Donald trump

Nigel Farage is hoping to enlist the climate science denier Donald Trump to help lead a global campaign to plant billions of trees to capture CO2. The Brexit party leader, a friend of the US president, is due to make the announcement in Westminster on Friday as his party launches its version of an election manifesto. Described as a “contract with the British people”, the party’s focus on the environment with the support of the US may be part of an attempt to broaden its appeal to voters beyond those looking to vote for a hard form of Brexit. Speaking to the Guardian, Farage said the UK should become the face of a worldwide UN initiative. “The UK should spearhead a global initiative at the United Nations to plant billions of trees around the world and I have every confidence Britain would get support from the American administration on this,” he said. “If it’s true that an area the size of Devon and Cornwall is removed from the Amazon every … [Read more...] about Farage hoping to enlist help of Trump in Brexit party tree-planting plan

As more trade tariffs loom on Dec 15, neither side is ready to give way first and global business will suffer The escalating situation in Hong Kong means that an easing of tensions between the US and China is looking less likely every day. This week, the US Senate passed a bill that condemns the current crackdown in Hong Kong, a move that Beijing regards as objectionable interference in its internal affairs. The whole idea of a “phase one” deal was to ringfence the low-hanging fruit and resolve some issues so markets could breathe a sigh of relief. The thornier questions of technology transfer, intellectual property theft and the opening of Chinese markets could then be dealt with at leisure.... … [Read more...] about Trump may have started a Forever War with his intervention on Hong Kong

The recent trend for puritanism in politics ended with John Major’s back to basics. Boris Johnson’s bed-hopping.  The problem with Johnson and Trump is not the immorality of their private lives it is the immorality of their public ones. that he mocks the disabled, is unapologetically misogynistic and a serial liar . has twice been sacked for lying , is casually racist and has been rebuked for twice failing to declare his outside earnings. You would have hoped that Labour could take the high ground here but the party has done itself no favours by  lifting the suspension of Chris Williamson. Today's agenda: What I am reading: Labour MP Jon Cruddas on why his party must not turn its back on its working class base What I am watching: Professor Anand Menon’s brilliant talk on Brexit and what we should do now . This is getting a lot of praise on social media and rightly so. … [Read more...] about Normal rules don’t apply to Boris Johnson. Here’s why they should

Britain was presented with a profound and urgent wake-up call this week about its standing in the 21st-century world. But the problem, in a political debate consumed by Brexit and Tory leadership speculation, is whether Britain will take any notice at all. The wake-up call was not the UK’s abject last place in the Eurovision song contest, humbling though that was. The far more serious lesson was the one delivered in the United Nations general assembly over the issue of Britain’s continuing occupation of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, of which by far the most important is the enormous US military base and hub of Diego Garcia. Britain is adamant about its sovereignty over the islands, which dates from Napoleonic times. Its attitude is an unbending insistence that what we have we hold, even in the post-colonial world. It has fought a rearguard action against domestic courts, which found in favour of the islanders who were deported from the Chagos half a century ago, … [Read more...] about The Guardian view on Britain and the Chagos Islands: a wake-up call from the world

Michael Gove last night compared pro-Remain experts to Nazi scientists , in an extraordinary live radio outburst. The leading Leave campaigner said "we must be careful about historical comparisons" - but immediately compared leading economists and business leaders to Nazi propagandists. In his comparison, he seemed to suggest the experts backing the Remain campaign could be "in the pay of the government." He told LBC Radio: "I think the key thing here is to interrogate the assumptions that are made and to ask if these arguments are good. "We have to be careful about historical comparisons, but Albert Einstein during the 1930s was denounced by the German authorities for being wrong and his theories were denounced, and one of the reasons of course he was denounced was because he was Jewish. "They got 100 German scientists in the pay of the government to say that he was wrong and Einstein said: 'Look, if I was wrong, one would have been enough.'' "The truth is that if you look at the … [Read more...] about Michael Gove compares pro-EU experts to Nazi scientists