LONDON — It was the gleaming smiles and mutual backslapping of two 40-something banker bros which signalled a new era of U.K.-EU relations.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron looked like natural bedfellows as they riffed off one another at a friendly Paris press conference in March, announcing a sizeable £478 million package to deter migrant crossings through the English Channel.
The contrast with the petty name-calling of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss eras was clear to see.
Sunak’s warm and productive summit with Europe’s most high-profile leader confirmed a more collaborative relationship with the EU and its national capitals after the turmoil of the Brexit era. Less than two weeks earlier, the British PM’s landmark Windsor Framework agreement with Brussels had finally resolved post-Brexit trading issues in Northern Ireland.
“My hope is that [theagreement] opens up other areas of constructive engagement and dialogue and cooperation with the EU,” Sunak told POLITICO en route to the Paris summit.
Six months on, his words have been borne out.
In addition to the Windsor Framework and English Channel agreements, Britain has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Brussels on regulatory cooperation in financial services, and this month rejoined the EU’s massive €96 billion Horizon and Copernicus science research programs — a major result for the U.K.’s research and university sectors after two years of uncertainty.
Next on the agenda is a cooperation deal between the British government and the EU’s border protection agency Frontex — another move that brings Britain closer to the EU in a small but meaningful way.
The deal, confirmed by the Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Tuesday, is expected to be similar to other deals Frontex has with non-EU countries, like Albania, which allow the sharing of data on migration flows.
“We have seen concrete steps created by a new climate of good faith,” said a London-based European diplomat, granted anonymity — like others in this article — to speak candidly about diplomatic relations.
“We missed that before, and so that’s the Sunak effect. I wouldn’t say he’s done an amazing job, but he’s changed the state of mind — and therefore he has changed everything.”
A new hope
In addition to a renewed focus on relations with fellow leaders, Sunak has impressed EU diplomats with his willingness to face down the vocal Brexiteer wing of his own party, which has long seemed — to European eyes — to hold outsized influence over successive Tory prime ministers.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proclaimed a “new chapter” in post-Brexit relations with the European Union after securing a breakthrough deal to regulate trade in Northern Ireland | Pool photo by Dan Kitwood/AFP via Getty Images
Earlier this year Sunak enraged Tory right-wingers by abandoning a controversial pledge to scrap or rewrite thousands of EU-era regulatory laws which remain on the British statute book by the end of this year, to the delight of EU capitals.
“The improving relationship is built on the fact there’s now a willingness to find solutions and engage in a way that wasn’t there in the previous administrations,” a second London-based European diplomat said.
Negotiations continue between Sunak’s government and Brussels over other outstanding areas of dispute — chief among them tough new tariffs due to be imposed in January on electric vehicles (EVs) being shipped in and out of the U.K. which do not conform to strict sourcing requirements for electric batteries.
On Wednesday the U.K.-EU Trade Specialised Committee will meet to discuss the issue, with British ministers increasingly hopeful Brussels will agree to scrap the end-of-year deadline after heavy lobbying from German automakers and its own European Commissioner for trade, Valdis Dombrovskis.
Catherine Barnard, a European law professor at Cambridge University, said overall Sunak had overseen a “much more positive relationship” with Europe, albeit one conducted on a “pay-as-you-go basis.”
“This is looking much more positive and it’s putting some meaning on dealing with our European neighbors as friends, rather than as foes,” she said.
“But equally, we’re not talking about a comprehensive and thorough renegotiation — quite the contrary.”
No. 10 Downing Street agrees the shift is less profound than some media observers — or grumbling Tory MPs — would like to think.
A No. 10 aide said Sunak sees his diplomatic efforts as “normal government,” noting that “we’ve just forgotten what it looks like” after the turmoil of the post-Brexit era.
“I know it’s following Brexit and all that nonsense we’ve seen over the last few years, and it’s nice to see any small win or small argument to bridge that divide, but this is just normal government relations,” the aide said.
But his opponent, U.K. Labour leader Keir Starmer, has made clear he too wants closer cooperation with Europe should he seize power.
A senior moderate Tory MP said that despite the attacks on Starmer, Sunak is “not overly ideological when it comes to the EU” | Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
Starmer said this month a future Labour government would use the upcoming review of the post-Brexit trade deal, expected in 2025 or 2026, as a chance to reduce border checks through the signing of a veterinary agreement and to increase U.K.-EU mobility for some sectors of the economy.
And he told a conference in Montreal last weekend that that “we don’t want to diverge from the EU” in areas such as working conditions or environmental standards.
These comments were seized upon by Tory ministers as evidence that Starmer would bring the U.K. even further into the EU’s orbit than he has publicly admitted — something the Labour leader denies. Tory campaigners hope to use such comments in campaign attacks painting Starmer as an anti-Brexit europhile.
But some observers suggest such political attacks are ironic, given Sunak’s own direction of travel. Barnard, quoted above, says that “what Keir Starmer was saying in Canada last week is pretty much a description of where we’re at at the moment.”
A senior moderate Tory MP said that despite the attacks on Starmer, Sunak is “not overly ideological when it comes to the EU.”
“There’s always been a belief in Brussels that we would inevitably come crawling back to them, and we’re seeing that a bit now,” they said.
Nevertheless, it is unclear how much closer Britain and the EU can get without a fundamental renegotiation of the terms of Brexit — something all sides insist is off the table.
One area for agreement is the need for enhanced security and defence links, with next year’s European Political Community Summit in Britain providing a potential opportunity for further announcements.
Some in Westminster speculate that this could come in the form of Britain joining individual projects of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation — a body which coordinates the bloc’s security and defence policy. The European Council invited Britain to join its “military mobility project” alongside Canada, Norway and the U.S. in November 2022.
Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank , said he’s “not convinced” of the potential benefits for Britain, considering the U.K.’s existing position in NATO and other organizations.
He believes the British government will run out of road in finding mutually beneficial areas of cooperation with Brussels.
“The EU is relatively happy with the status quo,” Menon said. “It’s only in the U.K. where people say we need to move closer … There are so many bigger fish to fry for the EU.”
LONDON — Back in the spring, Britain was sounding pretty relaxed about the rise of AI. Then something changed.
The country’s artificial intelligence white paper — unveiled in March — dealt with the “existential risks” of the fledgling tech in just four words: high impact, low probability.
Less than six months later, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems newly troubled by runaway AI. He has announced an international AI Safety Summit, referred to “existential risk” in speeches, and set up an AI safety taskforce with big global aspirations.
Helping to drive this shift in focus is a chorus of AI Cassandras associated with a controversial ideology popular in Silicon Valley.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI.
Not everyone’s convinced it’s the right approach, however, and there’s mounting concern Britain runs the risk of regulatory capture.
The race to ‘God-like AI’
Effective altruists claim that super-intelligent AI could one day destroy humanity, and advocate policy that’s focused on the distant future rather than the here-and-now. Despite the potential risks, EAs broadly believe super-intelligent AI should be pursued at all costs.
“The view is that the outcome of artificial super-intelligence will be binary,” says Émile P. Torres, philosopher and former EA, turned critic of the movement. “That if it’s not utopia, it’s annihilation.”
In the U.K., key government advisers sympathetic to the movement’s concerns, combined with Sunak’s close contact with leaders of the AI labs – which have longstanding ties to the movement – have helped push “existential risk” right up the U.K.’s policy agenda.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” – urging policymakers and AI developers to pump the brakes.
It echoed the influential “AI pause” letter calling for a moratorium on “giant AI experiments,” and, in combination with a later letter saying AI posed an extinction risk, helped fuel a frenzied media cycle that prompted Sunak to issue a statement claiming he was “looking very carefully” at this class of risks.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI | Carl Court/Getty Images
“These kinds of arguments around existential risk or the idea that AI would develop super-intelligence, that was very much on the fringes of credible discussion,” says Mhairi Aitken, an AI ethics researcher at the Alan Turing Institute. “That’s really dramatically shifted in the last six months.”
The EA community credited Hogarth’s FT article with telegraphing these ideas to a mainstream audience, and hailed his appointment as chair of the U.K.’s Foundation Model Taskforce as a significant moment.
Under Hogarth, who has previously invested in AI labs Anthropic, Faculty, Helsing, and AI safety firm Conjecture, the taskforce announced a new set of partners last week – a number of whom have ties to EA.
Three of the four partner organizations on the lineup are bankrolled by EA donors. The Centre for AI Safety is the organization behind the “AI extinction risk” letter (the “AI pause” letter was penned by another EA-linked organization, the Future of Life Institute). Its primary funding – to the tune of $5.2 million – comes from major EA donor organization, Open Philanthropy.
Another partner is Arc Evals, which “works on assessing whether cutting-edge AI systems could pose catastrophic risks to civilization.”
It’s a project of the Alignment Research Centre, an organization that has received $1.5 million from Open Philanthropy, $1.25 million from high-profile EA Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Foundation (which it promised to return after the implosion of his crypto empire), and $3.25 million from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, set up by Skype founder and prominent EA, Jaan Tallinn. Arc Evals is advised by Open Philanthropy CEO, Harold Karnofsky.
Finally, the Community Intelligence Project, a body working on new governance models for transformative technology, began life with an FTX regrant, and a co-founder appealed to the EA community for funding and expertise this year.
Joining the taskforce as one of two researchers is Cambridge professor David Krueger, who has received a $1 million grant from Open Philanthropy to further his work to “reduce the risk of human extinction resulting from out-of-control AI systems”. He describes himself as “EA-adjacent.” One of the PhD students Kruger advises, Nitarshan Rajkumar, has been working with the British government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as an AI policy adviser since April.
A range of national security figures and renowned computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, are also joining the taskforce as advisers.
Combined with its rebranding as a “Frontier AI Taskforce” which projects its gaze into the future of AI development, the announcements confirmed the ascendancy of existential risk on the U.K.’s AI agenda.
‘X-risk’
Hogarth told the FT that biosecurity risks – like AI systems designing novel viruses – and AI-powered cyber-attacks weigh heavily on his mind.The taskforce is intended to address these threats, and to help build safe and reliable “frontier” AI models.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” | John Phillips/Getty Images
“The focus of the Frontier AI Taskforce and the U.K.’s broader AI strategy extends to not only managing risk, but ensuring the technology’s benefits can be harnessed and its opportunities realized across society,” said a government spokesperson, who disputed the influence of EA on its AI policy.
