2RY8Y78 Former President Donald Trump gesture to the crowd before his speech at the California Republican Party Convention Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
BRITAIN must unite with Donald Trump in support of freedom and capitalism, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said today.
Congratulating Mr Trump on his imminent return to the US presidency, Sir Keir said: “As the closest of allies, we stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of our shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise.”
The generous interpretation of Mr Trump’s outlook appeared to be an attempt by the government to efface the record of unflattering comments made about the president-elect by Labour figures, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Sir Keir was taunted by new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch in the Commons over the fact that the Republican Party is suing the Labour Party over the dispatch of hundreds of activists to the US to assist Kamala Harris’s doomed campaign.
Sir Keir submitted himself to a meal with Mr Trump during a recent visit to New York, which by most accounts went rather well, details including the president-elect personally offering Mr Lammy second helpings. [!]
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Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths said: “In place of grovelling congratulations like those from Prime Minister Starmer, the so-called ‘centre-left’ should learn the lesson from recent US and EU election results: capitulating to big business market forces, racism, militarism and right-wing nationalism will end in their own defeat, sooner or later.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, hit out at the apparent Trump victory, claiming it marks a “dark, dark day for people around the globe.”
He said: “This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe. The world’s largest economy and most powerful military will be led by a dangerous, destructive demagogue.
“The next President of the United States is a man who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action and global security. Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.
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Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, struck a similar tone. He said: “I know that many Londoners will be anxious about the outcome of the US Presidential election. Many will be fearful about what it will mean for democracy and for women’s rights, or how the result impacts the situation in the Middle East or the fate of Ukraine. Others will be worried about the future of NATO or tackling the climate crisis.
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“The lesson of today is that progress is not inevitable. But asserting our progressive values is more important than ever – re-committing to building a world where racism and hatred is rejected, the fundamental rights of women and girls are upheld, and where we continue to tackle the crisis of climate change head on.”
A healthy NHS and strong economy depend on healthy people, not just strong public finances. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget was a missed opportunity for the government to get serious about public health by protecting citizens from the leading risk factor for death in the UK: unhealthy food.
If a multinational corporation was dumping a chemical into our water that was costing the NHS £19 billion a year (the cost of obesity), that company would be asked to pay the bills. This is the “polluter pays” principle.
The same principle should apply to food. Instead, multinational food companies are profiting from sales of unhealthy food. For example, PepsiCo, which includes brands such as Pepsi MAX, Walkers and Doritos, generated more than £70 billion net revenue in 2023, globally.
Reeves’ budget states that the soft drinks industry levy will rise in line with inflation. From April 1 2025, the lower rate of the levy will increase from 18 pence per litre to 19.4 pence per litre. And the higher rate will increase from 24 pence per litre to 25.9 per litre. (The lower rate applies to added-sugar drinks with a total sugar content of 5 to 7.9 grams per 100 millilitres, and the higher rate applies to drinks with 8 grams or more per 100 millilitres.)
Levies like this result in an increase in the price of food and drink if companies pass the levy on to citizens; which is exactly what they typically do.
Evidence suggests that the levy has been effective at reducing consumption of sugar in the UK, but it could do much more.
Many countries have gone beyond sugary drinks to tax other foods, such as those high in fat, salt or sugar. Again, in the example of the UAE, a 50% excise tax is applied to any product with added sugar or other sweeteners. Indeed, 18 countries have taxes on high fat, salt and sugar foods.
Mexico was among the first countries to adopt such a policy, applying an 8% tax on discretionary foods such as confectionary, chocolate, sugary breakfast cereals, crisps and other salty snacks. Following implementation, there was a significant reduction in sales of these unhealthy foods.
Mexico was the first country to introduce a tax on sugary drinks. JRomero04/Shutterstock
Make the polluter pay
The new budget in the UK could have gone much further in terms of raising funds and rebuilding the NHS by expanding the soft drinks levy to a levy on high fat, salt and sugar foods.
The government’s ten-year plan for the NHS is due to be published in spring 2025. Many have advocated for the plan to focus on prevention. But the idea that the NHS should be responsible for prevention perpetuates the idea that individuals are responsible for unhealthy diets and obesity. It moves the blame from companies that process, promote and profit from high fat, salt and sugar foods to individuals and the NHS. Instead, why not demand that the polluters pay?
A healthy population underlies economic growth. If the government wants a healthy NHS and a strong economy, make multinational corporations, not citizens, pay for the harms of their unhealthy products that are marketed to us and our children every day.
The DWP confirms that draconian ‘savings’ are coming down the track. Are we a nation that will repair hospitals, but not help a nurse with long Covid?
