Tag: Whitehall

Britain has all but given up on a special Brexit summit at the end of November as there remain too many sticking points to complete the talks in the time originally hoped for. UK and EU negotiators were talking until 2.45am on Monday, Downing Street said, but sources downplayed the prospect of any immediate breakthrough as the impasse on the Irish border backstop continues. Negotiations will continue intensively this week, but unless there is dramatic progress by the end of Wednesday, there can be no European summit to sign off a draft deal this month. “There’s no breakthrough at the moment,” a Whitehall source said. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, became the second cabinet minister in two days to warn that the prime minister did not have a completely free hand. We need to work together as a cabinet to do that. May wants to secure a November summit to ensure there is enough time for the British parliament to ratify a deal. In the meeting with Barnier, about 10-12 member states intervened, stressing the need for national capitals to be able to scrutinise any Brexit deal, including the political declaration on the future. “Of course we are prepared for all the different possibilities but we try to work hardly on a good agreement and we are very close, you know what are the limits for the moment. We will have a close look at what a customs union would mean for us because it’s in between the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship so of course it’s a little bit special to discuss the two of it.

What do you do after you’ve been the deputy prime minister to the United Kingdom? Historically, the answer is usually “retire” or “become prime minister.” For Nick Clegg, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy prime minister between 2010 and 2015 under David Cameron, the answer is “move to Palo Alto, California, to work for Facebook.” “Instead of the gothic splendour of Westminster, I will be surrounded by the gleaming glass and steel of Silicon Valley,” he wrote in a Guardian op-ed officially announcing his new position on Friday. The idea being that, say, a Facebook executive is more powerful than, say, a deputy prime minister — a sentiment that isn’t wrong, exactly, but doesn’t quite get at the exact relationship between government and the tech industry. It’s also a reflection of their political principles, and those of the companies they turn to. The ideology of Clegg’s Liberal Democrats — centering around the economic liberalism of free trade, free markets, and the free movement of people — has fallen deeply out of favor in electoral politics in the U.K., as it has in most of the rest of the world, but it’s still the main political current in Silicon Valley — and at Facebook especially. Why waste your time on the unreceptive world of electoral politics when platform politics welcomes you with open arms? Clegg is known best for his, let’s say, transformative leadership of the Liberal Democrats. In 2016, he campaigned loudly against Brexit (we know how that one went); last year, he lost the election for his own seat to the Labour Party candidate. In that sense Clegg isn’t leaving politics for tech so much as exchanging one form of politics — the ballot box — for another — the platform. But if there’s one thing Clegg has made clear, it’s that he’s willing to compromise if he sees a clear benefit.

I have mixed feelings about leaving the UK’s public debate about the future of our country’s relations with the rest of Europe. But I will no longer seek to play a public role in that debate myself. Profile Nick Clegg's political highs and lows Nick Clegg: political highs and lows Even though Nick Clegg spent five years as deputy prime minister, his probable political highlight came about a month before he took the post, in the unlikely arena of the pre-election party leaders’ debate of April 2016. After the election, the Lib Dems had 57 MPs – enough to gain a share in government with Cameron’s Conservatives and get Clegg an office adjoining Downing Street. It was a rapid fall for a man who ended up spending just 12 years in the Commons, becoming Lib Dem leader little more than two years after becoming an MP, following his work at the European commission and five years as an MEP. I do not arrive in Silicon Valley with a monopoly of wisdom on these crucial questions, but I have been impressed in my numerous conversations with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in recent months by the seriousness with which they recognise the profound responsibilities that Facebook has – not only to its vast number of users but to society at large. As concerns about the impact of technology grow, the left has tended to condemn “big tech” as representative of everything that is wrong in an unleashed market economy. We cannot wish away technological progress. The worlds of politics and tech too often speak past each other. •Nick Clegg is a former UK deputy prime minister and former leader of the Liberal Democrats

The Institute of Economic Affairs is facing two official investigations after it emerged that the thinktank offered potential US donors access to UK government ministers as it raised cash for research to promote free-trade deals demanded by hardline Brexiters. The two investigations were announced following an undercover investigation by Unearthed, an arm of Greenpeace, which found that in May the IEA arranged for US donors who pledged to donate £35,000 to have a private meeting with Steve Baker MP, when he was Brexit minister. It also emerged on Monday that the casino industry donated £8,000 to the IEA after it published a report calling for more casinos. It said no one outside the think tank saw a draft of the casino report or made any changes prior to publication. The thinktank’s director, Mark Littlewood, had previously told Unearthed’s undercover investigator that a donor could fund and shape “substantial content” in research reports commissioned by the IEA, that would support calls for a free-trade deal between the UK and the US. The IEA denies it has breached charity law. A former board member of the Charity Commission, Andrew Purkis, also said the regulator should be worried that the IEA’s director told undercover investigators that the thinktank was “in the Brexit influencing game”. In July it launched a £50,000 prize for ideas about harnessing the free market to solve the UK’s housing crisis. Responding to the Greenpeace investigation, Purkis said: “Offering donor access to ministers is a practice more closely associated with commercial lobbying/PR companies or raising funds for political parties rather than charities, but charity fundraisers do quite frequently offer donors access to their patrons and celebrity supporters. Educational charities should not be promoting an ideology.” He continued: “The reference to donors being able to influence ‘substantial content’, though not conclusions, adds to the worries that the public’s trust and confidence in charities as existing solely for the public benefit can be endangered if charity reports are perceived to be ‘substantially influenced’ by big donors – who may represent particular private interests and whose identity, in the case of IEA, is often secret.”

But a source familiar with the negotiations said there is no chance of the Treasury, faced with a promised rise in NHS spending and other demands on the budget, conceding any more cash to the Ministry of Defence. The Financial Times reported on Thursday that May, at a Downing Street meeting, had asked Williamson to justify the UK being a “tier-one” country. Despite denials from Downing Street, a source familiar with the meeting said on Thursday that May had questioned whether the UK needed all these capabilities. “We will continue to spend 2% of our GDP on defence. We will continue to contribute in a whole variety of ways across conventional, cyber and nuclear capabilities.” May hinted she was content with the status quo on defence spending. The MoD is still hoping to secure some more money in the next few weeks, and, failing that, in the autumn. However, the source said the best the MoD could hope for was a token rise in spending in autumn or early next year, though nothing close to the billions Williamson was seeking. While the Treasury is reported to be sympathetic to a rise for the military, it is concerned about the impact of pay rises across the public sector and looking for a compromise from Williamson. Stoltenberg, speaking in London, said he wanted the UK to maintain at least its current spending level on defence, 2.1% of GDP, just above the 2% Nato minimum. Faced with a £20bn funding shortfall over the next decade, the MoD claims it can make savings through efficiency.