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Robert Jenrick greets Kemi Badenoch, after Badenoch was announced as the new leader of Britain's Conservative Party, in London, Britain, November 2, 2024.
Can Britain’s new Tory leader become Thatcher 2.0?
Self-proclaimed “straight speaker”Kemi Badenoch won the leadership of the UK Conservative Party on Saturday – the first Black woman to do so – and promises to take the party further to the right.
Who is Badenoch? The British-born daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Badenoch champions “migrant patriotism,” rejects “woke” ideologies, and embraces cultural conservatism. She’s pro-Brexit,an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and campaigned on a platform of freedom and individual responsibility. Badenoch’s got a major task cleaning up after Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, but she’s aiming high. She says she will defeat Labour and win back voters lost to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party by reasserting core Conservative values.
And while some have criticized her bluntness, Badenoch considers it an asset. At the party’s weekend conference, she declared, “A lot of people are not used to a politician who says it like it is.” Straight talk, indeed.
What could Badenoch bode well for Britain?In a BBC interview on Sunday, Badenoch stated that, if elected, her economic policies would be “completely the opposite” of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ and would focus on tax cuts. She criticized previous Conservative leaders for their broken promises on immigration and taxes, which damaged voter trust. But she also said Johnson’sPartygate scandal was“overblown” and refused to “churn over” everything that went wrong with previous Tory prime ministers.
We’ll be watching whether her neo-Thatcherite no-nonsense approach unifies or alienates more moderate Tories.
June 16, 2023 - Paris, France: Saudi Arabia s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman arrives at the Elysee palace for his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Hard Numbers: Aramco invests, Japan frets, Perplexity gets popular — and sued, UK sentences man in deepfake case
25: When surveyed, only 25% of Japanese respondents said that AI makes them nervous — the lowest mark of any of the 32 countries that Ipsos polled recently. But the country has been very slow to adopt AI or lean fully into its research. Stanford’s count of the “foundation models” for generative AI found that 182 of them originated in the United States, while none originated in Japan. The country is open to AI, but its tech sector just isn’t diving in yet.
350 million: Perplexity is an ascendant AI search engine — it fielded 350 million user queries in September alone. That’s a big uptick considering users asked only 500 million questions in all of 2023. As it’s grown, the company has come under fire from news publishers. Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, sued Perplexity last week alleging copyright violations. In response, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said he won’t pay to license content from news publishers but is discussing a revenue-sharing agreement similar to how Spotify pays musical artists.
18: In a landmark court decision, a judge in the United Kingdom sentenced a 27-year-old man to 18 years in prison for using AI to create child sexual abuse material. The man pleaded guilty to using a US-based service called Daz 3D to transform real photos of children into explicit deepfakes in violation of British law.The British government on Thursday announced it would return the Chagos Islands, a group of tiny atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, back to Mauritius — while retaining its joint military base with the US on Diego Garcia.
Britain gives back key islands to Mauritius
British Conservatives lambasted the agreement, with the man likely to become the new Tory leader, Robert Jenrick, describing it as “a dangerous capitulation that will hand our territory to an ally of Beijing.” Jenrick has his facts slightly wrong — Mauritius is not a formal ally of China — but the two countries do have growing economic ties, and the security concerns are real. American military air operations in the Middle East and South Asia depend on the base.
The UK will retain sovereignty of the base, pay Mauritius rent, and subsidize the resettlement of the Indigenous people on the islands. We’re watching how the change affects US and allied military posture, and whether the British public backs Starmer on the choice.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a joint press conference with Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy in the Locarno room at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in London, Britain, September 10, 2024.
US accuses Iran and China of supplying Russian war machine
Iran and China have found themselves in the crosshairs of accusations from Washington. They stand accused of being Russia’s partners in crime in its ongoing war against Ukraine.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Tuesday that China is giving Russia “very substantial” support for its war machine in exchange for top-secret Russian submarine and missile technology. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Iran of supplying Moscow with short-range ballistic missiles and announced new sanctions on both countries, which will also be enforced by France and Germany.
Tehran denies involvement, but the West knows Iran has been sending Moscow so-called “suicide drones,” and ballistic missiles are seen as an escalation. North Korea, meanwhile, has been providing Russia with missiles since at least January, which has brought Moscow and Pyongyang closer, to the chagrin of both Beijing and Washington. Eurasia Group, our parent company, highlighted the growing affinity between Russia, Iran, and North Korea as one of its top risks for 2024.
But the debate around Beijing’s support of Moscow – China also denies supplying Russia for its war effort – has thus far focused on “dual-use” items, such as mechanical components that can be used in drones and missiles.
Campbell’s unambiguous but vague accusation could strain Sino-American ties despite efforts by both sides – US and Chinese military officials just held high-level talks aimed at keeping open channels of communication – to stabilize the relationship. He did not lay out plans for sanctions or other possible reactions to China’s alleged support, but Blinken and Lammy will be in Kyiv tomorrow, and we will be watching how their meetings go in light of the revelations.
People inspect a damaged building after the Russian missile attack on the premises of the lyceum of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management in Poltava, Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Russian missile strike prompts fresh Kyiv calls for air defenses, Corruption makes African youth look abroad, Migrant boat capsizes in English Channel, Housing woes hit all-time highs in rich countries, US Marines assaulted in Turkey
51: A Russian ballistic missile strike on a military academy and a hospital in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday killed at least 51 people. After the attack, which occurred in the city of Poltava, about 200 miles from the front lines, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his call for Western allies to send more air defenses. Separately, the US and Ukraine are close to an agreement on the supply of long-range missiles.
