UK government needs a nuclear plan B, says Tim Yeo

Ministers need to talk to the Chinese about fast-tracking the planned reactor at Bradwell in Essex because the future of the £18bn Hinkley Point project is so uncertain, according to a leading pro-nuclear campaigner.

 The Hinkley project in Somerset has been hit by a series of delays. A final investment decision has been put back to September. Photograph: EDF Energy/PA

Tim Yeo, a former chair of the energy and climate change committee, said the government should also consider whether the Russian state operator, Rosatom, or the British state could build new atomic plants.

How you can stop the UK giving millions to dirty power

What if I told you the UK Government plans to hand out just under $1 billion to energy companies in exchange for the promise that they will carry on producing dirty coal and diesel-fired power? Well, they and governments across Europe are doing just this, so hold on to your outrage while I take you through the very boring sounding ‘capacity mechanisms’, their instrument for doing this. 

China's European charm offensive: Silk Road or Silk Rope?

The UK should not imagine that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s October visit means it now has a 'special relationship' with China. The visit was just part of a Chinese charm offensive aimed at the EU. 

Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK from October 20th-23rd had every possible element of flattery and friendship. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said before the visit that the UK was China’s “best partner in the West”. Xi told a joint session of Parliament that China and the UK were becoming “an interdependent community of entwined interests”.

Labour leadership: Jeremy Corbyn elected with huge mandate

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the British Labour party, in a stunning first-round victory that dwarfed even the mandate for Tony Blair in 1994.

He won with nearly 59.5% of first-preference votes, beating rivals Andy Burnham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Cooper who received 17%. The “Blairite” candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

The UK response to the plight of Syrian refugees is a national embarrassment

Europe once stood for human rights, collective action and the reconstruction of lives shattered by war. Not anymore. Faced with a refugee crisis that leaves the lifeless body of a three year old Syrian toddler washed up on a beach, 70 dead in the back of a van on an Austrian lay-by, and thousands drowned in the Mediterranean, Europe’s leaders are behaving like rabbits caught in the headlights.

The time has come for the EU’s citizens to draw a line in the sand. We need a plan of action commensurate with the scale of the displacement. And we need a public mobilisation in defence of our shared values. This crisis is also about us.

The Euro Intercepts

Press Release Top German NSA Targets Top German NSA Intercepts

The United States National Security Agency has been massively targeting phone numbers of top German ministers and public officials responsible for commerce, finances, economics and agriculture – including even Angela Merkel's personal assistant. WikiLeaks publishes today, 1 July 2015, a list of 69 German government telephone numbers from a high-priority NSA target interception list demonstrating economic and political espionage against Germany for almost two decades. WikiLeaks is also publishing classified interception reports resulting from the surveillance, showing the US and UK spying on German officials discussing their positions and disagreements on the solution to the Greek financial crisis.

The Amazing Decline of America’s Special Relationships

Most Americans have never heard of Edward Miliband. And given this week’s result in the U.K. elections it is very likely they never will. After a crushing defeat he has already resigned as leader of the Labour Party and is poised to return to the Wallace & Gromit animated films from which he seems to have been discovered. His electoral failure and that of his party once again proves the old electoral adage that unappealing leaders and incompetent campaigns often produce bad results.

UK humanitarian aid in the age of counterterrorism: perceptions and reality

For years, British humanitarian NGOs have criticised counter-terrorism laws for undermining their aid operations, and British Muslim NGOs have argued that they have been disproportionately affected by such laws. Banks have placed restrictions on the services they offer to various UK NGOs working in conflicts like Syria and Gaza while other NGOs have been hard hit by allegations of links to terrorism. All of this has affected the work of humanitarian organisations seeking to provide aid in high-risk conflict zones.

David Cameron, Janan Ganesh and renegotiating EU membership

David Cameron is receiving a lot of advice on how to ‘renegotiate’ the terms of Britain’s EU membership, if he wins May’s general election. Janan Ganesh’s recent Open Europe essay, ‘From a reluctant European: a memo to the prime minister’, is an excellent contribution to this debate. However, Ganesh mistakenly urges Cameron to seek UK opt-outs from EU social policy and financial regulation, neither of which is feasible, and he misreads the German position on some key dossiers.



The paper starts with a strong analysis of why the alternatives to full EU membership are pretty hopeless. Ganesh realises that a UK seeking to leave the EU would be in a weaker position to negotiate access to the single market than many Conservatives imagine. If the British followed the Norwegian or Swiss models, they would have to accept most EU regulations, the free movement of labour and the obligation to make big payments into the EU budget. The UK is much more dependent on the EU’s market than vice versa: Britain’s exports to the EU account for 14 per cent of its GDP, while the rest of the EU exports only 2.5 per cent of its GDP to Britain. As Ganesh says, “Our working assumption must be that the EU would go out of its way to make life for a departing member as difficult as possible, pour encourager les autres”.