But some researchers worry that the more prosaic threats posed by today’s AI models, like bias, data privacy, and copyright issues, have been downgraded. It’s “a really dangerous distraction from the discussions we need to be having around regulation of AI,” says Aitken. “It takes a lot of the focus away from the very real and ethical risks and harms that AI presents today.”
The EA movement’s links to Silicon Valley also prompt some to question its objectivity. The three most prominent AI labs, OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic, all boast EA connections – with traces of the movement variously imprinted on their ethos, ideology and wallets.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own. Musk recently hired Dan Hendrycks, director of Center for AI Safety, as an adviser to his new start-up, xAI, which is also doing its part to prevent the AI apocalypse.
To counter the threat, the EA movement is throwing its financial heft behind the field of AI safety. Head of Open Philanthropy, Harold Karnofsky,wrote a February blog post announcing a leave of absence to devote himself to the field, while an EA career advice center, 80,000 hours, recommends “AI safety technical research” and “shaping future governance of AI” as the two top careers for EAs.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
Trading in an insular jargon of “X-risk” (existential risks) and “p(doom)” (the probability of our impending annihilation), the AI-focused branch of effective altruism is fixated on issues like “alignment” – how closely AI models are attuned to humanity’s value systems – amid doom-laden warnings about “proliferation” – the unchecked propagation of dangerous AI.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist. A vocal critic, former Googler Timnit Gebru, has denounced this “dangerous brand of AI safety,” noting that she’d seen the movement gain “alarming levels of influence” in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, the “strong intermingling” of EAs and companies building AI “has led…this branch of the community to be very subservient to the AI companies,” says Andrea Miotti, head of strategy and governance at AI safety firm Conjecture. He calls this a “real regulatory capture story.”
The pitch to industry
Citing the Center for AI Safety’s extinction risk letter, Hogarth called on AI specialists and safety researchers to join the taskforce’s efforts in June, noting that at “a pivotal moment, Rishi Sunak has stepped up and is playing a global leadership role.”
On stage at the Tony Blair Institute conference in July, Hogarth – perspiring in the midsummer heat but speaking with composed conviction – struck an optimistic note. “We want to build stuff that allows for the U.K. to really have the state capacity to, like, engineer the future here,” he said.
Although the taskforce was initially intended to build up sovereign AI capability, Hogarth’s arrival saw a new emphasis on AI safety. The U.K. government’s £100 million commitment is “the largest amount ever committed to this field by a nation state,” he tweeted.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist | Hollie Adams/Getty Images
The taskforce recruitment ad was shared on the Effective Altruism forum, and Hogarth’s appointment was announced in Effective Altruism UK’s July newsletter.
Hogarth is not the only one in government who appears to be sympathetic to the EA movement’s arguments. Matt Clifford, chair of government R&D body, ARIA, and adviser to the AI taskforce as well as AI sherpa for the safety summit, has urged EAs to jump aboard the government’s latest AI safety push.
“I would encourage any of you who care about AI safety to explore opportunities to join or be seconded into government, because there is just a huge gap of knowledge and context on both sides,” he said at the Effective Altruism Global conference in London in June.
“Most people engaged in policy are not familiar … with arguments that would be familiar to most people in this room about risk and safety,” he added, but cautioned that hyping apocalyptic risks was not typically an effective strategy when it came to dealing with policymakers.
Clifford said that ARIA would soon announce directors who will be in charge of grant-giving across different areas. “When you see them, you will see there is actually a pretty good overlap with some prominent EA cause areas,” he told the crowd.
A British government spokesperson said Clifford is “not part of the core Effective Altruism movement.”
Civil service ties
Influential civil servants also have EA ties. Supporting the work of the AI taskforce is Chiara Gerosa, who in addition to her government work is facilitating an introductory AI safety course “for a cohort of policy professionals” for BlueDot Impact, an organization funded by Effective Ventures, a philanthropic fund that supports EA causes.
The course “will get you up to speed on extreme risks from AI and governance approaches to mitigating these risks,” according to the website, which states alumni have gone on to work for the likes of OpenAI, GovAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.
People close to the EA movement say that its disciples see the U.K.’s AI safety push as encouragement to get involved and help nudge policy along an EA trajectory.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher who asked not to be named as they didn’t want to risk jeopardizing EA connections.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via AFP/Getty Images
“One said that while Rishi is not the ‘optimal’ candidate, at least he knows X-risk,” they said. “And that ‘we’ need political buy-in and policy.”
“The foundation model taskforce is really centring the voices of the private sector, of industry … and that in many cases overlaps with membership of the Effective Altruism movement,” says Aitken. “That to me, is very worrying … it should really be centring the voices of impacted communities, it should be centring the voices of civil society.”
Jack Stilgoe, policy co-lead of Responsible AI, a body funded by the U.K.’s R&D funding agency, is concerned about “the diversity of the taskforce.” “If the agenda of the taskforce somehow gets captured by a narrow range of interests, then that would be really, really bad,” he says, adding that the concept of alignment “offers a false solution to an imaginary problem.”
A spokesperson for Open Philanthropy, Michael Levine, disputed that the EA movement carried any water for AI firms. “Since before the current crop of AI labs existed, people inspired by effective altruism were calling out the threats of AI and the need for research and policies to reduce these risks; many of our grantees are now supporting strong regulation of AI over objections from industry players.”
From Oxford to Whitehall, via Silicon Valley
Birthed at Oxford University by rationalist utilitarian philosopher William MacAskill, EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare.
Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley, and a mutated version called “long-termism” that is fixated on ultra-long-term timeframes now dominates. MacAskill’s most recent book What We Owe the Future conceptualizes a million-year timeframe for humanity and advocates the colonization of space.
EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare. Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley | Mason Trinca/Getty Images
Oxford University remains an ideological hub for the movement, and has spawned a thriving network of think tanks and research institutes that lobby the government on long-term or existential risks, including the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.
Other EA-linked organizations include Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which was co-founded by Tallinn and receives funding from his Survival and Flourishing Fund – which is also the primary funder of the Centre for Long Term Resilience, set up by former civil servants in 2020.
The think tanks tend to overlap with leading AI labs, both in terms of membership and policy positions. For example, the founder and former director of GovAI, Allan Dafoe, who remains chair of the advisory board, is also head of long-term AI strategy and governance at DeepMind.
“We are conscious that dual roles of this form warrant careful attention to conflicts of interest,” reads the GovAI website.
GovAI, OpenAI and Anthropic declined to offer comment for this piece. A Google DeepMind spokesperson said: “We are focused on advancing safe and responsible AI.”
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA. “There’s definitely been a push to place people directly out of existential risk bodies into policymaking positions,” he says.
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau via AFP/Getty Images
CLTR’s head of AI policy, Jess Whittlestone, is in the process of being seconded to DSIT on a one day a week basis to assist on AI policy leading up to the AI Safety Summit, according to a CLTR August update seen by POLITICO. In the interim, she is informally advising several policy teams across DSIT.
A former specialist adviser to the Cabinet Office meanwhile, Markus Anderljung, is now head of policy at GovAI.
Kemp says he has expressed reservations about existential risk organizations attempting to get staff members seconded to government. “We can’t be trusted as objective and fair regulators or scholars, if we have such deep connections to the bodies we’re trying to regulate,” he says.
“I share the concern about AI companies dominating regulatory discussions, and have been advocating for greater independent expert involvement in the summit to reduce risks of regulatory capture,” said CLTR’s Head of AI Policy, Dr Jess Whittlestone. “It is crucial for U.K. AI policy to be informed by diverse perspectives.”
Instead of the risks of existing foundation models like GPT-4, EA-linked groups and AI companies tend to talk up the “emergent” risks of frontier models — a forward-looking stance that nudges the regulatory horizon into the future.
This framing “is a way of suggesting that that’s why you need to have Big Tech in the room – because they are the ones developing these frontier models,” suggests Aitken.
At the frontier
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics. The paper explored the controversial idea of licensing the most powerful AI models, a proposal that’s been criticized for its potential to cement the dominance of leading AI firms.
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics | Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
CLTR presented the paper to No. 10 with the prime minister’s special advisers on AI and the director and deputy director of DSIT in attendance, according to the CLTR memo.
Such ideas appear to be resonating. In addition to announcing the “Frontier AI Taskforce”, the government said in September that the AI Summit would focus entirely on the regulation of “frontier AI.”
The British government disputes the idea that its AI policy is narrowly focused. “We have engaged extensively with stakeholders in creating our AI regulation white paper, and have received a broad and diverse range of views as part of the recently closed consultation process which we will respond to in due course,” said a spokesperson.
Spokespeople for CLTR and CSER said that both groups focus on risks across the spectrum, from near-term to long-term, while a CLTR spokesperson stressed that it’s an independent and non-partisan think tank.
Some say that it’s the external circumstances that have changed, rather than the effectiveness of the EA lobby. CSER professor Haydn Belfield, who identifies as an EA, says that existential risk think tanks have been petitioning the government for years – on issues like pandemic preparedness and nuclear risk in addition to AI.
Although the government appears more receptive to their overtures now, “I’m not sure we’ve gotten any better at it,” he says. “I just think the world’s gotten worse.”
Update: This story has been updated to clarify Luke Kemp’s job title.
LONDON — Boris Johnson issued a direct plea to Donald Trump not to ditch U.S. support for Ukraine if he becomes president in 2024.
Writing for the Spectator after a trip to Ukraine, the former British prime minister — who has lobbied hard for wavering Republicans to keep the faith in the war-torn country — warned Russian triumph could boomerang on any Trump administration.
“A Putin victory would be a catastrophe for the West and for American leadership, and I don’t believe it is an outcome that could easily be endured by a U.S. president, let alone one who wanted to Make America Great Again,” Johnson wrote in the Spectator.
Johnson said that should Ukraine succeed in repelling Russia, “then the reverse is true.”
“Exactly the opposite message will be sent around the world: that we do care about democracy, that we are willing to back our principles, and that the West still has the guts to stick at something until we succeed,” he added.