In the days after the budget, the headlines were dominated by talk of Rachel Reeves’s “tax and spend” bonanza. The message was clear: austerity is officially over. When there was concern about squeezed incomes, it was solely for workers. As the Mail front page put it: “Reeves’ £40bn tax bombshell for Britain’s strivers”. Almost a week later, there has still barely been a word about the policy set to hit the group long scapegoated as Britain’s skivers: the billions of pounds’ worth of benefit cuts for disabled people.
Making up just a couple of lines in a 77-minute speech, you’d have been forgiven for dozing past Reeves’ blink-and-you’d-miss-it bombshell. With a record number of Britons off work with long-term illness, the government will need to “reduce the benefits bill”, she said, before noting ministers had “inherited” the Conservatives’ plans to reform the work capability assessment (WCA). That plan, let’s not forget, was to take up to £4,900 a year each from 450,000 people who are too sick or disabled to work – a move that the Resolution Foundation says would “degrade living standards” for families already on some of the lowest incomes in the country.
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Much like when George Osborne aimed to cut the disability benefits bill by a fifth, “welfare reform” based on arbitrary cost-cutting says the quiet part out loud: benefits won’t be awarded based on who needs them – just on what they cost. It is social security by spreadsheet, severing the social contract that promises the state will be there in times of sickness and disability, and adding a footnote that says, “but only if we can afford it”. That last week’s budget revealed huge investment for infrastructure at the same time as disability benefit cuts exposes how even the affordability argument is largely fabricated. There is money to fix hospital buildings but not to feed a nurse bedbound with long Covid.
The financial impact of such “reform” on those relying on benefits is well established but the psychological toll should not be underestimated. Since gaining power, Labour has drip-fed the rightwing press sound bites and op-eds on potential benefit cuts, leaving news outlets to speculate wildly for clicks. The budget’s half-announcement has only added to the confusion and fear, issuing vague dog whistles of “fraud” and high “benefit bills” while forcing millions of people to wait months to find out if they will lose the money they need to live.
Climate campaigners march in London on October 19, 2023 to demand that fossil fuel corporations pay for their climate damage. (Photo: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“As governments debate how to finance climate action, they can be confident that making polluters pay is not only fair, but also far more popular and effective than placing the burden on ordinary citizens.”
A multinational survey commissioned by Greenpeace International and published Monday revealed that a majority of respondents favor making fossil fuel companies pay for being the main cause of the climate emergency.
Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling, Start Paying campaign commissioned the strategic insight agency Opinium Research to survey 8,000 adults in eight countries—Australia, Argentina, France, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States—ahead of this month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“Asked about who should bear the most responsibility for climate change impacts, the most popular option across all eight countries in the survey was making oil and gas companies pay, with high-emitting countries and global elites ranked second and third,” Greenpeace International said in a summary of the survey, adding that “60% of all surveyed countries see a link between profits of the oil and gas industry and rising energy prices.”
The survey also found that two-thirds or more of respondents are angry about Big Oil CEOs getting huge bonuses even as their products exacerbate the planetary emergency; fossil fuel expansion; industry disinformation; and the “historic and ongoing role of oil and gas companies in conflict, war, and human rights violations.”
Eight in 10 respondents said they were worried about climate change. However, more than twice as many people surveyed in the Global South said the climate emergency has personally affected them than respondents in the Global North.
According to Greenpeace International:
Imposing a fair climate damages tax on extraction of fossil fuels by OECD countries—proposed by the charity Stamp Out Poverty and supported by 100 NGOs, including Greenpeace International—is one example of a tax on big polluters. This could generate $900 billion by 2030… This would be key for annual climate-related loss and damage costs, estimated to be between $290-$580 billion by 2030 in low-income countries, as well as for reducing the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis in all countries.
“This research shows how taxing the wealthy polluters-in-chief—companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Total, Equinor, and Eni—has become a mainstream solution among people, cutting across borders and income levels,” said Stop Drilling, Start Paying co-chair Abdoulaye Diallo. “As governments debate how to finance climate action, they can be confident that making polluters pay is not only fair, but also far more popular and effective than placing the burden on ordinary citizens for a crisis for which they bear little or no responsibility.”
The Opinium survey was published on the same day that Amnesty Internationalcalled on the richer countries most responsible for the climate emergency to “fully pay for the catastrophic loss of homes and damage to livelihoods” in Africa.
“African people have contributed the least to climate change, yet from Somalia to Senegal, Chad to Madagascar, we are suffering a terrible toll of this global emergency which has driven millions of people from their homes,” said Samira Daoud, Amnesty’s regional director for West and Central Africa. “It’s time for the countries who caused all this devastation to pay up so African people can adapt to the climate change catastrophe.”
