Britain must allow US chlorine-washed chicken into UK markets if it wants relief from sweeping tariffs, Donald Trump has indicated.

It comes after the UK failed to avoid tariffs imposed on the global economy, with the US president slapping a 10 per cent levies on all British exports to the United States.

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In a statement published alongside the tariff announcement, the White House said: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”

It suggested that Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken was among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit the US’s ability to trade.

The UK has long ruled out allowing imports of chlorine-washed chicken from the US due to health concerns, with Downing Street on Thursday reiterating its manifesto commitment to high food standards.

Asked whether the UK could allow imports of chlorine washed chicken in order to appease the US, the prime minister’s officials spokesperson said: “Our position on that is unchanged. You’ve got the manifesto commitment on food standards, which obviously remains.”

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The last major polling done on the issue, conducted in 2020, revealed that 80 per cent of Britons are opposed to allowing imports to the UK, and the same proportion is also against allowing chicken products that have been farmed using hormones.

There is also growing pressure from the farming industry to rule out concessions on the issue, amid fears it could undercut British farmers and drive down food standards.

Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26833310

US state department officials have challenged Britain’s communications regulator over the impact on freedom of expression created by new online safety laws, the Guardian understands.

A group of officials from the state department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) recently met Ofcom in London. It is understood that they raised the issue of the new online safety act and how it risked infringing free speech.

The state department body later said the meeting was part of its initiative “to affirm the US commitment to defending freedom of expression, both in Europe and around the world”. During the meeting, Ofcom officials said the new rules were only in place to deal with explicitly illegal content, as well as material that could be harmful to children.

Asked about the meeting, which is understood to have taken place in March, a state department spokesperson said: “As Vice-President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom. It is important that the UK respect and protect freedom of expression.”

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It follows months of pressure from figures close to President Trump over free speech. Some have accused the UK government of failing to protect free expression, especially after the riots that took place last summer.

In February, the US vice-president, JD Vance, complained of “infringements on free speech” in the UK. Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest allies, repeatedly claimed that some prison sentences handed down to people who incited the riots on X were a breach of free speech. X hosts accounts by figures including Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, who were accused of inciting people to join Islamophobic protests.

Since the riots last summer, the online safety act has been implemented as a way of regulating illegal online content. During a visit to the UK, the US state department team held meetings with Ofcom, the Foreign Office and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a US group that funds and campaigns on conservative issues.

Among the group was Samuel D Samson, who previously worked for US conservative organisations. He was appointed as a senior advisr at the DRL in January after Trump’s victory. On the day of last year’s US election, he tweeted: “Today we choose God over Pagan idols.”

He has previously taken a close interest in freedom of speech issues, writing about the topic in the American Conservative magazine. The DRL’s interest in Britain marks a pivot by an agency originally set up in the 1970s to advance democracy around the world against the backdrop of the cold war. Rather than Britain’s domestic affairs, the DRL’s advocacy has focused on the Middle East, Russia and China.

The fate of boys “is a defining issue of our time”, according to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, as she calls for more men to become teachers to combat “toxic” behaviours.

since 2010 the number of teachers in our schools has increased by 28,000 – but just 533 of those are men

Do you think this is an issue? Decades ago, boys would have been taught by male teachers, so today's female teachers are a change from the past.

Ministers hope this announcement is a reasonable basis for carrying on with negotiations over a trade deal that could lead to them falling or being dropped entirely.

The government has accepted Donald Trump's tariffs will hit the UK economy despite efforts to try and avoid them, but is continuing talks to try and secure an exemption.

Trump is set to unveil sweeping tariffs on goods from around the world on Wednesday, an event the US president has dubbed “liberation day”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told a meeting of his Cabinet on Tuesday that "nobody wants to see tariffs," and he is "keeping all options on the table" when it comes to a response.

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves also told Cabinet that "global tariffs will have an impact on the UK as an open trading economy", but she said that securing an economic deal with the US could "mitigate some of those effects".

Reeves spoke to her US counterparts on Monday ahead of the tariffs being announced on Wednesday.

Trump has already announced a 25% import tax will be introduced on all cars imported to the US, a measure which will be a blow to the UK’s automotive industry.

