Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Friday offered a “brutally honest” assessment of Europe’s capabilities in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, stating bluntly that “we’re not strong enough” to stand up to Moscow alone.

Visiting Australia, the leader of the pending NATO member said Vladimir Putin’s invasion and occupation of neighbouring Ukraine had exposed both European weaknesses and strategic blunders in dealing with Russia.

“I must be very honest, brutally honest with you, Europe isn’t strong enough right now. We would be in trouble without the United States,” she told Sydney’s Lowy Institute think tank.

Marin insisted Ukraine must be given “whatever it takes” to win the war, adding that the United States had been pivotal in supplying Kyiv with the weapons, finance and humanitarian aid necessary to blunt Russia’s advance.

“We have to make sure that we are also building those capabilities when it comes to European defence, the European defence industry, and making sure that we could cope in different kinds of situations,” she said.

Finland won independence from Russia almost 105 years ago and inflicted heavy casualties on an invading Soviet army soon after despite being hugely outgunned.

The 37-year-old Finnish leader decried European Union policies that had stressed the importance of engagement with Putin and said the bloc should have listened to member states who were part of the Soviet Union until it collapsed.

Since joining the European Union in 2004, countries such as Estonia and Poland have urged fellow EU members to take a tougher line on Putin, a stance tempered by France, Germany, Italy and Greece — which favoured closer economic ties with Moscow.

“We should have listened to our Baltic and Polish friends much sooner,” Marin said.

“For a long time, Europe was building a strategy towards Russia to closen our economic ties, to buy energy from Russia… we thought that this would prevent a war.”

Marin added that this approach had been “proven entirely wrong”.

“They don’t care about economic ties, they don’t care about the sanctions. They don’t care about any of that.”

Source: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday denied being the main target of a judicial investigation into the government’s use of management consultants and their role in recent election campaigns.

The French financial crime prosecutor’s office revealed late Thursday that it had opened a probe which was thought to be focused on Macron and his 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns.

“I’m not scared of anything,” the 44-year-old head of state told reporters during a trip to the town of Dijon.

“I believe that your servant is not at the heart of the investigation,” he added, referring to himself.

“It’s normal that the justice system does its work. It does it freely and will shine a light on this issue.”

The prosecutor’s statement did not name Macron or his election campaign, but said investigators were looking into allegations of favouritism and hidden campaign financing in relation to management consultancies.

The probe began after complaints following the publication of a Senate report in March which showed government spending on consultants had more than doubled during Macron’s first term from 2017-22.

The favouritism allegation could relate to US-based consultancy firm McKinsey, which was the biggest beneficiary of these contracts and reportedly provided staff to Macron’s 2017 campaign team for free.

KcKinseygate?

“I tell you, no,” Macron replied when asked about the allegation, adding that he had explained himself “hundreds of times” already.

The Senate’s revelations about spending on consultants — which reached a billion euros ($1.1 billion) last year — were seized on by Macron’s opponents during his campaign for a second term this April.

The scandal, dubbed “McKinseygate” by the French media, became a debating point, with many French people shocked by the use of expensive and foreign firms which specialise in strategic advice and IT services.

Macron has repeatedly defended the recourse to consultants.

“When you want to go very quickly and very strongly with a policy, you need to make use of outside contractors occasionally,” he told reporters in late March.

The investigation is significant because it could be the first that risks personally implicating the president.

Several of his allies, including his current chief of staff, face legal investigations over a range of charges.

‘Slow poison’

The most damaging incident involved his former bodyguard who was filmed beating up protesters in 2018 and was later convicted of assault.

“For the moment, this issue is going completely over the head of French people who are obsessed with economic, energy and social considerations,” Frederic Dabi, the director of polling group Ifop, told AFP.

“It remains to be seen if it will become a slow poison for Macron’s camp if there are a series of judicial developments,” he added.

France has strict rules on the financing of election campaigns and political parties, which have led to many convictions in recent decades.

Right-wing ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy received a one-year prison sentence in September 2021 for illegal financing of his 2012 re-election bid.

Judges concluded that Sarkozy spent nearly twice the legal limit on his doomed quest for a second term.

