Former French president Sarkozy stripped of Legion of Honour medal
PARIS, June 15 (Reuters) - Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour, France's highest distinction, after being convicted of corruption and influence peddling last year, according to a decree published in Sunday's Official Bulletin.
The centre-right politician has been embroiled in legal battles since leaving office in 2012.
Last year, France's highest court upheld his conviction for corruption and influence peddling, ordering him to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French head of state.
Also last year, an appeals court confirmed a separate conviction for illegal campaign financing in his failed re-election bid in 2012.
The rules of the Legion of Honour award meant that the revocation had been expected.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
NHS faces paying more for US drugs to avoid future Trump tariffs
Britain faces paying more for US drugs as part of a deal to avoid future tariffs from Donald Trump. The NHS will review drug pricing to take into account the 'concerns of the president', according to documents released after a trade agreement was signed earlier this year. White House sources said it expected the NHS to pay higher prices for American drugs in an attempt to boost the interests of corporate America. A Westminster source said: 'There's an understanding that we would look at the drug pricing issue in the concerns of the president.' The disclosure is likely to increase concerns about American interference in the British health service, which has long been regarded as a flashpoint in trade talks. It comes after Rachel Reeves announced a record £29 billion investment in the NHS in last week's spending review. The Chancellor's plans will drive spending on the health service up towards 50 per cent of all taxpayer expenditure by the mid-2030s, according to economists at the Resolution Foundation. The Telegraph has also learnt that under the terms of the trade deal with America, the UK has agreed to take fewer Chinese drugs, in a clause similar to the 'veto' given to Mr Trump over Chinese investment in Britain. The White House has asked the UK for assurances that steel and pharmaceutical products exported to the US do not originate in China, amid fears the deal could be used to 'circumvent' Mr Trump's punishing tariffs on Beijing. Mr Trump is enraged by how much more America pays for drugs compared with other countries and considers it to be the same issue as he has raised on defence spending. Just as the US president has heaped pressure on European nations to increase the GDP share they allocate to defence, he thinks they should spend more on drug development. An industry source said: 'The way we've been thinking about it and many in the administration have been thinking about it, it's more like the model in Nato, where countries contribute some share of their GDP.' Britain and the US 'intend to promptly negotiate significantly preferential treatment outcomes on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients', the trade deal reads. Pharmaceutical companies are also pushing for reductions in the revenue sales rebates they pay to the NHS under the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth (VPAG) – a mechanism that the UK uses to make sure the NHS does not overpay. Non-US countries are 'free-riding' Last week, Albert Bourla, Pfizer's chief executive, said non-US countries were 'free-riding' and called for a US government-led push to make other nations increase their proportionate spend on innovative medicines. He said White House officials were discussing drug prices in trade negotiations with other countries. 'We represent in UK 0.3pc of their GDP per capita. That's how much they spend on medicine. So yes, they can increase prices,' Mr Bourla said. Industry sources said there was no indication yet on what the White House would consider to be a fair level of spending. Whatever the benchmark, Britain will face one of the biggest step-ups. UK expenditure on new innovative medicines is just 0.28pc of its GDP, roughly a third of America's proportionate spending of 0.78pc of its GDP. Even among other G7 nations, the UK is an anomaly. Germany spends 0.4pc of its GDP while Italy spends 0.5pc. Most large pharmaceutical companies generate between half and three quarters of their profits in the US, despite the fact that America typically makes up less than a fifth of their sales. This is because drug prices outside of the US can cost as little as 30pc of what Americans pay. Yet, pharmaceutical companies rely on higher US prices to fund drug research and development, which the rest of the world benefits from. A month ago, Mr Trump signed an executive order titled 'Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients', which hit out at 'global freeloading' on drug pricing. It stated that 'Americans should not be forced to subsidise low-cost prescription drugs and biologics in other developed countries, and face overcharges for the same products in the United States' and ordered his commerce secretary to 'consider all necessary action regarding the export of pharmaceutical drugs or precursor material that may be fuelling the global price discrimination'. Trung Huynh, the head of pharma analysis at UBS, said: 'The crux of this issue is Trump thinks that the US is subsidising the rest of the world with drug prices. 'The president has said he wants to equalise pricing between the US and ex-US. 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A government spokesman said: 'This Government is clear that we will only ever sign trade agreements that align with the UK's national interests and to suggest otherwise would be misleading. 'The UK has well-established and effective mechanisms for managing the costs of medicines and has clear processes in place to mitigate risks to supply.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Labour needs to make its priorities clear to everyone
