States of Guernsey wants election experience views from islanders
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
34 minutes ago
- Telegraph
UK borrowing climbs as Reeves plots further tax rises
Latest updates 21 August 2025 7:18am 7:18AM Borrowing lower than expected in July Borrowing for the first four months of this financial year hit £60bn, which was £6.7bn more than during the same period last year. However, Government borrowing slowed to a lower-than-expected £1.1bn in July, the ONS said. Treasury borrowing was £2.3bn less than the same month a year earlier and is the lowest July borrowing figure for three years. It came after a rise in self-assessed income tax payments helped increase tax receipts for the month. July borrowing was higher than the £2bn figure predicted by economists. Public sector net borrowing excluding public sector banks was £1.1 billion in July 2025. This was £2.3 billion less than in July 2024 and the lowest July borrowing for three years. Read more ➡ — Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) August 21, 2025 7:14AM Good morning Thanks for joining me. The Treasury has borrowed £6.7bn more so far this financial year than it did by the same point in 2024, according to official figures. Here is what you need to know. 5 things to start your day 1. Trump calls for Fed board member to quit in fresh attack on central bank | Governor accused of mortgage fraud as president vents frustration at high interest rates 2. US tech stocks lose $1 trillion on AI bubble fears | S&P 500 fell for the fourth consecutive day as tech sell-off deepened 3. BBC wrong not to call Hamas terrorists, says former head of news | Observer editor-in-chief James Harding takes aim at corporation's coverage of Oct 7 attacks 4. Dale Vince compares Musk's Tesla to Ku Klux Klan | Labour-supporting energy tycoon refers to US carmaker as 'The White Power Company' 5. Labour poised to take control of Gupta's UK steel factories | The Government will step in as administrator if factory cannot secure BlackRock rescue deal What happened overnight Asian shares were mostly higher after a mixed finish on Wall Street, where shares in Nvidia, Palantir and other superstar stocks reduced their earlier steep losses. Traders will be hoping for clues on the outlook for US monetary policy from a meeting of central bankers that begins later today in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is due to speak to the conference on Friday. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.6pc to 42,636.74 after a survey showed Japan's factory activity remained in contraction for the second month in August. The S&P Global flash Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) increased to 49.9 in August from 48.9 in July, just below the 50 level that delineates between growth and decline. Regional manufacturers have been feeling pressure from Trump's higher tariffs on exports to the United States. In Chinese markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index edged 0.1pc lower to 25,135.09, while the Shanghai composite index rose 0.4pc to 3,779.52. South Korea's Kospi jumped 1pc to 3,161.74, while Australia's S&P ASX 200 index added 1pc to 9,005.00. Taiwan's Taiex climbed 1.2pc, while India's Sensex added 0.1pc. US stocks fell on Wednesday, though by the end of the day the drops were not nearly as stark as during early trading. The S&P 500 closed down 0.26pc, at 6,394.97 while the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.68pc to 21,170.19. Tech stocks Palantir, Nvidia and Intel fell by 1.1pc, 0.14pc and 8.86pc respectively.
