
Blair's fury with Chirac over Mugabe summit invite
'But this is the opposite of what he said to me,' he scrawled in a handwritten note after No 10 officials told him Mr Chirac feared South African president Thabo Mbeki would stay away from the gathering unless Mr Mugabe was invited.
Tony Blair wanted to be 'pretty fierce' with president Robert Mugabe (PA)
'Ultimately if France wants to take the heat on this they can and probably they are using it to damage the UK's standing in Africa in the belief (mistaken) that Mugabe retains credibility.
'But we should be seen to do all we can to protest.'
The row came as Zimbabwe was caught up in a worsening spiral of violence and economic collapse after Mr Mugabe instigated a violent campaign to drive the country's remaining white farmers from their lands.
Mr Blair's Labour government was at the forefront of international efforts to pressurise Mr Mugabe to end the chaos, implement democratic reforms and restore the rule of law.
The UK's intervention was, however, deeply resented by Mr Mugabe who argued that – as the former colonial power – Britain should be paying reparations to his country.
As the situation worsened Mr Blair noted that they needed to be 'pretty fierce on Mugabe' if they were to make any progress.
Nelson Mandela told Tony Blair that Mr Mugabe should be treated with respect (Matthew Fearn/PA)
He was, however, warned by South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela that – as a veteran of Africa's struggles for liberation from colonial rule – Mr Mugabe still needed to be treated with respect.
'Despite the recent turmoil in Zimbabwe we must not forget that President Mugabe is a statesman who has made a major contribution not only to Zimbabwe's independence but to the liberation of southern Africa,' he wrote in a letter to the prime minister.
'He deserves our good will, support and advice. As friends we should be able to discuss the issue of land redistribution, the rule of law and violence frankly and constructively with him.'
Meanwhile, efforts to foster better Anglo-French co-operation on Africa were hampered by a deep personal antipathy between Mr Chirac and Britain's international development secretary Clare Short.
Sir John Holmes, Britain's ambassador to Paris, said Mr Chirac had taken him aside to complain that she was 'viscerally anti-French and 'insupportable''.
He contrasted her attitude with the good working relationship French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine had enjoyed with his British counterpart Jack Straw and before him Robin Cook.
'Vedrine and Cook had worked well together, and Vedrine and Straw were continuing in the same vein. But Ms Short was impossible,' Sir John reported the French president as saying.
'He had not liked to raise this with the prime minister because they always had lots of other things to talk about, but we needed to know the position. In typical Chirac fashion, he laboured the point for several minutes.'
When Sir John assured him that Ms Short's views had been 'transformed' in the light of a recent trip to the region by Mr Vedrine, the French president replied 'God be praised'.
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The Independent
18 minutes ago
- The Independent
Labour must speed up plans to shut all asylum hotels, says party's red wall chief
Labour must shut down all asylum hotels 'a lot quicker' than its current plan to put a stop to them by the end of the current parliament in 2029, the chairman of the party's red wall group of MPs has said. Jo White, the MP for Bassetlaw, who leads a caucus of around 40 MPs in the party's traditional heartlands, said Chancellor Rachel Reeves ' plan to axe the use of asylum hotels by 2029 needed to be sped up. There are currently around 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels around the UK. Anti-migrant demonstrations last week outside one of those hotels, in Epping, led to more than a dozen arrests. The hotel was thrust into the spotlight after a man living there was charged with sexual assault, harassment and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity. The man, from Ethiopia, has denied the offences and remains on remand in custody. Ms White told The Telegraph: 'There's a commitment to close down the hotels by the end of the parliamentary term. I think we all want it to be a lot, lot quicker than that.' 'There is a huge sense of unfairness because people work hard here in this country and commit to supporting the country and then there's the sense that what asylum hotels cost is a huge drag on what should be invested into our NHS, our schools and our infrastructure. 'So they have to close, we have to get those asylum hotels cleared out.' She added that she believes Labour ministers share her frustrations and went on to urge Sir Keir Starmer to 'stop the incentives' for those seeking to reach the UK illegally. A record 24,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, the highest tally for the first half of the year since records began in 2018. It represents a 48 per cent rise compared to the first six months of last year. Ms White welcomed home secretary Yvette Cooper 's plan to share asylum‑hotel locations with food‑delivery firms, calling it a sensible measure to crack down on illegal working. She also urged Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Cooper to revisit the idea of national identity cards, a proposal repeatedly ruled out by Downing Street. Reflecting on last week's demonstrations in Epping, however, she described the scenes as 'really frightening and quite scary', adding that while anger is understandable, violence against asylum seekers could not be condoned. It was revealed last week that plans to reduce the number of asylum hotels could see migrants rehoused in vacant residential properties and council‑owned homes. Public concern over the scheme has intensified as Sir Keir has vowed to significantly reduce both legal and illegal migration. At the same time, more than 40,000 failed asylum seekers remain in limbo, having appealed against their decisions and still requiring housing. A government spokesman said that since taking office, ministers had acted immediately to fix the asylum system, closing hotels and removing over 35,000 people with no right to be here.