Following Scottish vote, attention in Britain shifts to rights for the English

Just a month after the United Kingdom survived a near-death experience when nearly half of Scots voted to secede, the focus of British politics has rapidly shifted to that other hotbed of churning nationalist discontent: England.

A woman holds a Union flag umbrella in front of the Big Ben clock tower and the Houses of Parliament in London on Oct. 4, 2014. (Luke Macgregor/Reuters)

The English, genteel as they may appear, are in an increasingly foul mood, irked by what many see as a sweetheart deal for the Scots that will come at England’s expense.

How to Save China-UK Relations

Signing ceremony during the visit of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in London (June 17, 2014).

Image Credit: Flickr/ Foreign and Commonwealth Office

If there is one striking characteristic of the U.K.-China relationship, it’s the lack of passion, despite all their historic and current overlays and links. When Li Keqiang visited Germany in September, he went shopping with Chancellor Angela Merkel in a supermarket. The two leaders actually seemed to get on with each other, with some evidence of personal chemistry. By contrast, on his visit to the U.K. visit in May, Li stood woodenly next to a nervous-looking Queen, who may have been resentfully wondering why a Chinese commoner had dared to demand an audience with her. The main issue in the lead up to Li’s May visit was an argument over the length of the literal red carpet rolled out for Li at the airport. It was almost as though Chinese protocol officers were mocking the U.K.’s perceived love of ritual and formality.

UK anger over 'secret' EU financial transaction tax plan

 
George Osborne has promised to mount a new legal challenge to a European Union financial transactions tax after 11 countries, led by France and Germany, agreed to introduce the levy by 2016. 

The UK – even a flexible labour market still is a LABOUR market

In their book Animal Spirits George Akerlof and Robert Shiller state that wages are not set equal to the marginal productivity of labour but according to social norms – i.e. equal to (a part of) other wages. A wage is not just the atomistic market remuneration for your labour. It’s also a powerful social token of the respect you earn and a neon sign of your position in society. 

Why Cameron's timing on EU reform is off

British prime minister David Cameron is in a tight spot on EU reform. He must balance calls by eurosceptics in his Conservative Party to repatriate powers from Brussels, and the political reality in Europe that favours less far-reaching change. Cameron hopes to start renegotiating the terms of British EU membership after the 2015 election and believes Germany and the Netherlands will support him in this endeavour. But their plans and timetables do not match his.




Across the Union the debate about reform is gathering momentum. It has reached EU foreign ministers at General Affairs Council meetings in November 2013 and March of this year. Cameron has said that he wants to reform the EU, and renegotiate the UK’s relationship with it, before an in/out referendum in 2017. But instead of leading the debate, Cameron has been holding his cards close to his chest. It is an unwise strategy that threatens to leave him empty-handed.

Ukraine highlights a crisis in British foreign policy created by its retreat from an EU role

By Michael Emerson, The Centre for European Policy Studies

Events in Ukraine mark not only the start of a momentous shift in the region, but serve to chart the disturbing erosion of Britain’s global clout. If only the UK government would take its lead from the approach taken by its embassy in the heart of Kiev.

Will Greece and Spain replace the UK as Europe’s fastest growers?

Countries on the eurozone periphery such as Greece and Spain have endured years of weakness but there have been recent signs of strength in these economies.

No special treatment for UK over Europe, says Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel has pleaded with Britain to remain a strong voice in the EU but said the country cannot expect special treatment if David Cameron embarks on a renegotiation of Britain's membership terms after a Conservative election victory.

Food banks are booming even in Britain's most affluent areas

In wealthy towns, families hit by falling incomes and benefit cuts are increasingly being forced to rely on charity handouts

 

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who criticised the cuts, is made a cardinal at the Vatican Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

 

Volunteers have sounded the alarm over a growing reliance on food banks in one of the richest areas in Britain.

Please, Scotland, vote Yes and take us northerners with you

Freedom … 'I really want Scotland to go for it.' Photograph: Getty Images/Vetta

 

Act of Union, 1707. Still nailed in my head from history A-level. Three centuries on, could Scotland really be about to tear it up? I hope so. It's a thrilling prospect.

Berlin Backs UK over introducing new restrictions on migration within the EU. The European Commission is enraged

By Carsten Volkery and Severin Weiland

 

David Cameron: "Free movement within Europe needs to be less free."

Germany has now stepped into the UK-triggered fray over introducing new restrictions on migration within the EU. The European Commission is enraged, and even conservative EU parliamentarians warn of pandering to populists.

"Free movement within Europe needs to be less free," British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote on Friday in a guest editorial for the Financial Times. Then he outlined a detailed list of ways the United Kingdom plans to limit access for European Union citizens to his country's social benefits.