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The EU has requested an arbitration tribunal under the dispute-settlement mechanism of the Trace and Cooperation Agreement with the UK. The dispute is over sandeel fishing in British waters, which the UK has prohibited to counteract a declining population. The EU claims that the ban is discriminatory and that the UK has not followed advice from an international environmental organisation.
The Prime Minister has come under pressure from Commonwealth leaders to discuss reparations for the transatlantic slave trade at a two-day summit in Samoa. Several members of his cabinet have called for reparations in the past, but Starmer seems to want to avoid the subject, and has said that it is “very clear” that the UK has no intention to pay. This has not stopped Britain signing a joint communique which calls for “discussions on reparatory justice”. Briefings co-Editor Prof Robert Tombs has written about reparations for the Telegraph.
Starmer in a bind with the Commonwealth
The owners of Channel Tunnel are considering starting legal proceedings against the EU over a last-minute delay to a new post-Brexit border system. The EU has repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines for getting the new system up and running, and the most recent delay came with just two weeks’ notice, with no new deadline named.
US tech company Intel has won a claim against the European Commission worth more than €1 billion. The ECJ ruled that a fine imposed in 2009 for alleged violations of EU competition law should be annulled. This brings an end to almost 15 years of litigation – perhaps President Macron is right about the EU being overregulated.
The pro-Russian ruling party in Georgia has been declared the winner of the recent elections, amidst allegations of impropriety by the pro-European opposition party. Georgia has been moving closer to Russia in recent years, with its application to join the EU suspended by Brussels over the ‘authoritarian tendencies’ of the ruling party.
Georgians choose Russia over the EU
Media
Briefings co-editor Prof Robert Tombs on reparations for slavery
Blog
Inaccurate news and the BBC: its response to our complaint by Briefings for Britain
The BBC faced criticism for uncritically reporting an Aston University study on Brexit’s impact on trade. Briefings for Britain highlighted errors, questioning why BBC Verify didn’t fact-check the claims. The BBC defended its approach, citing attribution to researchers and a balanced perspective.
The Corporation is proud of having a special section, ‘BBC Verify’, dedicated to ‘examining the facts and claims behind a story to try to determine whether or not it is true.’ But not in this case, despite the prominence of the story. Note the BBC’s selective use of language in its reporting: ‘the study calculated’, ‘the study found’. Not ‘the study claimed’, ‘the study argued’. Perhaps anti-Brexit claims, however implausible, are given a free pass.
Key Points
Republicans in the US have lodged a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over Labour Party employees flying over to the US to campaign for Vice-President Harris. It has also emerged that Morgan McSweeney, now the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, was paid to attend the Democrat Conference and plays a key role in a transatlantic pro-censorship group which wants to ‘kill Musk’s Twitter’. This says two things about Keir Starmer’s Labour Party: it is more concerned with ideological interests than national interests, and it is blind to its own hypocrisy.
Polls suggest that the US election could go either way. All the key swing states are too close to call, meaning that there is every chance (in fact, a seemingly growing chance) that Donald Trump will be elected President in November. If he is, the Labour Party will have succeeded in making an enemy of the leader of Britain’s most important ally by actively campaigning against him during the election. Given the importance Trump attaches to personal relationships, this will undoubtedly be detrimental to Britain’s interests on the international stage.
Why would the Labour Party put the country’s strategic interests in jeopardy for the sake of a trivial intervention in a foreign election? The only explanation is that they care far more about ideology than they do about the country. It is more important to them that their progressive counterparts in the US fare well in US elections than it is that the UK as a whole enjoys good relations with whoever is in charge in Washington. Throughout the last general election, we were promised that Keir Starmer would put “country first, party second”. When it comes to foreign policy, he delivers the exact opposite.
Labour politicians are very quick to criticise others for taking foreign help in domestic campaigns. They criticised the Tories for taking money from rich foreigners, and they smeared the Leave campaign with allegations of interference from Russia. The basic principle, that elections should be exclusively domestic affairs, is sound, but it is surprising how quick Labour are to waive it when it is their own ideological interests at stake.
The more we see of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the more his election pitch of being ‘grown ups in the room’ proves to have been an illusion. This is a party concerned primarily with its own ideological interests and less so in the interests of the country at large and a party which does not hold itself to the same standards it imposes on others.