The levy is on top of a series of tariffs set to come into effect on April 2, which could include a general 20% tax on UK products in response to the rate of VAT, which Trump deems to be discriminatory against the US.

Shabana Mahmood’s intervention to halt new guidelines on sentencing is “dangerous” and a “deliberate step backwards”, according to senior legal figures and prison campaigners.

The Society of Black Lawyers said guidelines from the Sentencing Council, which were suspended after an intervention by the justice secretary, were an attempt to achieve “equal treatment” after “racist two-tier policing for 500 years”.

Pavan Dhaliwal, the head of the charity Revolving Doors, said the lord chancellor’s decision to block recommendations for pre-sentencing reports for minorities “is to ignore lived experience, evidence, and the reality of disparity in our courts”.

The Sentencing Council on Monday suspended plans for the guidelines in England and Wales, which highlighted the need for pre-sentencing reports depending on age, sex and ethnicity, as ministers prepared to force through a law to overturn proposals.

Mahmood told MPs that the council would have its role reviewed in light of the row over the guidelines.

The climbdown, which took place hours before the guidance was due to come into force, followed a standoff with the Ministry of Justice, which planned to use emergency legislation to override the guidelines.

The guidelines, first drawn up under the Conservative government, were viewed as evidence of a “two-tier” justice system by the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick.

Peter Herbert, the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: “We have experienced racist two-tier policing for over 500 years. If we achieve equal treatment that is not two-tier as it is long overdue. We have never asked for special treatment only equal treatment.”

Dhaliwal said: “The lord chancellor’s decision to block the Sentencing Council’s guidance is a deliberate step backwards and the claim that recognising race and inequality in sentencing undermines fairness is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.

“To suggest that acknowledging these facts undermines equality is to ignore lived experience, evidence, and the reality of disparity in our courts. Pre-sentence reports are one of the few tools we have to challenge those disparities by giving courts the full context: poverty, trauma, racial discrimination.”

Black and minority ethnic communities are overrepresented at almost all stages of the criminal justice process in England and Wales and are more likely to be imprisoned and receive longer sentences than white people.

The council, composed of some of the most senior legal figures in England and Wales, said the guidelines would have helped address disparities between how different ethnicities are treated in the justice system.

The new rules, which would have been binding on judges, were set to take effect on Tuesday but were delayed on Monday because of the inevitability they would be overturned by parliament.

The new rules stated: “When considering a community or custodial sentence, the court must request and consider a pre-sentence report (PSR) before forming an opinion of the sentence, unless it considers that it is unnecessary.”

“A pre-sentence report will normally be considered necessary if the offender belongs to one (or more) of the following cohorts:

At risk of first custodial sentence and/or at risk of a custodial sentence of 2 years or less (after taking into account any reduction for guilty plea).

A young adult (typically 18-25 years.

Female.

From an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.

Pregnant or postnatal.

Sole or primary carer for dependent relatives.”

The leading black KC Keir Monteith said there had been a deliberate misreading of the rules to generate a row.

“This is an absurd situation where we have politicians on both sides of the house creating an argument out of absolutely nothing. It is not ‘two-tier’ justice because the starting point of the dropped guidelines was everyone should get a pre-sentencing report.

“This story that has been created by Robert Jenrick and then taken up by Mahmood and seems to coincide with all the noise we are getting from America about two-tier justice,” he said.

In an article for the Guardian, Janey Starling, the co-director of gender justice campaign group Level Up, accused Mahmood of participating in “a populist pantomime” with Jenrick.

“What is truly appalling is that Mahmood decided to play along in an attempt to win over Conservative and Reform UK voters,” she said.

In a statement to the Commons, Mahmood said: “The proper role of the Sentencing Council and the process for making guidelines of this type must be considered further.

“I will do so in the coming months. It is right that this question is considered in greater depth and should further legislation be required, I shall propose it as part of the upcoming sentencing bill.”

The Labour MP Diane Abbott has said some MPs are “astonished” at Mahmood’s response to the council’s dropped guidelines. “I realise this is not a popular view in the house but the justice secretary will be aware that some of us are astonished that she thinks our judges are so weak-minded as to be affected by what are guidelines in relation to how they sentence black and brown defendants,” she said.