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice call for scrutiny over which EU laws UK ditches
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU. The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented. Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said the UK needed a 'salvage operation' to clear up the environmental and regulatory havoc caused by Brexit. The analysis by the Guardian and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has found that since Brexit the EU has brought forward 28 new, revised or upgraded pieces of environmental legislation that the UK has not adopted, and the UK has actively chosen to regress by changing four different pieces of legislation including on protected habitats, pesticides and fisheries. Creasy said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, needed to move more quickly to repair relations with the EU and realign on environmental law. 'I am working with Richard Tice as well as other Brexit sceptics on restoring some sort of European scrutiny committee in parliament so we can decide if and when we want to diverge rather than it all being passive,' she said. Creasy said: 'We don't have a body in parliament that knows both UK and EU law and can forge a way forward. This data from the Guardian and IEEP makes the case for having a scrutiny committee looking at if we diverge, and if we strengthen or weaken environmental protections. MPs aren't scrutinising this at all at the moment; they don't even know about what's going on.' One major issue is the planning and infrastructure bill, which overrides the EU's habitats directive and allows rare habitats such as chalk streams to be destroyed if developers pay a nature restoration levy to government. Chris Hinchliff, the MP for North East Hertfordshire, had the Labour whip removed for proposing amendments to the bill, including one to protect chalk streams from harmful development. Creasy said she supported Hinchliff and that the UK should not be regressing from EU law. She said: 'I signed Chris Hinchliff's amendments as I think he was right to bring these issues to the fore. There are good reasons to be concerned. Nobody wants to be the dirty man or woman of Europe, do they?' Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have consistently pitted the environment against growth, blaming bats and newts for a lack of housebuilding. Creasy said this was wrong: 'There is no trade-off between the environment and growth; you can do both.' She added that Labour had made some positive steps towards realigning with the EU: 'Under the Conservatives they were pushing very hard for isolation and they were saying there were benefits to have separate regulatory regimes as if pollution would stop at a border. It doesn't. The UK and EU reset deal is very clear about the climate crisis and the existential threats we face and that is encouraging.' There was now less of a fear of joining in with Europe and adopting good policies that the bloc came up with, Creasy said. 'The Tories wouldn't even join the European biosecurity alerts because it had the word 'European' in, when there was foot and mouth in France they didn't even want to know. We are over the hump of saying because it's European then we couldn't possibly do it. But now we need to scrutinise this Guardian and IEEP data and find the way forward.' She said she was relaxed about working with Reform MPs, even though their views are diametrically opposed to hers: 'Richard Tice and I can disagree over the benefits of alignment but we can both agree that parliament should examine these issues. Tracking environmental regulation has fallen to external bodies … no one's checking or holding the government to account.' Brexit campaigners said leaving the EU would allow the UK to 'take back control', but the UK has not decided on what to do about EU environmental directives and instead has passively fallen behind. For example, the EU has banned dozens of harmful chemicals under its Reach programme, while the UK's new chemicals regulator has yet to ban a single one. 'Brexit has not led to parliament taking back control,' Creasy said. 'We aren't actively making decisions on divergence. Those conversations aren't happening.' Creasy thinks the UK should 'dynamically align' with the EU, which means automatically adopting its environmental standards while reserving the right to reject some if they do not work for the UK. This means there would be less pressure on UK regulators to keep up, and it would also be helpful for trade, she believes. 'I've always been someone who supports the business case and the business case is you align by default unless there is a really good reason for why we shouldn't,' Creasy said. 'Since leaving the EU we have only actively chosen to diverge on a handful of things, but we have passively diverged on a lot.' She added: 'We need to say: can we align, how do we do that, why does it matter? We need a salvage operation because Brexit has been so damaging to our environment – there is no time to waste. We need to fight for the thing which will save the planet, which is to work with our nearest neighbours as quickly as possible.' A government spokesperson said: 'There are many areas of our environmental protections, like banning bee-killing pesticides, closing sand eel fisheries, restricting bottom trawling in sensitive marine areas, where the UK's approach is truly world leading. There is more to do, and we need to unlock growth and promote nature's recovery. Through initiatives like the nature restoration fund, our approach secures lasting improvements for nature and helps fix the failed status quo of time-intensive and costly processes to support the building of 1.5m new homes.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
European leaders scramble to shield Ukraine in high-stakes Trump talks – but did they?
