Labour: A leadership challenge is coming

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Kier Starmer. He fired Peter Mandelson as our US ambassador in September last year when leaked emails from the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee first revealed he had sent supportive messages to Jeffrey Epstein during his 2008 prosecution and referred to him as his "best pal.” Five months later, Starmer himself is now coming under huge political pressure for appointing him in the first place. I’m not sure what else he could have done. People now accusing the PM of exercising poor judgment over Mandelson all seemed to think his appointment was a good one at the time. Starmer wasn't popular before last week's details emerged, and you can't help but feel Mandelson's behaviour over a decade ago is just a handy cudgel to beat him with.

Brexit: a hopeless case

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of David Cameron’s attempt to shoot UKIP’s fox and the ill-fated referendum on leaving the EU that he tried to use. We will also be able to recall all the lies told by Brexiters ten years ago as the campaign got underway. Of all the words spoken about Brexit since the starting gun was fired, those of  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in June 2016 still ring true: "In is in. Out is out", emphasising that the UK couldn't retain single market benefits without accepting EU obligations. Ever since the vote, we have been trying to find ways to prove that Schäuble was wrong. And we have comprehensively failed.

Epstein was Putin's "wealth manager"

A lot of extraordinary stuff is coming out of the Epstein files released recently by the US Department of Justice, as Lord Mandelson is learning to his cost. Journalists the world over are descending like a plague of locusts on the three million pages published on the DoJ website detailing correspondence between Epstein and various well-known individuals. The FT are picking over Mandelson's involvement with Epstein while the Daily Mail is focusing on what it describes, with some justification, as a KGB 'honeytrap'. Epstein amassed an $800 million fortune between 1999 and 2018 through various tax avoidance scams, investments and fees, although it's not entirely clear exactly how he did it. What I find extraordinary is the list of rich, powerful and influential people all over the world that he knew intimately.

A week of chaos in Trumpland

America under Donald Trump looks like it’s having a collective nervous breakdown. One unhinged man is turning the world’s most powerful country inside out, hammering the truth, facts and reality itself into the shape of a dysfunctional banana Republic. The checks and balances that the founding fathers built into the US Constitution - the one that citizens swear allegiance to all the time - have proved to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Things that would have shocked and scandalised the country before 2016 are now so commonplace that they barely get a mention and are swiftly buried under the avalanche of new outrages.

Trump's polling numbers show he's losing middle America

Peter Kellner at YouGov has produced some interesting polling about Donald Trump and his plummeting ratings. The US is a nation divided, politically and economically, and has been ever since the Republic began. He says roughly a third of voters are Republicans and a third are Democrats. They tend to be fiercely loyal to their party’s candidate, 94-95% supporting either Biden or Trump in 2020, for example. But, as usual, it’s the swing voters, especially in the swing states, the so-called middle America, who really decide the outcome of US elections, and Trump is burning through this section of the electorate at a rate of knots.

America's descent into lawlessness increases pace

The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month by federal agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was absolutely horrific. On Saturday, we saw another killing by ICE agents in the same city. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital. He went to the aid of a woman and was pushed to the ground by six masked men, disarmed and summarily executed. The videos, and there are several, are so shocking that most TV stations cut the images a few moments before one of the agents fires multiple shots into him while he’s helpless on the floor.

Trump: Making America Grate Again

Donald Trump flew to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, essentially to deliver his standard interminable campaign rant to a gathering of baffled world leaders and members of the press. He interspersed his speech, if that’s the right word, with boasts about his achievements and threats to annex Greenland - or was it Iceland? Nobody seemed sure, least of all Trump. America, in his fevered imagination, swings effortlessly from being the most powerful nation in the history of the world to one which is constantly taken advantage of by other lesser countries. The US is both victim and victor at the same time. One moment he’s boasting of taking in trillions of dollars and being the hottest country on the planet, and the next complaining that it’s not enough.

Trump and the New World Order

Trump is an elected dictator, and men like him almost always go too far.  Sooner or later, their megalomania is their undoing. Hitler attacked Poland in 1939 while General Franco confined himself to Spain, ruled for 36 years and died in bed. If Adolph had stuck to Austria and the Sudetenland, he too could easily have been in power until the 1970s. Trump's attempt to annex Greenland is his watershed moment, one that will bring him down eventually.  He has imposed tariffs on countries that oppose the move, his go-to solution for every problem, and hasn't ruled out using military force. It would be a surprise to me if there wasn't a group in the Pentagon right now planning how they would occupy Greenland if he gave the green light.

Select Committee hears Britain's Brexit woes

The Business and Trade Select Committee heard evidence about the ongoing impacts of Brexit from various stakeholders on Tuesday. It served to reawaken and reinforce everything we knew and know about the disastrous impact Brexit has had on UK-EU trade. Liam Byrne’s committee members heard from the RHA, Associated British Ports, UK Steel, a Haulier specialising in chilled and frozen meat, the NFU, the TUC, CBI, National Grid and Airbus. Nobody had a good word for Brexit or had seen any benefits from the reset announced last May. It was a catalogue of delays, extra costs, increased paperwork, bureaucracy, lost exports, and inefficiency. Byrne described it as a World of pain. 

The Farage clause

It’s being reported, and not denied, that the EU is demanding a clause in the agreement being negotiated for an SPS agreement to reduce border checks, that Britain will compensate the Bloc if Farage becomes PM and tears up the deal, as he is very likely to do. The amount they want to receive if we pull out is £4.7 billion, which is the amount Brussels paid out to member states affected by Brexit to allow them to build and staff new border posts. UK diplomats say this is normal in international agreements, and we will get money if the EU withdraw.  I think it might be normal in commercial contracts, but not in intergovernmental agreements. It smacks of suspicion and lack of trust.