Leo Varadkar to take up role with Washington based Penta Group
The company, which has a network of offices around the world, said the former Taoiseach's "expertise in navigating complex geopolitical landscapes, economic development, and progressive social change" will assist Penta's expansion plans.According to Matt McDonald, CEO of Penta Group, Varadkar's experience at the highest levels of government will help the company's clients to "navigate today's increasingly complex global environment".Varadkar served as Taoiseach from 2017 to 2020 and from 2022 to 2024 and was a key Irish and EU political player during Brexit negotiations.He announced his resignation as Taoiseach just over a year ago after serving 20 years as a public representative in Ireland.At the time, he described his period in public service as "the most fulfilling time of my life".Penta acquired the Irish public relations firm Hume Brophy, set up by John Hume, son of the former SDLP leader John Hume, and Dublin businessman Eoin Brophy, in 2023.Conall McDevitt, a former MLA representing the SDLP at the Stormont Assembly, is president of Penta and managing partner for Europe and Asia.
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Here's the truth about Britain's immigration hysteria: Starmer and co have whipped it up to get cheap votes
Immigration has been a fixture of Britain's political discourse for so long, it now feels, like Voltaire's god, that if the issue did not exist, we would have to invent it. What would our politics look like, what would the broad majority of Britain's media do with themselves, without immigration? It has become such a feature of the country's political culture, it amounts to a sort of historical exhibit: 'rivers of blood', the 'hostile environment', 'go home' vans, 'controls on immigration' crockery, the Brexit 'breaking point' poster, the Windrush scandal, 'stop the boats', 'island of strangers'. And now, summer riots. What conjoins all of these is one thing: misinformation. I have banged on for years in this column about the disconnect between immigration discourse and the reality of how hard and expensive it is to enter the UK and stay there. A poll from last week demonstrates that gulf with striking simplicity. The conclusion to be drawn from the survey is that support for hardline immigration policies is linked to ignorance about migration figures. Half of all respondents thought that there were more migrants living in the UK illegally than legally. According to YouGov, these perceptions are 'wide of the mark', with those in the country legally vastly outnumbering those who are not, even at the most generous estimates of irregular migration. But there is a new development related to that ignorance. Over the past 20 years or so, immigration demands have shifted from variations of 'controlling our borders' and reducing numbers of new migrants, to demanding that zero migrants be allowed to enter, and 'requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave'. This is an 'extraordinary' development, according to YouGov. Indeed, the last time a member of a political party even hinted at any sort of deportation policy was in the late 00s, when British National party leader Nick Griffin (another installation in the immigration exhibit) stated that he would 'encourage' voluntary repatriation of legal migrants and 'those of foreign descent to return to their lands of ethnic origin'. On Saturday, far-right protesters clashed with police while holding signs saying 'Remigration NOW'. This latest mutation of migration discourse to include mass deportation is down to, as ever, media and politics. Rightwing media not only constantly cover immigration negatively, but go through different seasons of doing so, depending on the political climate. The 2010s was about Muslims, the run-up to Brexit about certain east European nationalities and how their presence had a deleterious effect on British society, and the latest phase is about 'numbers'. Specifically, numbers of irregular arrivals. The small boats fixation here is central, as they evoke a sense of losing control of the borders, sadly no longer as easy to pull off after Brexit. That fixation has been mirrored in political discourse. The last government's contribution to this was the Rwanda scheme and Rishi Sunak's 'stop the boats' campaign – one of his five promises, which was given equal weight to such macro challenges as bringing down inflation and cutting NHS waiting lists. And this government has continued in the same vein. Keir Starmer's 'island of strangers' speech, which referred to an era of rising migration as a 'squalid chapter' in the country's history, was the rhetorical opening salvo in an anti-immigration campaign that in its tone and relentlessness reinforces the issue as a crisis. Starmer's X account constantly posts highlights of crackdowns against those who try 'to cheat the system' and even Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-like videos of deportations. In the past week alone, Starmer has posted 14 times on X; 10 of those posts were about immigration, particularly irregular arrivals and those arriving on small boats. This is a wildly disproportionate emphasis, considering this cohort makes up a minuscule percentage of overall immigration to the UK. The result is a framing of all of immigration through the lens of irregular arrivals, and therefore cultivating a sense of crisis and overwhelm. A study by