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Rishi Sunak flies to India for G20 summit with post-Brexit trade deal in sight

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

LONDON — Rishi Sunak arrives in New Delhi for the G20 leaders’ summit Friday hoping to finalize a slimmed-down trade deal with India for signoff next month.A free-trade agreement between the U.K. and India — one of the most coveted prizes of Brexit — will not be done and dusted this weekend, but both sides are hopeful a deal can be reached before the end of the year.Such an outcome hinges in part on face-to-face talks between Sunak and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, scheduled for Saturday in New Delhi. No. 10 Downing Street is keen to make much of Sunak’s trip, with his spokesperson telling reporters this week: “As the first British prime minister of Indian descent, his visit will be an historic moment.”Sunak now faces “a political decision” on whether to press ahead with a slimmed-down trade deal, one senior business representative told POLITICO, as Modi works to “bounce” him into a rapid agreement ahead of next year’s Indian election.“Modi...

What ex-prime ministers do next 

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play EN_Google_Podcasts_Badge Created with Sketch. Acast In the week we marked the first anniversary of Liz Truss taking office — and Boris Johnson leaving Downing Street — host Aggie Chambre explores what former prime ministers do next with their lives. Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, fired by Truss 38 days into her 45 day premiership, talks of the “emptiness” and “numbness” that comes with leavin...

Liz Truss’ sacked chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng speaks of ’emptiness’ after Downing Street

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

LONDON — Former U.K. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng spoke out about the “numbness” and “emptiness” top politicians feel after being ousted from office.Kwarteng was sacked 38 days into Liz Truss’ short-lived and chaotic premiership last year. He presided over the “mini-budget,” which precipitated market turmoil, an emergency intervention from the Bank of England, and was gutted within days.Speaking to POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast, Kwarteng said he felt “let down” by his longstanding friend and political ally Truss. He revealed the two have not spoken about his dramatic firing since it took place.In an episode about what former prime ministers do after leaving office, Kwarteng gave a frank assessment of politicians who are “adrenaline junkies” and likened top jobs to being in an “action movie.”Speaking about how ex-leaders feel after office, Kwarteng said: “These people, political people, but I think particularly people who get to the top, they...

Labour should encourage Britain’s Indo-Pacific ambitions

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

Ben Bland is the director of the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House.As the United Kingdom’s opposition Labour Party senses that it is getting closer to power, it is following a seemingly contradictory strategy: intensifying its polemical attacks on the Conservatives, while also ensuring its own policies hew closely to the Tories to neutralize any claims that leader Keir Starmer is a dangerous radical.This may well prove to be sound electoral triangulation, but when it comes to foreign policy and Britain’s uncertain place in a fast-changing world, Labour needs to be thinking beyond such electoral tactics.Along these lines, Starmer and Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy have already indicated that, if elected, Labour will maintain support for Ukraine and work along Tory lines to improve the post-Brexit relationship with the European Union. However, the party seems unconvinced by the Conservative government’s Indo-Pacific tilt — and this needs to change.For the past yea...

Europe is under attack — by wolves and deadly insects

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.Yes, it’s the return of Declassified after a busy month moonlighting doing PR work for the Spanish football federation.It’s been a strange month. Olaf Scholz is now sporting an eye patch after an accident while out jogging, meaning that there is now one interesting thing about Olaf Scholz. Also, congratulations to those of you who had “August 23” and “in a plane crash” on your “How Yevgeny Prigozhin Will Be Killed By Putin” bingo card.Speaking of the hunted, Ursula von der Leyen is angry like the wolf (again). You may remember that the European Commission chief’s beloved pony was killed by a wolf in Germany last year (RIP Dolly). The wolf responsible — known as GW950m, or Dave to his mates — faced a kill order but has not, as far as we are aware, actually been shot by either a German hunter or by one of the more anonymous members of the Commission, sent by VDL to live ...

Georgia must do more to earn EU membership, Brussels warns

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

KAZBEGI, Georgia — Ukrainian flags fly from the houses that line the highway up to the Georgian border, while on the road below, dozens of tow-trucks pull brand new luxury Porsches and Land Rovers over the mountain pass and into Russia as the super-wealthy skirt Western sanctions. If the country’s politicians have their way, this could soon be the EU’s easternmost frontier.But Georgia has refused to impose sanctions on Russia and stands accused of helping circumvent them by exporting consumer goods and luxuries — like the cars lining up on the border at Kazbegi.The South Caucasus nation has for years made little secret about its ambitions to join the EU, despite being more than a thousand kilometers across the Black Sea from the nearest member. The former Soviet Republic has gone as far as to enshrine its ambitions to become part of the bloc, and of NATO, into the constitution.In a long-awaited visit to Georgia on Thursday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, war...

Doubts over Catalan as EU language create a headache for Spain’s Sánchez

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

¡No pasarán!EU countries are hitting the brakes on Spain’s request to get Basque, Catalan and Galician recognized as official languages of the EU.That’s a big problem for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who needs the support of Catalan separatists to remain in office, after an inconclusive election in July.Last month, Sánchez’s Socialist Party entered into an elaborate deal with the seven lawmakers belonging to the separatist Junts party, which is indirectly led by former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont. In exchange for the MPs’ votes in favor of Francina Armengol, the socialist candidate for the presidency of the Spanish parliament, Sánchez’s government agreed to ask Brussels to grant EU status to Spain’s co-official languages.To underscore the government’s commitment, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares immediately sent a letter to the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union (helpfully held by Madrid) formalizing the language request, and put th...

It’s back to school in Brussels — Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play EN_Google_Podcasts_Badge Created with Sketch. Acast It’s “back to school” week here in Brussels, so we’re looking ahead to what policies will dominate the news in the coming months. Also, our special guest is Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani.Host Suzanne Lynch is joined by POLITICO’s Sarah Wheaton and Nick Vinocur to discuss big European issues and events to watch out for in co...

Vestager faces uphill battle to win French support for EIB top job

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

PARIS — Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager still faces a tough ride to convince Paris she is the best fit to become president of the European Investment Bank (EIB).France is an all-important decision-maker in selecting the next boss at the EIB, which doles out billions of euros of loans to big infrastructure projects across Europe and is growing in importance because it is expected to have a crucial role in rebuilding Ukraine in the years ahead. President Emmanuel Macron is notorious for taking late decisions on big, politically loaded appointments such as this. Like Vestager, he hails from the Renew Europe liberal group that wants her to helm the EIB, but several people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO she had powerful detractors in France who would prefer her main rival, Spanish Economy Minister Nadia Calviño. As Stéphane Séjourné, the leader of the Renew Group and an MEP close to Macron, warned: “Renew is not Paris”.As a free-market-oriented EU competition c...

7 Investigates: Dangerous Dams

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:40:00 GMT

When thunder claps and the rain pours down, we all take cover. But, in some Massachusetts communities, residents and officials have one nerve-wracking thought: Will the dam hold?7 Investigates found some dams could pose an immediate danger. As torrential rain floods out local neighborhoods, climate experts say the kinds of storms that produce such rain are becoming more common. “The rainstorms are now more intense,” said Christine Hatch, a climate sciences processor at UMass Amherst. “There’s more rain per hour. There’s more rain per storm.”That means more stress on aging dams across the state. There are more than 1,300 dams in Massachusetts. 7 Investigates has learned 329 of those are classified as high risk, meaning they could cause significant damage to homes and businesses if they fail. Thirty-one dams are rated as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition by the state’s Office of Dam Safety, including the Hager Pond Dam in Marlboro. “It’s in disre...