Parliament is back in session

This past week in British politics has been described as “the most unedifying” in living memory, beginning with the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament being declared “unlawful,” one of the most bizarre speeches made by a world leader at the UN General Assembly in New York, and female MPs imploring the Prime Minister to moderate his language in the midst of abuse fears. You would be forgiven for admitting that you have switched off at this point, it really is all too much to keep up with. Thankfully for you, we at Northern Slant painstakingly follow every minute of the current hellscape that is UK politics, so you don’t have to.  

On Tuesday the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted unlawfully when he suspended Parliament. The case was brought to the Supreme Court by Gina Miller, a businesswoman and campaigner who has now twice led legal challenges against the government and won. The news was met with elation from the opposition, with the speaker John Bercow announcing after the ruling that the House of Commons would reconvene the following morning.

The Prime Minister was in New York at the UN General Assembly when the ruling was made, and said in an interview to the BBC that he strongly disagreed with the ruling. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn led calls for the Prime Minister to resign in his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference, but he also stated that he would not call a vote of no confidence to trigger an election until the PM had sought a Brexit extension. 

Parliament returned on Wednesday with Attorney General Geoffrey Cox at the helm, while the PM made his way back from New York. Although the Attorney General said that he respected the decision by the Supreme Court, he also attacked MPs for not holding an election, stating that “this parliament is dead.” Despite pleas from fellow MPs – including his former cabinet colleague Amber Rudd  – to cease his language of “pitting Parliament against the people,” he insisted that he had been driven to these rhetorical lengths. 

The politics of language was one of the major issues in Parliament this week, with MPs accusing the Prime Minister using “inflammatory and dangerous” language to ramp up pressure surrounding Brexit before the crucial October 31st deadline. Labour MP Paula Sherriff called out the PM for using the words “surrender” and “betrayal” to describe opposition and rebel plans to stop a no-deal Brexit, including the Benn Act requiring an extension request to the departure date. The PM provoked further reaction by describing the MP’s claims, which included references to death threats and abuse that MPs face everyday in light of MP Jo Cox’s murder by a far-right extremist, as “humbug.”

The day after this unfolded in Parliament, a man was arrested outside of the office of Labour MP Jess Phillips for allegedly trying to smash windows and calling the MP for Birmingham Yardley a “fascist.” A man has been charged over this incident. Rachel Johnson, sister of the Prime Minister, has condemned this rhetoric as “tasteless” and “reprehensible,” and the daughter of MP Yvette Cooper and former Cabinet Minister Ed Balls took to Twitter to plea for her Mother’s safety:

 Prime Minister Boris Johnson went on to comment that there was a need to moderate violent language on all sides of the debate, and that the best way to honour Jo Cox was to “get Brexit done.” The PM has refuses to apologise for these remarks, and has described himself as a “model of restraint” when it comes to language around the Brexit debate. 

Unfortunately for Boris Johnson the tensions in Parliament over Brexit aren’t the only issues facing his premiership at the moment. The Prime Minister is also facing public scrutiny over his links with a US businesswoman while he was Mayor of London. On Friday the Greater London Authority’s monitoring officer referred the prime minister to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) – whose job it is to oversee the conduct of the mayor. He has denied any conflict of interest in the award of grants and access to the businesswoman. 

And if that all wasn’t enough, the Conservative Party conference is kicking off this week in Manchester! And former Tory MP Rory Stewart might be starting his own party! The fun truly never stops.

The government has already pledged billions for hospital projects across England at the start of the party conference. Parliament will still be in session in this coming week, with MPs rejecting the government’s request for a three-day recess to stage the party conference. 

 

In Washington, the impeachment process begins

With everything that’s happening on this side of the Atlantic, it’s easy to presume that politics in the US would quieten down a bit so that we can fully process what’s going on. Unfortunately that’s not exactly how current affairs and the political process works. 

 In this past week the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump. This announcement was made in reaction to allegations by a whistle-blower that the President attempted to pressure the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. 

The White House reacted to this announcement by releasing a partial readout – not a full transcript – of the call between the two Presidents. However critics have pointed out that the five-page document assembled by ‘notetakers’ from the National Security Council proves very little, as it is not a word-for-word version of the conversation. The document does reveal that Trump responded to Zelensky’s request for an increase in military aid by asking the Ukrainian President to do him a “favour” – investigate the Biden family’s dealings with a Ukrainian prosecutor. Democrats view this as evidence of Trump abusing foreign policy for personal gain and to manipulate the 2020 presidential election. Trump responded to the Democratic Party’s announcement by calling it “Presidential harassment” on Twitter.

In terms of the whistle-blower’s complaint that kicked off this whole process, it contains two main allegations – one regarding the phone call itself, and another being that senior White House officials tried to cover up the call by moving evidence of the conversation into a classified storage system. The whistle-blower has been identified as a CIA officer who worked in the White House, with President Trump referring to them as a “spy” while reminiscing about the “old days” when spies were handled “a little differently.” This has been interpreted by many as witness intimidation.

