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Grant Shapps leaves Downing Street after being appointed Defence Secretary in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's mini-reshuffle.
Meet the UK’s new defense secretary
After British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace resigned from his post this week, PM Rishi Sunak tapped Conservative MP Grant Shapps to take his place.
Shapps, who has served in several cabinet positions since 2019 – most recently overseeing the Department of Energy Security – was not on many people’s bingo cards to take over the defense portfolio due to a lack of foreign policy and national security experience.
Still, some analysts say that Sunak likely tapped Shapps, who backed him for the Tory leadership, because of his apt communication skills – skills the PM hopes can help the party connect with an electorate that’s soured on the Tories after years of political tumult.
Shapps traveled to Kyiv last week as part of a plan to help Ukraine power its nuclear plants.The UK has been one of the world's staunchest supporters of Ukraine to date.
The PM made a few other tweaks to the cabinet this week, but some critics say that he should have done more to shake things up within the party this summer as a general election looms, and Labour remains nearly 20 points ahead in the polls.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak holds a huddle with political journalists on board a government plane as he heads to Washington.
What does the UK’s Sunak want from Biden?
The so-called special US-UK relationship has taken a series of hits in recent years – think Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit – but things appear to have gotten back on track under President Joe Biden and PM Rishi Sunak.
That camaraderie is currently on full display as Sunak landed in Washington, DC, on Wednesday for a two-day visit. He will meet with Biden at the White House on Thursday, after meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate leadership at the US Capitol on Wednesday.
Despite their 40-year age gap, the two men, who sit on different sides of the political middle, are closely aligned on Ukraine, Russia, and China policy.
The ongoing war in Ukraine – particularly the recent breach of a crucial dam in the south – will be top of the agenda when they meet, as well as how to regulate artificial intelligence, with Sunak having emerged as a tough critic of the emerging tech.
The state of bilateral economic ties, perhaps the thorniest topic, will also be a key feature of the summit. Consider that when Biden came to office in 2021, he nixed a larger US-UK trade deal proposed by Trump that the Brits hoped would bolster their shaky post-Brexit economy. (Though a free-trader, Biden has focused on providing subsidies at home to boost US manufacturing with his signature Inflation Reduction Act, which Sunak aides have dismissed as “protectionist.”)
Still, perhaps to tamper expectations, Downing Street says that Sunak won't push for an expansive UK-US free trade agreement this week, knowing that the White House isn’t quite there.
Supporters of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu demonstrate as a Turkish court reaches a verdict in his trial.
What We're Watching: Turkish political verdict, Nagorno-Karabakh flareup, Sunak's immigration plan, Lula's military
Bombshell ruling in Turkey
On Wednesday, a Turkish court sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu to 2.5 years in prison for the obviously heinous crime of calling election officials "fools" after they annulled the result of the May 2019 race he won. Context: Imamoglu's slim victory then was questioned by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Law & Justice party, which forced a rerun only to see Imamoglu win again by a wider margin. The double loss was a slap in the face for Erdoğan, who is running for re-election just six months from now — with Imamoglu favored to be his main rival. On the one hand, Erdogan is trying to pull the oldest authoritarian trick in the book by getting loyalist judges to throw his enemy in jail. On the other, since Imamoglu will surely appeal, the snail-pace legal system won’t confirm his conviction ahead of the presidential vote. Will Erdogan’s move further boost the mayor in the polls, convincing an alliance of six opposition parties to pick Imamoglu as their candidate? Throwback: in 1997, when Erdoğan himself was mayor of Istanbul, he did time in jail and was banned from political office for … reciting a controversial poem. Five years later he was elected as Turkey’s first Islamist PM.
Nagorno-Karabakh tensions rising again
For three days now, protesters tied to the Azerbaijani government have blocked the road connecting neighboring Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed ethnic-Armenian exclave that Azerbaijan claims as part of its territory. The blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only tie to the outside world has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis among the mountainous region’s 150,000 people, especially after Azerbaijan reportedly cut gas supplies on Tuesday. For background, Karabakh was part of Soviet Azerbaijan, but since a brutal war in the early 1990s, the region has enjoyed a fragile de facto independence, backed by Armenia. After fresh fighting in 2020, Azerbaijan fully encircled Karabakh and has demanded that Armenia recognize Karabakh as Azerbaijan’s territory. Nothing doing, says Yerevan, which warns of an Azeri “genocide” against the Karabakh Armenians. A Russian peacekeeping mission has mostly kept a lid on things since 2020, but was reportedly unable to dislodge the current road blockade. The EU, meanwhile, has shown its usual “serious concern,” but the two main outside players are really Russia, which is Armenia’s closest ally, and Azerbaijan’s main backer: Turkey.