Times
18 minutes ago
- Times
16-year-olds will soon have the vote. How will they use it?
Sir Keir Starmer may have been named after the founder of the Labour Party but among his predecessors it is Harold Wilson he admires most. Like Starmer, Wilson was both a pragmatist and a progressive, famously declaring that 'he who rejects change is the architect of decay'. It is this shared ethos that explains best why Starmer intends to hand the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds; he is the first prime minister to extend the franchise since Wilson lowered the threshold from 21 to 18 in 1969. Starmer believes it is essential to restoring the 'social contract' with younger generations, whose needs and desires have been ignored by successive governments, and whose faith in democracy is lower than other age groups. He also sees it, fundamentally, as an issue of fairness. 'He's long believed that if you can serve [in the military], pay tax and reach adulthood in that parliament you should have a say,' a No 10 source said. 'Every time the franchise has been widened it has been bitterly opposed. Opponents are on the wrong side of history again this time around.' Similar arguments shaped the thinking of Wilson's administration decades ago, as the Swinging Sixties and the Mod subculture personified by rock bands like the Who gave rise to new ideas about the meaning of adulthood. Starmer's opponents see it differently, noting the trend in recent years has shifted towards raising legal age thresholds, be it getting a tattoo, remaining in full-time education or buying tobacco. Starmer, following in the footsteps of Rishi Sunak, is pushing through a generational ban on cigarettes for anyone born after 2009. Those nicotine-free teenagers are the same people he wants to empower at the next election. The UK is to join a handful of countries that have moved to voting at 16 for national elections, including Austria, Argentina and Brazil. As the veteran Labour commentator John Rentoul recently observed, the challenge for Starmer is 'to explain why voting is different from most other things, not why it is the same'. The fiercest attacks on Starmer come from the right: Nigel Farage has accused Labour of attempting to 'rig the system' and secure re-election on the back of a 'youthquake'. But to focus on this alone is to ignore a movement that first emerged 40 years ago, and which stretches far beyond the confines of Labour politics. In 1985, at a time of surging youth unemployment, drug use and crime, a fresh-faced Liberal Democrat MP sought to seize on the growing clamour for change. Aged 30, Jim Wallace, the member for Orkney & Shetland, put forward a youth charter bill to improve educational and work opportunities and to lower the voting age from 18. He argued young people could bring forward 'fresh ideas' and had put environmental issues on the agenda 'long before they gained political respectability'. Unlike the environmental movement, his bill failed to catch on. Wallace, who went on to lead the Scottish Lib Dems and served as both deputy and acting first minister of Scotland, now says that 'the lot fell on me' because he was the youngest Lib Dem in parliament. Nevertheless, the principle stuck with him and he remains, aged 70, a staunch supporter. While another three private member's bills failed in 1991, 1992 and 1999, the cause continued to rise up the political agenda and became a core policy for the Liberal Democrats. It has been in their manifesto since 1992. The SNP followed suit in 1997. The idea gained popular momentum in the early 2000s as dozens of youth and democracy organisations formed the Votes at 16 Coalition. It was around this time that a young Angela Rayner, a teenage mother who left school at 16, also began advocating to lower the voting age in her role as a Stockport branch secretary at Unison, the trade union. While the Electoral Commission advised against the move, by 2007 Gordon Brown was calling for it as prime minister. The Youth Citizenship Commission was established to try to reconnect Britain's disengaged youth with the political system. Among the new commissioners was Wes Streeting, who was president of the National Union of Students and is now health secretary. As the 2010 election neared, Labour's internal National Policy Forum had given its backing and Streeting, determined the policy should make the manifesto, directly appealed to the man Brown had tasked with writing it. 'The inclusion of votes at 16 in the next manifesto is a litmus test as to how seriously the leadership take the youth movement of the party,' he wrote in a blog post for the LabourList website. 'Ed Miliband: we're watching you.' Miliband delivered: Labour's manifesto promised MPs a free vote on the issue. Brown, however, did not, and the election of David Cameron's Conservatives doused the hopes of a generation of young activists. However, the election did prove Brown right in at least one respect: less than half of the 18 to 24-year-olds registered to vote actually did so. While the Tories had killed off the prospect of UK-wide change, in Scotland the genie was already out of the bottle. At the instigation of Alex Salmond as first minister, 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on Scottish independence at the 2014 referendum. More than 100,000 of them voted and at least half chose independence. Sixteen and 17-year-olds gained the right to vote in Scottish parliamentary and local government elections in 2016, and Wales followed suit in 2020. While low turnout among young voters is frequently raised as a reason not to extend the franchise, Wallace believes Scotland has shown the opposite to be true. 