Martin Kettle quotes a former Whitehall mandarin saying that 'the government has still not made clear what kind of Britain it is trying to create' (Rachel Reeves seized her moment – whatever the future brings, Labour's economic course is now set, 12 June). He has a point, not wholly answered by Rachel Reeves. It's the vision thing, and the ability to communicate it. It's about describing what Labour is for, in a general sense, beyond a list of policy deliverables. Growth is important, but only as a means, not an end. 'Securonomics' is interesting, but has no public resonance. If people are now unsure what Labour stands for, it is because the task of ideological self-definition has been neglected. This is unlike 1997, which was preceded by a process of rethinking that produced New Labour and the 'third way'. Something similar is needed now. There is a rich tradition of social democratic thinking in Britain to draw on, including RH Tawney's argument for equal access to what he called 'the means of civilisation' as the basis for a common culture. Pragmatism is valuable, but it is not enough. An argument should be constructed around the three pillars of security, opportunity and community that would pull together all that the government is trying to do, and the kind of Britain it wants to create. And in a way that people might WrightLabour MP, 1992-2010 I agree with Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah that the focus on investment alone will not work (Has Rachel Reeves made the right choices? Our panel responds to the spending review, 11 June). New public investments are pointless if the operation and maintenance of what already exists isn't adequately funded. After years of austerity, the quickest and surest way to raise GDP and improve public services is to ensure that we realise the full potential of what we already have. The highest priority should be to relieve the financial pressure on those delivering services, especially our severely cash-strapped local authorities. This will deliver more broad-based and higher economic growth quickly, in contrast to the central allocation of investment funds to mega-projects that will take decades to deliver results. Entrepreneurs want to live and invest in safe areas with good health and education, well maintained roads and pleasant amenities. Properly funded local authorities can encourage higher private investment by delivering that. Unfortunately, they are instead expected to implement an expensive and disruptive reorganisation and find the money to pay higher minimum wages and national insurance while receiving a settlement that implies a real-terms cut in funding. Labour needs to think FosterChelmsford According to Rachel Reeves, the NHS has been 'protected' and will receive 'a 3% rise in its budget' (Spending review 2025: who are the winners and losers?, 11 June). But will it in practice? In a recent meeting with the chief executive of the Nottingham University hospitals trust, he told us that he had been instructed to make £97m of cuts in this financial year. This would mean leading to the loss of about 750 jobs and the closure of some wards. Further, these massive cuts are the trust's contribution to the even bigger ones imposed on the integrated care board for our county: a £280m reduction in the provision for all local health services. So, which is it really, protection and a 3% rise, or enormous cuts?Mike ScottChair, Nottingham & Notts Keep Our NHS Public Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Politicians should learn that history is not just a handy rhetorical device
The head of Britain's Left-wing government warns that the country might become an 'island of strangers'. A senior black MP, Diane Abbott, attacks his speech as 'fundamentally racist'. Sir Keir 'doubles down', then a few days later apologises. He refuses, then accepts, an enquiry into organised child rape. The chairman of the main anti-immigration party, David Bull, announces that immigration has always been 'the lifeblood of this country'. To put it mildly, all this shows moral, intellectual, political and not least historical confusion. Yet the history of migration is very simple. People have always moved, often compelled by war, persecution or economic stress. Such movement has invariably caused friction and often serious violence: xenophobia is a constant of history. England has for most of its past been a country of low immigration. Those who claim that immigration has always been our 'lifeblood' or that 'immigrants built this land' (in Diane Abbott's words) would have to show when and how this was