Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described Donald Trump’s decision to roll back sanctions on Russia as a “reward” for Vladimir Putin and warned it will embolden the Russian leader and intensify the Kremlin’s war, as Moscow launched one of its worst strikes yet on Ukraine’s power plants in an attempt to black out the country’s cities before winter.
The Ukrainian president also said he expected the Trump administration to lift more sanctions against Russia in the future and called for Europe to establish its own negotiations with Moscow as the US has sought better ties and business deals with the Kremlin.
Andrew Bailey among finance leaders to leave session in Bangkok when Russian finance minister addressed group
The Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, has taken part in a walkout of finance leaders who left an International Monetary Fund meeting in protest against Russian involvement.
Bailey joined counterparts from France, Germany and a number of Scandinavian and Baltic countries who left the session in Bangkok when the Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov, addressed the group in Russian.
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible, the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Today gang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a column by me for the Guardian
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator read Nesrine Malik’s recent column in The Guardian
As Andy Burnham talks up closer alignment with the EU and a poll suggests half in UK would rejoin, the B-word is back on the agenda
In February 2016, days after David Cameron announced the UK would hold a referendum on leaving the EU, he told workers in Slough not to imagine they could change their minds a few years down the line if they did not like how things panned out. Voting to stay in or leave was a once in a generation thing, he said. “This is a decision that lasts for life.”
Well times change, as the last prime minister but five could testify. A decade after Britain told Brussels where to go, Brexit is back on the political agenda. After years in which many politicians avoided any mention of the B-word, Andy Burnham broke the omertà in his party conference speech last month, saying he would look again at Britain’s relationship with Europe.