Since being forced from office last year, the ex-British leader has energetically lobbied for continued support for Ukraine. In May he attended a private lunch in Dallas, Texas, as part of efforts to shore up support for the Ukrainian war effort with skeptical Republicans. And he dined with Trump on the same trip, with a Johnson spokesperson saying he stressed “the vital importance of Ukrainian victory.”
NEW DELHI — The G20 endorsed language in support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but the group of the world’s biggest economies weakened a previous stance that directly blamed Russia for the war in Ukraine.
The joint communiqué for the G20 summit in India stated that all countries should “refrain from action against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state.” That language was unchanged from a draft first reported by POLITICO on Saturday.
The wording, which Western countries wanted in order to signal a continued anger at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, could also appease Moscow’s complaints that attacks inside Russia have escalated since Kyiv launched its counteroffensive. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was deeply involved in the weeks of negotiations leading to the final version.
But the joint statement didn’t include a direct condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which a G20 statement in Bali last November did. Some officials contend that a shift was the only way to get buy-in from some of the group’s more Moscow-friendly members — let alone the fact that Russia is also in the bloc.
Critics argued that U.S. President Joe Biden could have gotten more. Svitlana Romanko, founder and director of the pro-Ukraine group Razom We Stand, called the communiqué “weak” and “cowardly by not even mentioning Russia or its ongoing war crimes.”
But some G20 members say it reflected a fair compromise. “It is a fact that this is today a very polarizing issue and there are multiple views on this,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said Saturday, referring to Ukraine. “Bali was a year ago, the situation was different. Many things have happened since then.”
There’s further language in the declaration that Western officials could herald as victories. It references adherence to the United Nations charter, which stipulates that no country can threaten another’s territory and sovereignty by force — a key demand of the U.S. and the EU in the run-up to the G20 summit. And it also calls for the “full, timely and effective implementation” of the Black Sea Grain Initiative which has stalled after Russia pulled out during the summer.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already touted the document as a “good and strong outcome.”
“What you’ll see in the communique is strong language, highlighting the impact of the war on food prices and food security, calling on Russia to re-enter the Black Sea grain initiative to allow exports to leave that part of the world and help feed millions of the most vulnerable people as well as the communique recognizing the principles of the U.N. charter respecting territorial integrity,” he said.
NEW DELHI — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised “very strong concerns” with Beijing about China’s alleged interference in the U.K. parliament.
Sunak relayed his concerns to Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in India following the arrest of a purported Chinese spy working in the parliament.
Sunak told broadcasters in New Delhi that he expressed “very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable.”
He added that his meeting with Li in the margins of the G20 gathering was an example of the benefits of engagement rather than “shouting from the sidelines.”
“We discussed a range of things and I raised areas where there are disagreements,” Sunak said. “And this is just part of our strategy to protect ourselves, protect our values and our interests, to align our approach to China with that of our allies like America, Australia, Canada, Japan and others, but also to engage where it makes sense,” he said.
The Sunday Times reported that a parliamentary researcher with links to several senior Tory MPs, including the foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns, was arrested under the Official Secrets Act.
The researcher was arrested along with another man on March 13. Officers from the Metropolitan police’s counterterrorism command, which covers espionage, are investigating, the paper said.
The researcher, in his 20s, was arrested in Edinburgh and the second man, who is in his 30s, was detained in Oxfordshire, according to the report. Police also carried out checks at an address in east London. Both men were held at a south London police station before being bailed until a date in early October.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has pressed the U.K. government for a more hawkish stance toward Beijing, said it was “appalled at reports of the infiltration of the U.K. parliament by someone allegedly acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.”
Kearns declined to comment but said on social media: “While I recognize the public interest, we all have a duty to ensure any work of the authorities is not jeopardized.” A person close to her told the PA news agency: “It is inevitable the Chinese Communist Party would target and seek to undermine parliament’s leading voices who have demonstrated the ability to constrain the CCP’s ambitions.”
The researcher also had links to security minister Tom Tugendhat, but is said to have had no contact since Tugendhat took on that role, according to the Sunday Times report.
At the end of August, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, visited Beijing amid criticism from hawkish Tory MPs.
Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith said U.K. institutions were “deeply penetrated by the Chinese,” and that the government was “so desperately thinking about China as a business problem, they fail to realize how dangerously threatening China really is becoming.”
A meeting between Sunak and Li at the margins of the G20 had been discussed in the run-up to the summit, as POLITICO reported, but it was not confirmed until Sunday morning.
According to Chinese state-controlled news agency Xinhua, Li told Sunak that the U.K. and China should properly handle disagreements and respect each other’s interests and concerns.
NEW DELHI — A last-minute agreement on the Ukraine portion of the G20’s summit statement kept the entire document from the trash heap — but it took dropping a reference to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to do it.
All the members of the group of top world economies spent weeks in fierce negotiations over every element of the 35-page communiqué. The greatest sticking point was what to say about the war raging in Eastern Europe, not least because Russia, a member of the bloc, would oppose condemnations of Moscow and shows of support for Kyiv.
What ultimately led to an agreement in the dark, early hours of Saturday morning was new language drafted by officials from India, the host nation, and delegates from Brazil and South Africa.
Russia, which spent weeks offering alternatives that wouldn’t leave it isolated in the G20 club, relented after key developing countries presented the formulation: All countries should “refrain from action against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state.” That phrasing was not included in the G20’s Bali declaration nearly a year ago.
But the final text was also acceptable to the Kremlin because it didn’t “deplore” or condemn “the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” as the Bali statement did. Language about there being a “war in Ukraine,” without specifically blaming Moscow for the conflict, is in both the Bali and the New Delhi declarations. “There were different views and assessments of the situation,” the new communiqué reads.
In effect, the G20 dropped its accusations against Russia in order to maintain unity on broader concepts of war and peace —concepts that were not so explicitly endorsed last November in Bali.
“The fact that we have consensus around the document was far from clear until the very last moment,” explained a senior EU official who, like four others from the Biden administration and European governments, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic dealings.
The G20, as a grouping, is geared toward issues of global economics and finance, not international conflict. But Western leaders, and U.S. President Joe Biden in particular, have leveraged multilateral gatherings since Russia invaded Ukraine 18 months ago to show they stand united with Kyiv.
Text on monetary policy was finalized well before presidents, princes and prime ministers descended on the Indian capital for this weekend’s summit. But the Ukraine section was being worked on well into Saturday morning, mere hours before official proceedings began.
Russia, represented in New Delhi by its foreign minister, not President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly demurred when iteration after iteration of the text sided more firmly with Ukraine. Moscow proposed competing language, the senior EU official said, including an entire section railing against Western-imposed sanctions that have complicated the Kremlin’s procurement of military materials.
India, as the host, shuttled Russian objections to officials from other G20 members, and sent their responses back to Moscow’s delegation.
In the end, so-called “sherpas” from the BRICS consortium’s three democratic countries settled on an idea: The communiqué should borrow language and principles from the United Nations Charter, which states that no country can seize territory from another using force. Russia, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, should have no objection to it, they reasoned.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak publicly called the final language on Ukraine a “good and strong outcome” | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister who was deeply involved in the final negotiations, said the Kremlin could live with that language. Western nations were satisfied because the language genuinely reflected the overwhelming sentiment within the G20.
A senior U.S. official insisted that the New Delhi version is far superior to the Bali statement because of that reflection, noting that Russia would never sign anything that directly accused it of illegally capturing land.
Jon Finer, Biden’s deputy national security adviser, noted that the G20 leaders endorsed the Bali language last year and have supported U.N. resolutions.
“The joint statement issued yesterday builds on that to send an unprecedented and unified statement,” Finer told reporters. Biden is working to rally nations around the world against Russian aggression, he said. “This statement is a major step forward in this effort.”
U.K. officials, meanwhile, argued that in referring to the U.N.’s resolution against the invasion of Ukraine, the Bali communiqué didn’t directly condemn Russia’s aggression but instead indirectly referenced the fact that some countries had “deplored” it. “By achieving consensus in New Delhi, the G20 has forced Putin to commit to cessation of attacks on infrastructure, to withdrawal of troops, and to the return of territory,” a U.K. official said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak publicly called the final language on Ukraine a “good and strong outcome.”
But others expressed their reservations. “Of course, if it was a document written by the EU alone, then this would probably look different, but then this would not be a consensus document,” the senior EU official said.
Kyiv had a much harsher reaction. “Ukraine is grateful to its partners who tried to include strong wording in the text,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wrote on social media. “At the same time, the G20 has nothing to be proud of in the part about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
Officials from the G20, from India to Western nations, professed satisfaction with the joint declaration. They insisted that they achieved what they could in New Delhi in terms of being more pointed in their view of the war, even if the document had to drop the “aggression” reference about Russia.
According to a second U.S. official: “The focus was different for this one.”
NEW DELHI — With the clock likely ticking on his time in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak wants to secure a legacy on the world stage. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be just what he needs.
The British prime minister faces a general election next year with his Conservative Party languishing 18 points behind the Labour opposition in the polls.
But though Sunak told reporters travelling with him to the G20 leaders’ summit in India this weekend he was “entirely confident” he can still win re-election, U.K. government insiders say the PM already has one eye on his possible post-Downing Street legacy.
Sunak takes pride in how he has helped repair the U.K.’s diplomatic standing after the rancour of Boris Johnson’s premiership and Liz Truss’ brief but disastrous stint in power. He sees the Windsor Framework — the agreement on post-Brexit trade checks in Ireland which markedly improved U.K. relations with the EU and the U.S. — as his signature achievement so far.
Now the bigger prize in Sunak’s sights is the opportunity to position the U.K. as the leading authority on the governance of AI.
“He sees it as one of his long-term legacy pieces,” one government adviser told POLITICO. “Shaping the world’s response to a paradigm-shifting technology would be a big deal — and it would be recognized as a big deal.” A second government official said Sunak “never misses a chance” to bring up AI.
There are several existing international forums for governments to discuss AI regulation, including a G7 process and the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council. Sunak’s challenge is to convince countries to take the U.K. seriously as a place to bring existing initiatives together and fold in unrepresented countries. And that will require some skillful diplomacy.
