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      Trump fangirl Liz Truss channels Maga menace at US conservative thinktank

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      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

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      in US Politics

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

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      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

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      in US Politics

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

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      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

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

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      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

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      in Elections

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

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      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

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      Skeptical America’s ‘Katespiracies’ fixation goes beyond a reasonable doubt

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      For a while, the “Katespiracies” were the most fun people have had on the internet in a long time.The whereabouts of the Princess of Wales after her planned abdominal surgery and subsequent recovery were not particularly high stakes, and so many reveled in the threads and group chats as the “what ifs” got wilder – the theories both more specific and more incredible at the same time.Some postured that Catherine had been replaced with a body double, had been photoshopped into photos not just now but for months, or maybe treated unjustly by an increasingly sinister Prince William. Or: could it be that the princess was dead?The royals did not help their own case. With each vague and defensive correspondence from Buckingham Palace confirming Catherine was actually fine and on track for a recovery by Easter, the online world doubled down.“The Princess of Wales has returned home to Windsor to continue her recovery from surgery. She is making good progress,” a Kensington Palace spokesperson said back in January. “The prince and princess wish to say a huge thank you to the entire team at the London Clinic, especially the dedicated nursing staff, for the care they have provided.”When the Associated Press noted that a photo of Catherine and her children had been doctored, presumably manipulated by the princess herself, the frantic cycle of speculation only escalated.For many it felt like a break from reality and a news cycle dominated by war and politics, and an exercise in collective creativity. It was Twitter/X at its funniest, and the common person working towards a common goal. (That, and the Timothée Chalamet meme.)Then, suddenly, it got dark.A video was released this week by the Sun of Catherine and William shopping near their home. The metadata confirmed the location and timing. In a normal world, this would be enough to slow the rumor mill. But of course, it wasn’t. Internet sleuths kept sleuthing.Why were the Christmas decorations still up in March? She didn’t look exactly like herself, did she? Why were all these videos so damn blurry?It was proof that nothing would satiate the hive mind in the post-truth world, a world where people are fed an onslaught of information, much of it true, some of it manufactured, and some of it somewhere in between. And when people are primed to believe something is false, there’s little one can do, short of maybe meeting the princess in person, that will put an end to the doubt.That matters far beyond what may – or may not – be going on with Britain’s future queen.The US is currently battling a deep distrust in institutions that, while fallible and constantly evolving, are actually founded in the public good – from the Department of Justice to the CDC. That distrust, paired with the ease of proliferating conspiracy theories, has made the ability to have civic discourse, or to report the truth, increasingly difficult. It gives way not to the most likely explanation, or the most fact-based – but the one that most fits with the narrative the court of public opinion has cultivated.There are many depressing versions of Katespiracies that hound Americans in the political world. For example: Ashley Biden’s (fake) diary, QAnon and pretty much anything to do with Anthony Fauci. How do you convince people who believe these hoaxes – which have been disproven many times over, that the real threat to their lives is losing critical social safety nets or birth control, herd immunity, or public education?It is true that the world is rife with misinformation, and blindly trusting those in power has never been a good idea. The royal family, specifically, has a long history of scandal and secrecy. And public institutions, similarly, owe us transparency and clarity.Yet three months of speculation on Catherine is a sign that healthy doubt and questioning can be easily replaced by the inability to accept any truth at all. In the absence of information, on any subject, we’ve now seen what can happen when the court of public opinion takes over the conversation. Even when the facts emerge, there’s a possibility that it will no longer matter. More

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      in US Politics

      If we the Black voters ‘get loud’, neither the Tories nor Donald Trump will survive | Al Sharpton