60: How bad is corruption in African countries? Bad enough that 60% of the continent’s young people aged 18 to 24 want to leave because of it, according to a new study by the South Africa-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation. The top destination of choice was North America, followed by Western Europe.
12: At least 12 migrants are dead after their boat capsized in the English Channel en route from France to the UK on Tuesday. Last week, the French and British governments pledged to jointly crack down on the human trafficking networks that bring asylum-seekers across the channel in small boats.
50: The lack of affordable housing is a problem for at least 50% of people in the OECD, a group of nearly 40 wealthy democracies. That’s the highest level of dissatisfaction on record. A combination of high interest rates – which make home loans more expensive – and sluggish construction are to blame. In the US, housing costs are nearly 40% higher than when the Biden administration took office, making housing a key issue in the presidential election. See here for our special report on what Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have pledged to do about it.
2: Two US Marines were assaulted on Monday in Izmir, Turkey, by members of the Turkish Youth Union, a nationalist and anti-American youth organization. Police reportedly detained 15 people over the incident. A video of the altercation showed a group pushing and grabbing two men dressed in civilian clothes, and attempting to put a sack over one of their heads while chanting “Yankee, go home.” Police and other Marines in the area eventually intervened. The two Marines were taken to a hospital to be evaluated but were not injured and have returned to their ship, the USS Wasp.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, September 2, 2024.
UK suspends arms shipments to Israel over human rights concerns
The United Kingdom announced on Monday that it is suspending some arms shipments to Israel, citing a “clear risk” of violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
The decision was not based on military grounds but on the lack of food and medicine reaching the enclave, and what British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called “credible claims” of abuses of Palestinian prisoners. The suspension affects about 30 out of 350 arms export licenses, including parts for military aircraft, helicopters, drones, and ground-targeting equipment. It does not affect systems related to the F35 aircraft, crucial to Israel’s military advantage.
Lammysaid the UK still supported Israel’s right to self-defense and that Britain would continue to confront “Iranian aggression” across the Middle East. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, however, argued that the suspension sends a “problematic message” to Hamas and “its sponsors in Iran.” It could also encourage other countries to follow suit with similar suspensions.
The UK’s decision comes after a tumultuous two days of mass protests and a general strike in Israel following the discovery of six dead hostages in Gaza, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino. US President Joe Biden criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday for not doing enough to secure a cease-fire that could have saved hostages’ lives. In an emotional televised address on Monday, Netanyahu begged Israelis “for your forgiveness” for not returning the hostages home alive but insisted that Israel must maintain control of the Philadelphi corridor, which he says Hamas uses to smuggle weapons into Gaza.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron welcome Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he arrives to attend a reception for heads of state and government at the Elysee Palace before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, in Paris, France August 28, 2024.
Keir Starmer “Bre-sets” UK’s relationship with Europe
The United Kingdom’s new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to “turn a corner on Brexit” ahead of his quick European tour this week. Taking a jab at his Conservative predecessors — who campaigned for and managed the country’s divorce from the European Union — he vowed to “fix the broken relationships left behind by the previous government.”
Starmer arrived in Berlin on Wednesday to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In a press conference, the leaders announced a plan for a new German-UK cooperation agreement modeled after a similar 2010 deal with France that deepens defense ties over the next 50 years. The new agreement will also target energy, science, technology, and migration coordination, as well as an increase in intelligence sharing. Both countries aim to sign the treaty by 2025.
Starmer does not plan to try to reverse the 2016 Brexit decision and has said Britain will not rejoin the EU in his lifetime.
Still, Scholz said Wednesday that he was “delighted” with the UK’s pivot back to Europe. “We want to grasp this outstretched hand,” he said.
After Berlin, Starmer headed to Paris for the Paralympics opening ceremony on Wednesday night and to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.Asylum seekers wait outside the foreign office in Brussels, Belgium.
Crackdowns against asylum-seekers gain momentum in Europe and the Americas
On both sides of the Atlantic, a range of countries adopted new measures to clamp down on asylum-seekers this week, amid rising concern about the political impacts of immigration.
Panama began US-funded deportation flights as part of an agreement with Washington to stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of people who transit the country annually en route to the US border. Immigration is the number-two top issue for US voters right now.
Brazil announced it will crack down on layovers who request asylum, after finding that many of them simply use refuge in Brazil as a jumping-off point for northward journeys to the US or Canada.
Hanging over all of this: Some 40% of Venezuelans say they may leave the country if Nicolas Maduro remains in power. Their exodus would exacerbate what is already the world’s largest external refugee crisis.
Across the pond, the UK, reeling from recent anti-immigrant violence, pledged a raft of new measures to stop asylum-seekers from coming, staying, or working in the country. Immigration is now the top issue for UK voters — the first time since the European immigration crisis of 2016, which helped fuel Brexit.
And Hungarian PM Viktor Orban took a page from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s book, promising one-way tickets to Brussels for undocumented migrants who arrive in Hungary. The threat comes after the EU fined Budapest for a strict border policy that is out of step with common EU rules.