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Liz Webster: Burnham tried to appease Brexit...

🚨 Burnham tried to appease Brexit and Brexit punished him for it. The Times reveals an extraordinary sequence of events. The EU had reportedly been prepared to exempt Britain from its “Made in Europe” rules, protecting our deeply integrated car industry and supply chains. But @andyburnham worried that Starmer’s reciprocal youth-mobility agreement would not pass the “Makerfield test” in his Leave voting constituency and sought to reopen it. Brussels responded by withdrawing the British exemption. So an attempt to appease Red Wall Brexit sentiment made the reset deteriorate, delayed the UK–EU summit and left British manufacturing facing an even greater threat. Now Burnham is refusing to rule out putting EU membership in Labour’s next manifesto. By trying to move one step away from Europe, he may have forced himself to move two steps closer. There is a powerful political journey here, if Burnham tells it honestly: Britain cannot demand European privileges while refusing reciprocity. We cannot protect British jobs through permanent Brexit red lines. And governing by the fears of one Leave-voting constituency cannot take precedence over the national interest. The “Makerfield test” has collided with economic reality. Reality won 🏆

Liz Webster: The far right claiming that...

The far right claiming that “the whole of Europe is moving right” is not quite the scare tactic they think it is. If true, it demolishes their own case that the EU is some alien left-wing superstate from which Britain must remain isolated. And when Sweden votes left, they claim the votes of Swedish citizens with immigrant backgrounds somehow count less. Every citizen’s vote carries equal weight. That is democracy. Discounting people’s votes because of their ancestry is ethnic nationalism.

Andrew Bridgen: Far from ending the conflict...

Far from ending the conflict in the Middle East is escalating again with President Trump considering strikes against the Houthis in Yemen after their attack on Riyadh where a ballistic missile was fired at the capital of Saudi Arabia. Events caused President Trump to returned early to the White House from Camp David, cancelling all of scheduled meetings and events US embassies across the Middle East — Israel, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, and Bahrain — issued security alerts. The Houthi’s have attacked Jeddah, Yanbu, Abha, Jazan, and the East-West pipeline, effectively preventing Saudi Arabia from exporting oil via the Red Sea as an alternative to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. The world wide energy crisis is only deepening as if it was all planned out in advance.

Ben Judah: Labour has a challenge...

Labour has a challenge in answering this campaign of super wealthy Britons, leaning in to undermine the government, with their talk of severe national decline. Labour now too speaks of an uninterrupted national slide — “decades of neoliberalism” — and warns of “harsh times” to come. And that’s in a country where decline is a widely felt public perception. So these comments from the super rich on the front page resonate on terrain Labour has only softened by not owning the successes of 1997-2010 and by refusing to date this slide to 2016 with Brexit and hold Farage fully accountable for it.
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