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      Donald Trump’s racist mentality has long been an open secret. In the 1970s, a federal lawsuit was brought against him for alleged racial discrimination on one of his housing developments in New York. He led the campaign calling for the death penalty against the Central Park Five, who were accused of a brutal rape but later vindicated. Even after that exoneration, he continued to suggest they were guilty.So are Black Americans flocking to support Trump? Reports are mixed. Trump himself would tell you he has a unique affinity with the Black community, but personally, I don’t buy it. Polling in 2020 estimated Trump would take 20% of the black vote. The real number was closer to 8%.After all, let’s remember what he says about us. Just this weekend, he said that Black Americans identified with him because he had faced criminal charges and we embraced his criminal mugshot. That was outright racist and insulting. For him to say that during Black History Month in the US is the epitome of an insult.And the irony is that he is the one being prosecuted – and by Black professionals at that. The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, brought the financially ruinous civil financial fraud case against Trump. Fani Willis, Fulton county district attorney, was responsible for challenging Trump’s alleged election interference in Georgia.I spend a lot of time speaking with Black voters. I host a US radio show six days a week – and from what I hear, I’m not alone in thinking that claims that he has growing support among our community are grossly exaggerated. But I do think it is fair to say that Black citizens are asking questions of the Democrats.Joe Biden has simply not done a good enough job on messaging. He needs to be more aggressive in speaking to Black voters – laying out his record, such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (which Trump opposed) and his support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (which almost every Republican voted down). Biden should not assume people know what they haven’t been reminded of.US liberals must understand that if you take the high road and are not making noise about it, no one knows that you’re taking any road. They have to be more vocal, they have to challenge more, and not run away from the issue of race.That goes for the left in the UK, too. Arriving yesterday, I was disgusted to hear racist, Islamophobic language being used by members of the Conservative party. The Tories seem to be alarmingly Trump-like in their language. And that should be a mobilising cry to millions of Black British voters to register to vote.It shocks me that the wider British public doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the threat to Black voting in the UK. The UK’s new photo ID legislation disproportionately disadvantages Black and minority voters. We know – similar legislation was used against us in the US. But Black people mobilised against it, and in 2021 helped to elect Raphael Warnock as Georgia’s first Black US senator. It shows the importance of fighting back.That’s why I came here: to tell leaders to use our playbook to challenge laws that suppress the Black vote – and to impress on Black communities the importance of turning out. It is imperative to democracy that we awaken the black vote in the UK and bring it alive. And we must do it simultaneously in the US.Biden has an opportunity to expose Trump’s lies and get disenfranchised communities back on side. To do that, he must be candid: he must openly call out Trump’s blatant racism for what it is. He must tell Black voters how Trump stacked the courts in a way that is detrimental to them, and that he will aggressively fight that. The Democrats still have time to recapture those whom they think they are losing. If they do that, Trump will have no recourse. He can’t undo things he has already said and done.You have to turn people on before you can turn them out. And if you turn them on to what is being done to us – what has already been said about us – you can turn people out. Liberal movements in the US and the UK have been blindly hoping that people will turn out on their own. But leaders must understand they won’t mobilise without a reason. It’s not enough to be proud in silence – we need to get loud again.
      The Rev Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader, activist and founder and president of National Action Network (Nan). As told to Lucy Pasha-Robinson.

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      Wednesday briefing: Everyone claims to back a ceasefire in Gaza. But what are they really saying?

