry that Atkins was seeking “to politicise personal tragedy in this way”. He went on:
    I think it’s immensely, immensely regrettable that she would seek to do that. None of us have been sure what happens in matters of personal tragedy. But I think it’s beneath her, actually, to try to weaponise it in a way that she has done this.
    This government takes the issues of mental health very, very seriously indeed. That is why we are setting up mental health hubs in every community so that we can support farmers and others who are suffering from mental health, which I would again remind her is a problem that escalated during her time in office the secretary of state for health, where she failed to address the problems people are facing.
    Keir Starmer used his speech to the London Defence Conference to announce a £563m contract for Rolls-Royce for the maintenance of Britain’s fleet of Typhoon fighter jets. “The work to maintain 130 Typhoon engines will take place at Rolls-Royce’s sites, supporting hundreds of jobs in Bristol and beyond,” No 10 said.He also said that British workers would gain from what he described as the “defence dividend” – the benefits to be had from the government’s decision to increase defence spending. Starmer said:
    Our task now is to seize the defence dividend – felt directly in the pockets of working people, rebuilding our industrial base and creating the jobs of the future.
    A national effort. A time for the state, business and society to join hands, in pursuit of the security of the nation and the prosperity of its people.
    An investment in peace, but also an investment in British pride and the British people to build a nation that, once again, lives up to the promises made to the generation who fought for our values, our freedom and our security.
    The phrase “defence dividend” is an allusion to the term “peace dividend” – which referred to the advantage Britain and other western countries gained at the end of the cold war when they could cut defence spending, meaning more government money was available for other priorities.What Starmer refers to as the “defence dividend” has been funded in part by huge cuts to aid spending. But Starmer has repeatedly sought to show that his policy will bring, not just defence gains, but employment gains too.Keir Starmer has said that acting in the national interest has been his priority in the talks on the UK-US trade deal expected to be announced later.Speaking to the London Defence Conference, Starmer:
    Talks with the US have been ongoing and you’ll hear more from me about that later today.
    But make no mistake, I will always act in our national interest, for workers, businesses and families, to deliver security and renewal for our country.
    The conventional wisdom at Westminster is that trade deals are a good thing, and that voters welcome them. But the US-UK deal could challenge this assumption because at least some of its features may look like protection racket payments handed over to an administration using tariffs as an instrument of extortion.In a post on social media, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says British voters might not necessarily applaud what has been agreed.
    The UK’s soon-to-be announced tariff deal with the US matters hugely for two reasons.
    First, it is the first since Trump announced his coercive global tariffs on the whole world. So it will be a template for further such deals with bigger manufacturing nations and areas like Japan and the EU.
    Second, it can only be judged against the yardstick of how far the UK has been forced to grant the US better terms of trade in response to the American president’s gangsterish bullying.
    The prospect of the UK being seen as a net winner from a deal that would abuse the meaning of “free trade” is nil.
    The question, soon to be answered, is how far we have surrendered – on access to the UK for US farmers, on reducing the tax for the likes of Google and Amazon – to save the bacon of our motor and steel manufacturers.
    Politically in the UK for the prime minister I am not sure how it will play out. British voters don’t like Trump. They won’t want Starmer to have capitulated to him.
    The Green party is joining the Liberal Democrats (see 8.05am) in demanding that MPs get a vote on the proposed US-UK trade deal (as well as the UK-India one). The Green MP Ellie Chowns posted this on Bluesky.
    Reports that Labour may scrap the Digital Services Tax to secure a trade deal with Trump are deeply concerning. I’m urging the govt to guarantee MPs get a vote on any such deal. MPs must have a say in decisions that affect our digital economy and ability to tax corporate giants.
    In 2021 the Labour party published a policy paper saying it would give MPs a vote on trade deals. It said:
    We will reform the parliamentary scrutiny of trade agreements, so that MPs have a guaranteed right to debate the proposed negotiating objectives for future trade deals, and a guaranteed vote on the resulting agreements, with sufficient time set aside for detailed scrutiny both of the draft treaty texts, and of accompanying expert analysis on the full range of implications, including for workers’ rights.
    In the Commons, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has repeatedly pressed Keir Starmer to confirm that he will give MPs a vote on the proposed US-UK trade deal. But Starmer has refused to commit to this. When this last come up, he told Davey: “If [a deal] is secured, it will go through the known procedures for this house.”This was a reference to the CRAG (Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010) process – which does not guarantee MPs get to vote on treaties.Unlike Donald Trump, Keir Starmer does not have his own social media platform. He still uses X, and this morning he has been tweeting, not about the US-UK trade deal, but about the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
    Their victory will always be one of our finest hours.
    Today we come together to celebrate those who fought for our freedom.
    #VEDay80
    He has also posted a link to an article he has written for the Metro about the VE Day generation, and his own grandfather. Here is an extract.
    This is the thing about our greatest generation.
    Not only did they sacrifice so much, they often bore their burden in silence.
    I think of my own grandfather, who fought during the Second World War. We never did find out exactly what he saw. He simply didn’t want to talk about it.
    But this VE Day and every VE Day, we must talk about them. Because without their bravery, the freedom and joy of today’s celebrations may never have come to pass.
    Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up from Martin Belam.Here is a timetable for what we are expecting today. We will be mostly focused on the US-UK trade deal announcement, but there will be some other politics too.9am: Keir Starmer gives a speech at the London defence conference. He is not expected to take questions.9.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.10.30am: Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, takes questions on next week’s Commons business.11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.Noon: Starmer and other political leaders join the king and queen in Westminster Abbey for the service to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day.After 12pm: After the two minutes’ silence to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the Bank of England announces its interest rate.After 12pm: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.3pm (UK time): Donald Trump is due to make his announcement in the White House about the US-UK trade deal. He posted this on his Truth Social account earlier.Afternoon: Starmer is expected to make a statement about the trade deal.Defence secretary John Healey has just appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, where he did not have much to add to his earlier comments about the prospect of a UK-US trade deal, repeating that negotiations had been “hard” and that ministers had refrained from offering a running commentary in order to give negotiators space.He was asked whether ministerial silence on some of the more controversial things Donald Trump’s administration had said or done since coming to office was part of the UK trying to secure a trade deal, and also asked why it did not appear to be “a full deal, as opposed to something responding to tariffs, as it seems to be.”Healey essentially side-stepped those questions, saying “the single purpose of the government is to get a good economic deal. And this discussion reminds us that the US is an indispensable ally for our economic security and our national security.”The Liberal Democrats treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper has reiterated the party’s position that any trade deal with the US should be put to parliament for approval before being ratified, saying Labour “should not be afraid” of a vote if they are confident a deal is in the country’s best interests.Cooper, the MP for St Albans, said in a statement:
    Parliament must be given a vote on this US trade deal so it can be properly scrutinised.
    A good trade deal with the US could bring huge benefits, but Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned that it may include measures that threaten our NHS, undermine our farmers or give tax cuts to US tech billionaires.