the University of Birmingham that surveyed thousands of media texts and political documents earlier this year found that that disproportionate focus on small boats shapes public attitudes towards migration, fuelling 'a sense of crisis and emergency'. There's something compulsive about all of this, almost addictive. Posturing on immigration is a cheap hit, a low-cost (to politicians – the cost is very high for migrants) way to gesture at some sort of executive action, for a government otherwise in the mire. The irony is that this fixation produces ignorance about all immigration, which means there is less and less the government can do to address the very myths it has seeded. If you create the impression that small boats, 'illegality' and cheating are the defining feature of the UK's immigration, then how can you expect the public to make distinctions that their very government does not? And so in a grim spiral, Labour continues to fuel the sense of crisis, then chase it, never catching up, and always setting the stage for those further right to make ever bigger promises of crackdown and deranged claims about housing and crime. The galling idiocy of it all is that posting hectically about immigration and rolling out hardline measures is self-defeating. It doesn't even work to instil confidence in Labour as the only credible party on immigration. The more Labour presses the issue, the more it reinforces the validity of anti-immigration rhetoric, empowering Reform as the specialised vehicle of crackdown. To voters mobilised by this, Labour can never be better than the real thing. And so it can only be a spiral. In order to keep immigration as that easily activated issue central to a political system that has few answers to any of the structural problems that are most salient to people's everyday lives, from the cost of living to lack of housing, we must always be at some sort of breaking point. That toxic energy has to go somewhere. It's not the sort of thing that can be just a casual part of discourse and stay in a holding pattern. The stakes are constantly higher, more frightening, more defining of why things are bad. And on and down it goes. We must wean the UK off its 'immigration dependency', Starmer said in 2022. But the problem is his – and the entire political establishment's – dependency on immigration as an issue to be exploited, rather than to be handled with honesty, duty of care to immigrants who are now terrorised in the streets, and to the whole country's social cohesion. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
The National
4 hours ago
- The National
Kenny MacAskill: SNP leadership should be listening to members
As our National Bard wrote, 'Now's the day and now's the hour'. The former PM, after all, isn't just a Labour grandee but a lifelong party loyalist, never broaching criticism of the central machine, let alone seeking to intervene since his resignation as leader. But his comments on the two-child cap on benefits and on poverty in the UK cut right across the bows of Rachel Reeves. It's all indicative of the crisis engulfing Keir Starmer's Labour Government and the UK's accelerating decline, economically and socially. Keir StarmerIt's a world away from Brown's 2014 sermons about 'the broad shoulders of the UK' sustaining Scotland, let alone supporting the poor and vulnerable across Britain, and equally distant from the promised 'pooling and sharing', as Scotland's budget tightens and inequality increases in the UK. The UK is in deep trouble. Its economic situation is dire, its political direction even gloomier and global perception of it plummeting. The 2014 boast of a 'force for good' rings hollow with the UK complicit in Israel's genocide and craven to Trump's US triumphalism. Far from a post-Brexit 'New Great Britannia', the UK is a poor and third-rate power. READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon says she should have paused gender reform legislation It's also indicative of the lies told during the independence referendum campaign of securing membership of the EU, the strength of sterling and the safety from economic turbulence within the British bosom. Increasing exposure of that fraud, along with the growing travails of daily life in the UK, are undoubtedly why independence support has remained so high, despite the failings of the SNP Government and the absence of any full-on campaign for freedom. It shows though that an opportunity exists. That was why last week in this column I welcomed John Swinney's proposal of an independence convention, given the opportunity it offered for the movement and our land. I did, though, caveat it that it had to be called soon and certainly before the election; be all-encompassing of the movement; and have a purpose which is realisable of making Holyrood 2026 a plebiscite election. That call was made not simply by the Alba Party but by other Yes groups and also by many SNP branches. It was therefore bitterly disappointing to see it summarily rebuffed by the First Minister without discussion, and also that he did it at a Festival event, without firstly engaging with his party membership. It's viewed as grossly disrespectful for a minister to make a major statement publicly before doing so in Parliament, and that applies to both Holyrood and Westminster. It equally, though, applies to a political party when related to a major strategic or policy issue. The membership is surely entitled to be told