possible given the rarity of significant migration until the 1990s. Those who repeat the now familiar historical claim that England has always been a country of immigrants also have to skate over the awkward fact that when major immigration did occur, it was rarely a happy experience. Romans (including those probably fictitious black legionaries on Hadrian's Wall), Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans were violent invaders, even if some did build roads and cathedrals. Even 18th or 19th-century internal migrants – such as the Scots in Ireland or the Irish in Scotland – gave rise to lasting tensions still tangible after centuries of common citizenship. Genuine refugees in small numbers met with popular sympathy, and some made an economic contribution – Huguenots are always mentioned here, and sometimes Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia or Ugandan Asians. Nevertheless they were met with hostility from those who felt displaced. Others fleeing manifest danger – French refugees from the Revolution, Belgians in 1914, Ukrainians in 2022 – received sympathy, but were usually expected in due course to return home. The overall picture is clear: for nearly 1,000 years, the British Isles received few immigrants. Our history is one of emigration, as British expatriates became the 'lifeblood' of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, whether the indigenous populations liked it or not. One can certainly sometimes point to economic development as an outcome of immigration. But as the leading economist of migration, Sir Paul Collier, observes, 'migrants capture the lion's share of the economic gains from migration'. It is not only with regard to migration that the censoring, sanitisation and rewriting of the past has been carried out. There have been attempts to argue that certain modern cultural phenomena have always been present. A recent example is the trans movement: Joan of Arc has been conscripted as a gender activist. Poor Joan, burnt by the 15th-century English, has been sacrificed to another cause by their descendants. Most politicians and activists have always regarded history not as a source of wisdom, but as a handy rhetorical device. When history became a quasi-scientific subject in the 19th century, it aimed to cut through rhetoric and myth-making and discover often awkward and complicated truths. Despite postmodernist assertions that there is no objective reality, this is what most professional historians still try to do: that is why they read archives, analyse statistics and study context. But for some, what counts more than analysis is pushing a 'narrative' that serves a cause (and their careers), even when the evidence is against them. Some things are exaggerated; others are played down. African rulers' enthusiastic slave trading; violent Muslim conquest; the cruelty and oppression of many pre-colonial societies. In the West, this is linked with Left-wing obsessions about race and colonisation, but Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping – and for the sake of balance let me add Donald Trump – are equally keen abusers of history, with Tibet and Ukraine the main victims so far. No surprise there. Our own history too has been and is being carefully moulded by people in unaccountable positions of influence, and is being propagated by schools, universities and museums – I noticed the other day that even the King's Gallery is not entirely immune. People mould history to serve ideological causes or in the hope of calming tensions, or (as in the case of museums) to attract new customers. Hence, the British tend to accept accounts of their own history written by historic opponents. We acquiesce in American accounts of the War of Independence (forgetting the slaves and indigenous people who fought for the Crown) and to nationalist accounts of the Empire. One of the most taught subjects in English schools today is the Atlantic slave trade. Here, Britain's role, especially in abolition, was indeed globally epoch-making. Nevertheless, it is a brief and marginal episode in England's own long saga, and not its principal theme. The history of Britain's institutions is little taught, and the creation of England itself apparently not at all, despite England arguably being the prototype of the nation state. Why is there an England? Why a Britain? What is distinctive about them? You would be unlikely to find out at school. It is notoriously difficult to decide what history should be taught and how. It is easy, however, to say what should not be taught: propagandist 'narratives' that are at best simplistic and anachronistic, and at worst patent falsehoods. One obvious example is that slavery and imperial exploitation created British prosperity. Another is that past empire makes Britain today racist – evidence shows the opposite. History should teach complexity not simplicity. That past societies sometimes succeeded with resources far less than ours. That people thought differently from us, and were not necessarily wrong. That political decisions are hard and that the future is never clear (think of Chamberlain and Appeasement). Even children can learn these things. They might even remember them when they become adults. Perhaps one day a responsible government will help this to happen.