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      Good morning. The daily details of the horror being visited on civilians in Gaza can make any conversation about the language of ceasefire proposals being put forward in foreign capitals seem absurd.A massive majority at the UN general assembly backed a ceasefire in December; so did the pope. A few days later, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer backed a “sustainable” ceasefire. Twenty-six of 27 EU states again called for a ceasefire on Monday. Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet been persuaded by any of them.But the calls for a ceasefire, and the subtle ways that they’ve changed over time, do tell us something about Israel’s weakening position on the international stage. This week, in the UK and at the UN, rival propositions for what a ceasefire might look like have emerged. Behind the diplomatic wrangling, and a particular crisis today for the Labour party in Britain, is a complicated story about how the violence might end, and who might be able to influence it.The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has been covering these discussions. For today’s newsletter, I asked him whether any of them will make any difference. Here are the headlines.Five big stories
      Health | Patients whose health is failing will be granted the right to obtain an urgent second opinion about their care, as “Martha’s rule” is initially adopted in 100 English hospitals from April at the start of a national rollout. The initiative follows a campaign by Merope Mills, a senior editor at the Guardian, and her husband, Paul Laity, after their 13-year-old daughter Martha died of sepsis at King’s College hospital in London in 2021.
      UK news | Detectives hunting for Abdul Ezedi, the man wanted over a chemical assault that injured a vulnerable woman and her two young daughters, have recovered a body in the Thames that they believe is Ezedi, Scotland Yard has said. “We have been in contact with his family to pass on the news,” said Cmdr Jon Savell.
      WikiLeaks | Julian Assange faces the risk of a “flagrant denial of justice” if tried in the US, the high court has heard. Lawyers for Assange are seeking permission to appeal against the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition, and say he could face a “grossly disproportionate” sentence of up to 175 years if convicted in the US.
      PPE contracts | Michael Gove failed to register hospitality he enjoyed with a Conservative donor whose company he had recommended for multimillion-pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the Covid pandemic. When asked by the Guardian about not registering VIP hospitality at a football match he received from David Meller, a spokesperson for Gove apologised for the “oversight”.
      Pakistan | Imran Khan’s political rivals have announced details of a coalition agreement, naming Shehbaz Sharif as their joint candidate for prime minister amid continuing concerns about the legitimacy of the recent elections. Candidates aligned with Khan won the most seats in the parliamentary elections but not enough to form a government.
      In depth: ‘The use of the word ceasefire in a US resolution is a shot across Israel’s bows’View image in fullscreenThe prospect of an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have now sought sanctuary, has made the urgency over the question of a new ceasefire greater than ever. Israel says that unless Hamas frees every hostage by the beginning of Ramadan on 10 March, it will launch its offensive; if so, there could be dire humanitarian consequences, and a danger of more violence in the West Bank and escalation across the Middle East.Israel and Hamas have been participating in talks in Cairo brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar. And while the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said that recent days “were not really very promising”, discussions are still continuing, Patrick Wintour said: “The focus at the moment is on the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for each hostage. But the pressure is certainly growing.” Two resolutions at the UN and three motions and amendments in the UK parliament this week help make sense of the nature, and limits, of that pressure.The Algerian resolution | ‘Immediate humanitarian ceasefire’Algeria, the only Arab state currently on the UN security council, brought a resolution forward calling for a ceasefire to begin immediately – and endorsing the provisional orders issued by the international court of justice obliging Israel to take action to prevent genocide.13 security council members supported the resolution – but the UK abstained, and the US used its veto. Washington claimed that the Algerian text risked disrupting negotiations aimed at agreeing a hostage release deal in Cairo – although, as Patrick pointed out: “The Arab Group [including Egypt and Qatar] at the UN has made it very clear that they don’t agree with that.” Others suggest that the US, although now more distant from Israel, is simply not willing to back a resolution demanding it agree to an immediate ceasefire.