Zbig: the man who shaped the world
The Matts are joined by acclaimed author and FT journalist Edward Luce to talk about his new book Zbig— the definitive biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cold War strategist and key architect of U.S. foreign policy. More than just a biography, Zbig offers sharp insights into the nature of power and America's role in the world. If you want to understand how global strategy is shaped, this episode is essential listening.
Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Cold War Prophet is out on May the 13th. Preorder here.
EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get The New European for just £1 for the first month. Head to theneweuropean.co.uk/2matt
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Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Video of Labour's broken promises to nuke veterans gets 3 million views
Labour is under pressure to act on the Nuked Blood scandal after a video of ministers' broken promises was seen by 3 million people The 3 Cabinet ministers who made promises to nuke veterans A video detailing Labour's broken promises to nuclear veterans has been seen by more people than the 10 o'clock news. Growing awareness of the goverment's failure to resolve the £5bn Nuked Blood scandal is now putting ministers under pressure to come up with answers. A defence minister is expected to make a written statement to the House of Commons tomorrow to reveal interim findings of a review into allegations of human radiation experiments carried out on troops in the Cold War. And it comes as more evidence emerges of veterans' medical records being tampered with to remove evidence of monitoring them before, during and after they served at nuclear weapons tests. Peter Stefanovic, lawyer and founder of the Campaign for Social Justice, has compiled clips of Defence Secretary John Healey, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard while in Opposition, all calling for the Tories to set up compensation schemes for the veterans. In just six weeks it has been viewed by 3 million people - more than watch the 10 o'clock news on either BBC or ITN. * You can support the veterans' fight for justice HERE "That doesn't happen unless the public get behind something. It illustrates to the government that public consciousness and outrage continues to grow," said Mr Stefanovic. "We are hitting the public and the government in the face with this every day. Something has to give." Lawyers acting for the veterans have threatened to launch a £5bn lawsuit for the missing medical records, unless the government accepts a cheaper offer of a one-year special tribunal, with capped costs, to investigate the cover-up. And police are assessing a criminal complaint of misconduct in public office, linked to a secret database with information about blood and urine testing of troops, unlawfully locked behind national security at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. After the Mirror forced some of the files open, the entire archive is due to be declassified. Now veteran Dave Whyte - who has been ruled "vexatious"| by the Ministry of Defence over a long Freedom of Information battle aimed at discovering his radiation dose after he was sent into Ground Zero at Operation Grapple in 1958 - has discovered a huge bundle of his personal medical records have gone missing. After more than a decade and campaign group LABRATS raising his case with the Veterans Minister Al Carns, Dave, 88, of Kirkcaldy, Fife, has been sent his medical notes from his 10 years in service. It contains just 13 sheets of paper, some of them duplicates. His 10 years of annual medical examinations are missing, along with 12 sets of clinical notes and 8 records of visiting the medic. The papers show two blood tests and a chest x-ray were administered for no clinical reason, but only one set of test results is in his file. And the results of a gland biopsy, conducted two years after the nuclear tests when his lymph nodes swelled up and doctors decided he had a blood disorder, are also missing. Dave said: "I've asked again about my records from the decontamination centre I was sent to, and have been informed that I am still barred from asking FOIs. It is 14 years since I have been banned, convicted murderers serve less time." The Mirror's evidence of the Nuked Blood scandal featured in a BBC documentary last year, called Britain's Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story, and in a Newsnight special report last week.
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Scotsman
A dramatic revival in shipbuilding in Glasgow is under way
BAE Systems Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... As NATO leaders met in The Hague on Wednesday to make their historic re-armament pledge, about a hundred shipyard workers and managers at BAE Systems were gathering on Glasgow's Upper Clyde for the official opening of a vast new shipbuilding facility in Govan. The Janet Harvey Hall, named after the first woman to work in the yard in the second world war, is one of the largest industrial buildings in Scotland. It has to be big to accommodate the side-by-side construction – sheltered from Glasgow's notorious weather - of two Type 26 frigates that the UK's biggest defence contractor is building for the Royal Navy. In all, eight were ordered under a £7.9 billion contract with the Ministry of Defence. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad To a piped soundtrack of 1940s music including wartime crooner Vera Lynn, staff heard how the new facility was built on land once owned by Fairfields, the former Govan business that blazed a global trail for Scottish shipbuilding in the 19 th century. But as GMB union convener Kenny Smith told them: 'It also stands as a monument to the future.' PA That future can be seen in why the Type 26 is being built in Glasgow. It was in front of the same hall that Keir Starmer last month unveiled the government's Strategic Defence Review, warning the threats Britain now faces are 'more serious and less predictable than at any time since the end of the Cold War'. One of those is a marked increase in Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic, particularly under the icy waters of the Norwegian Sea. This is where the Type 26 comes in. Described by BAE Systems as a 'frontline warfighting frigate' with 'high survivability characteristics', the vessel has been built for stealth, including an alternative electric motor to reduce noise. BAE Systems has invested £300 million in modernising its facilities in Glasgow to build the Type 26, including docks across the Clyde at Scotstoun where hulls are fully fitted out, including with a computerised 'combat management system'. A 'mission bay' towards the stern allows the deployment of drones and anti-hypersonic missiles. 