What’s Sunak’s immigration plan?
After first placing a tourniquet around the British economy, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is now tackling another thorny policy: immigration. Sunak, Britain’s fourth PM since 2019, outlined on Wednesday a new plan to stop migrants from traveling in rickety boats across the English Channel. (Just today, four bodies were found in the channel after a small boat capsized.) As part of his effort to clear the UK’s asylum backlog of nearly 100,000 people, Sunak’s government will resume “hostile environment” checks, meaning that asylum seekers from countries not deemed dangerous enough will be returned without having their claims processed. This is thought to be aimed at deterring Albanian nationals; 11,240 Albanians crossed the English Channel in the first nine months of this year, up from 800 in 2021. Though Sunak supports many of the hardline immigration policies floated by his former boss Boris Johnson – including the controversial Rwanda resettlement plan – the milder-mannered Sunak has taken a more pragmatic approach to the immigration issue. Unlike Boris, he’s sought to work with French President Emmanuel Macron on the issue rather than antagonize him.
Brazil’s president & its military
Brazil’s incoming president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has named a civilian to lead the military as Defense Minister. After several years of military men running the armed forces under outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, it’s a move meant to send a message: the military should remain out of politics. During this year’s bitterly contested presidential campaign, many Bolsonaro critics feared that the former army captain, who admires Brazil’s past as a military dictatorship, might ask his old pals to save him from defeat. In the end, he resisted the temptation, but his supporters are still protesting the election result, particularly outside army barracks, where Bolsonaro is popular among rank-and-file soldiers. The leftist Lula’s choice, José Múcio Monteiro, is actually a member of a right-wing party – a nod to the need for someone who can appeal across the political spectrum. Monteiro has already named new commanders for the armed forces. As Lula’s January 1 inauguration approaches, we’re watching to see how Brazil’s military, and Bolsonaro himself, respond to Lula’s attempt to ease soldiers away from Brazil’s political stage.
UK: Truss out, lettuce see what comes next?
In the end, poor Liz Truss didn’t even outlast that head of lettuce. At best, she stuck it out for barely four “Scaramuccis.” There are many ways to clock the downfall of the UK prime minister, who resigned on Thursday morning after just 45 days in office, marking the shortest premiership in British history.
Now the UK, which has already had three PMs in as many years, will have had three in less than two months. For a European country that’s not Italy, that’s a lot. And there is no guarantee that things will calm down anytime soon.
“A total and utter shambles, just complete carnage,” is how Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe research at Eurasia Group, described it mildly.
To refresh: Truss — a Thatcherite chosen by Tory party members to succeed Boris Johnson after his own scandal-driven resignation — got into trouble fast with a major tax cut proposal. It was meant to spur economic growth in an early 1980s kind of way, but fears about its fiscal impact on the UK meant it spooked financial markets in more of a late 2000s kind of way. The pound got crushed so badly that alarm bells rang at the IMF.
Although she shelved the proposal and fired her chancellor for good measure, Truss was unable to stop the bleeding politically, and out came the knives. After the loss of another key official earlier this week, the writing was on the wall — by Thursday morning, Truss simply read it aloud.
Who comes next? Truss pledged that a successor would be in place within seven days. There are thought to be three frontrunners at the moment:
- Rishi Sunak, a centrist technocrat and former chancellor of the exchequer who lost to Truss in the last selection process and openly opposed her tax cut proposals.
- Former Foreign Secretary Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the lower house who finished third behind Truss and Sunak.
- Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a fiercely anti-immigrant politician popular among the Tory party’s broader membership.
Current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has ruled out competing and will stay in his post. He is, after all, due to present a full fiscal plan on Oct. 31. Boris Johnson’s name has also come up — he’s still popular with the party’s base — but Rahman says that while he has some momentum, the former PM may still have too many enemies among party MPs to mount a comeback for now.
Who chooses? The Tories have to work out a succession process that includes party MPs as well as the 170,000 or so party members among the public.
But the politics of those two groups are very different. Conservative Party members nationwide tend to be older, whiter, maler, and much more conservative than the party’s MPs in Parliament.
“If they have a say,” says Rahman, “it moves the center of gravity away from the centrist candidates and much more towards the extremes.” That would hurt Sunak and Mourdant, while opening a path for Braverman.
Tory leaders in parliament have said they will “consult” with Tory party members, but as of this writing, it’s unclear what that means. It could mean agreeing on a list of candidates and presenting it to party members for an online vote. There are also rumors of a “coronation” deal in which the second-place vote-getter among Tory MPs steps aside, all but eliminating the chance for the broader party membership to have a say.
