Tony Blair's think tank worked on ‘Trump Riviera' plan for Gaza
The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) fed into a project led by Israeli businessmen in which a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk was also discussed.
Fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas has been ongoing in Gaza for 20 months since the terror attacks of Oct 7 2023.
Earlier this year, Donald Trump, the US president, released a provocative video of his vision for Gaza which included skyscrapers, bearded belly dancers and golden statues of himself.
Members of staff at the TBI worked on lengthy dossiers for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as part of its 'Great Trust' project.
One document written by a TBI employee and shared with the group included the idea of a ' Gaza Riviera ' with artificial islands. A similar concept was shown in the video created by Mr Trump.
The Financial Times, which first reported the plan, said the document suggested trade initiatives based around cryptocurrency and 'special economic zones' with low-tax regimes.
It went on to claim that the war in Gaza, in which tens of thousands of people have died, had created a 'once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild Gaza from first principles'.
The document suggested the Strip would be able to go forward as a 'secure, modern, prosperous society'.
Staff from the TBI also took part in a 12-person messaging group used for the budget, as well as producing a 'Gaza economic blueprint'.
The TBI did not author or endorse the final-slide deck, which was submitted to the Trump administration and suggested paying half a million Palestinians to leave Gaza.
Last week, it emerged that the BCG had previously modelled how much it would cost to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.
This prompted a backlash because the group was involved in establishing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which had the backing of Israel and the US. The BCG would later go on to distance itself from the project.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said the former prime minister had neither spoken to the people who prepared the plans nor commented on them.
The spokesman added: 'The TBI team speaks to many different groups and organisations with post-war 'plans' for Gaza, but had nothing to do with the authorship of this plan.
'TBI staff participated in two calls, as they have done with many other people with 'Gaza plans' and interacting with them doesn't mean endorsement.
'The TBI document referred to is an internal TBI document looking at proposals being made by various parties covering all the different aspects of what a post-war Gaza could look like [...] but it was not produced in connection with the BCG work nor given to BCG.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
37 minutes ago
- Reuters
Asia stocks slip amid US tariff confusion, oil skids
SYDNEY, July 7 (Reuters) - Stock markets slipped in Asia amid much confusion as U.S. officials flagged a delay on tariffs but failed to provide any detail or paperwork on the change, while oil prices slid as OPEC+ opened the supply spigots more than expected. The United States is close to finalising several trade agreements in the coming days and will notify other countries of higher tariff rates by July 9, President Donald Trump said on Sunday, with the higher rates to take effect on August 1. "President Trump's going to be sending letters to some of our trading partners saying that if you don't move things along, then on August 1 you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN. Trump in April announced a 10% base tariff rate on most countries and higher "reciprocal" rates ranging up to 50%, with an original deadline of this Wednesday. However, Trump also said levies could range in value from "maybe 60% or 70% tariffs to 10% and 20%", further clouding the picture. With very few actual trade deals done, analysts had suspected the date would be pushed out, though it was still not clear if the new deadline applied to all trading partners or just some. "This renewed escalation in trade tensions comes at a time when major trade partners, including the EU, India and Japan, are believed to be at crucial stages of bilateral negotiations," analysts at ANZ said in a note. "If reciprocal tariffs are implemented in their original form or even expanded, we believe it will intensify downside risks to U.S. growth and increase upside risks to inflation." Investors have grown somewhat used to the uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade policy and the initial market reaction was cautious. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures both eased 0.3%. Japan's Nikkei lost 0.3% (.N225), opens new tab, while South Korean stocks (.KS11), opens new tab fell 0.7%. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS), opens new tab eased 0.1%. Safe-haven bonds were better bid, with 10-year Treasury yields down almost 2 basis points at 4.326% . Major currencies were little changed as the dollar index continued to languish near four-year lows at 96.913 . The euro held at $1.1787 , just off last week's top of $1.1830, while the dollar dipped to 144.38 yen . The dollar has been undermined by investor concerns about Trump's often chaotic tariff policy and what that might do to economic growth and inflation. The same worries have kept the Federal Reserve from cutting rates and minutes of its last meeting should offer more colour on when the majority of members might resume easing. It is a relatively quiet week for Fed speakers with only two district presidents on the docket, while economic data is also sparse. The Reserve Bank of Australia is widely expected to cut its rates by a quarter point to 3.60% at a meeting on Tuesday, the third easing this cycle, and markets imply an eventual destination for rates of 2.85% or 3.10%. New Zealand's central bank meets on Wednesday and is likely to hold rates at 3.25%, having already slashed by 225 basis points over the past year. In commodity markets, gold slipped 0.3% to $3,324 an ounce , though it did gain almost 2% last week as the dollar fell. Oil prices slid anew after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, a group known as OPEC+, agreed on Saturday to raise production by a larger-than-expected 548,000 barrels per day in August. The group also warned that it could hike by a similar amount in September, leaving analysts with the impression it was trying to squeeze lower margin producers and particularly those pulling oil from U.S. shale. Brent dropped 52 cents to $67.78 a barrel, while U.S. crude fell $1.01 to $65.99 per barrel. text_section_type="notes">To read Reuters Markets and Finance news, click on For the state of play of Asian stock markets please click on:
The Independent
43 minutes ago
- The Independent
Ex-Treasury secretary pans Congress for passing Trump's ‘shameful' megabill he says will hurt economy
Donald Trump got his wish of signing the 'big, beautiful bill' into law on July 4, but a top economist is pouring cold water on his celebrations. Larry Summers, the former Obama Treasury chief and center-left economic guru, unleashed scathing criticism of the law on Sunday, claiming it was going to harm American economic growth by slashing the social safety net in the most unprecedented manner in decades. 'The Yale Budget Lab estimates that it will kill, over 10 years, 100,000 people. That is 2,000 days of death like we've seen in Texas this weekend,' Summers told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on This Week. 'In my 70 years, I've never been as embarrassed for my country on July 4th,' he added. 'These higher interest rates, these cutbacks in subsidies to electricity, these reductions in the availability of housing, the fact that hospitals are going to have to take care of these people and pass on the costs to everybody else, and that's going to mean more inflation, more risk that the Fed has to raise interest rates and run the risk of recession, more stagflation, that's the risk facing every middle-class family in our country because of this bill. 'And for what? A million dollars over 10 years to the top tenth of a percent of our population? Is that the highest priority use of federal money right now? I don't think so. This is a shameful act by our Congress and by our president that is going to set our country back,' Summers continued. He also rejected out of hand projections from Trump's White House Council of Economic Advisers, who claimed that economic growth resulting from the tax cuts and other measures in the bill would balance out the bill's deficit spending. This proved to be a headache for conservatives who fought to make deeper spending cuts in the legislation, but were denied. 'It is, respectfully, nonsense. None of us can forecast what's going to happen to economic growth,' said Summers. 'There is no economist anywhere, without a strong political agenda, who is saying that this bill is a positive for the economy. And the overwhelming view is that it is probably going to make the economy worse.' Summers's criticism will likely be written off by the administration as coming from a former Obama appointee, but even nonpartisan forecasters continue to fret that any growth of the U.S. economy resulting from tax cuts will likely be offset by the Trump administration's tariff policies, which are set to go back into effect this Wednesday. A 90-day pause on the president's so-called 'reciprocal' tariffs is due to end, and the president is set to send letters to numerous U.S. trade partners informing them of the new tariff rates. Negotiations with the EU and various countries are ongoing, but officials have given no indication that another pause is on the table. Markets slid sharply upon the last announcement that the president would be sharply raising tariffs. Summers is one of many economists who has called the president's tariff strategy naive. 'The question is mostly how much damage is going to be done,' he said of Trump's tariffs in April, during a Bloomberg interview, adding that the reciprocal tariffs plan was 'bizarre'. Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, also trashed Trump's megabill on Sunday during an interview on CNN's State of the Union. The governor of a state with many rural areas, Beshear was a vocal opponent of the bill's provisions to cut Medicaid and SNAP benefits via the imposition of work requirements, which nonpartisan analysts project will cause millions to leave the programs due to issues with paperwork, government red tape or confusion about reporting requirements. On Sunday, Beshear delivered vicious criticism of Republicans in Congress who supported the legislation, accusing them of believing 'that poor people are stupid' as the GOP attempts to deny that the bill represents a cut to Medicaid. Republican lawmakers, defending the bill's new work requirements, have repeatedly echoed the same depiction of a Medicaid recipient at risk of losing eligibility under the new law: a young, male twenty-something living unemployed in a basement collecting government benefits, a cartoonish stereotype Democrats say simply doesn't exist in real life. 'You can lie all you want about what's in this bill. But the numbers are the numbers,' said Beshear on Sunday. 'These work requirements aren't really about getting people back to work. They are about increasing the paperwork on everybody.'
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Ports attacked in first Israeli strikes on Yemen in a month
Israel launched attacks on Houthi targets in three Yemeni ports and a power plant on Sunday, marking the first Israeli attack on the country in almost a month. The strikes on Hodeidah, Ras Isa and Salif ports, and Ras Qantib power plant were due to repeated Houthi attacks on Israel, the Israeli military said. Israel also attacked the Galaxy Leader ship in Ras Isa port, which was seized by Houthis in late 2023. • Israel resumes Gaza ceasefire talks despite 'unacceptable' Hamas demands 'The Houthi terrorist regimes forces installed a radar system on the ship, and are using it to track vessels in international maritime space, in order to promote the Houthi terrorist regimes activities,' the military said. The Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV reported that Israel launched a series of strikes on Hodeidah, shortly after the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for people at the three Yemeni ports. The assault comes hours after a ship was attacked off the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah and the ship's crew abandoned it as it took on water. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the security firm Ambrey said the vessel fitted the typical profile of a Houthi target. Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, the Iran-aligned Houthis have fired at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade, in what it said are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians. Most of the dozens of missiles and drones fired toward Israel have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.