'The turnout of 16 to 17-year-olds was better than the next tranche of 18 to 24-year-olds in 2014,' he noted, citing an analysis by the Electoral Commission, which put the figures at 75 per cent versus 54 per cent. The habit stuck. In 2023 research at the University of Edinburgh found these young Scots had 'continued to turn out [at subsequent elections] in higher numbers, even into their twenties, than young people who attained the right to vote later, at age 18'. Wallace believes this is partly explained by the flurry of educational activity around the Scottish referendum, with 'almost every second school holding a hustings'. He added: 'It confirms something that I have felt for a long time, which is that the reason why people don't vote is they don't know what it's about. I think just the act of going into a polling station is alien to some people. You have to strip away some of the mystique around it.' Similar trends have been found in Austria, where turnout among 16 and 17-year-olds roughly matches other age groups. By the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016, the principle of votes at 16 had become widely accepted in Labour. Miliband and later Jeremy Corbyn were firmly committed to it during their leaderships. After the vote to leave the EU, the argument deployed by Remainers, that 1.5 million ineligible teenagers had been robbed of their future, merely entrenched the belief among senior Europhiles that it was time for change. Many, like Rayner and Streeting, would go on to take seats around Starmer's cabinet table. With the policy now set, the question is whether this new cohort of voters will alter the course of the next election. They number 1.5 million, increasing the size of the franchise by 3 per cent, but large enough to prove decisive in a tight contest. According to an analysis by The Sunday Times, there are 114 constituencies where the size of the incumbent MP's majority is smaller than the number of 16 and 17-year-olds living there: Increasingly, age, rather than class or gender, is proving the key social divide in Britain — and it is certainly true that under Corbyn, these younger voters flocked to Labour in 2017. But those assumptions can no longer be made. Labour's majority is increasingly under threat from progressive parties such as the Greens, Lib Dems and Corbyn's new, as yet unnamed alternative. It is no longer a given that the youth votes left, if recent European elections are anything to go by. When Germany gave 16-year-olds the vote before last year's European parliament elections, the populist left and right increased their vote. Sixteen per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds voted for the hard-right AfD. There was a similar pattern in France, where 31 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds backed the left-wing France Unbowed at last year's European election and 26 per cent backed Marine Le Pen's hard-right National Rally. President Macron's Renaissance party got 8 per cent. Here in Britain, Reform has made a concerted effort to win over millennials and Gen Z. Farage's presence on TikTok, where these voters increasingly get their news, far surpasses his Labour and Tory rivals. In Warwickshire, where Reform won the largest number of seats in May's local elections, George Finch, a 19-year-old politics student at Leicester University, is now the leader of the county council. Reform holds a commanding lead in all-age opinion polls, but surveys by the think tank More in Common consistently show younger voters are still more drawn to Labour and the Greens. This is true even among young men, although they are voting for the populist right in unprecedented numbers. There are also signs that, despite Scotland's success, apathy among the young remains high. In a recent poll by Merlin Strategy, 49 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds said they did not want the vote before 18. Only 18 per cent were sure they would vote if there were an election tomorrow. • Daniel Finkelstein: Opposing votes at 16 would cost Tories dear With so many variables, the change seems likely to have a negligible impact. According to Wendy Chamberlain, a Lib Dem MP who previously co-chaired the Votes at 16 all-party parliamentary group, the only certainty in politics now is 'the volatility of the electorate, regardless of their age or other social demographics'. The bigger problem for Starmer is the perception of other voters. More in Common's polling found 70 per cent shared Farage's view that Labour was seeking electoral advantage, and votes at 16 were opposed by 48 per cent to 27 per cent. Luke Tryl, the think tank's director, says the issue ranks well below the public's top priorities. For Wallace, these are challenges not to resile from but to confront head-on. 'It's a reason to get your argument across to young people, to try and win their vote,' he said. 'Whether it's higher education, better training and apprenticeships, the environment, young people are right to be demanding more.' Additional reporting by Dominic Hauschild


Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Lone protester slams Donald Trump at golf course with brutal Scottish insult