    If the government is confident the agreement it has negotiated with Trump is in Britain’s national interest, it should not be afraid to bring it before MPs.
    Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge has appeared on Times Radio this morning, and the Conservative MP for South Suffolk said “the devil is in the detail” over prospects for a US-UK trade deal.He told listeners the Conservatives “obviously” would support a deal “in principle”. He continued:
    If it’s correct, and you know, whilst we haven’t been named publicly, it does sound like something’s happening, nevertheless, it would be wholly speculative [to comment].
    As you appreciate and know full well, with any deal like that, the devil is in the detail. What is the nitty gritty? What does it mean for individual sectors and so on.
    So obviously, yes, we wanted to see a trade deal with the US. It’s a big benefit of our position with an independent trade policy since we left the EU but as I say, the devil will be in the details. So should there be an agreement, we would then need to study that in depth.
    Asked by presenter Kate McCann if there was anything the Tories would not want to see in any deal, he said:
    I think if we don’t know at all what’s in it, or even if it’ll definitely happen, I think to try and sort of pre-judge what might or might not be in is not something I’m going to get into respectfully. I totally understand why you’re asking that. I think it’s an incredibly important issue, particularly with the wider challenge of tariffs and so on. I’m a big free trader. Our party wants us to see the UK growing by striking trade deals. But I just think you’ve got to wait and see, because who knows, quite frankly.
    In 2021, then prime minister Boris Johnson said his Conservative government was “going as fast as we can” to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, but the successive administrations of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak failed to secure one.The defence secretary has said he is confident that UK negotiators will secure “a good deal with the US”, describing the country as “an indispensable ally for our economic security.”John Healey declined to comment on the timing of any update from Keir Starmer, which No 10 said would happen today. Asked whether it was correct that Donald Trump was going to make an announcement at 3pm UK time, and whether Starmer would speak at the same time, Healey said “I don’t account for the movements in Downing Street.”Appearing on Sky News the defence secretary reiterated his lines from an earlier Times Radio interview, saying:
    We’ve been conducting hard negotiations with the US ever since Keir Starmer went to the White House in February, trying to secure any good economic deal for Britain.
    And during that time, I have to say, ministers like me have stepped back and refrained from commenting on those discussions in order to give the negotiators the space to secure the best possible deal for Britain. So any live discussions or timelines really aren’t for me.
    He was pressed on Sky News on whether a US trade deal would have repercussions for the NHS, farm workers and steelworkers in the UK. He said:
    I’m not going to comment on potential content of any economic deal or timelines. What I will say is that for steelworkers like those in sconthorpe, they’ve seen now a UK Government, a Labour government, willing to step in to secure the future of their industry.
    And as defence secretary, you know, I’m going to make sure that the increased defence spending that we will use to secure our defence for the future also brings a premium – a dividend, if you like – and is measured in more British jobs, more British apprentices, more successful British firms right across the country.
    Keir Starmer will give an update on the prospects for a UK-US trade deal later today, it has been announced.PA Media reports a Number 10 spokesperson said:
    The prime minister will always act in Britain’s national interest – for workers, for business, for families. The US is an indispensable ally for both our economic and national security. Talks on a deal between our countries have been continuing at pace and the prime minister will update later today.
    Defence secretary John Healey is appearing on Sky News at the moment, speaking from Westminster ahead of VE Day commemorations later today.He has already appeared earlier on Times Radio, where he was coy about commenting on the prospects for a UK-US trade deal. PA Media report he told listeners of that station:
    It’s certainly true that the US is an indispensable ally for the UK, both on economic and national security grounds. It’s also true that since the prime minister visited the White House in February we have been in detailed talks about an economic deal.
    But I have to say, throughout that period, ministers like me have been keen to give the negotiations the space to get the best possible deal for the UK. So, we just haven’t been giving a running commentary on developments or timelines, so I’m not going to start now.
    In the morning Politico newsletter, Andrew McDonald makes the following point worth bearing in mind. He writes:
    This was never meant to be a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, of the sort that previous Tory governments tried and failed to win. Instead, this had been pitched by UK officials as a narrow economic pact to avoid tariffs and work together on AI and critical tech. How narrow or otherwise, we should know soon.
    Here is our earlier report from my colleague Hugo Lowell in Washington …Labour’s defence secretary John Healey and the Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge are on the media round this morning. They are likely to be questioned about the prospects for a US-UK trade deal announcement, as well as the conflict this week in Kashmir. I’ll bring you the key lines that emerge.In its report suggesting that a trade deal between the US and UK would be the subject of Donald Trump’s promised announcement, the New York Times quotes Timothy C Brightbill, an international trade attorney at Wiley Rein, who suggested any announcement would consist of “an agreement to start the negotiations, identifying a framework of issues to be discussed in the coming months.“We suspect that tariff rates, non-tariff barriers and digital trade are all on the list –and there are difficult issues to address on all of these,” he added.The UK government is likely to have in its sights a reduction in the 25% tariff on automobile sales that the Trump administration imposed. That has led to some British manufacturers pausing shipments across the Atlantic.A team of senior British trade negotiators is in Washington in the hopes of seucuring the trade deal. Last night, government sources said the recent announcement by the US president, Donald Trump, of film industry tariffs had proved a significant setback.One person briefed on the talks said: “We have a senior team on the ground now, and it may be that they are able to agree something this week. But the reality is the Trump administration keeps shifting the goalposts, as you saw with this week’s announcement on film tariffs.”Another said Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs on films “produced in foreign lands”, which could have a major impact on Britain’s film industry, had “gone down very badly in Downing Street”.UK officials say they are targeting tariff relief on a narrow range of sectors in order to get a deal agreed before they begin formal negotiations with the EU over a separate European agreement. A draft deal handed to the US a week ago would have reduced tariffs on British exports of steel, aluminium and cars, in return for a lower rate of the digital services tax, which is paid by a handful of large US technology companies.Officials from the trade department hoped to reach an agreement on two outstanding issues, pharmaceuticals and films. Trump has said he will impose tariffs on both industries, mainstays of the British economy, but has not yet given details.Keir Starmer has ruled out reducing food production standards to enable more trade of US agricultural products, as officials prioritise signing a separate agreement with the EU, which is likely to align British standards with European ones.Donald Trump is expected to announce the framework of a trade agreement with the UK after teasing a major announcement with a “big and highly respected, country.”The specifics of any agreement were not immediately clear and there was no comment from the White House or the British embassy in Washington on whether an actual deal had been reached or if the framework would need further negotiation. Any agreement would mark the first such deal for the administration since it imposed sweeping tariffs against trade partners last month.In a post on Truth Social previewing the announcement, Trump was vague and did not disclose the country or the terms.“Big news conference tomorrow morning at 10:00am, the Oval Office, concerning a MAJOR TRADE DEAL WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF A BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY. THE FIRST OF MANY!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. More