It was dubbed the 'Great European Charm Offensive'. Hours before Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to Washington for a Monday meeting with Donald Trump, announcements came pouring in from across Europe, making it clear that the president of Ukraine would not be going alone. Instead, seven European heavyweights – a 'dream team' of leaders representing Europe's economic and military heft and who had a proven rapport with the US president – hastily cleared their schedules to join Zelenskyy in Washington. The result was a meeting set to become among the 'oddest in modern diplomacy', Simon McDonald, former permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote in the Guardian. Their scramble hinted at just how much was at stake. Days earlier, Trump had met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, rolling out the red carpet for a man wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes. The US president had gone into the summit insisting he wanted 'some form of a ceasefire'; he came out of it backing pro-Russian positions. As Trump publicly dropped plans for an immediate ceasefire and insisted it was now up to Zelenskyy to 'get it done,' the mood in Moscow was jubilant. At its most simple, the united European front was aimed at avoiding a repeat of Trump's February ambush of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. But the 'rare and sweeping show of diplomatic force' was also about protecting Ukraine and Europe from any widening aggression from Moscow, said Luke Harding, the Guardian's senior international correspondent, as the leaders of Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Finland landed in Washington alongside their EU and Nato counterparts. The talks offered up a showcase of the lessons learned during Trump's erratic time in power. Flattery flowed fast and freely, with European leaders showering compliments on Trump and gently papering over potential sticking points as much as possible. Six months after Zelenskyy's extraordinary dressing down in the Oval Office, the Ukrainian president peppered his opening remarks with eight thank you's, most of them directed at Trump, as he sported what one European diplomat described as 'almost a suit' in a style that Reuters coined as 'combat formal'. Matthias Matthijs, a senior fellow for Europe at the Council of Foreign Relations, likened it to the meandering trajectory that EU trade relations have taken under Trump: 'There are always high expectations, and then the Europeans' expectations are dashed by the Americans – usually by Trump's social media posts or some interview he gives,' he said following Monday's meeting. 'Then when they meet again, having avoided the worst outcomes, they come to some sort of agreement. It's better than they feared, but it's always worse than the status quo. But as the saying goes, the Europeans live to fight another day.' Fabrizio Tassinari pointed to the broader picture of how Trump had inadvertently become 'the greatest unifier of Europe since the end of the cold war'. Writing in the Guardian, the executive director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, added: 'For those like myself who have followed the chimera that is European foreign and security policy for years, it was almost an epiphany to witness these seven leaders, each speaking for two minutes, repeating the exact same message.' Days after the unprecedented flurry of diplomacy, questions continue to swirl over what – if anything – might come out of it. On Monday, Trump and several European leaders, said Putin had agreed to face-to-face talks with Zelenskyy in the coming weeks. Moscow, however, has yet to confirm that any such meeting – which would be the first since Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago – is being planned, with a Kremlin aide saying only that Putin and Trump discussed the idea of 'raising the level of representatives' in the Ukraine talks. Trump had also indicated a willingness to be part of security guarantees for Kyiv if there was a deal to end fighting. But the exact nature of those guarantees remains to be seen, with Trump later ruling out the possibility of the US putting troops on the ground in Ukraine and instead floating that Washington could provide air support. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Concerns also continue to linger over what exactly Trump proposed in Alaska and what, if anything, Putin agreed to during the near three-hour meeting. As Pjotr Sauer, a Guardian Russian affairs reporter, noted, some fear Trump may have overstated the outcome and misjudged Moscow's willingness to compromise. Others, such as Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of charity Hope for Ukraine, suggested Trump is deliberately setting out an exit path for Washington by entertaining Putin's demands that Ukraine withdraws from Donetsk and Luhansk, even as Zelenskyy sets a firm red line against ceding land beyond the present occupation or legitimising Moscow's control. Putin had offered a 'peace deal' that Ukraine would be forced to reject, knowing Trump would then blame Zelenskyy and end US support for Kyiv, he told the Guardian on Monday. After a week dominated by talks and punctuated by Russian bombs continuing to rain down on Ukraine, Boyechko hoped that the jarring contrast would force European leaders to realise that it would take more than just charm offensives to protect the region. 'Ukraine and its European allies must recognise the urgent need to develop their own strategy to defend Ukraine and secure peace in Europe – because it is increasingly likely that Trump will walk away from the peace negotiations.' This is an edited version of the This is Europe newsletter. If you want to read the complete version every Wednesday, please sign up here.