Matt Halliday from Stranraer said he was disappointed more people hadn't shown up to Trump's golf course - while hundreds protested in Edinburgh and Aberdeen A lone protester braved the massive police presence at Donald Trump's golf course to protest against his visit to Scotland. Trump enjoyed a morning round of golf with the protection of thousands of British police officers - while protests against his trip to Scotland raged elsewhere. The US President is staying at Turnberry until Monday before heading off to his other golf resort in Aberdeen. Tomorrow he'll hold a meeting with EU chief Ursula Von Der Leyen, before sitting down with Keir Starmer on Monday. During the meeting, they're expected to discuss the fine points of the trade deal Mr Starmer agreed with President Trump in May. But while it's expected to be an informal session, they'll also discuss heavier topics - including work to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine. Trump was seen playing golf on Saturday morning, and was shuttled around the course in a 15-strong motorcade of golf buggies. He wore a white USA baseball cap, and waved at photographers gathered outside the course's fence. The sole protester at Turnberry - Matt Halliday, 55, from Stranraer - came to Turnberry today bearing two placards. One featured a picture of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, and another of a set of bagpipes. The message read: "TRUMP GO HOME: The only "blowhard" pumped up windbags that we want to listen to are these bad boys". The second placard was much less family friendly. "I'm here to show my displeasure at Trump being here," he told the Mirror. "I just find him morally repugnant. I see what he's doing in the states, rolling back civil rights for women and minorities, folk getting lifted from their houses, medicaid getting taken away - and he comes here and thinks he's got the authority to pontificate to us. "Because he wants us to do the same, and he'll try and bully us through tariffs and trade - similar to Canada which he wants to make the 51st state. "That's what's coming for us if we don't stand up to him." Protests raged in Edinburgh and Aberdeen today, with thousands expressing their displeasure at Trump's arrival. In Aberdeen, the group that gathered in the city centre were seen waving banners with anti-Trump slogans - with one demonstrator even dressed as the president with a large papier mache head. As speeches ended at the rally, chants of "Trump Trump Trump, out out out" could be heard, along with "Donald, Donald, hear us shout, all of Scotland wants you out". But the winding roads and windswept beaches of South Ayrshire, where Turnberry sits, remained calm and quiet. Mr Halliday suggested people had been put off by the enormous operation Police Scotland have put in place to protect President Trump - complete with a no-fly zone, a ground exclusion zone stretching for miles around the resort, snipers and as many as 5,000 officers reported to be policing the area. And the operation is much bigger than locals have seen during previous visits. "It's supposedly a private visit, and I've seen figures from £5 million to £14 million for Police Scotland, Mr Halliday said. "That's coming out of their budget. If you saw the convoy of 27 cars last night, there were even Scottish Ambulances at the back. And folk can't get them. It's madness." Get Donald Trump updates straight to your WhatsApp! As the world attempts to keep up with Trump's antics, the Mirror has launched its very own US Politics WhatsApp community where you'll get all the latest news from across the pond. We'll send you the latest breaking updates and exclusives all directly to your phone. Users must download or already have WhatsApp on their phones to join in. All you have to do to join is click on this link, select 'Join Chat' and you're in! We may also send you stories from other titles across the Reach group. We will also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose Exit group. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Mr Halliday said he was "very" disappointed to have arrived in Turnberry to find no other protesters - but he said he thought most people had gone to Edinburgh instead. Mr Halliday said he was "very" disappointed to have arrived in Turnberry to find no other protesters - but he said he thought most people had gone to the Edinburgh rally instead. Another man from Glasgow, who did not want to be named, said they were surprised people had not come to protest in Turnberry itself - and were dismayed that the huge police presence had been used to put people off. 'Especially since it's - apart from a couple of meetings - it's a holiday, it's a private visit,' he said. 'The resources that have been diverted from other places to protect him. It's mad.' One participant joined the Edinburgh rally against Donald Trump while wearing a Handmaid costume from the Margaret Atwood novel. Louise Brown, a healthcare worker, said she had travelled from Newcastle to the Scottish capital to protest the President's visit. She said: "He's a convicted felon - eroding women's rights, trans rights, gay right, immigration rights. There's too much to list. "I know he loves Scotland because of his mother. He doesn't normally care about protests but maybe he might care a little bit about one in Scotland, I don't know." She said there was more anger towards Trump following his first inauguration in 2017, but added: "Especially after those immigration ICE raids, I think the anger has now come back. "Because he's even worse than he was the first time."