People-smugglers should be treated like terrorists, Keir Starmer will say on Monday, as he hosts an international summit on organised migration crime in London.

Starmer will urge representatives from more than 40 countries to cooperate across national borders to stop smugglers just as they did to stop terrorists when he was director of public prosecutions more than a decade ago.

The summit is the latest initiative in the government’s attempts to cut irregular migration by targeting organised crime. So far, however, the strategy has not paid off, with more people having crossed the Channel in small boats this year than had done so by this point in the previous three.

Starmer will say: “When I was the director of public prosecutions, we worked across borders throughout Europe and beyond to foil numerous plots, saving thousands of lives in the process. We prevented planes from being blown up over the Atlantic and brought the perpetrators to justice.

“I believe we should treat organised immigration crime in the same way.”

He will add: “I simply do not believe organised immigration crime cannot be tackled. We’ve got to combine our resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream at every step of the people smuggling routes.”

Ministers will mark the opening of the summit with a range of new policy measures, including £30m to tackle global trafficking routes and the flows of illicit money which fund them. A further £3m will go to the Crown Prosecution Service to help it expand its international work.

Officials from a number of countries will attend, including the US, Vietnam, Iraq and France. Meta and TikTok will also be there to talk about how to stop the online promotion of people smuggling.

Yvette Cooper said on Sunday the government would also change employment laws so companies can be punished for employing someone without the necessary visa even if they do so as a contractor rather than as staff.

The home secretary is targeting businesses such as restaurants, takeaways, barbers and beauty parlours, which often use irregular workers without checking their immigration status.

She added that the government is also considering the application of article eight of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a family life and is often used by migrants to argue they should be allowed to stay in the UK.

Cooper told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday: “We are reviewing this area to make sure that the immigration and asylum system works effectively in the way that parliament intended it to and make sure that there is a proper sense of control in the system.”

Starmer and Cooper scrapped the previous government’s Rwanda plan soon after coming to power last year and focused instead on cross-border action to tackle people smugglers.

Officials say the approach is working, highlighting a series of recent arrests of people they describe as “smuggling kingpins”. Three men were recently convicted in Belgium for being involved in people smuggling, for example, after being arrested in the UK.

The number of small boat crossings continues to rise, however. More than 5,000 people have made the crossing so far this year – a threshold which was met faster than in any year on record.

Cooper in part blamed the weather for the high number of crossings, saying on Sunday: “We cannot carry on with border security being so dependent on the number of calm days that happen in the Channel.

“But the reason that is happening is because the criminal gangs still have a deep hold.”

The democratic recession does not begin when a far-right party takes office. It begins when a centrist party crushes hope in democracy. When Keir Starmer’s government takes a chainsaw to people’s aspirations for a fairer, greener, kinder country, he cuts off not just faith in the Labour party but faith in politics itself. The almost inevitable result, as countries from the US to the Netherlands, Argentina to Austria, Italy to Sweden show, is to let the far right in.

So what’s the game? Why adopt policies that could scarcely be better calculated to prevent your re-election? Why stick to outdated fiscal rules when projections suggest they’ll make almost everyone worse off, especially those in poverty? Why impose devastating attacks on wellbeing, such as sustaining the two-child benefit cap, freezing local housing allowance and cutting disability benefits?

Why pursue austerity when the country voted so decisively to end it? Why cut and cut when years of experience show this will undermine the government’s primary (and ill-advised) goal, economic growth?

Why taunt, insult and abuse a crucial part of your political base: people who care about life on Earth? Why trash environmental commitments, abandon protections, expand airports and tie down green watchdogs? Why sustain and defend the most extreme anti-protest measures in any nominally democratic country?

Why seek to nix the financial regulations inspired by the 2008 crash, when the likely result is a repeat performance? Why reject a wealth tax, when a 2% levy on assets of over £10m could raise £24bn a year? Why not adopt the measures proposed by Patriotic Millionaires, generating £60bn a year? Or those suggested by political economist Richard Murphy, worth £90bn in tax revenue? Why abandon plans to tax non-doms properly? Why not demand an end to the Bank of England’s destructive quantitative tightening?