Meanwhile, Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday to face questions on his handling of the whistle-blower complaint. During this three-hour long hearing Maguire defended both the whistle-blower and his handling of the complaint, maintaining that the Trump administration did not ask him to withhold the memorandum about the call between Trump and Zelensky.

In this coming week Congress will begin a two-week break, but Democratic lawmakers still maintain that it is possible that articles of impeachment can be drafted by the end of October. The House Intelligence Committee chair, Adam Schiff, has stated that he plans to not take this break to continue work on impeachment, as new revelations emerge surrounding the White House’s efforts to limit access to the President’s conversations with foreign leaders including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Vladimir Putin. 

 

Wrightbus and Thomas Cook cease trading

The past seven days have been tragic for the transport industry on both a global and a local level.

In the early hours of Monday  Thomas Cook – the world’s oldest travel company – folded, costing 21,000 jobs worldwide and stranding 150,000 British tourists overseas. The collapse of the company sparked the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history, with more than half of the holidaymakers having been returned to the UK by the end of the week. The government has revealed that the combined cost of the rescue flights and refunds has reached £520 million, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the government will not intervene to save the company with a bailout package.

It has been reported that Thomas Cook was in line for £200 million in rescue funding from a consortium of the Spanish and Turkish governments just hours before its collapse, only for a deal to fail due to a lack of Westminster support. The company’s CEO Peter Fankhauser issued a statement citing challenges in the final weeks of negotiations with creditors. Mr Frankhauser has been criticised for “pocketing hefty pay-packages” while the company mounted up debt, with the chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial  Strategy Committee stating that questions need to be asked about their “accounting practices.”

 On a much more local level, 1,200 jobs in Northern Ireland were lost this week when the Ballymena-based bus manufacturer Wrightbus entered administration. The company had been seeking investment or a new buyer, after confirming that it was facing financial difficulties, with talks allegedly collapsing after would-be buyers were asked to lease the factory for £1 million a year. The family has denied blocking a factory deal, and stated that death threats have been issued against them following the collapse of the business.

Questions have been raised over the Wright family’s management of the company, who founded Wrightbus in 1946 and gained global prominence through constructing the iconic red London Routemaster buses, commonly known as ‘Boris buses’. These questions are largely focused around the £15 million in donations that Green Pastures charity – which is led by Wrightbus’s majority shareholder Jeff Wright – received from Wrightbus over six years.

Green Pastures released a statement saying that it was “devastated” by the job losses, but was “grateful for the support” from the Wright family. Several hundred redundant Wrightbus workers protested outside of the church this Sunday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that he was “very sad” to hear that Wrightbus had gone into administration, stating that “one of the problems” was that the current Mayor of London Sadiq Khan did not continue the London transport contract with the company. The Unite union has warned that a further 1,700 jobs could be at risk in the company’s supply chain while administrators at Deloitte continue to seek an investor. 

 

Bibi given first dibs

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been tasked by President Ruven Rivlin with forming the new government after unity talked failed between the Likud party leader and the leader of the Blue and White party, Benny Gantz. 

 There is currently no indication that Netanyahu will be able to form a coalition and put an end to weeks of political stalemate, especially as he is due to face pre-indictment hearings for corruption charges on 2nd October. In this past week Israel’s Attorney General extended the pre-trial hearings on allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust to four days. If Netanyahu does form a government he will be able to retain power that could help protect him if indicted. 

In the elections held earlier in September Gantz’s Blue and White Party won 33 seats over Likud’s 32. Giving Netanyahu the first chance to form a government may seem illogical to some, but Joint List leader Ayman Odeh believes that it is all part of Gantz’s plan. If Netanyahu goes first and fails to form a government, Gantz hoped that other parties would be willing to compromise for a Gantz-led coalition rather than going to the polls for the third time in 12 months. 

Netanyahu and Gantz are due to meet on this coming Wednesday in what is believed to be a last-ditch attempt to form a unity government. If Netanyahu fails, the task of forming a government will be passed on to Gantz.

 

“You are failing us”

The United Nations General Assembly in New York took place during this week, when more than 20 leaders gathered to speak on the issues facing our world. However, from the outset  all eyes were on the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose speech at the UN criticised world leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. She told world leaders that “the eyes of all future generations are upon you” to see if anything concrete will come out from the UN Climate Action Summit that was also held in New York at the beginning of this past week.

The activist described the world leaders’ reaction to the climate crisis as a “betrayal” of young people, and blamed them for stealing her dreams and her childhood. US President Donald Trump mocked the activist on Twitter and only briefly attended the climate summit before leaving for a separate event on religious freedom. The US did not speak at the summit. 

Eagle-eyed Twitter users quickly noticed Thunberg’s reaction to Trump’s tweet:

This week Thunberg also won Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize – the Right Livelihood Award – for her climate activism alongside a Brazilian indigenous leader, a Chinese women’s rights lawyer and a human rights defender.