“The Algerians did initially hope that they could win US support for this,” he said. “They were willing to make changes to try to accommodate the Americans. But at the weekend they decided they weren’t going to get that support, so they went ahead without them.”The US resolution | ‘A temporary ceasefire’ beginning ‘as soon as practicable’If the inevitability of the veto might make Algeria’s resolution appear pointless, the fruits of its efforts are not in the vote itself, but in another resolution which will likely be voted on later this week – brought forward by the US in response.Washington has now used its security council veto three times to protect Israel, Patrick noted: “They needed to show that they have some sort of solution to the impasse, not simply putting their hands up and saying ‘No’.”The language is sharp on the prospect of an attack in Rafah, which is said to hold “serious implications for regional peace and security”. The use of the word “ceasefire” in a US resolution for the first time also feels significant, Patrick added: “It’s a shot across Israel’s bows. They’re saying, you mustn’t start a ground offensive, and you must start to let aid in more substantially.”At the same time, he noted, “it’s important not to be bamboozled by the use of that word”. Probably more important is the phrase “as soon as practicable” – which would appear to give Israel total latitude over timing and terms. “It isn’t a demand for a ceasefire now, it’s a proposal for a ceasefire in the future,” Patrick said. “So it does put some sort of pressure on Netanyahu, but a lot less than, for example, stopping sending arms would do.”The SNP motion | ‘An immediate ceasefire’Opposition day motions in the UK House of Commons are non-binding, and obviously far less consequential than security council resolutions. But they do suggest that the centre of gravity on the issue in UK politics might be shifting – a little.The Scottish National party put forward a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in November; their new motion today is substantively very similar. Although it calls for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas, it does not say that should be a prerequisite: “It calls for an immediate ceasefire without saying that there are any conditions attached,” Patrick said.Labour has been worried that a number of its MPs would break ranks to support the SNP motion, not least because it is substantively so close to what many of them have been saying already. That is part of why it finally came up with its own amendment yesterday.The Labour amendment | ‘An immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides’“I don’t think they would have tabled this now but for the SNP putting its own motion forward,” Patrick said. “They can point to external events, like the level of bombardment in Gaza – but ultimately this is the result of knowing that they were facing another very sizeable rebellion.”For more detail on the Labour text, see this analysis from Kiran Stacey. “The amendment is very long, but it does show that they’ve moved – for instance, it says: ‘Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October cannot happen again.’ Previously, they’ve said that Hamas can’t be left in a military position to mount such a strike again – so it seems to back away from that idea.”It is also the first time Labour has called for an “immediate” ceasefire. Nonetheless, it is much less straightforward than the SNP text: the left-wing campaign group Momentum says that “by making its call for a ceasefire so conditional and caveated, the Labour leadership is giving cover for Israel’s brutal war to continue”.Labour’s slowness to respond to growing public pressure, particularly among its own voters, on Gaza is because “they’re trying to stay as close to the UK government position as possible, and to the US”, Patrick said. “They would view it as politically risky to be too far from either.”But Labour’s manoeuvres have not headed off the risk of rebellion. While officials believed yesterday that they had persuaded potential rebels to support their motion over the SNP’s, the government later published its own amendment – and it is not yet clear whether that text or Labour’s will be put to a vote today. If Labour’s amendment is not on the table, dozens of MPs could yet rebel and back the SNP.The UK government amendment | ‘Negotiations to agree a … pause’For a long time, the British government (and Labour) position appeared defined by the term “sustainable ceasefire”. “That became a code, really, for saying that there’s no need for Israel to commit to anything until Hamas was obliterated,” Patrick said. “You hear that much less now. Foreign Office officials now say that the idea Hamas can be militarily destroyed is for the birds.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNonetheless, the government repeats that language in its proposed amendment to the SNP motion. It endorses only “negotiations to agree an immediate humanitarian pause” and then “moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire” – and says that getting there will require the release of all hostages, and “Hamas to be unable to launch further attacks and no longer in charge in Gaza”. That ultimately still accepts that a decision about timing is in Israel’s power – which is why so many Labour MPs will struggle to back it.Do all of these triangulations, whether at the UN or in Westminster, really matter? “I doubt if you’re in Gaza you’re waiting with bated breath to hear what the Labour or SNP motions say,” Patrick said. “And even though Netanyahu’s not popular, the Israel public still doesn’t support a ceasefire. But diplomatic movements like these have brought accumulating pressure to bear on Israel, and placed limits on where they can go.”What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen
      Members of Generation Z are allegedly going to bed at 9pm: Tim Dowling (above), who is a little older, spent a week trying it for himself. “I sleep fitfully and, after a certain point, not at all,” he grumbles. “My biological clock has blown its mainspring.” Archie
      In 1974, a group of young families established the Old Hall community in an 18th-century manor house, running an ad in the Guardian seeking other “middle-class socialists” to join them. Emine Saner visited the commune to see how the project was fairing all these years later and the legacy it has created. Nimo
      I absolutely loved Fergal Kinney’s headlong dive into the lore of Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a movie so bad that it arguably broke British cinema, and quite a few careers. Especially good are an extract from Peter Bradshaw’s brutal review, and the surprising turn to experimental theatre at the end. Archie
      Gaby Hinsliff reflects on Breathtaking, a Covid drama written by a doctor about her experiences in hospital wards at the height of the pandemic, and asks whether it will shift public opinion on the forthcoming junior doctors’ strikes. Nimo
      A gambling addiction treatment centre run by the charity Gordon Moody in Wolverhampton is the only one in the UK catering specifically to women. Jessica Murray reports on the life-changing benefits for those who use the services. Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Erling Haaland (above) netted Manchester City’s only goal in a 1-0 victory over Brentford that lifted them into second place in the Premier League table, just one point behind leaders Liverpool. In the Champions League, Luuk de Jong rescued a PSV draw 1-1 against Borussia Dortmund, while a late goal from substitute Marko Arnautovic gave Inter Milan a 1-0 home victory against Atlético Madrid.Tennis | Andy Murray took his first step out of the worst slump of his career as he outplayed France’s Alexandre Müller for much of their battle before holding his nerve at the close to reach the second round of the Qatar Open with a confidence-boosting 6-1, 7-6 (5) victory. Murray entered the court in Doha on a six-match losing streak.Athletics | Radical proposals that could see foul jumps eliminated from the long jump have been criticised as an “April Fools’ joke” by four-time Olympic ­champion Carl Lewis. With around a third of all jumps disqualified at last year’s world championships, World Athletics is to trial a new “take-off zone” instead of the usual fixed wooden board.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Labour leader faces threat of revolt over Gaza despite call for ceasefire” says our Guardian print edition splash this morning. “William: too many have died in Gaza conflict” – that’s the Daily Mail, while the Telegraph has “William: fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end”. “Prince issues Gaza plea for permanent peace” is how the Times reports it. “‘Cam’s govt knew’” – that’s David Cameron’s government and the wrongful Post Office prosecutions, in the Metro. “Barclays to return £10bn to investors in push for new revenues and balance” is the lead in the Financial Times. “PM: completely ridiculous for illegal migrants to jump the queue” reports the Daily Express. “Putin’s Brit targets” – the Daily Mirror touts as an exclusive its page one story about claims the Russian ruler is putting together a hitlist.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWhy the NHS needs Martha’s ruleFollowing a campaign by her family in memory of Martha Mills, the NHS is introducing Martha’s rule giving hospital patients in England access to a rapid review from a separate medical team if they are concerned with the care they are receivingCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenFor decades the role of Black Americans in space exploration was diminished and ignored. A new National Geographic documentary seeks to redress this erasure by chronicling the stories of African American pioneers in engineering, science and aviation, who battled violent systemic racism in society while trying to climb the ranks of an industry that was hell bent on keeping them out.Ed Dwight, a pilot who very nearly became the first Black American in space, is featured as a “golden thread” in The Space Race. Dwight, who grew up on a farm in the 1930s, knew he wanted to fly and, against the odds, went on to have a successful career in the US air force. With President John F Kennedy’s recommendation, he was invited to train to be an astronaut at Chuck Yeager’s test pilot programme at an air force base in California. Kennedy called Dwight’s parents to congratulate them and he featured on the covers of Black publications such as Jet. Though Dwight (pictured above in 1954) was not ultimately allowed to go into space, he was considered a hero by many. After retiring, Dwight became a sculptor. His contributions to space exploration were eventually recognised when Nasa named an asteroid after him, describing him as a “space pioneer” who paved the way for Black astronauts that followed.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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