Tory leadership is in a bind: To stabilize the UK’s financial situation, party leaders will want to hand the reins to a safe, centrist pair of hands. But marginalizing party members could provoke a backlash that cripples the Tories and courts further political upheaval.
Buckle up: The next head of lettuce — or 0.7 Scaramuccis if you will — is going to be a wild one in the UK.
For more on this, check out Ian Bremmer’s Quick Take on the “shortest-lived, most shambolic premiership in British history” here.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns.
UK's Liz Truss resigns
There have been jokes about whether UK Prime Minister Liz Truss could outlast a head of lettuce. But who’s laughing now? The newly installed British leader announced on Thursday that she’s resigning, unable to fulfill the promise of a low-tax, high-growth strategy for getting the post-Brexit economy moving. Truss noted that her government had delivered on reducing energy bills and cutting national insurance fees. But given the energy and economic crises — UK inflation hit a whopping 10.1% in the latest figures — and Russia’s war on Ukraine, which she said “threatens the security of our whole continent,” her plan for growth is untenable. Truss will stay on in the post, much like predecessor Boris Johnson did, until a replacement is found. A Tory leadership contest will come next, but any hopes for immediate solutions to the UK’s mounting crises have been dashed.
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British Prime Minister Liz Truss
Dead on arrival: The Truss and Trussonomics experiment is almost over
Things have been turbulent in the UK since the 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union – but the upheaval of the last six weeks may be among the most volatile episodes in modern British politics.
A recap. Newly installed Conservative PM Liz Truss introduced a tax cut plan last month – aka Trussonomics – to try to stimulate Britain’s inflation-ridden economy through a trickle-down effect by pushing for £45 billion ($50 billion) of tax cuts. But she failed to convince voters, markets, and even her own party that it could be paid for or succeed in addressing the cost-of-living crisis. Market turmoil and widespread criticism ensued.
In response, Truss backtracked on the corporate tax cuts and then, on Friday, sacrificed longtime ally and political soulmate, UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. She replaced him with Jeremy Hunt, a Conservative centrist who is the fourth person to take on this role since July. Importantly, on Monday, Hunt scrapped nearly all of Truss's mini-budget that sparked the recent chaos, causing the pound to rise slightly against the US dollar.
While the opposition smells blood and Conservative support is plummeting, the chaos has also invited international criticism. US President Joe Biden openly called Truss’s plan a mistake on Sunday. The UK is also becoming the butt of jokes cracked publicly by world leaders.
Indeed, Truss’s go-it-alone policy-making – she failed to consult the independent watchdog that scrutinizes fiscal plans – and sloppy u-turns have triggered the beginnings of a mutiny in the Conservative benches. Less than two months into a tenure that started with the removal of former PM Boris Johnson, the days of Truss’s prime ministership appear to be numbered.
Goodwill Hunting. While Truss and the Conservative Party hemorrhage support, the new chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said he supported Truss's premiership despite some policy differences. But his reversal of nearly all of her planned tax cuts (excluding those already put into place) and ditching of her scheme to cap energy prices for a full two years, is indeed a humiliating development for the new PM.
Hunt is in the hot seat. While some have praised the moderate, anti-Brexit “remainer” now running the exchequer from No. 11 Downing Street, critics point out that Hunt didn’t do well during the last Tory leadership contest. Also, while he eventually endorsed Rishi Sunak in that race, Hunt himself had supported higher corporate tax cuts than Truss. As the former health secretary, his performance in getting the UK pandemic-ready also fell short.
Money moves. Hunt seems to be quickly moving towards orthodoxy. Within 48 hours of assuming office, he warned that taxes could rise and that government spending would shrink. But he also referred to a “compassionate” Conservative government that wouldn’t implement the type of austerity measures seen back in 2010.
Though Goldman Sachs downgraded its economic growth outlook for the UK on Sunday, yields on long-dated gilts (UK government bonds) fell during Hunt's address Monday, while the pound rose 0.9% against the US dollar. Markets seemed to respond positively to his announcement that the universal cap on energy prices, set to cost £80bn ($90 bn), would be lifted in April and would only target poor Britons thereafter.
Can Truss hang on? Letters of no confidence are reportedly already being filed against Truss by MPs. But Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s lead Europe analyst, says removing Truss will be difficult. “Although MPs are openly talking about finding a way of replacing Truss without again involving the 160,000-strong party membership [for intra-party elections], this will not be easy,” he says.
Like last summer, there is likely to be disagreement on who should take the helm. “Some Truss supporters, and allies of Boris Johnson, will try to block a return to power by Rishi Sunak,” Rahman explains.
Some MPs, Rahman says, think Truss will be forced out before the end of the month. The consensus is that her performance will now accelerate the talks among senior Tories for agreement on a “unity candidate.” But the party rules for choosing a PM would have to be rewritten to raise the threshold a candidate would need to reach to be in the running. Likely candidates, Rahman says, are Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor, and Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader.
