'For the French left, inspiration could come from across the Channel'
After 14 years in opposition, the Labour Party, led by the highly moderate Keir Starmer, has returned to power with a large parliamentary majority. For tourists in 2027, the most striking change will be the unified rail network under the name Great British Railways. Britons had long endured a system plagued by chronic failures, despite paying the highest fares in Europe and receiving public subsidies, due to its fragmentation among a multitude of private companies. Nationalization is set to change that. The government plans to invest heavily in regional trains, reduce subsidies and keep fares steady.
The Conservatives left behind a severely deteriorated fiscal situation. In response, Labour has set a clear course: increase taxes to avoid austerity and refrain from imposing cutbacks on public services. In France, the current government is tempted to do the opposite – cutting public services to avoid raising taxes. Clearly, the two sides of the Channel are not speaking the same language!
The new funding sources identified by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the exchequer (the British equivalent of finance minister), will affect both households and businesses. In addition to taxing private jet flights, one key measure concerns private education. In the United Kingdom, public funds are almost exclusively allocated to public schools; private school teachers are not paid by the government. As a result, there are half as many children enrolled in private schools, and parents pay on average €25,000 per child annually. In Paris, enrolling a child at the prestigious Collège Stanislas – which receives generous subsidies, notably from the Ile-de-France region – costs only about €2,000.
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France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
UK water pollution alarms summer bathers
To his dismay things have not improved. "They released sewage water last week on Friday, (and) Sunday night, and on Monday the beach was declared not safe for swimming," said Stanley, 82, a regular swimmer, whose home overlooks the sea from the southeastern town of Whitstable. The Southern Water company, which supplies water to 2.6 million people, is allowed to release excess wastewater into the sea when the network is saturated such as during heavy rains. But the situation has become so exasperating that in 2021 Stanley refused to pay part of his water bill relating to sewage treatment. Last month a court ordered that Stanley must pay what he owes. "The judge ruled that water companies have the right to claim the money even if they don't do it properly," he said wryly. Many Britons have been increasingly alarmed by the water companies' failures and their lack of investment, with some customers launching a national campaign named "Boycott Water Bills". Last year, a record 3.6 million hours of sewage discharges were registered in England, according to the government's Environment Agency. Serious pollution contamination incidents also rose by 60 percent in a year, the agency said. According to an investigation by environmental watchdogs Unearthed and DeSmog, 10,000 water quality tests had to be abandoned between May and July due to a lack of staff at the Environment Agency. System overhaul Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's centre-left government on Monday announced plans to overhaul the water regulation system after a scathing report by the Independent Water Commission. It slammed private companies and authorities in England and Wales for failing to regulate the water sector. "Our water industry is broken," Environment Secretary Steve Reed said. The government will now abolish the much-maligned regulator Ofwat after the commission report, dubbed the most comprehensive review of the sector since its privatisation in the late 1980s. On Wednesday, the first day of the school holidays, a few families were playing in the sunshine enjoying Tankerton's pebble beach on the Kent coast, lined with colourful beach huts. Near a Southern Water treatment station, where a long pipe travels under the beach into the sea to release wastewater, some holidaymakers were even bathing. The water company had dumped polluted water into the sea for six hours the day before, but swimming was still permitted. Yoga instructor Lisa Lawton from London was enjoying a week's holiday in Whitstable with her two daughters. "They were released last night? I was not aware. I just wanted to go for a swim," Lawton, 41, told AFP, referring to the discharges. Another mum, Emily Winstone, 42, said: "When we used to come here as children, you didn't ever think about it." "But now it's every time you come to the beach, it's the first thing you think of. Can we go in the water?" she said. Renationalisation The charity Surfers Against Sewage has created a phone app that indicates the water quality on UK beaches. Last year, they received 1,850 reports of people falling ill after swimming in the sea. Elane Heffernan, who volunteers with the campaigning group SOS Whitstable, became sick after bathing close to sewage spillages in 2021. That year, the town's oyster farm shut down and Southern Water was fined 90 million pounds ($121 million) for admitting to 7,000 illegal discharges between 2010 and 2015. Since then, Heffernan has advocated for the renationalisation of the water industry, and a petition launched by SOS Whitstable was signed by more than 280,000 people. "We have now had more than enough evidence over 30 years to know it (privatisation) doesn't work. It can't work. It's never going to work," said Heffernan, adding private companies prioritised profit over long-term investments. A spokesperson for Southern Water told AFP the discharges "are not acceptable and we have a £1.5 billion plan (by 2035) to drastically cut their use by using innovative nature-based and engineering solutions which keep rainwater out of our sewers". They added that the company had also invested 965 million pounds last year.