first, especially when the subject is due for debate at a coming conference. It's disrespectful and also undemocratic. At a critical time, internal debate within the SNP is being closed down and policy and strategy on this most important of issues left to leadership dictat. I'm currently reading the late great Professor Sir Neil McCormick's biography which narrates many of the great debates which the SNP had over the years such as on independence in Europe and the Constitutional Convention. READ MORE: Trust selling Highland clan's land for £6.8m under investigation They were thrilling debates where the membership, sometimes narrowly, decided upon the change. It wasn't dictat from the top and the membership was energised and the leadership strengthened by it. Instead, we're left with the First Minister's strategy of pursuing the unachievable, to seek the unobtainable. The SNP are just not capable of delivering a majority of seats at Holyrood on their own. This isn't 2011 and John Swinney isn't Alex Salmond. Moreover, Starmer and his Cabinet have already said no to a second referendum and nothing will change that. He's no more going to blink than did Boris Johnson, when we were last told that it was a given. We need to push now, not sit tight. Yet there's no sign of that from the SNP leadership and Kate Forbes's departure is confirmation of that. Doubtless childcare is to the fore but it's hard to imagine that if she thought she was going to lead a nation to its destiny that she wouldn't have held on. If the SNP wish to close the ever-growing gap between those willing to vote for them and those who support independence but won't back them, then they need to listen to the growing dissent within their own ranks, not just the voices who have already departed. That means being serious about independence, not mouthing platitudes. The movement is bigger than any party or individual, the cause of independence transcends all. The branches still pushing for a change in SNP direction and policy are to be commended. If, as is likely, they are thwarted by the party machine, then Alba stands ready to work with them. But for a plebiscite election, not pursuing the unachievable to seek the unobtainable.
Daily Record
11 hours ago
- Daily Record
Excitement as £80 million new Perth High School building opens to pupils this month
Work is now under way moving equipment and resources into the new building ahead of pupils returning to school Perth High School headteacher Martin Shaw is excited to welcome staff and pupils into the new building later this month. The new £80 million Perth High School is complete and will open to pupils on August 21. Mr Shaw sees it as a "proud moment" and a chance to "raise the bar". Work is now under way to transfer school resources and equipment into the new building. Perth High School staff will start the 2025/26 session with an in-service day on Monday, August 18 followed by two exceptional closure days to allow teachers to unpack and set up their classrooms. Perth High School pupils will enter their new school on Thursday, August 21 - with all other Perth and Kinross Council schools opening to pupils for the new term on Tuesday, August 19. The new Perth High School has been built on the school's existing Oakbank Road site. The previous building - built in 1971 - was rated "C" or "poor" for suitability. The secondary is Perth and Kinross Council's largest school. The new building will accommodate up to 1,600 pupils and 140 staff over three storeys. Like Perth's Riverside Primary, it has been built by Robertson Construction Tayside to Passivhaus building design standards in order to save energy. Planning permission for the new Perth High was first granted back in March 2022. It was originally due to open in August 2024 but the opening was delayed by a year due to "challenges within the construction industry". In June 2022, PKC's head of business and resources Greg Boland told the Property Sub-committee, the build had been affected by "the implications of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and also currently the war in Ukraine which is causing a lot of issues regarding supply, tender prices and material prices". The cost soared from an initial budget of £50 million in 2021 to ultimately costing £80.2 million. Half of the capital cost is being met by the Scottish Government's Learning Estate Investment Programme. Perth High School Headteacher, Martin Shaw said this week: "Moving into our new school building marks a bold new chapter for Perth High School. It is a chance to raise the bar, bringing our values of ambition, respect and equity to life in a space designed for excellence and equity. "With removals under way and preparations in full swing, we are focused on setting the tone for the year ahead, raising expectations in everything we do, from effort and attitude to how we carry ourselves each day. "This is a proud moment for our school and wider community and we are excited to welcome all our school staff and pupils to the new Perth High School in August." Vice-convener of PKC's Climate Change and Sustainability Committee and local Perth City South ward Lib Dem councillor Liz Barret said: "I'm delighted that Perth High School has been delivered on time, to provide modern 21 st century facilities for pupils and staff. "The building to Passivhaus standards - including solar panels - means that energy use will be reduced, helping us to address the climate emergency."