From G20 to AI summit
Sunak used conversations with other world leaders at the G20 to drum up interest in his landmark AI safety summit, which is taking place in the U.K. in November. The invitation list has yet to be made public, but is expected to include a range of countries including China.
The prime minister told POLITICO en route to New Delhi: “So far, the response we’ve had has been really positive, people are really keen to participate and they recognize that the U.K. can play a leadership role in AI.”
At a technology-focused session of the summit on Sunday the PM made comments on the need to develop AI responsibly. He praised India for “bringing AI to the top of the agenda at the G20” and said that there was “an opportunity for human progress that could surpass the industrial revolution in both speed and breadth.”
He told leaders that first and foremost, the development of AI had to be done safely to manage risks. “This requires international cooperation,” he said. “The U.K. will be hosting the first ever international AI Safety Summit in November to help drive this forward.”
Sunak added that the technology must also be developed securely “to protect the digital economy from malevolent actors and states” and fairly to “ensure inclusivity.”
“Getting this right is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities of our age,” Sunak said. “Let’s work together to make sure we all benefit.”
Lacking luster
But to make Sunak’s summit a success — and help secure his legacy — he will be reliant on the buy-in and active participation of fellow world leaders.
Despite Sunak congratulating his host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a successful summit, the G20 was noteworthy for the absence of powerful figures including China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Sunak will be hoping to avoid similar ‘no shows’ at his AI summit. He has already been dealt a blow with news last month that U.S. President Joe Biden will not be attending.
Key European leaders have also failed to confirm their attendance. In comments to POLITICO, one French official questioned the need for U.K. mediation, given alternative international avenues for discussing AI.
Sunak’s experience at the G20 also demonstrates the difficulties of choreographing the good optics and effective diplomacy required for a successful summit.
Predictions from U.K. government figures that Sunak would be mobbed by the adoring public did not materialize in a locked-down New Delhi where there were few people on the streets.
There were also hiccups in Sunak’s summit agenda. He had been due to meet Modi at his house on Friday but that was replaced with a 20-minute meeting on the margins of the summit on Saturday. On Friday night Modi hosted President Biden for dinner instead. The two leaders held talks for about an hour.
A planned business reception for Sunak on Friday at the British High Commission was also cancelled, because of transport issues. Sunak’s spokesperson said rescheduling was “part and parcel” of any summit.
Things did improve over the weekend for the British PM. Modi and Sunak were filmed bear-hugging each other when they met. According to the U.K. government’s readout, Modi “noted the warm reception” Sunak had had in India, and the pair had agreed to continue moving towards a free trade agreement “at pace.”
The Indian government said Modi has now formally invited Sunak for a bilateral visit, after POLITICO reported that U.K. officials were already drawing up plans for a possible return trip for Sunak later this year.
LONDON — A year is a long time in politics — but the reverberations of the surreal fall of 2022 are still being felt across the U.K.
Wednesday marks the first anniversary of Liz Truss’ ill-fated appointment as prime minister — a year on from that rainy day in September when she stood outside No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain” with free market shock therapy.
Truss’ £45 billion package of unfunded tax cuts — with the promise of more to come — instead sunk the pound, sent interest rates soaring, caused chaos on the bond markets and forced the Bank of England to prop up failing pension funds.
Humiliated, Truss had little choice but to junk her entire economic program and less than four weeks later she was gone — the U.K.’s shortest-ever serving prime minister, famously outlasted by a supermarket lettuce.
The legacy of the period still is fiercely debated among Britain’s left and right-wing commentariat. In Westminster, some Tory factions still push for Truss’ successor Rishi Sunak to embrace her brand of free market economics.
But the period sticks in the memory of most ordinary Brits as one of high farce and incompetence and significantly, it’s a view shared in boardrooms across London and beyond.
“It was such a short, sharp, weird time. It had such a febrile sense of impending doom,” said one partner at a Big Four accounting firm who was granted anonymity — like other figures quoted below — to speak candidly about Truss for this article.
The money men
Senior employees of major financial and professional services firms say Truss’ brief period in office still taints Britain’s reputation around the globe.
Annual Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the U.K., already down significantly since the 2016 Brexit referendum, fell further — behind France — last year, according to an EY survey.
Britain has also been the second-worst performing G7 economy post-COVID, despite an upgrade in GDP growth figures by the Office for National Statistics last week.
The U.K.’s stuttering economic growth since the pandemic always was going to put a dent into Britain’s prospects for international investment. Experts give a myriad of reasons for Britain’s decreasing international competitiveness.
But a director at one U.S. investment bank said: “The No. 1 issue I hear from clients is that the U.K. is still un-investable because of what happened last year in Westminster, particularly with what happened during Liz Truss’ time in office.”
Senior employees of major financial and professional services firms say Truss’ brief period in office still taints Britain’s reputation around the globe | Leon Neal/Getty Images
A managing director at another investment bank agreed. “This stuff matters for clients who are looking at the U.K., seeing three different prime ministers and four different chancellors in a matter of a few months, and saying ‘why on earth would we choose that place to build our new factory?’ The results of that will still be felt today.”
Such views are confirmed in a recent survey by transatlantic lobby group BritishAmericanBusiness and management consulting firm Bain and Co.
The survey found U.S. business confidence in Britain has sunk for the third straight year, with political instability cited as a key factor.
BritishAmericanBusiness’ chief trade and policy officer Emanuel Adam said: “The instability in No. 10 last autumn, coupled with ongoing concerns over Brexit, growth prospects and taxation have led to a drop of confidence in the U.K. for a third year in a row.
“The message from U.S. investors is clear. They are calling for a stable political environment and business friendly policies from the U.K. government.”
But if foreign direct investors have been put off, the pound’s stronger-than-expected performance since Truss left office suggests they may have compensated with other forms of inward flows.
The Big Four partner quoted at the top of the article says Truss’ disastrous premiership was one of several factors making the British economy less competitive on the world stage.
“Trussonomics plus Brexit plus political uncertainty plus a misplaced sense of British exceptionalism are all contributing to making Britain a less attractive place than we ought to be,” they said.
“I’m aware of real-life examples of decisions being made to invest elsewhere, because they couldn’t be confident about the stability of their return on investment.”
Gloom in Westminster
But even more than the U.K. economy, it is Truss’ Conservative Party which is haunted most by the specter of her brief tenure.
Polling from Ipsos shows the British public’s trust in the Conservatives to manage the economy fell off a cliff during Truss’ time as prime minister, and has never recovered.
With an election looming next year, their Labour opponents — now 18 points ahead in the polls — cannot believe their good fortune.
“The two most important things for an opposition are to be able to show people that they can be trusted to protect the economy, and trusted with the defence of the realm,” said one Labour shadow Cabinet minister. “Liz Truss did a lot of the heavy lifting in allowing us to get a hearing on the economy from the public.”
One moderate Tory MP, and Sunak supporter, said “the damage done by the 49 days of Truss could still be the thing that loses us the next general election.”
“At least part of the party’s problem at the moment is that although the economy is starting to improve, no one is going to give us the credit for that because of the seismic events of last year,” they said.
Julian Jessop, an independent economist who acted as an informal adviser to Truss during her leadership campaign, agreed that the public became infuriated once mortgage rates began to surge during last September’s financial meltdown, but said “it is a bit much” to continue to blame the Tories’ poor polling on the former PM.
“If that were the big problem, then confidence should have recovered,” he said. “We have a new prime minister in place.”
A different view
Indeed some economists — and Truss defenders — see the past 12 months in a very different light.
Even more than the U.K. economy, it is Truss’ Conservative Party which is haunted most by the specter of her brief tenure | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
They point to bond yields which recently have hit similar levels to the worst moments of the Truss era, thanks to successive Bank of England rate rises.
Truss’ prediction that inflation would help the U.K. eat through some of its debt pile — used as justification for funding her tax cuts through borrowing — has also been borne out in reality. And tax receipts have come in higher than expected this year, thanks to larger than expected growth and inflationary pressures.
Truss’ former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, speaking on a forthcoming episode of POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast, insisted that while he and Truss admittedly pushed it “too much, too far,” their overall policy direction was sound.
“I think there’s a big lesson in life,” he said. “It’s all very well thinking you’ve got the right answer, but you’ve also go to have a staged, methodical approach to getting to the answer.”
Russell Napier, author of The Solid Ground investment report, added the unexpectedly strong performance of sterling against the U.S. dollar and other major currencies this year indicates capital inflows into Britain must be stronger than expected.
“Is there something that’s unique and dangerous about the U.K.? No there isn’t,” Napier added. “Our bond yields are at a dangerously high level, but so is the bond yield of Sweden and France, and Canada and South Korea and Australia.
Some of Truss’ closest supporters on the Tory backbenches have now set up pressure groups to fight for the type of low-tax policies advocated in her time in office.
Truss, for her part, is writing a book which aides suggest will be “more manifesto than autobiography.” She is also giving a keynote speech on the economy this month — just five days after the anniversary of her ill-fated “mini-budget.”
But for many Tory MPs still feeling the political repercussions of her tenure and fearing a brutal defeat at next year’s election, a period of silence would be welcome.
“It could be worse,” notes one Tory MP, a minister under Sunak. “It could have been a lot worse if she’d stayed.”
In the race to rein in artificial intelligence, Western governments have hit a major bump in the road: they all want to win.
Officials from the European Union, the United States and other major economies are competing to write the definitive rules for artificial intelligence, including for the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Rival summits will be held in the Fall with the aim to reach a coordinated plan between Western governments on how to regulate the emerging technology. But these upcoming events risk entrenching divisions between countries in ways that threaten to undermine efforts to draw up a unified international rulebook on AI. To make matters worse, some of the talks are now getting personal.
“Everyone is committed to making this work,” said a European Commission official involved in negotiations over AI rules. “But right now, there are a lot of egos in the room.”
Western politicians are keen to show voters they are on top of a technology that burst into the public’s consciousness, almost overnight.
AI advocates say the economic opportunities offered by rolling out the technology range from quicker diagnoses of diseases to the development of autonomous vehicles. Skeptics warn AI could lead to a surge in unemployment and — in the very worst scenarios — global armageddon, if automated systems gain uncontrollable power.