While many fear that appointing yet another Tory leader will make the party look ridiculous, “the growing view at Westminster,” says Rahman, “is that that might be a better alternative to holding on to a Prime Minister who has palpably failed to achieve the ‘mission’ on which she set out.”
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Populism vs. moderate politics
For Tony Blair three challenges will define geopolitics in the near future: the Western relationship with China, making democracy more effective, and harnessing the tech revolution.
How can we address them? The former British PM — who along with then-US President Bill Clinton led the centrist "Third Way" of politics in the 1990s — says that we need to return to the center to match challenges that'll be more practical than ideological.
Speaking to Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, Blair acknowledges that populism wins when voters believe that centrism can't solve their problems.
His solution? More politicians with experience beyond politics who can "understand the world, embrace it, and then change it."
The video above is an excerpt from the weekly show, GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, which airs weekly on US public television. Watch the episode on "upheaval in UK" here.
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- Upheaval in UK: the sobering challenges facing new PM Truss ... ›
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UK Prime Minister Liz Truss
Britain on fire
British Prime Minister Liz Truss’ first few weeks in office have been a hot mess.
Markets are in a tizzy, the pound tumbled to a record low against the US dollar, and interest rates have surged. Unsurprisingly, Brits are increasingly disillusioned with their new government and Truss’ Conservative Party.
Truss’ month-long premiership has been dubbed the worst start to a new government in British history. How did she get here and what does this mean for her party — and British politics — going forward?
Growing pains. Much of the recent turmoil is linked to Truss’ contentious “high growth” economic vision, whereby she’s championed a slate of major tax cuts despite Britain’s inflationary woes.
Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng maintain that slashing taxes and deregulation will bring Britain's sluggish economy back from the dead. But they’ve failed to convince barely anyone that this is a hot idea amid a cost-of-living crisis.
As a result, Kwarteng announced at the Conservative Party conference this week that the government would ax a proposal to scrap the UK’s 45% tax rate for high-income earners. That sparked a massive backlash from … the PM’s own party.
But walking it back hasn’t been enough to calm the markets, says Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s managing director for Europe. “The markets will not be calmed until Truss and Kwarteng put more flesh on the bones of their vague promises of supply-side reforms, including immigration, housing, childcare, financial services, agriculture, broadband, and diluting workers’ rights."
Internal Tory criticism has been varied. Some establishment Tory MPs say that Downing Street’s approach is out of touch because it requires the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The party’s debt hawks, meanwhile, say Truss can’t cover the massive borrowing needed to fund the remainder of the tax cuts proposed in the recent “mini” budget.
Indeed, selling tax cuts to a party that is, well, very pro-tax cuts was supposed to be the easy part for Truss, who’s also proposed supply-side reforms – including slashing red tape and ditching a planned corporate tax hike – that could prove even more divisive. For now, at least, Truss says she isn’t backing down on the rest of her proposed agenda.
What Brits want. Truss and Kwarteng claim that they reversed course on the 45% tax rate after “listening” to the British people. But perhaps they need to come in a little closer to hear what British people really think about economic growth. In short: they couldn’t care less.
Around 38% of Brits (compared to 28%) think that “politicians focus too much on economic growth at the expense of other issues,” according to a poll by the Economist. What’s more, by a large margin — 53% to 16% – voters polled agree that “the government should spend more on health care and pensions, even if that means spending less on infrastructure and science.”
Credibility: Easy to lose, hard to get back. Truss’ credibility has taken a beating in recent days, both among the electorate and within her own party, only a third of which backed her bid in the final round of voting to replace former PM Boris Johnson.
Part of the reason for Truss’ diminishing status is the ill-conceived timing of her “go big or go home” pitch. As the war in Ukraine continues to disrupt global energy supplies, sending energy prices through the roof, more than 7 million British households are headed towards fuel poverty this winter, meaning they’ll spend at least 10% of their incomes on energy.
Unveiling an economic package that slashes taxes for those at the top makes for bad optics and even worse politics.
Truss tried to win over hearts and minds during her keynote address Wednesday at the Tory conference — where her options were not great. She didn't backtrack on additional parts of her economic agenda, which could be viewed as an admission of ineptitude. But standing firm on “growth, growth, and growth” might boost the chances of a parliamentary rebellion, with reports that some Tory MPs are already plotting with the Labour Party on how to block parts of the PM’s agenda.
“The chaos makes Truss’ speech [...] even more critical,” says Rahman. “MPs have been so furious at the way the government has gone about its early days that some have talked of Truss being gone by Christmas.”
For now, at least, the chaos continues.