He has appealed.

“Let’s stop imagining that because an investigation has been opened that there’s something outrageous,” MP Sylvain Maillard, interim leader of Macron’s party in parliament, told Europe 1 on Friday.

Source: AFP

Britain’s highest court on Wednesday rejected a bid by the devolved Scottish government in Edinburgh to hold a new referendum on independence without London’s consent.

The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court torpedoed the Scottish nationalist government’s push to hold a second plebiscite next year.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) had said that in that event, it would turn the next general election into a de-facto vote on splitting from the rest of the United Kingdom, threatening constitutional chaos.

First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said she respected the ruling but was “disappointed”.

If Scotland cannot “choose our own future without Westminster consent”, the idea of the UK as a voluntary partnership was exposed as a “myth”, she tweeted.

The Supreme Court’s Scottish president, Robert Reed, said the power to call a referendum was “reserved” to the UK parliament under Scotland’s devolution settlement.

Therefore “the Scottish parliament does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence”, Reed said.

Sturgeon’s SNP-led government in Edinburgh wanted to hold a vote in October next year on the question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

The UK government, which oversees constitutional affairs for the whole country, has repeatedly refused to give Edinburgh the power to hold a referendum.

It considers that the last one — in 2014, when 55 percent of Scots rejected independence — settled the question for a generation.

But Sturgeon and her party say there is now an “indisputable mandate” for another independence referendum, particularly in light of the UK’s departure from the European Union.

Most voters in Scotland opposed Brexit.

Source: France 24

Elected for the first time to parliament in 2015, Rishi Sunak became Britain’s youngest prime minister in more than 200 years on Monday, tasked with steering the country through an economic crisis and mounting anger among some voters.

It is a remarkable return for Sunak who lost a leadership bid to Liz Truss less than two months ago when he was accused by some in the Conservative Party of bringing down their hero, Boris Johnson.

One of the wealthiest politicians in Westminster, he enters Downing Street facing a need to make deep public spending cuts to stem a fiscal crisis, as well as tackling a cost-of-living crunch, a winter of strikes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

His backers say the former finance minister is a safe pair of hands who can restore Britain’s credibility with investors who sold the country’s bonds and sterling after Truss’s mini-budget offered tax cuts with little on how to fund them.

But the former Goldman Sachs analyst and hedge fund partner also faces challenges within the governing Conservative Party, where some lawmakers blame him for his role in ousting Johnson and are concerned he has not got what it takes to win elections.

The opposition Labour Party is likely to paint him as a member of the uber-rich elite, out of touch with the pressures faced by millions as Britain slides towards a recession, dragged down by the surging cost of food and energy.

Some fear he cannot reunite a party that is deeply divided and getting used to quickly dispensing with leaders they do not like.

“He couldn’t beat Liz Truss last month; he’s not turned into an election winner less than two months later,” one senior Conservative lawmaker said on condition of anonymity after supporting Johnson in his failed bid to run again.

Sunak replaces Truss, who said she would resign four days ago but who defeated him on Sept. 5 with 57% of the vote from Conservative members. Then, the former finance minister repeatedly described his predecessor’s ideas as “fairytale” economics that would spook the markets.

He was proved right, but after a fast-track leadership race, some Conservatives say they doubt his commitment to a Margaret Thatcher-style small state vision to spur growth after he put Britain on course for the highest tax burden since the 1950s with emergency pandemic spending on saving jobs and welfare.

When declaring his candidacy, Sunak, 42, said he had a track record that showed he could “fix our economy, unite out party and deliver for our country”.

“There will be integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government I lead and I will work day in and day out to get the job done,” he said in veiled criticism of Johnson, forced out over a scandal-ridden premiership.

First Indian-heritage PM

Born in Southampton in 1980 to Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent, Sunak repeatedly during the last leadership campaign spoke of helping his mum, who ran a pharmacy, with the books, doing payroll and accounts.

He had a privileged education – he went to an elite fee-paying school and is the latest prime minister to have studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, following David Cameron and his predecessor, Truss.