Experts argue a common Western rulebook is vital to allow companies that use the technology to operate with ease internationally because AI is inherently a cross-border tool. Common rules would also protect people from Berlin to Boston from the technology’s potential harms, including minority groups potentially suffering discrimination from automated AI tools.
“We really don’t have a systematic global response to what we should do about the many risks,” said Gary Marcus, a psychologist and cognitive scientist at New York University who wants to see greater checks on AI. “Every country is trying to do something on its own.”
While governments in the West argue among themselves, China is pressing ahead with its own rulebook. The Chinese Communist Party says it’s seeking to protect its citizens from the AI’s risks. But Beijing’s critics say its regulation will be designed to serve its authoritarian ends.
Governments in the West worry that China’s totalitarian take on AI, including the technology’s wholesale use for national security purposes, may gain ground across the developing world if they don’t promote their own blueprint as an alternative.
For this article, POLITICO spoke to six Western officials working on the AI summits, who were granted anonymity to discuss the challenges they face.
In September, officials from the G7 group of Western industrialized economies are expected to meet to finalize a blueprint for how to regulate AI, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the talks.
Western officials worry that China’s totalitarian take on AI may gain ground across the developing world if the West does not promote its own blueprint as an alternative | Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
That gathering will then be followed by a more formal summit of G7 leaders, likely in October or November, the officials said. European and U.S. officials hope the G7 work will bolster their joint attempt to limit the risks of generative AI and develop safe ways to use the technology to jumpstart economic growth.
The U.K. has also pitched itself as a world leader on AI safety and is expected to host its own summit, in London in November. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak views the event as a chance to enhance the country’s role as a global player seven years after the country’s Brexit referendum.
Officials involved in these overlapping AI projects describe a complex diplomatic tussle. International rivalries, diplomatic realpolitik and — above all — fears about how China will promote its own AI rules have complicated preparations for the meetings. Not all Western capitals, particularly within the EU, view Beijing’s stance on AI as contradictory to their own.
Divisions on how best to police the technology have also slowed down the process of reaching agreement. The EU wants to take a more aggressive stance on policing AI, while the U.S., U.K. and Japan would prefer more industry-led commitments. It’s unclear whether these differences can be overcome before the proposed summits later this year.
Egos, not policy
Three Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, complained that people’s egos — and not efforts to regulate AI — had taken over discussions linked to the G7 and U.K. summit events.
Since the EU first proposed AI oversight to the G7 work in late April and followed that up with a two-page memo in late May to the U.S., representatives from cooperating governments have been sparring privately to take credit for the West’s plans, the officials added.
That behavior has included adding to the draft G7 document in ways that favored their own stance on AI governance; taking credit, publicly, for the conclusions of the upcoming G7 summit; and dismissing others’ views in often backhanded comments while drafting proposals.
Brussels wants its own AI legislation, which is expected to be completed by December, to form the basis of measures adopted by other leading democracies, according to two European Commission officials involved in that process. That plan involves pushing for mandatory curbs on how AI is deployed in so-called “high-risk” cases like the use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement.
Washington is eager to press its more industry-friendly approach, and the White House published a set of voluntary commitments that Amazon and Microsoft have agreed to support. These non-binding pledges, which include promises to allow outsiders to test the firms’ AI systems for biases and other societal safeguards, are, in part, an effort to get ahead of similar proposals at the heart of the G7’s upcoming summit, according to one U.S. official.
“Any kind of international level agreement will have to be at the level of very vague principles,” said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer scientist at Brown University, who co-wrote the White House’s guidelines for how U.S. agencies should oversee AI. “Everyone wants to do their own thing.”
LONDON — Britain has spent years seeking its place in the world after Brexit. Now it seems to have found a role … as a global conference center, where the great powers gather to talk.
Without a seat at the European table in Brussels, and also excluded from power-play summits between the EU and Washington, Britain hopes to wield its own “convening power” as it reboots its foreign policy ambitions.
Indeed almost every time a major global issue has raised its head of late — climate change; war in Ukraine, the rise of AI; the energy crisis — Britain’s answer has been to host another world summit.
Hot on the heels of this summer’s Ukraine Recovery Conference in London, U.K. government officials are now busy prepping for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “major global summit on AI safety,” due to be held later this year.
That event will be followed next spring by a global energy security conference, timed to mark the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And all this less than two years after Britain played host to COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow.
This “summit frenzy”, as one European diplomat laughingly describes it, has not gone unnoticed in foreign capitals. But as more and more powerstry a similar middleman strategy, the U.K. may have a fight on its hands to stand out.
“This is really our bread and butter,” said Alicia Kearns, Conservative chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee. “One of our strongest diplomatic offers to the world is our ability to convene people. I think it’s a really important aspect of our diplomacy.”
“UK-hosted forums and conferences deliver real-world results, and position us as a leading voice on a range of important issues,” a U.K. government spokesperson told POLITICO, in response to questions about its summit strategy.
They are a “vital part of the diplomatic toolkit, giving us the opportunity to bring together governments and experts … and yield commitments which translate into real and lasting change for the better.”
Leading or following?
Hosting international conferences is hardly a new venture for the U.K. — but its efforts to act as global broker have been given fresh prominence in the wake of Brexit.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron’s Syria donor conference in early 2016 raised more than $10 billion to help pay for food, medical care and shelter in the war-torn country. Two years earlier, Cameron’s Foreign Secretary William Hague had gathered global ministers — and a Hollywood megastar — in London to combat the use of rape as a weapon of war. A follow-up was held in Westminster last year.
Britain’s big post-Brexit foreign policy reset, known as the “Integrated Review” and published in March 2021, made the national mission explicit. “Shaping the open international order of the future: we will use our convening power and work with partners to reinvigorate the international system,” the plan promised.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should not confuse a convening role with that of actual leadership | Pool photo by Henry Nicholls/Getty Images
Its author, the academic John Bew, continues to advise Sunak on foreign policy today. And multiple current and former advisers and diplomats agree that playing the role of eager host makes sense for the U.K. these days.
“People can pretty much rely that if they come to London for an international summit it will be well-organized,” Peter Ricketts, a former head of the U.K. diplomatic service, said. He cited Britain’s strong diplomatic reputation for drafting sound communiqués and brokering compromises.
But Ricketts noted Britain should not confuse a convening role with that of actual leadership. “The U.K. is not big enough to provide global leadership on any of these huge issues,” he said, referencing energy, climate change and artificial intelligence.
“Inevitably the Americans are going to be in the lead on setting governance for AI norms and so on,” he added.” The other players will be the Chinese, for their huge market power, and in third place — perhaps a long way behind — is the EU.”
COP out
Hosting a major global conference is one thing — making it count is another matter.
A former adviser to the U.K.’s foreign office, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the hosting of conferences “in and of themselves doesn’t hold massive value.” More critical is the follow-up work to ensure they “catalyze change or investment and serve a purpose.”
“It’s how you leverage it that matters, and its legacy,” the ex-adviser cautioned. “They take an awful lot of work, and done badly are just talking shops.”
Some believe there are lessons for the U.K. to learn from the aftermath of COP26, when the eyes of the world were on Glasgow for two weeks of high-stakes climate summitry.
Nick Mabey, who advised the U.K. government on COP26 and founded the E3G climate think tank, said the British played a “good game” in their organization of the event — but then appeared to drop “its own ball in the follow-up” as initiatives got delayed while the Conservative Party burned through three prime ministers.
“That did damage the U.K.’s reputation quite strongly among core allies, and other countries. It was seen not to have followed up as strongly across all of the things that it launched at COP26,” he said.
Mabey cited the forest declaration, an agreement which aims to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, as an example of an initiative he thinks has fallen in priority.
But the U.K. government spokesperson quoted above insisted its “track record” on delivery “speaks for itself.”
“In the last two years alone, 190 countries agreed to phase down coal power at COP26, $60 billion was raised at the Ukraine Recovery Conference and an international declaration on ending Sexual Violence in Conflict was signed by over 50 countries.”
Unlike summits hosted by bigger powers — or meetings like COP that are part of an established United Nations process — Britain will, Mabey warned, really need to “hustle” to get a turnout at its own events.
“The international calendar is going to become a lot more crowded, as other countries will be doing the ‘middle power strategy’ to get their place in the sun too, whether that is the South Africas or Brazils,” he said.
Testing the waters
The European diplomat quoted at the top of the story, granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, agreed there is now a “little bit of summit competition” among the larger capitals.
Many leaders, he said, see the benefits of playing host: they find it easier to bag coveted bilateral meetings with important counterparts on the sidelines — especially useful for U.K. prime ministers who no longer have bi-monthly meetings with the EU27 in the calendar.
Italy has spied its own conference opportunity through the Rome Med — an annual gathering of Mediterranean leaders which began in 2015. In June, French President Emmanuel Macron convened a global finance conference in an effort to unlock trillions of dollars for the fight against climate change.
But not everyone wants to be the first mover, the diplomat added, citing risks for the U.K. in taking ownership of hot-button issues like AI.
“You have capitals that don’t necessarily want to be the first to host a summit on a specific topic,” he said. “Maybe they want to host the second or the third, or further down the line, so that they can test the waters and see if that thing flies or it doesn’t fly.”
He added: “If a summit is a failure, it doesn’t look very good for the host.”
For Britain, still seeking its new place in the world three-and-a-half years after Brexit, it seems to be a risk worth taking.
Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a damaging political blow on Friday as voters rejected his party in two parliamentary elections it could ordinarily have expected to win.
The Conservatives lost to the resurgent Labour Party in Selby and Ainsty, a region in the north of England where the Sunak’s party had enjoyed a commanding majority.
A second seat, Somerton and Frome, was won by the Liberal Democrats, a centrist party.
The Conservatives just managed to hold on to a third seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the constituency held by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson until his resignation from parliament last month, although Labour significantly grew its share of the vote.
But that was little comfort for Sunak – the overall results suggest Sunak’s government is on course for an electoral defeat at the next general election, expected next year.
Thursday’s three by-elections were a tough mid-term test yet for Sunak, who took power after Liz Truss’s shambolic six-week premiership last fall.
Sunak has struggled to reverse the Conservatives’ plummeting fortunes in the nine months he has held office; a series of scandals, a stuttering economy and a decline in Britain’s public services have left his party deeply unpopular.
In Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Labour was hoping to claim the seat Boris Johnson had held for eight years. Conservative Party candidate Steve Tuckwell won 45.16% of the vote there.
Johnson quit in anger after a committee of fellow lawmakers found that he had lied to Parliament over “Partygate,” the scandal of lockdown-era parties in his government that tanked his popularity and contributed to his political downfall.
But in Selby, in the north of England, Labour overturned a huge deficit to win the seat with 46% of the votes.
The two seats were viewed as the kind of regions that Labour needs to be targeting if it is to have a hope of claiming a parliamentary majority at the next election.
Both those votes were triggered after a committee of lawmakers found Johnson lied to Parliament, in a damning and unprecedented verdict against a former Prime Minister. Johnson was set to be suspended from Parliament for 90 days, but avoided that penalty by resigning instead.
Nigel Adams, the former Conservative lawmaker for Selby and a close ally of Johnson’s, quit hours later in an apparent move of solidarity.
Adding to the Conservatives’ woes was a thumping loss in Somerton and Frome, an affluent area in south-west England, to the Liberal Democrats which won nearly 55% of votes. The centrist party has been picking up former Conservative support in the so-called “Blue Wall,” a well-off portion of southern England that typically opposed Brexit.
While the Conservatives took some comfort from the result in Uxbridge, the swing against Sunak’s party in all three seats indicate a resurgent Labour party would take power in a national vote.
By law, a general election must take place by January 2025. Most observers think Sunak will call it in the fall of 2024, if not before, to avoid trying to persuade voters to cast their ballots in the middle of winter.
Time is running out for him to reverse Sunak’s fortunes. A cost of living crisis, creaking public services, stubbornly high inflation and an endless list of Tory scandals have turned opinion firmly against his party – which has been in power for 13 years – and intensified calls by buoyant opposition parties for an early general election.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace plans to leave the government at the next Cabinet reshuffle and will not stand in the next general election, he told the Sunday Times newspaper.
Wallace informed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of his plans on June 16 but had hoped to make the announcement later in the summer, the newspaper reported late Saturday. A Cabinet reshuffle is expected by September.
“I’m not standing next time,” Wallace was quoted as saying. But he ruled out going “prematurely” and forcing another by-election, the newspaper said.
“I went into politics in the Scottish parliament in 1999. That’s 24 years,” Wallace, who has been defense chief since July 2019, told the paper.
The development comes days after Wallace controversially said Ukraine should put more emphasis on showing “gratitude” to “doubting politicians” in the U.S. and other allied countries who might not be completely convinced of the need to maintain military and economic support to Kyiv as it defends the country from Russia’s invasion.
“There’s a slight word of caution here which is, whether you like it or not people want to see gratitude,” Wallace told reporters at a NATO summit in Lithuania on July 12.
Sunak was forced to try to calm the diplomatic tumult caused by Wallace’s remarks. The prime minister said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed gratitude to Kyiv’s allies “countless times.”
Wallace’s name was in the mix of potential candidates to be the next secretary-general of NATO before the defense alliance in early July agreed to extend Jens Stoltenberg’s term by a year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia has a “sufficient stockpile” of cluster bombs and threatened to take “reciprocal action” if Ukraine used the weapons against Russian troops.
The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that Washington had delivered the cluster munitions, which over 110 countries worldwide have banned, to Ukraine.
Kyiv says it needs the explosive shells to compensate for ammunition shortages as it is currently mounting a counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion. Ukraine has said that cluster bombs would only be used on its own territory to dislodge Russian soldiers from occupied areas. Cluster bombs are filled with submunitions that are released in the air and make the weapons more effective against enemy troops but can also pose a risk for civilians.
“I want to note that in the Russian Federation there is a sufficient stockpile of different kinds of cluster bombs. We have not used them yet. But of course if they are used against us, we reserve the right to take reciprocal action,” Putin said in an interview Sunday with Russian state TV, according to Reuters.
“Until now, we have not done this, we have not used it, and we have not had such a need,” the president said. He said that he regarded the use of cluster bombs as a crime.
There is strong evidence, however, suggesting that Moscow has used cluster bombs in its war against Ukraine. In a report in May, Human Rights Watch said that “since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian armed forces have used cluster munitions in attacks that have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged civilian objects, including homes, hospitals, and schools.”
Neither Russia nor Ukraine nor the U.S. has ratified the international convention on banning cluster bombs.
President Joe Biden and King Charles III on Monday met for the first time since the British monarch ascended to the throne, with the US president visiting Windsor Castle for all the pomp and circumstance that comes with a royal meeting.
Biden arrived to inspect an honor guard formed of the Prince of Wales Company of the Welsh Guards – with hundreds of uniformed troops, and its military band – positioned on the grassy quadrangle before a tent. The band played “God Save the King” upon the monarch’s arrival and “The Star-Spangled Banner” upon Biden’s entrance.
The moment marked Biden’s second trip to Windsor Castle since taking office – the president met the King’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at her home just outside London in June 2021. The Queen met 12 US presidents spanning her reign, all but President Lyndon Johnson. The president said at the time the Queen wanted to know about Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Biden was meeting in Switzerland days after their visit, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Biden said he wished he could have spoken to the Queen for longer. “She was very generous,” he told reporters.
This latest meeting with Charles was a closely watched moment for how the King balances his traditionally apolitical role with a cause he is passionate about that has become a signature priority. Biden has called climate change “the existential threat to human existence as we know it.”
Biden, Sullivan told reporters, “has huge respect for the king’s commitment on the climate issue in particular. He has been a clarion voice on this issue and more than that, has been an actor – someone who’s mobilized action and effort. And so the president comes at this with enormous goodwill at this relationship,” Sullivan said, calling Monday’s engagement an opportunity to “deepen the personal bond” and “harness their shared interest in trying to drive climate progress and climate action.”
Biden, King Charles and special envoy for climate John Kerry met with private sector company leaders at a climate event. The group discussed barriers to private investment, and Biden was expected to encourage those in attendance to “step up to their responsibilities,” while also highlighting public investment, Sullivan said.
In keeping with US tradition, Biden did not travel to London for the coronation, but first lady Dr. Jill Biden and granddaughter Finnegan Biden attended the ceremony. Both the president and first lady did make the trip across the Atlantic for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II last year.
Biden arrived at 10 Downing Street and was greeted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of discussions on a range of issues, including Ukraine, a topic on which the two leaders have closely coordinated. Biden recounted all of the places he’s met with Sunak – from San Diego, California, to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Hiroshima, Japan, to Washington, DC – six times in the six months since the prime minister took office.
“Couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend or greater ally. Got a lot to talk about,” Biden said, adding, “Our relationship is rock solid. … And I look forward to our discussions.”
Sunak welcomed Biden back to 10 Downing Street, which he was visiting for the first time as president, saying he is “very privileged and fortunate to have you here.”
He said they would be strengthening cooperation on joint economic security, as well as discussing the NATO alliance.
“We head from here to NATO in Vilnius, where we stand as two of the firmest allies in that alliance and I know we want to do everything we can to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. Great pleasure to have you here,” Sunak said.
Their meeting came after the US announced Friday that it will be sending cluster munitions to Ukraine for the first time, a rare topic on which the US and United Kingdom publicly disagree. The UK, Sunak told reporters Saturday, is “signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions and discourages their use.”
Sunak continued, “We will continue to do our part to support Ukraine against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion, but we’ve done that by providing heavy battle tanks and most recently long-range weapons, and hopefully all countries can continue to support Ukraine.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan downplayed any concern that Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions would present any “fracture” with allied countries that oppose the use of such equipment, suggesting that Sunak was stating a “legal position” as he highlighted broader US-UK unity.
“The prime minister stated the UK’s legal position, that they are a signatory to the Oslo Convention. The United States is not. That being a signatory means discouraging the use of these weapons. He fulfilled his legal obligation, but I think you will find Prime Minister Sunak and President Biden on the same page strategically on Ukraine, in lockstep on the bigger picture of what we’re trying to accomplish and as united as ever, both in this conflict and writ large,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday.
Sullivan noted that the US has not received any negative feedback from NATO allies regarding the decision.
“That will be repeated, in my view, with all the leaders of the alliance. I do not think you will see fracture, division, or disunity… as a result of this decision. Even though many allies – the signatories to Oslo – are in a position where they themselves cannot say, ‘We are for cluster munitions.’ But we have heard nothing from people saying this cast doubt on our commitment, this cast doubt on coalition unity, or this cast doubt on our belief that the United States is playing a vital and positive role as leader of this coalition in Ukraine,” he said.
A Defense Department release on the US’ latest equipment drawdown also said that the decision was made following “extensive consultations with Congress and our Allies and partners.”
In a readout following the meeting, the White House said Biden and Sunak “reviewed preparations for the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius.”
“They reaffirmed their steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression,” the White House said, adding the two leaders also discussed last month’s newly announced economic partnership and developments in Northern Ireland, including “efforts to ensure continued progress there.”
Later Monday, the president departs London for Vilnius, Lithuania, where NATO leaders will gather for critical meetings amid the war in Ukraine and last month’s failed coup attempt in Russia, posing the biggest threat to global stability for the alliance in recent history.
Following the NATO Summit, Biden travels to Helsinki, Finland, where he will offer a notable show of support to Nordic countries during a summit with the leaders of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark.
President Biden met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles in the U.K. ahead of the NATO summit that starts Tuesday in Lithuania. It comes after the president’s controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine. The weapons are banned by more than 100 countries. Weijia Jiang reports from Windsor, England.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
London — President Biden was in London Monday morning for a whistlestop, 24-hour visit to the United Kingdom before heading for a NATO leaders summit in Lithuania. The first meeting on Mr. Biden’s agenda after his Sunday night arrival was a sit-down with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at his residence at No. 10 Downing Street. It was the president’s first in-person discussion with a fellow world leader on the European trip as the U.S. and its NATO allies look to maintain a unified voice in support of Ukraine as it battles Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Mr. Biden was heard saying as he walked into the British prime minister’s official residence that the U.S. has “no closer friend and greater ally” and that the relationship remained “rock solid.”