France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
UK fears new summer of unrest, year after Southport riots
Police have arrested 16 people since protests flared last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the town of Epping, northeast of London. In one demonstration, eight police officers were injured. The unrest was "not just a troubling one-off", said the chairwoman of the Police Federation, Tiff Lynch. "It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph. Protestors shouted "save our children" and "send them home", while banners called for the expulsion of "foreign criminals". Cabinet minister Jonathan Reynolds on Thursday urged people not to speculate or exaggerate the situation, saying "the government, all the key agencies, the police, they prepare for all situations. "I understand the frustrations people have," he told Sky News. The government was trying to fix the problem and that the number of hotels occupied by asylum seekers had dropped from 400 to 200, he added. The issue of thousands of irregular migrants arriving in small boats across the Channel, coupled with the UK's worsening economy, has triggered rising anger among some Britons. Such sentiments have been amplified by inflammatory messaging on social networks, fuelled by far-right activists. Almost exactly a year ago on July 29, 2024, three young girls were stabbed to death in a frenzied attack in northwestern Southport. The shocking killings stoked days of riots across the country after false reports that the killer -- a UK-born teenager whose family came to the country from Rwanda after the 1994 genocide -- was a migrant. Nearly 24,000 migrants have made the perilous journey across the Channel so far in 2025, the highest-ever tally at this point in a year. The issue has become politically perilous, putting pressure on Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer's centre-left government, as the anti-immigrant, far-right Reform UK party rises in the polls. 'More unrest likely' The Epping protests were stirred after a 38-year-old asylum seeker, who only arrived in Britain in late June, was arrested and charged with three counts of sexual assault. Images from the protests have gone viral on social networks, mirroring what happened last July. But Epping residents have maintained that the protests are being fuelled by people from outside the community. "These violent scenes ... are not Epping, and they are not what we stand for," the Conservative MP for Epping, Neil Hudson, told parliament Monday. While calm was restored to Epping, a middle-class suburban town with a population of 12,000, tensions remain palpable. "This is the first time something like this has happened," one local who lives close to the Bell Hotel told AFP, asking not to be named. "The issue is not the hotel, but extremists applying a political ideology," he added. Late on Thursday, the hotel, cordoned off behind barriers, was again the centre of a protest involving dozens of people, with police making one arrest. With another protest expected on Sunday, the local council voted through a motion to demand the government no longer house asylum seekers at the hotel. The UK is "likely to see more racist riots take place this summer", said Aurelien Mondon, politics professor and expert on far-right and reactionary discourse at Bath University. Anti-immigrant protests have already erupted elsewhere, with demonstrations in the southeastern town of Diss in Norfolk outside a similar hotel on Monday. Last month, clashes flared for several days in the town of Ballymena in Northern Ireland after two teenagers with Romanian roots were arrested for the alleged attempted rape of a young girl. 'Civil disobedience' "It is well documented that many of the protests we are witnessing are not the result of grassroots, local movements," Mondon said. "Social media plays a role and facilitates coordination amongst extreme-right groups," but it is "also crucial not to exaggerate" its power, he added. High-profile far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who was blamed for stoking the Southport unrest, announced he would be in Epping on Sunday, before later seeming to scrap the plan. The firebrand anti-Islam campaigner has just been freed from jail after spreading fake news about a Syrian immigrant, but faces trial on a separate issue in 2026. "I don't think anybody in London even understands just how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale," said Reform leader Nigel Farage.
LeMonde
3 days ago
- LeMonde
French culture minister's corruption trial complicates Paris' political landscape
More than the order for Culture Minister Rachida Dati to stand trial for alleged corruption and influence peddling on Tuesday, July 22, it was her fierce attacks on the judges in response to the decision that stunned France's political class. "When you are a public official, when you are a minister, you don't attack judges. We are not Trump's America; we are the French Republic," said Clément Beaune, a former MP for Paris from Macron's Renaissance party, speaking on France 2 on Wednesday. Pierre-Yves Bournazel, the center-right Horizons party's candidate for the Paris mayoral elections, also criticized Dati, who will likely be one of his rivals in the race for city hall: "Dati's constant drama cannot be the alpha and omega of the Paris campaign," said Bournazel, who wants to "bring the project back to the center of the debate" and presents himself as a "bulwark against the Trump-ification of Parisian political life." President Emmanuel Macron and Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin spoke out in support of Dati, and their statements even provoked reactions within their own camp. "The fact that the president and the justice minister, both responsible for the proper functioning of the judiciary, rushed to the rescue of Ms. Dati, shocks all those for whom the promise of irreproachable ethics and the renewal of political practices heavily influenced their decision to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017," said Gilles Le Gendre, a former Renaissance MP for Paris. "A minister must leave the government when charged," Macron had said in 2017.
