President-elect Trump has threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries if they try to “replace the US Dollar in International Trade”. BRICS countries discussed moving away from the US Dollar at a summit last month, partly as a response to America’s policy of sanctioning its geopolitical adversaries. Threatening to cut all ties with BRICS countries may be effective, but it is hardly a display of self-confidence.
Figures published this week show that net immigration stood at over 700,000 in the year up to June 2024. Of the more than 3 million people from non-EU countries who have come to the UK over the past six years, only 500,000 came on work visas. Labour have announced an increase in legal aid for immigration work which, paradoxically, they say will help bring the numbers down.
The French government is on the brink of collapse, as Prime Minister Michel Barnier is scrambling to convince Marine Le Pen’s National Rally to abstain on an upcoming budget vote. The French Interior Minister has warned that if the budget does not pass, there will be an immediate financial crisis, as French government debt looks increasingly risky. Barnier has compared the risk to the eurozone to the Greek crisis in 2009.
Barnier on the brink.
The Georgian Prime Minister has suspended Georgia’s application to join the EU and has said that he will reuse all EU budget support. The announcement has led to widespread protests and the country’s President has called for fresh elections, apparently unsatisfied with the results from October.
The Emir of Qatar, along with other leaders and officials from the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, will visit the UK this week as Keir Starmer tries to make progress on a free trade deal between the UK and the GCC. Negotiations began in 2022, and the next round is scheduled to take place early in the New Year.
Media
Joseph Dinnage on the UK’s bloated HR sector
Tim Donner on Trump’s plan to ‘drain the swamp’
Blog
Ukraine is waiting for Donald by Adrian Hill
President Zelensky will accept a cease fire on the present front lines providing Ukraine joins NATO straight away and future membership is offered to all parts of occupied Ukraine. Since Putin may soon run out of fresh troops and crash Russia’s economy Donald Trump should go for this ‘deal’.
My back of an envelope calculation comes out at just over 912,000 killed and wounded over 363 days at their current rate of advance. Let’s say that if the West maintains robust support for Ukraine the latter would wipe out Russian and other forces almost the size of North Korea’s Army. It would pay South Korea to provide military aid to Ukraine! Putin knows this. There’s no rocket science in why he so anxious for Donald Trump to pull the military aid rug from under the Ukrainians. (Putin may have misread Donald, you really do never know.) The rest of us should ignore Putin’s useful idiots in the Western media. Stick with Ukraine. They’re defending us, the NATO alliance. And the longer we support them, the weaker become Putin and his fellow gangsters. Frankly, Russia’s economy is on the brink. Look at the velocity of the tumbling rouble. Putin hides a lot of things but he can’t hide empty shelves instead of butter in the shops.
Key Points
Keir Starmer this week said that Brexit was used “to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders” and vowed to bring net immigration numbers down. His attempt to blame Brexit for the huge increase in population is sly and misleading. His promise to bring the numbers down should convince no-one.
Listening to Starmer’s speech, one gets the impression that the EU was a moderating influence on the UK’s permissive approach to immigration, and that without Brussels’ guiding hand, post-Brexit governments opened the floodgates. This is, of course, nonsense. EU membership meant that immigration from EU countries was uncontrollable and could, in theory, be without limit. Leaving the EU gave the UK the freedom to control all aspects of its immigration policy.
It is the fault of successive Conservative governments that they did not use this newfound freedom responsibly. The huge number of visas handed out over the last 6 years was born out of a lack of foresight and an arrogant assumption that immigration had ceased to be an important issue for voters post 2016. Now that the UK is free to do what it pleases with its borders and the problem is clear for all to see, Keir Starmer has no excuse for continued failure.
The causes of the problem are not difficult to discern. Newcomers to Britain find it relatively easy to get here, relatively easy to find jobs, and relatively easy to claim benefits if there is no work available. Once here, it is relatively easy to bring dependents over as well. Living standards in Britain are much higher than in many parts of the world, and money earned here is easy to send to family back at home, where it goes much further. All things considered, the incentives to come are very strong.
Any government which wants to reduce net immigration must either change the incentives, or impose a simple cap on the number of visas which can be granted in any one year. Keir Starmer’s Labour party seems reluctant to do either. The Deputy Prime Minister has ruled out a cap or even a target for the government to reach. In opposition, Labour figures were critical of an increase in the minimum salary threshold required for a work visa, and have promised to review the modest increases brought into force by the last government.
On a more fundamental level, taking measures to restrict immigration is antithetical to the internationalist principles on which the modern Labour party is founded. An unrestricted principle of non-discrimination along with a pathological opposition to any kind of inequality is incompatible with meaningful border controls. If there are jobs and healthcare available, why should someone unlucky enough to have been born abroad have a weaker claim to them than a Brit?