There has been concern in Europe over the Biden administration’s decision to send controversial weapons to Ukraine, but also over the future of U.S. government backing for Ukraine when Mr. Biden’s first term comes to an end. On both points, the U.S. leader will be looking to reassure America’s closest allies that Washington remains not only a committed partner but one that respects their humanitarian concerns.
Mr. Biden has spoken with Sunak a handful of times in recent months and their Monday meeting at Downing Street lasted only about 40 minutes.
It came after the U.S. announced its latest military aid package for Ukraine, which for the first time includes controversial cluster munitions. The move has divided U.S. allies, some of which — including the U.K. — have long banned use of the bombs.
Over the weekend, Sunak said the U.K. “discourages” the use of cluster munitions. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday, however, that NATO does not have a position on the weapons and that their use is not on the agenda for the summit that Mr. Biden will fly to join in Lithuania after his stop in London.
Another issue facing Mr. Biden and Sunak, and then the other NATO leaders this week, is Sweden’s pending accession to the transatlantic alliance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove the previously neutral countries of Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership. Finland has already become a full NATO member but Turkey and Hungary have so far blocked Sweden from joining.
President Biden shakes hands with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of their meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, July 10, 2023.
Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
Mr. Biden was expected to speak Monday with Sunak about conditions for a possible deal with Turkey to clear the way.
Ukraine also wants to join NATO, but allowing that to happen would infuriate Russia, likely draw sharp criticism from China and is a more contentious issue among the alliance’s existing members.
In an interview aired by CNN over the weekend, Mr. Biden said he didn’t think Ukraine was “ready for membership in NATO.”
“If the war is going on, then we’re all in a war,” he said, adding that there are other qualifications Ukraine must still meet to be considered for membership, including full “democratization.”
After his meeting with Sunak, Mr. Biden left central London for the roughly one-hour drive west, to have his first in-person meeting with King Charles III at Windsor Castle. Though not an official state visit, some classic British pomp and circumstance was organized for Mr. Biden’s stop at the ancient home of the British monarchy, including a guard of honor and a marching band.
Mr. Biden has met Charles on multiple occasions, but not since the king’s formal coronation ceremony on May 6. Mr. Biden did not attend the ceremony as he had just been in Britain for a separate trip, but first lady Jill Biden was there.
One of the two heads of states’ recent meetings was at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, in November 2021. On Monday, they were expected to discuss environmental issues and greet attendees from a climate finance forum that took place in the morning. Mr. Biden and Charles are expected to discuss with businesses leaders how private industry can best tackle climate change.
Madrid and London do not look kindly on the American decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine.
The Biden administration announced on Friday that the weapons will be included in the U.S.’s next $800 million arms package to Kyiv — a decision that has raised humanitarian concerns.
A cluster bomb is a weapon engineered to scatter submunitions (or “bomblets”) over a wide area, potentially risking civilian collateral damage. Washington is not party to the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions, endorsed by more than 100 countries, including the U.K. and Spain, and banning their use. Neither are Russia and Ukraine.
“It is important to note that the Russian Federation has been indiscriminately using cluster munitions from day 1 of the unprovoked large-scale aggression,” tweeted Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov after the U.S. announcement. He committed to use the weapons with caution.
But the “five principles” Kyiv is pledging to abide by failed to convince some European allies.
“Spain, based on the firm commitment it has with Ukraine, also has a firm commitment that certain weapons and bombs cannot be delivered under any circumstances,” Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles told reporters on Saturday. “No to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defense of Ukraine, which we understand should not be carried out with cluster bombs,” she said.
The U.K. is determined to honor this commitment too, as a “signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions and discourages their use,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Saturday.
“We will continue to do our part to support Ukraine against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion, but we’ve done that by providing heavy battle tanks and most recently long-range weapons, and hopefully all countries can continue to support Ukraine,” Sunak said.
Sunak is due to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden in London on Monday, ahead of a NATO summit starting Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
A small group of Western allies are engaged in “advanced” and “frantic, last-minute” negotiations to finalize a security assurance declaration for Ukraine ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania, according to four officials familiar with the talks.
For weeks, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have been discussing the issue with Kyiv, and have also reached out to other allies in NATO, the EU and the G7. The idea is to create an “umbrella” for all countries willing to provide Ukraine with ongoing military aid, even if the details vary from country to country.
The effort is part of broader negotiations at NATO and among several groups of nations over how Western allies should display long-term support for Ukraine.
Kyiv wants to join NATO as soon as possible, giving it access to the alliance’s vaunted Article 5 clause — an attack on one is an attack on all. But many allies within the alliance broadly agree Ukraine can only join after the war ends, at the earliest.
So the alliance’s biggest powers have been working to see what stop-gap security commitments they can each give Ukraine in the meantime. That view is not universal, however, with countries along NATO’s eastern flank pushing for Ukraine to get a quicker path to ascension, even as the fighting rages on.
The Western powers’ goal is to unveil their umbrella framework around NATO’s annual summit, according to officials in Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions. The two-day event starts Tuesday in Vilnius.
“A discussion is under way; it’s quite advanced, in fact it’s very advanced, and we’re very hopeful that it can be concluded by the end of the summit,” a French official told reporters at a briefing.
A senior NATO diplomat agreed, telling reporters in a separate briefing there are “frantic last-minute negotiations” occurring at the moment “on what this should look like.”
Last-minute details
U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday in London, where their two staffs will huddle to try and iron out last-minute details, according to a second NATO diplomat with knowledge of the plans. On the U.S. side, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl is tasked with getting the agreement to the finish line.
The initiative may ultimately amount to promises to continue much of the aid allies are already providing: arms, equipment, training, financing and intelligence. But the intent is to offer a more-permanent signal of unity for Ukraine, especially as Kyiv is unlikely to get the firm pledge on NATO membership it wants at this week’s summit.
“It is basically a guarantee towards Ukraine that we will, for a very long time to come, we will equip their armed forces, we will finance them, we will advise them, we will train them in order for them to have a deterrent force against any future aggression,” the senior NATO diplomat said.
Many specifics of this support would be left for later, however. The diplomat said it would be up to each interested country to bilaterally determine with Ukraine “what your commitment will be. And it could be anything, from air defense to tanks to whatever.”
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued an “appeal to all countries that want to support Ukraine,” saying they should “make decisions for themselves that enable them to continue to keep up that support for one, two, three, and, if need be, more years, because we do not know how long the military conflict will last.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz | Pool photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/AFP via Getty Images
Separate from the security assurance declaration that Western powers are finalizing, NATO is also drawing up new ways to aid Ukraine’s military for years to come.
At the summit, NATO will agree on plans to help modernize Ukraine’s defenses, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Friday. The plan, he said, will involve “a multi-year program of assistance to ensure full interoperability between the Ukrainian armed forces and NATO.”
That multi-year effort will also focus on Ukrainian military modernization programs, and like the “umbrella” initiative, will depend on individual countries contributing what they see fit.
NATO aspirations
NATO leaders will also create a new NATO-Ukraine forum, giving the two sides a space to work on “practical joint activities,” Stoltenberg added.
The broader security assurance conversation has inevitably become intertwined with the debate around Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, which will be high on the agenda when leaders gather in Vilnius.
In the formal communiqué that will be issued during the summit, “we will be addressing Ukraine’s membership aspirations and that is something that NATO allies continue to work on,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters on Friday.
Specifically, leaders are aiming to update the alliance’s vague 2008 promise that Ukraine “will become” a NATO member at some point. But they aren’t expected to offer Kyiv the “clear invitation” that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking.
Scholz conceded as much last week.
“Certainly, we will also discuss the question of how to continue to deal with the perspective of the countries that look to NATO and want to join it,” Scholz said. Yet, he added, “it is also clear that no one can become a member of a defense alliance during a war.”
Stoltenberg nonetheless struck an upbeat tone on Friday.
“I’m confident that we’ll have a message which is clear,” he said. “We have to remember that Allies also agree already on a lot of important principles when it comes to Ukraine and membership.”
Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
Hans von der Burchard, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali
LONDON — Hundreds of thousands of Britons are facing mortgage misery over the next 12 months. Rishi Sunak is about to feel their wrath.
The U.K. prime minister has been snookered by Britain’s stubbornly high inflation rate, which at 8.7 percent remains the highest in Western Europe. The Bank of England is pushing interest rates ever-higher as a result, creating a crisis for U.K. homeowners not seen for a generation.
Around 800,000 households will need to remortgage their properties next year, the Resolution Foundation think tank calculates, and rising interest rates mean they will pay a staggering £2,900 a year more on average from 2024. With a general election looming next year, the timing for Sunak could hardly be worse.
This is a “huge problem” for voters, Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative member of the Commons Treasury committee and former U.K. business secretary, told POLITICO.
“It’s clear we’re going to lose the next election,” another former Cabinet minister sighed. “These are the voters we need. We can’t intervene or it will get worse, and the Bank of England were too slow to act to head it off. The goose is cooked — but it was cooked long ago.”
Yet both ex-ministers agreed with Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, that the U.K. government should not directly intervene to support those struggling to pay — despite an awareness they may be battered at the ballot box as a result.
Hunt told MPs this week that mortgage relief schemes would only “make inflation worse, not better.”
“Beating inflation has to be the priority,” Sunak will say in a speech on Thursday afternoon, shortly after the Bank announced rates were rising yet again, to 5 percent — a 15-year high. “If we don’t get a grip on inflation now, the damage will be worse and longer lasting.”
The one thing we didn’t want to happen
The impact of higher interest rates is particularly severe in Britain because of the large proportion of mortgages — 80 percent of existing deals and 90 percent of new ones — propped up by short-term fixed rates.
Britain’s mortgage woes have been further exacerbated by government support packages brought in over recent years to support the housing market, such as ex-Chancellor George Osborne’s Help-to-Buy scheme and Sunak’s own COVID-era stamp duty holiday, which critics say lured people into buying property with an illusion of affordability.
It’s hard to imagine any kind of hit to the nation’s personal finances presenting more of a nightmare for Sunak’s Conservative Party, given a mortgage crisis clobbers those he most needs to win over in 2024.