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    UK officials land in Washington as talks over trade agreement continue

    A team of senior British trade negotiators has landed in Washington as talks over a deal between the two countries gather pace.Officials from the business and trade department are in the US for much of this week, attempting to get an agreement signed before the planned UK-EU summit on 19 May.Downing Street did not deny reports the deal could be signed as early as this week, although government sources said the recent announcement by the US president, Donald Trump, of film industry tariffs had proved a significant setback.One person briefed on the talks said: “We have a senior team on the ground now, and it may be that they are able to agree something this week. But the reality is the Trump administration keeps shifting the goalposts, as you saw with this week’s announcement on film tariffs.”Another said Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs on films “produced in foreign lands”, which could have a major impact on Britain’s film industry, had “gone down very badly in Downing Street”.UK officials say they are targeting tariff relief on a narrow range of sectors in order to get a deal agreed before they begin formal negotiations with the EU over a separate European agreement. A draft deal handed to the US a week ago would have reduced tariffs on British exports of steel, aluminium and cars, in return for a lower rate of the digital services tax, which is paid by a handful of large US technology companies.The Guardian revealed last week the Trump administration had made negotiating a trade deal with the UK a lower-order priority, behind a series of Asian countries. UK officials said they have been able to continue talks with their US counterparts despite that, describing the Trump administration’s approach as “chaotic”.Officials from the trade department arrived in Washington this week hoping to reach an agreement on two outstanding issues, pharmaceuticals and films.Trump has said he will impose tariffs on both industries, mainstays of the British economy, but has not yet given details.This week, the US president said the US film industry was dying a “very fast death” because of the incentives other countries were offering to draw American film-makers, and promised to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films. Britain offers producers generous reliefs on corporation tax to locate their projects there, which help support an industry now worth about £2bn, with major US films such as Barbie having recently been shot in Britain.Trump also said that he planned to unveil tariffs on imports of pharmaceutical products “in the next two weeks”. The UK exported £6.5bn worth of such goods to the US last year.Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has ruled out reducing food production standards to enable more trade of US agricultural products, as officials prioritise signing a separate agreement with the EU, which is likely to align British standards with European ones.Officials are racing to sign the US agreement before the planned UK-EU summit, at which both sides will set out their formal negotiating positions. Leaked documents revealed on Wednesday the two remain far apart on their demands for a youth mobility scheme, with Britain demanding that visas issued under the scheme should be limited in number and duration, and should exclude dependents.EU ambassadors met in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the progress of the deal. One diplomat said: “Negotiations are going well, the mood is still good but it is a bit early to see bold moves from one side or another.”This week Starmer also signed an agreement with India after giving way on a demand from Delhi for workers transferring to the UK within their companies to avoid paying national insurance while in the country.The concession has caused some unease in the Home Office, with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, not having been told about it in advance.It was also criticised by Kemi Badenoch, who accused the prime minister of bringing in a “two-tier” tax system. The Tory leader denied reports, however, that she had agreed to the same concession when she was business secretary.The prime minister defended the deal on Wednesday, telling MPs at PMQs it was a “huge win” for the UK. Other senior Tories have also praised the deal, including Steve Baker, Oliver Dowden and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the latter of whom said it was “exactly what Brexit promised”.British officials say they have been surprised at the willingness of the Labour government to sign agreements which have been on the table for years but previously rejected by the Conservative government.With economists having recently downgraded the UK’s growth outlook, Starmer is understood to have decided to sign deals such as that with India, even though they do not include a number of British demands, such as increased access for services.One source said the approach was to clinch a less ambitious agreement and use that to build a fuller economic partnership in the coming years. More

