Rishi Sunak has performed a major U-turn by imposing Covid checks on travellers from China from 5 January, after criticism from a growing number of Conservative MPs over his “dithering”. After a series of seemingly mixed messages about whether the UK would follow the lead of Spain, Italy, Israel, the US and India in screening arrivals, the prime minister backed the move to bring the UK into line with its allies in a change of policy on Friday. The UK Health Security Agency will also initiate surveillance from 8 January,…
Tag: Rishi Sunak
Cop15 negotiators close to agreeing nature deal as talks draw to end
A potentially transformational agreement for nature is close to being reached at Cop15 in Montreal, which could bring better protection for Earth’s vital ecosystems such as the Amazon and Congo basin rainforests, big reforms to agriculture and better protection of indigenous territories and rights. After four years of negotiations and 12 years since the last biodiversity targets were agreed in Japan, the Chinese president of Cop15 put forward its recommendations for a final agreement after two weeks of intense negotiations at the UN biodiversity summit in Canada. Over the last…
British foreign policy is in flux – we need more than Sunak’s pragmatic blandness | Martin Kettle
It would be insulting and false to dub Rishi Sunak as, in Theresa May’s infamous phrase, a citizen of nowhere. Yet with a career rooted in international banking and financial networking, our prime minister is in many ways the embodiment of the globalised economic and political order that is in crisis, and may be in terminal decline. Life, it seems, has not done much to prepare Sunak for the task he faces on the world stage of plotting a path on Britain’s behalf in a multipolar world. Ukraine, nationalism, energy…
Culture secretary says revised online safety bill would still block content of kind seen by Molly Russell – UK politics live
From 2h ago Donelan says revised online safety bill would still block harmful content of kind seen by Molly Russell Here are some more lines from the Michelle Donelan interviews this morning on the changes being made to the online safety bill. Donelan, the culture secretary, said she was removing the “legal but harmful” provisions from the bill (see 9.26am) because they created a “quasi-legal category”. She told Sky News: It had [a] very, very concerning impact, potentially, on free speech. There were unintended consequences associated with it. It was…
Rishi Sunak says UK’s ‘golden era’ with China is over – video
Rishi Sunak has signalled the end of the ‘golden era’ of relations between Britain and China, using his first major foreign policy speech to warn of the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s regime. ‘We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism’, the UK prime minister said The Guardian
Rishi Sunak signals end of ‘golden era’ of relations between Britain and China
Rishi Sunak has signalled the end of the “golden era” of relations between Britain and China, using his first major foreign policy speech to warn of the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s regime. As police in China launched a show of force in an attempt to contain the highest levels of civil disobedience seen in decades, the prime minister threw his support behind protesters by condemning Beijing’s crackdown, as well as the assault on a BBC journalist. Sunak suggested a hardening of diplomatic relations and called China a “systemic challenge…
No 10 signals Rishi Sunak no longer committed to blocking all new onshore windfarm developments – UK politics live
From 3h ago No 10 signals Sunak no longer committed to blocking all new onshore windfarm developments At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson signalled that Rishi Sunak is no longer trying to block new onshore windfarm developments. The spokesperson did not accept that Grant Shapps’ comments in interviews this morning showed that the government had already implemented a U-turn. He claimed that Shapps’ references to community consent were a description of rules that are in force now. And the spokesperson would not commit the government to accepting…
Rishi Sunak to set out pragmatic approach to Russia and China
Rishi Sunak will pledge an “evolutionary approach” to British foreign policy, arguing that states like Russia and China plan for the long-term, and the UK needs to follow suit as he attempts to set out his vision for the country’s place on the global stage. In his first major foreign policy speech since becoming prime minister, he will draw on his years running the Treasury to say that the UK’s strength abroad must be underpinned by a strong economy at home as it stands up to competitors with “robust pragmatism”.…
The Observer view on Britain’s feeble response to China’s assault on human rights | Observer editorial
The trial of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner and media tycoon, which is due to begin this week, marks another low point in China’s relentless assault on individual and civil rights in Britain’s former colony – whose traditional freedoms Beijing is legally bound to uphold. Lai, a UK citizen who founded the popular Apple Daily newspaper, faces charges of conspiracy to publish seditious material and collusion with foreign powers under Beijing’s draconian 2020 national security law. The accusations are offensive and ridiculous. In effect, China’s Communist party is…
Biden and Sunak vow to support Ukraine and counter China in first call
The US president, Joe Biden, and Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, agreed during talks on Tuesday to work together to support Ukraine and stand up to China, the White House said. They spoke for the first time a few hours after Sunak became Britain’s third prime minister this year, inheriting an economic crisis after the resignation of Liz Truss whose tenure lasted 49 days. Only in recent days has Biden appeared to publicly criticise Truss’s doomed economic strategy, in a rare intervention by the US president. Relations between the…