'This is designed to beat the Russian sub at the cat-and-mouse game,' explains Simon Lister, a former Royal Navy vice-admiral and military attaché in Moscow who is now managing director of BAE Systems' naval ships business. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The building of the Type 26 signifies nothing less than a dramatic revival in shipbuilding in Glasgow after decades of post-war decline. Just as sites like Govan and Belfast were vital to wartime efforts in the past, it's a revival driven by geopolitics. And it places Scotland at 'the beating heart of military shipbuilding', as Scottish Secretary Ian Murray put it last month when the first Type 26 was officially named 'HMS Glasgow' by the Princess of Wales. It's a revival that looks sustainable, too, which will matter for jobs. Annual defence spending of £2.1 billion in Scotland currently supports over 11,000 defence industry jobs, of which almost 5,000 are at BAE Systems in Glasgow. In the Netherlands, NATO committed to meet US president Donald Trump's demand to raise defence spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035. The UK has pledged as part of this to raise core defence spending to 3.5 per cent, with an additional 1.5 per cent on security- related infrastructure such as cyber security and border protection. The future cashflow prospects for defence businesses are rosy. Investors have taken notice, powering explosive growth in the share prices of European publicly listed defence companies such as Rheinmetall of Germany, Italy's Leonardo – which has an avionics and radar business in Edinburgh – and Babcock, the UK's second largest defence contractor that's building Type 31 frigates at Rosyth. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This week, Babcock's chief executive David Lockwood declared a 'new era for defence' as his company raised its profits target. BAE Systems, whose shares are up 62 per cent so far this year, hopes it will win a contract from Norway this year to deliver five Type 26s. Developing a robust supply chain will be key. Two things announced in this week's UK Industrial Growth Strategy stand out. One is a new £400 million innovation fund to support new defence technology, while another is the creation of 'defence growth deals' for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to create 'regional industrial clusters'. In March, the government said it would launch a new 'support hub' to small and medium enterprises better access to the defence supply chain. PA 'The government has made a very clear link between increased defence spending and the effect on the economy, so this will have an effect not only in Scotland but the supply chain, a lot of which is in Britain,' says Emma Salisbury, a research fellow at the Council on Geostrategy. Notably, about half of the supply chain for the Type 26 is sourced in Britain. One unknown is whether this increase in naval activity will have any spillover effect into civilian shipbuilding. A hearing at the Scottish Parliament this week heard from Brussels-based consultancy ADS Insight that while competition from Asia had hollowed out European shipbuilding over decades, calls have started to come for a European maritime industrial strategy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Minister u-turns a second time on Nuked Blood
Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard has "performed backflips" over the fight for justice for victims of the Nuked Blood Scandal, say campaigners Victims of the Nuked Blood Scandal have been promised answers this summer as a minister has flip-flopped on supporting them for a second time. Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard was shown a clip of nuclear veterans being interviewed on a Newsnight special, and asked if he and the Prime Minister would agree to their request for a meeting to discuss their evidence of a criminal cover-up over human radiation experiments. Mr Pollard did not answer the question, but pledged there would be answers soon from a ministerial review of the archives ordered last year in the wake of a BBC documentary. "We'll be making an announcement in the summer about what that review has found," said Mr Pollard. "I want to see justice for those folks that were exposed to nuclear testing all those decades ago, because we're running out of time for many of them still being around." About 40,000 UK and Commonwealth troops took part in the Cold War weapons testing programme, held in Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1967. Only 10% of them are believed to still be alive. They report a catalogue of early deaths, cancers, blood conditions, miscarriages for their wives and 10 times the usual rate of birth defects in their children. Keir Starmer, who told veterans "your campaign is our campaign" in Oppposition, has ignored requests to meet them to discuss evidence of the Mirror's 3-year investigation in to secret biological monitoring of troops, with blood tests, urine tests, and chest x-rays ordered, taken, and subsequently removed from the men's medical files. Speaking to Newsnight presenter Faisal Islam, Mr Pollard appeared to take credit for the review. "As a constituency MP, before the election I was campaigning on behalf of nuclear test veterans to get the info they need. That's why as a government we've committed to review the files held by MoD and the Atomic Weapons Establishment," he said. "We know the consequences for many of those people participating in the tests are carried, not just by individuals, but by their family members. That's why we want to work out what we can declassify and share, and get to the heart of trying to get justice for those individuals." But the minister had a different view just last November, when he was asked in Parliament about delivering compensation to the same people. "The MoD has no current plans to develop a specific compensation scheme for either nuclear test veterans or their families," he said, suggesting they apply for a war pension instead. The MoD says it has no data on nuclear veteran war pensions, but it is believed only around 1% are successful, due to the lack of available medical data. Yet two years earlier, he had demanded payouts for nuclear veterans while in Opposition. "It's really dumb that the UK government has been denying not only a medal for their exceptional service 70 years ago, but compensation too," he told the Mirror's News Agenda podcast. Until those veterans get the recognition and compensation they need, this campaign must continue." Veterans say they are bemused at the minister's apparent changes of opinion. Alan Owen of campaign group LABRATS said: "The minister has performed backflips, in an effort not to land on the main point - he's the one in government, and he's the one with a moral responsibility to deliver the compensation he demanded. "Why did he change his mind after hard evidence of wrongdoing emerged, and why has he changed it back again when asked about it by the BBC?"