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    UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining intense US campaign against Houthi rebels

    British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.The British defence secretary, John Healey, said the attack was launched in response to “a persistent threat from the Houthis to freedom of navigation”. The Iran-backed group has attacked merchant shipping and western warships, leading to a sharp drop in trade flows.“A 55% drop in shipping through the Red Sea has already cost billions, fuelling regional instability and risking economic security for families in the UK,” Healey added in a social media post shortly after midnight.Further updates were expected from the UK later on Wednesday.Britain had joined with the US to conduct five rounds of airstrikes against the Houthis between January and May 2024, part of a campaign authorised by the Biden administration, but has not been involved in a fresh and more intense US effort until now.Since the launch on 15 March of Operation Rough Rider under the Trump administration, 800 targets have been struck resulting in the deaths of “hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders”, according to the US military’s Central Command.There have also been reports of higher civilian casualties. This week, the Houthis said 68 people were killed when a detention centre holding African migrants was struck in Saada, north-west Yemen, while 80 civilians were reported to have died in an attack on the port of Ras Isa on 18 April.Annie Shiel, the US director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic), said the “US strikes continue to raise significant questions about the precautions taken to prevent civilian harm, as required by both international law and US policy”, and noted that there appeared to have been a shift in policy under Donald Trump.Overnight on Tuesday, the UK said it had taken steps to minimise the risk of civilian casualties. The Houthi buildings were targeted with Paveway IV missiles once, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, “very careful planning had been completed to allow the targets to be prosecuted with minimal risk to civilians or non-military infrastructure”.The MoD also emphasised that “as a further precaution, the strike was conducted after dark, when the likelihood of any civilians being in the area was reduced yet further”, though no damage assessment was offered.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere was little immediate comment from the US, though the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has emphasised that the American military must emphasise “lethality, lethality, lethality” and has cut programmes intended to minimise civilian harm.News agencies said the Houthis reported several strikes around Sana’a, which the group has held since 2014, but there were few other details immediately available. Other strikes hit the area around Saada.The Houthis are targeting shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in support of Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza, subject of a renewed offensive by Israel. Though the US boasts considerably more firepower than the group, a $60m (£45m) US navy F-18 Super Hornet jet was lost at sea on Tuesday.US officials said initial reports from the scene indicated the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, on to which the F-18 was being towed, made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire. That contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard and sinking.The start of Operation Rough Rider caused controversy in the US over Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks, including a group containing a journalist. More

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    Emboldened by Trump, the ‘liberal’ UK is giving free rein to its colonial impulses | Kenneth Mohammed