During the last leadership campaign, he supported the creation of more selective grammar schools after new ones were banned by the opposition Labour Party, but repeatedly said “a world class education” should be a birthright.

He will also be the first person of colour to become Britain’s prime minister. Ravi Kumar, 38, a Conservative Party member working at a finance company in the central English city of Nottingham, described the appointment as a “watershed moment”.

“I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I could not even imagine a non-white prime minister in my lifetime… So to see a British Indian leader is phenomenal,” he told Reuters.

But Sunak’s marriage to the daughter of an Indian billionaire has raised concerns in the party that he is too far removed from the concerns of everyday voters, some of whom are being forced by spiralling inflation to decide whether to spend their money on food or heating.

It didn’t help that in April Sunak’s wife was forced to confirm reports that her non-domiciled status meant she did not pay tax on all her international earnings, something she agreed to end.

“Rishi never had an overdraft so he is used to having a Treasury (finance ministry) account and a current account,” said one Conservative insider who had backed Johnson.

“Rishi has good PR but an inability to be brave and be the Brexit Chancellor the UK needs,” the insider said on condition of anonymity.

Sunak’s supporters say he is just the man who is needed to steady the ship financially after Truss’s so-called mini-budget roiled financial markets, raising government borrowing and increasing mortgages and fears pensions funds could go bust.

“We need someone who can provide stability and proven economic competence in these challenging times, and Rishi Sunak is that person,” said Grant Shapps, brought in as Britain’s interior minister after Truss sacked his predecessor.

Shapps was just one of several ministers to back Sunak after Johnson pulled out late on Sunday, surprising and even angering his own supporters. Johnson has not made public who he backed.

COVID champion

Sunak rose swiftly up the ranks of the Conservative Party, becoming, in 2020, one of the youngest finance ministers.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain, Sunak dropped the Conservatives’ small-state instincts to borrow massively and stave off the risk of an economic depression.

That made him one of the most popular politicians in the country, as he was praised for helping businesses and workers.

In one photograph that captured the sense of unity behind his rescue plans, Sunak posed outside his Downing Street office flanked by the heads of Britain’s biggest trade union group and a leading employers’ group.

But that consensus disappeared as Britain emerged from the crisis saddled with an extra 400 billion pounds of debt and then fell into a cost-of-living crisis that led to even more demands on the public purse.

Polls earlier this year showed his stock had fallen with the public, who were worried about the cost of living crisis and angered that he had raised payroll taxes while his wife had avoided British levies.

Labour leader Keir Starmer is expected to seize on the appointment of a new wealthy prime minister by Conservative lawmakers rather than by the country as a reason why Britain should face a national election before it is due in two years.

“My focus is on the millions of people who are struggling to pay their bills, now have additional anxieties about their mortgage. I know what it feels like,” Starmer said on Sunday.

“They could have a stable Labour government.”

Source: REUTERS

Rishi Sunak has won the race to be leader of the Conservative Party and will become Britain’s next prime minister — the third this year.

The former Treasury chief will be Britain’s first leader of colour, and faces the task of stabilising the party and country at a time of economic and political turbulence.

His only rival, Penny Mordaunt, conceded and withdrew on Monday.

As leader of the governing party, he will take over as prime minister from Liz Truss, who quit last week after 45 tumultuous days in office.

Source: AP

Rishi Sunak looked set to become Britain’s next prime minister after Boris Johnson withdrew from the contest on Sunday, saying that although he had enough support to make the final ballot he realised the country and the Conservative Party needed unity.

Johnson had raced home from a holiday in the Caribbean to try and secure the backing of 100 lawmakers to enter Monday’s contest to replace Liz Truss, the woman who succeeded him in September after he was forced to quit over a string of scandals.

He said he had secured the backing of 102 lawmakers and could have been “back in Downing Street”, but that he had failed to persuade either Sunak, or the other contender Penny Mordaunt, to come together “in the national interest”.

“I believe I have much to offer but I am afraid that this is simply not the right time,” Johnson said late on Sunday.

The former prime minister had secured the public backing of just under 60 Conservative lawmakers by Sunday, well under half of the nearly 150 endorsements Sunak had received.

