NEW: EU Commission writes to EU Council on Johnson letter:
-Says backstop is "necessary, legally operative solution in the Withdrawal Agreement...we regret the new UK govt wants to replace a legally operative solution with a commitment to try to find a solution-yet to be found-"
-"The EU also regrets that the new UK govt does not provide any concrete proposals as to what these alternative arrangements could be. His letter recognises that there is no guarantee that such arrangements will be in place by the end of the transition period."
-The letter confirms the Commission is "ready to work constructively within our mandate. We will analyse any operational UK ideas that are compatible with the existing WA. We are of course ready to rework the Pol Declaration in line with EU Council guidelines."
Emphasis there on "operational", ie they need to bring us something which works.
EU sources also rallying against Downing St suggestion WA doesn't adhere to the Good Friday Agreement. They say backstop is the only means identified so far by both parties which honour the commitment to no hard border, as entered into at the start of the negotiations.
They also say it's inorrect to say backstop is not democratic or that Northern Ireland would have no influence over the legislation which applies to them, saying that has already been dealt with in joint protocol entered into in March.
-Also says that Johnson's suggestion that there are two separate political and legal systems on the island already and ergo easy to manage is misleading as EU law underpins the regimes on both sides. Without that checks and controls become necessary to protect the single market.
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More than half think her sentence was too lenient or about right. Only a third that it was too harsh.
Only 18% think politicians should associate themselves her, while 51% think they should actively distance themselves from her.
Turns out the preoccupations of the online right don’t mirror the way population thinks at large- who knew!
Conservative voters are more than twice as likely to say politicians should create distance between themselves and Connolly (48 per cent), than associate themselves with her (22 per cent).
Globally, we're moving back towards an aristocracy of wealth, more akin to the 19th century than the 20th.
Anyone who cares about social justice, about moving away from higher and higher levels of taxation on work, should be very concerned. Time to do something about it.
-The top 10% of UK households hold 57% of all wealth, while the bottom 50% own less than 5%.
-The top 1% alone controls 23% of wealth
-Inheritances are soaring: projected to double from £100bn a year (2020) to £200bn by 2040
-Half of all wealth in the UK is now inherited rather than earned, up from about 25% in the 1970s.
-Children of the wealthiest 20% are seven times more likely to remain in the top 20% as adults than children from the poorest fifth
Meanwhile working people are paying higher and higher taxes on their labour. We need to shift towards taxation on inherited wealth and a reduction in taxes on work and consumption. Both for moral and economic reasons. Let's allow people to keep more on what they do NOT what they inherit.
Lots of people accusing me of being communist. No- it's a liberal argument. On this I'll defer to John Stuart Mill, who wrote this in 1848 and would be dismissed as a "commie wanker" today:
"The principle of inheritance… is chiefly grounded on the duty of parents to provide for their children. But that duty has certain limits; and when these are exceeded, the right ceases. Beyond a certain point, to permit the transmission of enormous fortunes is nothing less than to establish a monopoly of wealth, and is wholly opposed to the spirit of a free and equal society.”
I'm being intentionally provocative when I propose a 100% rate. But I certainly think the rate should be much higher than it is today. It has been before in British history (go back to the 1920s) and in other societies- see Japan, S Korea.
For those waking up in US, bewildered in Europe, what happened?
Have been on air for last 12 hours pouring over the data
Here it is
There's no silver lining for Democrats. Trump won everywhere. He's going to win the popular vote. He did better across the demographics. He grew his coalition, better with black voters, Latinos, young voters. The US become less racially divided by party. Harris underperformed Biden virtually everywhere.
Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties.
Trump didn't just sweep up in the swing states, and none of them are going to be that close. He closed the gap on Harris in a tonne of blue states. She turned out anaemic victories in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota. He expanded his margins in red states to take huge generationally big victories in Florida and Iowa. He flipped Miami Dade county, winning a heavily Latino county Hillary won by 30 points by 10. He drove down Harris margins in big urban centres everywhere, including Chicago, New York, Austin etc.
This feels a far more devastating loss for the Democrats, even than 2016.
2016 the Dems had plenty of things to console them. A massive popular vote victory. A narrow electoral college loss in a few places. A rock solid ethnic minority coalition which looked like a solid electoral map of the future. Roe was intact. The Supreme Court was still balanced.
They have none of that now. They're staring down the barrel of a transformed Republican Party and a sustained inability to know how to deal with Trump and Magaism. In policy terms, they also have nowhere to go. In Biden's term they governed exactly in line with their own instincts. It's been soundly rejected by the electorate.
Extraordinary intervention from Donald Trump’s own former Chief of Staff John Kelly. The fmr general says Trump meets the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.
Kelly says: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly says Trump would not want to be pictured with amputee veterans saying that “it wouldn’t look good for me.”
Kelly confirms Trump spoke positively of Hitler as president.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”
As predicted, Labour are trying to suggest things are worse than they knew. There’s a bit of truth to that though broad contours of state of economy/public realm were known.
We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.
That itself is an idictment of a generation of policymakers and politics. Voters might be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard all this before. Indeed they have, since George Osborne in 2010. Ernie Bevin said he wanted to be at the Ministry of Labour til 1990, ie to set the terms of thinking on industrial relations for a half century. It sometimes feels like Osborne will be Chancellor til 2050, no matter bow many times his vision of politics/political economy fails. You have to wonder how much more tolerance for it there’s going to be.
If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.
Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.
The story of the last time a former president was shot and lived to tell the tale🧵
In October 1912 President Teddy Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term in office. He'd left the presidency four years before. On the 12th he was campaigning in Milwaukee.
Roosevelt had left the Republicans to found the Progressive Party, also known as the 'Bull Moose' Party.
On the night of the 12th October he was dining at the Gilpatrick Hotel, owned by a supporter. After eating he left to give a speech at the Milwaukee auditorium.
En route he was approached by a man called John Schrank, a German-American tavern owner, originally from Bavaria.
Shcrank opened fire on the former president with a Colt revolver. He was quickly wrestled to the ground but not before a bullet penetrated Roosevelt's body.
Fortunately, the bullet hit something else first- TR's glasses case and the folded up copy of his speech, some 50 pages long entitled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual"- both of which in his coat pocket.