    As Donald Trump rains chaos down upon the US – dismantling the rule of law trading in rage-fuelled nationalism and bullying the rest of the world – his ideology is now being eagerly imitated not just by the expected rogues of global politics, but by supposed bastions of democracy.These democracies now wear only a mask of civility over that old colonial impulses: control, divide, exploit.Most disturbing is the UK’s quiet complicity, sneaking its own brand of institutional cruelty. Like seasoned illusionists, they use chaos abroad to obscure injustice at home, to legitimise morally indefensible immigration policies.It is as though the UK and the US exchanged a sly nod across the Atlantic, and said: “Let’s see just how far we can go.”The US is now overseeing the deportation of thousands. Not illegal migrants. Legal. Some have lived in the country for decades, built families, contributed to society, paid taxes. As detention centre doors slams, dreams are extinguished in real time.Caribbean nation’s citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programmes, including Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia, are now under investigation by the US due to perceived security concerns, potentially facing travel restrictions. So, too, Africans are facing bans and visa cancellations.Not to be outdone, the UK has begun tightening visa restrictions on African and Caribbean nations under the thinnest of pretexts. To us, the message is clear: if you are the wrong colour and hail from a former colony, you’re not welcome. Of course, you’re more than welcome if you are Ukrainian or bringing money or minerals.View image in fullscreenA report on the roots of the Windrush scandal posted on the UK government’s website summarises, “major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin.” Sixty years later, the UK still engages this socio-political ideology.Take the absurd treatment of Trinidad and Tobago. British authorities last month slapped exorbitant visa fees on Trinidadians, similar to Jamaica and Dominica. The justification? A spike in asylum claims – from an average of 49 a year between 2015 and 2019 to 439 in 2023.In the year ending June 2024, the UK’s net immigration was 728,000, a 20% decrease from 2023’s peak of 906,000. Yet 439 Trinidadians cause a “crisis”? This is political theatre staged for a frothing few with empire nostalgia and immigrant paranoia.But the Trinbagonian government cannot be let off the hook. For over a decade, gang violence triggered by smuggled guns from the US, the drug trade from South America and the influx of gang members from Venezuela has worsened under an impuissant minister of security and a government in paralysis.This new UK immigration policy for Trinidad and Tobago isn’t policy, its punishment. It’s the empire rearing its head again – this time in the guise of “immigration control”. If the UK was truly concerned, it could have picked up the phone and spoken to the high commissioner to the UK or even the Prime Minister to find a proportionate solution – as fellow Commonwealth members. But what does the Commonwealth mean any more? A glorified nostalgia club presided over by a monarch few in the Caribbean have ever seen.The Commonwealth is a relic. An expensive, hollow monument to a colonial past Britain refuses to apologise for and the Caribbean refuses to walk away from. Common means subservience, and wealth flows only one way. For example, the judicial committee of the privy council remains the highest court for many Caribbean nations – a colonial backdoor that ensures British influence remains after the union jack has been lowered.View image in fullscreenWhy does the Caribbean still genuflect before a throne that sees it as a holiday destination at best and an aid burden at worst? Why do African nations tolerate the condescension of aid when their stolen minerals fuel the west’s riches? As Bob Marley demanded, we must “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”?The truth is: the west cannot function without us. It feeds off our resources, our oil and minerals, our intellect. Yet it treats us like pests at the door: unworthy of entry, let alone equality.Why are we still playing this rigged game? Why are we still begging for visas, pleading for asylum, when our presence build these nations in the first place?It’s time we stopped asking for permission, withdrew our labour, our brilliance, ourselves – and left them to stew in their nostalgia, mistaking walls for strength and xenophobia for sovereignty. We’ll build something better.Trump’s sledgehammer approach to diplomacy has torched relationships with Canada, Panama, Greenland, South Africa and the broader African continent. The Caribbean is not spared, least of all that US favourite: Cuba.This time, he unleashed his bulldog secretary of state, Marco Rubio,on Cuba’s quiet but powerful diplomatic engine: its doctors. For decades, Cuban medical professionals have travelled the world, from rural outposts in Africa to hurricane-ravaged villages in Haiti, treating the sick and delivering babies, with the soft diplomacy the US abandoned around the time it thought regime change was a sustainable foreign policy model.Cuban doctors have long symbolised international solidarity, emerging from a nation routinely vilified – because nothing terrifies Washington more than socialism in brown skin. But rather than acknowledge this medical diplomacy for what it is – a humanitarian gift – Rubio has instead accused Caribbean nations of exploiting these doctors, underpaying them and “trafficking” them. The audacity is breathtaking.Rubio threatened to revoke US visas from government officials and their immediate family members in any Caribbean country that accepts Cuban medical workers. Because America now exports moral lectures it no longer even pretends to live by.But this time, the Caribbean didn’t flinch. Leaders across the region responded with collective eye-rolling and a resounding: “Come take your visa.”These are independent nations, not subsidiaries of the US. Caribbean leaders made it clear: Cuban doctors are paid on a par with local medical professionals, they are not coerced, and are free to leave at any time. They are crucial to the region’s healthcare systems.Rubio’s daring to speak on behalf of doctors who have done more good across the global south than the aid-slashing US state department has in decades, is an insult not just to the Caribbean but to common sense.What we are witnessing here is a petulance from a fading empire that has replaced its moral compass with paranoia, and outsourced its diplomacy to the whisperings of an erratic billionaire, delusional oligarchs and baby-faced thinktanks addicted to colonial cosplayAmerica’s diplomacy had died, been cremated and scattered over Mar-a-Lago.So while Washington plays imperial hardball with nations trying to provide healthcare to their citizens, the rest of us are left wondering, again, why we allow ourselves to be bullied by a country that cannot keep its own citizens out of medical bankruptcy.At some point, the Caribbean – and the wider global south – must draw a red line. Not just rhetorically, but structurally. We need new alliances, new trading currencies, new friends, new models of cooperation rooted not in colonial debt but mutual respect.Because it is increasingly clear that the US is not interested in partnerships – it wants puppets. Preferably black or brown-skinned, desperate and pliable. More