Younger voters — who have overwhelmingly supported Labour in recent elections — tend to be concentrated in cities in rented accommodation, while the majority of older voters who own their homes outright without mortgages are already locked-down Conservative voters.
Around 800,000 households will need to remortgage their properties next year, the Resolution Foundation think tank calculates | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
“Then you’ve got this group in the middle, who have borne the brunt of food price rises, fuel price rises, and now interest rates as well,” says Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at Bristol University. “They’re the group that both sides ought to be targeting. That’s definitely going to be a problem for the Conservatives.”
Adam Hawksbee, deputy director of center-right think tank Onward, characterizes this group as those who “bought their home on cheap finance, live in towns or satellite cities, and have been used to a good quality of life with a car and summer holidays — they will be most affected.”
While the heaviest burden is expected to fall in London and the south east, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Surridge notes that mortgage rates are a problem not confined to wealthier voters but spread around the country.
A Conservative MP representing a relatively deprived constituency said: “There are poorer people in the seat who will be struggling — but there are more support schemes for them, and their overall expenses might be lower. But this mortgage stuff is going to hit the squeezed middle hard. It’s them I’m most worried about.”
A chancellor in No. 10
The crisis will be keenly felt by Sunak, who launched and eventually won his bid to lead the country with a pitch to steady the economy.
His promise to halve inflation by the end of the year now looks a tall order. But party observers — and Downing Street allies — say his only hope is to stick to the path he set out.
“I feel a deep moral responsibility to make sure the money you earn holds its value,” Sunak will say on Thursday. “That’s why our number one priority is to halve inflation this year … I’m completely confident that if we hold our nerve, we can do so.”
“There’s no one I’d rather have in No. 10 right now, because he’s so economically dry,” says Onward’s Hawksbee. “The government needs to hold the line and resist pressure to step in.”
Indeed, many Conservatives believe the U.K. has become overly reliant on the kind of big state interventions that became commonplace during the pandemic.
The irony is that it was Sunak himself — a politician who revels in his fiscally-conservative credentials — who drew up the multibillion-pound COVID assistance programs while serving as chancellor during the pandemic.
His famous March 2020 pledge — echoing European Central Bank President Mario Draghi — to do “whatever it takes” to shield U.K. households feels a long time ago.
“We can’t bail everyone out every time,” an ex-Treasury minister said. “And in this case, it’d just make things worse.”
Jeremy Hunt told MPs this week that mortgage relief schemes would only “make inflation worse, not better” | Leon Neal/Getty Images
So what can be done?
Sunak and Hunt’s only real action so far has been to summon the biggest mortgage lenders for a meeting this Friday, where they will be “reminded” of their obligations to borrowers.
Further direct action by the banks in the form of forbearance — agreeing to pause or reduce mortgage payments — seems unlikely, as it would merely offset the Bank of England’s efforts to rein in inflation.
The opposition Labour Party published its own five-point plan Wednesday night, urging new requirements on lenders to show leniency for those struggling to pay. But UK Finance, the body that represents British mortgage lenders, argues banks are already working with customers to find alternative solutions.
Mortgage lenders are keen to stress too that more radical measures, such as imposing mortgage holidays, would only kick the can down the road.
“They’re an option that still exists, but the interest does keep accruing so you end up paying back more than you would have done — a lot of people do not realize this,” said an industry communications person who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“The best plan would be to ignore the squealing and point to the decline in inflation everywhere apart from Britain, meaning rate rises here will end shortly anyway even with recent disappointments on inflation prints,” Meyrick Chapman, principal at Hedge Analytics told POLITICO.
This was echoed by Societe Generale’s uber-bear global strategist Albert Edwards, who said: “most economists would say it’s absolutely ridiculous to ameliorate the impact of rising interests on mortgage holders, as that would mean interest rates have to go even higher.”
Yet the scale of the crisis is such that pressure is now building on the government from inside the Conservative Party.
One former minister who worked directly with Sunak said: “Calls [for action] are growing. It’s not a full-on mass campaign or rebellion, but there are growing numbers of MPs who are concerned. I would have expected him to be much more front-footed, given the previous track record during COVID when he was very decisive.”
Former minister Jake Berry this week went public with a call for interest rate tax relief, as a way to defuse the “ticking time bomb.” Housing Secretary Michael Gove urged the banking sector to consider introducing 25-year fixed rate deals, putting the U.K. more in line with the long-term fixes offered to customers in the U.S. and Canada.
But Treasury Minister Andrew Griffith swiftly ruled out the first idea as unaffordable, while saying the second would only be achievable as a long-term project.
Structural factors are very different in the U.S., where long-term mortgages are in part made possible by the de facto underwriting of mortgages by quasi-governmental agencies which guarantee third-party loans. For the U.K. to normalize long-term mortgages, similar entities would likely have to be established — with possible consequences for Britain’s credit profile, and so the pound.
A government official familiar with Treasury thinking summed up: “No-one is advancing a serious, short-term, alternative set of interventions that are meaningfully different. It comes down to who people think is competent and will restrain spending.”
The worry for Sunak is that, post-Liz Truss, and with yet another crisis looming, the fabled Tory reputation for economic competence may now be shot.
As Surridge puts it: “People in the past have perhaps been able to say ‘we know the Conservatives are the nasty party, but they look after the economy.’ Without that, what’s left as a reason for people to choose the Conservatives?”
This story has been updated to incorporate Thursday’s rise in interest rates. Emilio Casalicchio, Geoffrey Smith, Joe Bambridge and AnnabelleDickson all contributed reporting.
As the United States and its European allies work to make sense of last weekend’s chaos in the Kremlin, they’re urging Kyiv to seize a “window” of opportunity that could help its counteroffensive push through Russian positions.
The forming response: Transatlantic allies are hoping, largely by keeping silent, to de-escalate the immediate political crisis while quietly pushing Ukraine to strike a devastating blow against Russia on the battlefield. It’s best to hit an enemy while it’s down, and Kyiv would be hard-pressed to find a more wounded Russia, militarily and politically, than it is right now.
In public, American and European leaders stressed that they are preparing for any outcome, as it still remained unclear where the mercenary rebellion would ultimately lead. Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the revolt, resurfaced on Monday, claiming he had merely wanted to protest, not topple the Russian government — while simultaneously insisting his paramilitary force would remain operational.
“It’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going,” U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday afternoon. “The overall outcome of this remains to be seen.”
For the moment, European officials see no greater threat to the Continent even as they watch for signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade hold on power might be slipping.
Western allies attribute the relative calm to how they managed Prigozhin’s 24-hour tantrum.
During the fighting, senior Biden administration figures and their European counterparts agreed on calls that they should remain “silent” and “neutral” about the mutiny, said three U.S. and European officials, who like others were granted anonymity to discuss fast-moving and sensitive deliberations.
In Monday’s meeting of top EU diplomats in Luxembourg, officials from multiple countries acted with a little-to-see-here attitude. No one wanted to give the Kremlin an opening to claim Washington and its friends were behind the Wagner Group’s targeting of senior Russian military officials.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said from the White House Monday, relaying the transatlantic message. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaled on Monday that his regime would still look into the potential involvement of Western spies in the rebellion.
The broader question is how, or even if, the unprecedented moment could reverse Ukraine’s fortunes as its counteroffensive stalls.
The U.S. and some European nations have urged Ukraine for weeks to move faster and harder on the front lines. The criticism is that Kyiv has acted too cautiously, waiting for perfect weather conditions and other factors to align before striking Russia’s dug-in fortifications.
Now, with Moscow’s political and military weaknesses laid bare, there’s a “window” for Ukraine to push through the first defensive positions, a U.S. official said. Others in the U.S. and Europe assess that Russian troops might lay down their arms if Ukraine gets the upper hand while command and control problems from the Kremlin persist.
British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“Russia does not appear to have the uncommitted ground forces needed to counter the multiple threats it is now facing from Ukraine, which extend over 200 kilometers [124 miles] from Bakhmut to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River,” U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in the House of Commons Monday.
Ukrainian officials say there’s no purposeful delay on their part. Russia’s air power, minefields and bad weather have impeded Kyiv’s advances, they insist, conceding that they do wish they could move faster.
“We’re still moving forward in different parts of the front line,” Yuri Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, said in an interview.
“Earlier it was not possible to assess the solidity of the Russian defenses,” Sak added. “Only now that we are doing active probing operations, we get a better picture. The obtained information will be factored into the next stages of our offensive operations.”
Analysts have long warned that, despite the training Ukrainian forces have received from Western militaries, it was unlikely that they would fight just like a NATO force. Kyiv is still operating with a strategy of attrition despite recent drills on combined-arms operations, maneuver warfare and longer-range precision fires.
During Monday’s gathering of top EU diplomats, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said now was the time to pump more artillery systems and missiles into Kyiv’s arsenal, place more sanctions on Russia and speed up the training of Ukrainian pilots on advanced fighter jets.
“Together, all these steps will allow the liberation of all Ukrainian territories,” he asserted.
In the meantime, European officials will keep an eye on Russia as they consider NATO’s own security.
“I think that nobody has yet understood what is going on in Russia — frankly I have a feeling also that the leadership in Moscow has no clue what is going on in their own country,” quipped Latvia’s Foreign Minister and President-elect Edgars Rinkēvičs in a phone interview on Monday afternoon.
“We are prepared, as we always would be, for a range of scenarios,” U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters Monday.
NATO allies will continue to watch for whether Russia starts to crumble or if the autocrat atop the Kremlin can hold his nation together with spit and tape.
“The question is how Putin will now react to his public humiliation. His reaction — to save his face and reestablish his authority — may well be a further crackdown on any domestic dissent and an intensified war effort in Ukraine,” said a Central European defense official. The official added that there’s no belief Putin will reach for a nuclear option during the greatest threat to his rule in two decades.
In the meantime, an Eastern European senior diplomat said, “we will increase monitoring, possibly our national vigilance and intelligence efforts. Additional border protection measures might be feasible. We need more allied forces in place.”
Alexander Ward reported from Washington. Lili Bayer reported from Brussels. Suzanne Lynch reported from Luxembourg. Cristina Gallardo reported from London.
[ad_2]
Alexander Ward, Lili Bayer, Suzanne Lynch and Cristina Gallardo