Sterling rose more than half a cent against the dollar in early trading in Asia.

Johnson’s statement likely paves the way for his arch rival, the 42-year-old former finance minister Sunak, to become prime minister, possibly as soon as Monday.

If confirmed, he would replace Truss who was forced to resign after she launched an economic programme that triggered turmoil on financial markets.

According to the rules, if only one candidate secures the backing of 100 Conservative lawmakers, they will be named prime minister on Monday.

If two candidates pass the threshold, they will go forward to a vote of the party membership, with the winner announced on Friday, just days before new finance minister Jeremy Hunt lays bare the state of the country’s finances in a budget plan due to be released on Oct. 31.

That had raised concerns that Johnson would return to Downing Street with the backing of the party members, and not a majority of lawmakers in parliament, leaving the party badly divided. Hunt declared his backing for Sunak late on Sunday.

Some Johnson supporters could switch to Mordaunt, who announced on Monday she had more than 90 nominations, who has presented herself as the unity candidate, but many immediately switched to Sunak.

Torn itself apart

Johnson has loomed large over British politics ever since he became mayor of London in 2008 and went on to become the face of the Brexit vote in 2016. While he led the Conservative Party to a landslide election in 2019, he was forced out just three years later by a rebellion of his ministers.

Sunak said he hoped Johnson would continue to contribute to public life “at home and abroad”.

One Sunak supporter, who asked not to be named, said his main reaction was relief because if Johnson had won the “party would have torn itself apart”.

Another Conservative lawmaker Lucy Allan said on Twitter: “I backed Boris for PM, but I think he has done the right thing for the country.”

Other Johnson backers immediately jumped ship.

Cabinet office minister Nadhim Zahawi, who minutes earlier had published an article on the Daily Telegraph website praising Johnson, said “a day is a long time in politics”.

“Rishi is immensely talented, will command a strong majority in the parliamentary Conservative Party, and will have my full support and loyalty,” he said.

Earlier, many of the Conservative lawmakers who normally back Johnson switched their support to Sunak, saying the country needed a period of stability after months of turmoil that has sparked headlines – and raised alarm – around the world.

Johnson is also still facing a privileges committee investigation into whether he misled parliament over Downing Street parties during Covid-19 lockdowns. He could be forced to resign or be suspended from office if found guilty.

Sunak first came to national attention when, aged 39, he became finance minister under Johnson just as the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Britain, developing a furlough scheme to support millions of people through multiple lockdowns.

“I served as your chancellor, helping to steer our economy through the toughest of times,” Sunak said in a statement on Sunday. “The challenges we face now are even greater. But the opportunities – if we make the right choice – are phenomenal.”

If chosen, Sunak would be the first prime minister of Indian origin in the United Kingdom.

His family migrated to Britain in the 1960s, a period when many people from Britain’s former colonies arrived to help rebuild the country after the Second World War.

After graduating from Oxford University, he later went to Stanford University where he met his wife Akshata Murthy, whose father is Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, founder of outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd.

Source: FRANCE 24 with REUTERS

British Prime Minister Liz Truss quit on Thursday — bowing to the inevitable after a tumultuous term in which her policies triggered turmoil in financial markets and a rebellion in her party that obliterated her authority.

Making a hastily scheduled statement outside her 10 Downing Street office, Truss acknowledged that “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.”

She is the third Conservative prime minister to resign in as many years and leaves a divided party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions. Truss, who said she will remain in office until a replacement is chosen, has been prime minister for just six weeks.

Bitterly divided Conservative Party lawmakers have just a few days to agree on a successor, or face another leadership contest. Potential contenders include former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who lost to Truss in the last leadership contest, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister ousted in July over a series of ethics scandals.

Whoever succeeds Truss will be the country’s third prime minister this year alone. A national election doesn’t have to be held until 2024, but opposition parties demanded one be held now, saying the government lacks democratic legitimacy.

Source: France 24

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday recognized the eastern Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as independent sovereign states, in what the Kremlin calls “accession treaties”.

“I order the recognition of the state sovereignty and independence” of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in southern Ukraine, Putin said in presidential decrees issued late on Thursday.