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    RFK’s statements prove autistic people and their families everywhere should fear Trump and his allies | John Harris

    In the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is “a terrible human being” and “probably a sociopath”. But in the US’s new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory.Nearly 2,000 members of the US’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have warned of “slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration”. Even work on cancer is now under threat. But if you want to really understand the Trump regime’s monstrousness, consider where Kennedy and a gang of acolytes are heading on an issue that goes to the heart of millions of lives: autism.Last Wednesday, Kennedy spoke at a press conference staged in response to a report about apparently rising rates of autism published by the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And out it all came: an insistence that autism is an “epidemic” and a “preventable disease”, and – in complete defiance of the science – that the root cause lies with “environmental toxins”. A range of new studies, he said, will begin reporting back in September: with the same banality that defines his boss’s promises on international conflict and global economics, he told his audience that answers would be presented to the public “very, very quickly”.Most of the people present would have been aware of Kennedy’s past support for the thoroughly discredited idea that autism is somehow linked to the use of vaccines. As he spoke, they were presumably reminded of the occasions when he has talked about autistic people with a mixture of disgust and complete ignorance. Autism, he said, “destroys” families; today’s autistic children “will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” Those comments have rightly triggered a huge backlash. But what has been rather lacking is a broader critique of Kennedy’s ideas, and how they go deep into aspects of the US’s culture and politics.As I explain in the book I have just written about my autistic son, James, I began my immersion in autism and the arguments that swirl around it 15 years ago, when he received his diagnosis from the NHS. That came amid visits from speech therapists and educational psychologists, and increasingly futile appointments with a paediatrician, who in effect told us to go away and manage as best we could. But straight away, I was also aware of a much more exotic subculture rooted in the US, based around the idea that autism could somehow be cured, and an array of regimens and pseudo-treatments.The anxieties surrounding Andrew Wakefield’s disgraced work on a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab were still easy to pick up. I read about “chelation”: injecting chemicals into the bloodstream, supposedly to remove the toxic preservatives used in vaccines from the body and send autism on its way. It was easy to find stuff about impossibly restrictive diets, and the terrifying notion of forcing people to drink diluted bleach. These ideas, moreover, came with claims of endless government cover-ups: proto-Maga stuff, which had long been snowballing online.That said, the underlying logic of all this quackery was encouraged by much more mainstream voices. By and large, British campaigning and research tends to focus on what autism actually is, and how to make autistic lives better – whereas in the US, very powerful forces have seen autism as a disease. In 2006, President George W Bush signed a legislative package tellingly called the Combating Autism Act, hailed by one of its supporters as “a federal declaration of war on the epidemic of autism”. At that point, there were initiatives and organisations with names such as Cure Autism Now and Defeat Autism Now! All this had already spawned the autistic self-advocacy movement that continues to loudly contest such ideas, but its appeal obviously still lingers.If I were in the US, I would now have two big worries. As well as constant attacks on the public sector that have already hacked back help for autistic people, there is a huge question about what Kennedy’s nonsense might mean for other areas of federal government policy, and the kind of MMR-style panics his “answers” on toxins might trigger. But some of those concerns also apply to the UK, thanks to the ease with which ideas travel, and how Trump and his allies influence politics across the world.Kennedy’s pronouncements are not only about what causes autism; they also reflect an age-old perception of autism as an aberration, and many autistic people as “ineducable” and beyond help. This surely blurs into populists’ loathing of modern ideas about human difference: once you have declared war on diversity, an attack on the idea of neurodiversity will not be far away. It also chimes with one of the new right’s most pernicious elements: its constant insistence that everything is actually much simpler than it looks.Which brings me to something it feels painful to have to write. Autism denotes a fantastically complicated set of human traits and qualities, but that does not make them any less real. It presents with and without learning disabilities, and can be synonymous with skills and talents. Its causes (if that is even the right word) are largely genetic, although careful research is focused on how those heritable aspects might sometimes – sometimes– intersect with factors during pregnancy, and with parental age. And obviously, those characterisations barely scratch the surface, which is some indication of the absurdity of Kennedy’s position, and how dangerous it is.On this side of the Atlantic, there are very good reasons why many of us who have families with autistic members feel deep anxiety about the constant shunting of politics to the right. The care, education and official understanding of the people we love and sometimes look after is fragile enough already: what would happen if their fate was in the hands of the Trumpist know-nothings of Reform UK, or Alternative für Deutschland? The American tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes shows the future we now have to avoid, and the kind of people we may have to fight, who will not just be arrogant and inhumane, but set on taking us back to a failed past: terrible human beings, you might call them. More

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    ‘I don’t want to give money to this America’: tourists’ fears of US travel under Trump

