Latest news with #EUagreement
LBCI
3 days ago
- Business
- LBCI
Germany hopes for EU deal on sending failed asylum seekers to third countries, minister says
Germany's interior minister is hoping the European Union can reach a bloc-wide agreement on sending failed asylum seekers who cannot go home to safe countries near their original homelands. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives won February's national election on a promise to bring down immigration levels, which opinion polls showed many voters regarded as being out of control, although numbers have been falling for over a year. In an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper published on Saturday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the approach of using third countries could work only if there was a Europe-wide consensus. Reuters
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir was priggishly cocky. He's stuck us back on the gluey flypaper of the EU...
Noisy, crowing laughter from Labour (and Lib Dems) mixed with shouts of 'shut up!' and groans of 'oh no, here we go!' when Conservatives and Scots Nats questioned Sir Keir Starmer and his EU agreement. In this Commons there was no time for such impertinence. Only one attitude was permitted: fealty to the Prime Minister. Kemi Badenoch tried – but failed. Her microphone did not seem to be working properly and in the hubbub she was often inaudible. Amid the abuse from Labour yowlers she vanished under the waves, glug glug. Nigel Farage did not turn up for the pre-lunch statement and now it turns out he was on holiday! Two no-shows in two days, on what used to be his core issue. What's going on? Labour's Red Wallers, reportedly simmering about concessions made to Brussels, proved to be non-combustible. One of them, Bassetlaw's much-hyped Jo White, mewed congratulations to Sir Keir for delivering everything her constituents had most earnestly desired. Her only criticism was that the student-exchange arrangements might be too middle-class. Sir Keir himself? Priggishly cocky. Confident. Almost cruel. All those years of blocking Brexit and colluding with Brussels against our country's urgent interests have finally come good. He has stuck us back, good and proper, on the gluey flypaper of European Commission regulations. He has condemned us to years more of a bad fishing deal that was finally about to expire. He has promised to pay Eurocrats undisclosed millions, perhaps billions, in 'administrative costs'. It's like one of those 'convenience charges' you have to pay at railway station car-parks, though the sums are rather heftier. Sir Keir's old co-collaborator, Hilary Benn, sat some way down the government bench, peering mistily at the middle distance. Suave Peter Kyle, Science Secretary, was tapping something into his mobile telephone. Wes Streeting, beside him, casually slid an eye over Mr Kyle's screen. Dame Emily Thornberry had poured herself into a new red trouser suit. Beside Sir Keir sat Nick Thomas-Symonds, minister for surrender negotiations. He kept glancing nervously at the PM's back and made sure he did a lot of nodding. The statement was meant to be about the EU deal but Sir Keir talked almost as much about his US and India agreements. He alleged the Tories, in failing to greet these with rapture, were showing themselves to be anti-trade. The trouble with hyperbole is that it can become as addictive as tincture of opium. Take one sip, another becomes irresistible. Sir Keir flew into repeated denunciations of what he considered to be the intellectual vacuity of the opposition. The Conservatives were finished. The Conservatives had made 'a descent into the abyss'. After Mrs Badenoch's contribution he remarked 'oh dear, that was such an unserious response'. From what one had managed to hear of it amid the hog-whimpering and giggles from Sir Keir's backbenchers, it had actually been quite sober. Probably too serious, in fact. She could do with being more vulgar. Doesn't prick the balloon. Bounces off it. Time and again Sir Keir repeated his 'they're not serious' line. Only he and the grown-ups, the technocrats, the people who knew best, were serious. Yet the characters behind him were behaving like baboons. Untidily-fringed Alan Gemmell (Central Ayrshire) roared witticisms about Mrs Badenoch before hooting gleefully with Gregor Poynton (Livingston) and Gordon McKee (Glasgow South). A lower-grade trio was led by Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West), yelping insults at the opposition and then cackling with delight. His little helpers were Chris Vince (the Harlow dimwit) and Natasha Irons (Croydon East). 'This is how they laugh at the public,' retorted Mrs Badenoch, 'yet they have no idea at what they've signed up for.' This set off another wave of merriment, a drowning din of derision that the barbarian Brexit voters were finally overcome. In a Commons where almost half the opposition (ie the Lib Dems) agrees with the Government, our legislature has seldom felt less representative of public sentiment.
