Nigel Farage emerges as the new champion of working-class voters
After courting right-wing voters, Nigel Farage has now openly turned his attention to working-class Britons. On Tuesday, May 27, the head of the far-right Reform UK party unveiled policy proposals that could well have come from the Labour government itself – had Keir Starmer not, until now, pursued a policy that is nearly conservative. Farage, whose party is leading in the polls (with 28% of voting intentions according to a YouGov study conducted on June 2, ahead of Labour at 22% and the Conservatives at 18%), pledged to abolish the cap on child benefits. Currently set at two children, the policy dictates that families receive no additional support for a third child or beyond.
This cap was introduced by the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2013, and child welfare groups have long called for its removal, arguing that it is the single fastest way to lift hundreds of thousands of British households out of poverty.
Speaking from the magnificent library of a London gentlemen's club just steps from Downing Street, Farage insisted his party wanted to go "much further to encourage people to have children, to make it easier for them to have children" in the United Kingdom. The country has "lost our sense of focus of just how important family is," added the veteran of British politics. A former member of the European Parliament, Farage was the first to campaign for Brexit; his remarks are clearly tinged with natalist sentiment. He cautioned, however, that more generous child benefits are "not aimed at those that come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children," making clear his anti-immigration stance.
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LeMonde
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- LeMonde
Quebec and Canada find common ground: 'Who is best to stand up to Trump?'
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Euronews
a day ago
- Euronews
Can the EU lower the cap on Russian oil without the US?
The European Union is readying a new round of sanctions against Russia to pile extra pressure on the Kremlin and pressure it to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, a step that Western allies consider indispensable for serious peace negotiations. Ursula von der Leyen has already provided an outline of what that package, the 18th since February 2022, is supposed to target: Russia's financial sector, the "shadow fleet" and the Nord Stream pipelines, which are currently non-operational. On top of that, the president of the European Commission has pitched a downward revision of the price cap on Russian oil to further squeeze profits from worldwide sales, a crucial cash flow to sustain the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "We need a real ceasefire, we need Russia at the negotiating table, and we need to end this war. Pressure works, as the Kremlin understands nothing else," von der Leyen said earlier this week after meeting with US Senator Lindsey Graham. But there's a catch: unlike other sanctions the bloc has imposed on Russia, such as the multiple export and import bans, the price cap has a political and practical dimension that exceeds the institutional sphere of Brussels and stretches across the ocean. More specifically, to Washington, DC. The price cap on Russian oil was introduced in December 2022 by the Group of Seven (G7) under the initiative of the Joe Biden administration. It was hailed as an ingenious, ground-breaking mechanism to mobilise the collective power of Western allies and cripple Russia's high-intensity war machine. As part of the plan, the G7, together with Australia, passed laws prohibiting their domestic companies from providing services, such as insurance, financing and flagging, to Russian tankers that sold seaborne crude oil above a predetermined price. The secret lay in market power: for decades, Western firms, particularly British ones, have dominated the sector of Protection and Indemnity (P&I), a type of insurance that gives shipowners broad protection and allows them to cover potentially huge costs from any accidental harm caused to the crew, their property or the environment. Due to the inherent risks of moving oil in high waters, P&I is today considered the norm in maritime trade and a must-have to be accepted in a foreign port. By leveraging their leading firms, the G7 intended to create an extraterritorial effect that would cap the price of Russian oil not only within their jurisdictions but all around the world. Following intense behind-the-scenes talks, the cap was set at $60 per barrel, a compromise between hard-line and cautious member states. The strategy only worked up to a point however. Although the price of Russian Urals oil gradually decreased, it consistently remained above the $60 mark, often exceeding the $70 threshold. The blatant circumvention was attributed to the "shadow fleet" that Russia deployed at high sea. These tankers are so old and poorly kept that they fall outside P&I standards and rely on alternative, obscure insurance systems that escape G7 surveillance. By the time the cap entered into force, Moscow "had spent months building a 'shadow fleet' of tankers, finding new buyers like India and China, and creating new payment systems, to the point that its oil does not need to be greatly discounted to sell," Luis Caricano, a professor at the London School of Economics, wrote in a recent analysis. "What should have been a blow became a manageable problem," Caricano said. With few sectors in the Russian economy left to sanction, Brussels has turned its sight to the cap as a means to tighten the screws on the Kremlin and secure a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Commission has reportedly pitched a revision between $50 and $45 per barrel, which the UK and Canada are believed to support. However, the US has so far refrained from endorsing a lower price cap, raising the stakes ahead of crunch talks at the G7 summit in Alberta, scheduled for mid-June. Now, a tough question emerges: Can the EU dare, and afford, to go it alone? In the strictest legalistic sense, the EU could, indeed, establish a lower price cap on its own. After all, the G7, as an organisation, lacks regulatory powers: each ally amends its laws individually to fulfil a collective mission. In this case, the EU introduced new legislation to prohibit EU companies – rather than, say, American or British companies – from servicing Russian tankers that bypassed the $60-per-barrel cap. Similarly, the bloc could now change the text to adjust that prohibition to a tighter price without waiting for other allies to reciprocate. Here appears the first roadblock: any change to sanctions must be approved by a unanimous vote among member states. It is highly unlikely that all 27 countries would choose to move forward with a lower cap without having an explicit guarantee that Washington will follow suit. Hungary, in particular, has fully aligned itself with the Trump administration and could veto any proposal opposed by the White House. Even if the bloc managed to overcome internal differences and agreed to a lower cap on its own, more formidable obstacles could impede its success. The bloc's revised cap would have to co-exist with America's existing cap. This means that one side of the Atlantic Ocean would apply a $50-per-barrel limit while the other side would apply a $60-per-barrel limit, creating a cacophony for all actors involved. 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"If the EU alone decides to tighten the screws on the cap, it's an additional constraint on Russia's oil exports but not as tight as with a whole of G7 approach," said Elisabetta Cornago, a senior researcher at the Centre for European Reform (CER). Besides practical snags and legal matters, there is geopolitics to consider. One of the reasons why the G7 initiative has fallen short of expectations is that, as the name suggests, it has remained a G7-exclusive plan. Countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa have refused to play along and join the coalition. China and India openly buy Russian crude oil, sometimes to refine it and resell it under a different label. Having the EU and the US go separate ways would further destabilise the Western alliance and create the impression of a transatlantic break-up. But for many, that is already a reality: the "Coalition of the Willing", born after Donald Trump unilaterally launched negotiations with Vladimir Putin, bears testament to the political divide. "The price cap was a G7 + EU initiative, and so in its current form, I do not see any pathway in which the EU could adjust the cap without the support of the broader coalition, including the US," said Ben McWilliams, an affiliate fellow with Bruegel. "That said, the EU is free to implement whatever measures it wants on its own domestic ships and insurance companies, which it could likely encourage the UK to join," McWilliams added. "So the EU can still move ahead – it would just need to be under a different institutional format than currently exists." 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France 24
2 days ago
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Trump says fresh US-China trade talks in London next week
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