    Last year, while Joe Biden was US president, Jenny and her husband booked a trip to Boston for June 2025.The British couple had been to New York before and wanted to see more of the country. But after Donald Trump’s re-election in November, Jenny said a “shadow” began to fall on their travel plans.Since Trump took office, reports have emerged from US border points of tourists being detained and interrogated, people with work permits sent to Ice detention centres and even a US citizen seemingly told to leave the country – as well as people being wrongly deported.Overseas visits to the US were down 11.6% in March compared with the same month last year, according to the US National Travel and Tourism Office.“I had a growing feeling that I really didn’t want to give this new America our money,” said Jenny, a 54-year-old former librarian from Northamptonshire. “But it took the news of the detainments at airports and borders to really crystallise our concerns into action.”The pair decided to cancel the trip.Dozens of people responded to an online callout to share their views about travelling to the US in light of the Trump administration’s policies. While several people reported no problems entering and leaving the US, others spoke of anxiety at the border and unpleasant interactions with officials – although many people raised it as being a longstanding problem.Jenny said it was frightening to see the reports of detainments and deportations in the supposed “land of the free”.After deciding not to travel, “we just feel so relieved,” she said. “We’ve now cancelled the flights and hotel and are heading to Crete for a week instead. We’ll visit Boston when Trump is long gone.”Several people who got in touch after travelling to the US recently reported no problem at the border. Sarah, a 39-year-old who works in financial services and lives in Hertfordshire, took her seven-year-old daughter to Miami, the Everglades and the Disney and Universal parks in Orlando this spring.“We were a little nervous about going, given recent coverage,” she said. “Amusingly, our seven-year-old asked earlier this year: ‘Are we still going to America now that man is back?’”Gruff border officials aside, at the airport they found everything was fine. “My husband and I had a conversation about how we’re probably quite privileged at the border, compared to some other families,” Sarah said.“It did make me think, am I being disproportionately frightened of something because of hearing coverage about rare or edge-cases? I tend to be quite data-driven, so hearing these stories in the news, we tried not to worry and just thought that we’ve done everything we need to do with visas and paperwork.”Sarah said her daughter had a great time in Florida and at the parks. “When we got out the airport in Miami, she said: ‘The cars are massive!’”But for some foreign citizens with partners from the US, travelling there feels particularly anxiety-inducing. Paul*, a 44-year-old French citizen living close to the Swiss border, is in a long-distance relationship with his fiancee, who lives in Detroit. He plans to fly from Paris to Chicago in June.“I am very uneasy about travelling because I fear being denied entry – or worse, being detained for whatever reason – and never being able to set foot in the US again,” he said. “As my fiancee and I are planning on getting married in the US in the autumn, this would seriously jeopardise our plans.” For now, he plans to fly.One silver lining of the heightened attention on the US border, he said, could be the exposure of longstanding unsavoury practices.“Rightfully, we’re all appalled at these recent stories,” Paul said, adding that he hoped these incidents would allow westerners to reflect on how border authorities had long treated certain groups.Alex, 39, a Dutch civil servant with a Peruvian background, said when he was flying to Peru to see family in 2017 he was subjected to a “very angry” interrogation by a border official during a layover in Miami. He said they examined his computer and books and asked if he was a communist.“I think it was intimidation for its own sake,” Alex said. “In all honesty I’m quite scared to travel to the US, but at the same time I can’t help but have this strong feeling of irony about this whole situation. Europeans now can face a treatment by the US that was previously reserved for folks from developing countries.”*Some names have been changed. More

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    What can the global left learn from Mexico – where far-right politics hasn’t taken off? | Thomas Graham