In the documents, Putin invoked the universally recognized principles and norms of international law, and the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, as enshrined in the UN Charter.

On Friday, the Russian president will hold a formal ceremony to announce the accession of the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as well as the two Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, into Russia.

Putin is also slated to deliver a speech and hold a meeting with the Russia-appointed leaders of the four regions, which account for more than 90,000 square kilometers or about 15 percent of Ukraine’s total territory.

Referendums on joining Russia were held in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as well as the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), between September 23 and 27, which saw an overwhelming majority of people voting to be part of the Russian Federation.

Culled from Presstv

An historic Accession Council proclaimed Charles III as Britain’s new king on Saturday morning following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II aged 96. In his speech at Saturday’s ceremony at St James’s Palace in London, King Charles III vowed to follow the example of his late mother and said he was “deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty”.

The council, televised for the first time, is a centuries-old formality to recognise the new king’s sovereignty even though he automatically became monarch after Queen Elizabeth II’s passing.

Several hundred privy councillors including current Prime Minister Liz Truss and all of her living predecessors, Charles’s wife Camilla and his eldest son and heir William all attended the ceremony at St James’s Palace, London.

King Charles III said his mother, who died on Thursday in Balmoral aged 96, “gave an example of lifelong love and of selfless service” that he promised to emulate. He added that he was “deeply aware” of the “duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty”.

Source: France 24

The new British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Tuesday selected a cabinet where, for the first time, a white man will not hold one of the country’s four most important ministerial positions.

Truss appointed Kwasi Kwarteng – whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s – as Britain’s first Black finance minister while James Cleverly is the first Black foreign minister.

Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, has in the past spoken about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has said the party needs to do more to attract Black voters.

Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second ethnic minority home secretary, or interior minister, where she will be responsible for police and immigration.

The growing diversity is in part thanks to a push by the Conservative Party in recent years to put forward a more varied set of candidates for parliament.

British governments have until a few decades ago been made up of mostly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority cabinet minister when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.

Rishi Sunak, whose parents came from India, was Kwarteng’s predecessor in the finance job and the runner-up to Truss in the leadership context.

“Politics has set the pace. We now treat it as normal, this diversity,” said Sunder Katwala, director of non-partisan think-tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity. “The pace of change is extraordinary.”

However, the upper ranks of business, the judiciary, the civil service and army are all still predominately white.

And despite the party’s diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative members of parliament are women and 6% from minority backgrounds.

Track record

Nevertheless, the Conservatives have the best track record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister in Benjamin Disraeli in 1868.

This is despite the fact ethnic minority voters are much more likely to back the opposition Labour party and the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised in 2019 for describing Muslim women wearing burqas as looking like letter boxes.

The Conservatives have elected all three of Britain’s female prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss.

The first lawmaker of Asian descent, Mancherjee Bhownaggree in 1895, also came from the Conservatives.

Johnson assembled the youngest and most ethnically diverse Cabinet in history when he elected prime minister in 2019. His three finance ministers included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background.

The changes followed a years-long effort by former leader and Prime Minister David Cameron.

When he took over in 2005, the party had just two ethnic minority members of parliament out of 196, and he set out to ensure that his party more closely resembled the modern Britain it hoped to lead.

The next year, Cameron introduced a priority list of female and minority candidates to be selected, many for safe seats in the House of Commons. Truss was a beneficiary of this push.

“A key part of ensuring the strength and resilience of any group, including a political party, is the avoidance of everyone thinking and acting in the same way – the avoidance of group-think,” said James Arbuthnot, a member of the party board’s committee on candidates when Cameron introduced the changes.

But Kwarteng has played down the significance of his ethnicity. He has said that, although he experienced racist insults growing up in the eighties, he does not see himself as a symbol of anyone other than his constituents in Spelthorne, which borders London’s south-west suburbs.

“I actually think that it’s not that much of a big deal,” he said after being appointed as the first Black Conservative front-bench minister. “I think once you’ve made the point, I don’t think it’s something that comes up that much.”

Source: Reuters