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    If you were to summarise the 2024 election year, you might say: grim for incumbents, good for the far right. Yet Mexico bucked both trends. Its governing party, Morena, not only retained the presidency but – along with its partners in the Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition – gained a two-thirds supermajority in the chamber of deputies, the lower house, while the far right failed to even run a candidate. That a self-described leftwing party could have such success by fixing on Mexico’s chasmic inequality has drawn attention from hopeful progressives worldwide. But Morena’s programme has some not-so-progressive elements too. It is not necessarily one others could – or would want to – copy in its entirety.Morena first notched a historic result in 2018, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an old face of the left who ran for president twice before founding the party, won a record 55% of the vote during the general elections. Mexico’s constitution limits presidents to a single term. But this time, Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of López Obrador’s, won 60% of the vote. Her victory was reminiscent of the heyday of Latin America’s “pink tide”, when leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales were reelected for a second term with more votes than their initial victories.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, the far right didn’t even get on the ballot. Eduardo Verástegui, an actor turned activist who produced Sound of Freedom, the surprise box office hit about a US federal agent busting a child-trafficking ring in Colombia, sought to bring Trumpian politics to Mexico but failed to collect the signatures required to run as an independent. Rather than developing a Mexican brand of far-right politics, Verástegui tried to transplant a distinctly American flavour that was heavy with God, guns and individualism. It didn’t take root.Morena’s success in building a leftwing movement stemmed from the party’s focus on socioeconomic justice. López Obrador developed a simple and powerful populist narrative, arguing that the country had been captured by corrupt elites, including the old political parties and their national and transnational business partners. This resonates for people in Mexico, a palpably unequal country in which roughly 27% of income accrues to the richest 1%.López Obrador promised to change that. His charisma and his long track record in Mexico made him a convincing vehicle for the message, which he hammered home in trips to every corner of the country and daily press conferences known as the mañaneras. In these, he touted his government’s achievements and lambasted its critics, shaping the media agenda. Morena’s message was amplified through state and social media, creating a kind of personality cult around López Obrador.And he delivered. López Obrador’s government doubled the minimum wage in real terms, while expanding social programmes and cash transfers for pensioners and the young, among others. It clamped down on the practice of outsourcing workers to avoid paying benefits and legislated that union contracts be put to democratic votes. And it focused infrastructure projects on the historically marginalised south, building trains and a new oil refinery. From 2018 to 2022, the percentage of the population living in poverty fell from roughly 42% to 36%.More from this series@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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    By putting inequality at the centre of his discourse, López Obrador created a committed base of supporters who were willing to overlook the shortcomings of his government. Although he came to power promising to improve corruption, insecurity and impunity, he achieved none of these things. His government had its own corruption scandals, and Mexico’s homicide rate remained high, with about 30,000 murders a year. In some ways, the situation worsened: extortion is now rampant. Despite this, large parts of the population felt increasingly confident in democracy. By 2023, 61% of Mexicans said they had faith in their national government, compared with 29% when he took office.But progressives elsewhere shouldn’t be too sanguine about the prospect of copying Morena’s model. While doing all the above, López Obrador also made expedient moves to the right. He cut deals with big business and swerved on tax reform. He kept fiscal austerity, meaning boosted social spending was funded with cuts elsewhere. He cracked down on US-bound migrants for political capital in Washington, and he refused to take a position on gay marriage or abortion, presumably to avoid limiting Morena’s appeal. And he embraced Mexico’s military, a popular but opaque institution with a record of human rights abuses, relying on them to deliver his programme. And although López Obrador set up several commissions to investigate historical abuses by the army, he later abandoned them.Criticisms came from across the political spectrum, but López Obrador brushed them off – and often insinuated they came from actors in hock to the corrupt elites of his narrative. By the end of his government, he had lost support from some feminists, environmentalists and victims of violence, to name a few. Yet his base continued to grow. He left power with approval ratings of about 70%.Once it became clear that Morena was on the up, politicians of all stripes, including some dubious characters, sought to join. Morena welcomed them, diluting principle with pragmatism. This shortcut to electoral success came at the cost of internal tensions. Still, Morena maintains a membership and grassroots activity that no other party can match. It has 2.3 million registered members, and wants to make that 10 million. Sheinbaum has commanded the party’s activists to get out to every part of the country. (It is an article of faith in the party that López Obrador’s success was born of visiting each of Mexico’s nearly 2,500 municipalities.) All of this no doubt helps ground Morena in local realities – in contrast to the fledgling far right.The party’s connection to local contexts limits how much progressives outside Mexico can draw from Morena’s example. Mexico is marked by its colonial history, and was under one-party rule for most of the 20th century before it transitioned to democracy in the 1990s. Today, organised crime exerts immense influence through violence and corruption, while Mexico’s economic dependence on the US is extreme. This sharp sense of injustice is a mobilising political sentiment.It would be tempting to frame Mexico’s political landscape as a story about the left successfully resisting the right. But progressives elsewhere must ask themselves how much they would want to draw from Morena. The focus on socioeconomic justice, the narrative control and the party organisation were tied up with some uglier aspects of populism, and an expedient adoption of rightwing positions. It’s hard to say whether the latter were necessary for Morena’s electoral success. But there is dissent on the Mexican left, where some, having weighed the results against their values, are no longer on board with the party.

    Thomas Graham is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City More

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    Trump Media urges regulators to investigate hedge fund’s vast bet against stock

    Donald Trump’s fledgling media firm has urged market regulators to investigate “suspicious activity” after a London-based hedge fund disclosed a vast bet against its stock.Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of the US president’s Truth Social platform, raised questions over trading by Qube Research & Technologies.Earlier this week, Qube revealed a significant short position in Trump Media via filings with Germany’s federal Gazette Bundesanzeiger. It disclosed a position of almost 6m shares, according to Trump Media.Short-selling is a way of betting against a public company. An investor borrows a stock, and then sells it on; should the stock fall, the investor then buys it back and pockets the difference.In a memo to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Trump Media – which trades under the ticker “DJT”, using Trump’s initials – said the total short interest in the company was 10.7m as of 31 March, according to Nasdaq, where its shares are listed, and had only risen to about 11m as of Wednesday.These factors “especially when combined with the history of suspicious trading surrounding DJT stock … could be indications of the illegal naked short selling of DJT shares”, Trump Media claimed.Qube did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Shares in Trump Media rallied by about 7% in New York on Thursday. They have fallen by more than a third this year.The firm is currently seeking to branch out beyond its core Truth Social platform, and this week announced investment accounts based on themes, including “Made in America” and “Energy Independence”, which align with the Trump administration’s agenda.On its website, Qube says it combines “data, research, technology and trading expertise” to “solve the most complex challenges”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe hedge fund was spun out of Credit Suisse in 2018, and is still led by Pierre-Yves Morlat and Laurent Laizet, former employees of the bank. It also has offices in Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.In that time, Qube has grown quickly to rival some established giants of the industry, reportedly managing about $23bn of assets, which according to industry estimates would put it among the top 1% of hedge funds. It is also considered unusual for its lack of a New York office and collaborative corporate culture.Alongside its short position in Trump Media, Qube has short positions in a range of UK-listed companies, including real estate firms, fashion retailer Boohoo and bowling centre operator Hollywood Bowl Group, according to the latest disclosures with the UK’s City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority. More