Why bury policies that might help restore democracy, such as proportional representation? Why introduce new political funding rules without actually addressing the capture of politics by the rich?

Why adopt Reform’s messages, Reform’s branding and Reform’s cruelty, to compete over who can most brutally beat up asylum seekers? An abundance of evidence shows that when centre-left parties take radical-right positions, they lose more voters on the left than they gain on the right. Adopting far-right messaging helps far-right parties win.

These policies might seem incomprehensible. But there’s a thread running through them. They all arise from the same doctrine: neoliberalism. This ideology, which has dominated the UK since 1979, demands austerity, the privatisation and shrinkage of public services, curtailment of protest and trade unions, deregulation and tax reductions for the rich. Justified as a means of creating an enterprise society, it has instead delivered a new age of rent, as powerful people monopolise crucial assets, from water to housing to social media. It leaves a government with few options but to scapegoat asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups for the problems it fails to address.

Here's a summary of the video:

• The speaker advocates for a shift in the tax system, highlighting the disparity between the high taxes paid by ordinary working people and the lack of taxation on inherited wealth [00:00].
• He suggests taxing wealth rather than work to give working people and their children a better chance [00:25].
• The speaker points out that during the lockdown, luxury spending decreased, and government-printed money ended up benefiting the wealthy who own corporations and houses [00:54].
• He emphasizes that increasing inequality leads to decreased living standards for working people [01:31].
• He acknowledges the difficulty in taxing the rich but insists on its necessity to prevent children from living in poverty [01:53].
• The speaker references the success of wealth taxes in the UK in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which enabled working-class people to achieve financial security [03:28].
• He shares his personal experience of working hard and paying high taxes while others inherit vast sums without taxation [03:46].
• The speaker expresses concern about the country's future and the potential for working-class individuals to face poverty [04:35].
• He criticizes the fact that some individuals live in Dubai to avoid taxes on their global incomes, while ordinary people struggle financially [05:27].
• The speaker advocates for taxing profits, not consumption, to address this issue [05:50].
• He reflects on the financial industry's inability to accurately predict interest rates, highlighting a broader issue of incompetence [06:10].
• The speaker reiterates his stance on taxing billionaires more and working people less to create a fairer system [07:31].

Archive

One of the biggest corporate donors to the populist Reform U.K. party has sold almost $2 million worth of transmitters, cockpit equipment, antennas and other sensitive technology to a major supplier of Moscow’s blacklisted state weapons agency, documents show.

From 2023 to 2024, the company, part of the British aerospace manufacturer H.R. Smith Group, shipped the equipment to an Indian firm that is the biggest trading partner of the Russian arms agency, Rosoboronexport.

H.R. Smith Group donated 100,000 pounds (just under $130,000) to Reform U.K. last year, two days after Nigel Farage was announced as the party’s leader. The company is run by Richard Smith, a businessman who owns 55 Tufton Street, a Westminster townhouse that is home to some of Britain’s most influential right-wing lobbying and research groups.

H.R. Smith Group said that its sales were lawful and that the equipment was destined for an Indian search-and-rescue network. The parts “support lifesaving operations” and are “not designed for military use,” said Nick Watson, a lawyer for the company.

The records do not prove that H.R. Smith’s products ended up in Russia. But they show that, in some instances, the Indian company received equipment from H.R. Smith and, within days, sent parts to Russia with the same identifying product codes.

The number of young people not in education, employment or training has risen to unacceptable levels because Whitehall is failing to listen and respond to their needs, Andy Burnham will say this week.

The mayor of Greater Manchester will warn in a key speech that the number of “neets”, which now stands at almost 1 million - the highest figure in 11 years – will continue to rise unless the Department for Education (DfE) adopts a new schools policy more geared to their requirements.

Over recent weeks, government ministers have attempted to make a “moral” case for welfare cuts and changes to the benefit system, partly by highlighting the number of young people who are not in employment or trying to get work, and instead are living on benefits.

Based on experience from Manchester, Burnham will say that one of the main causes of this is a school system that fails them and is overly focused on the traditional university route, rather than catering for the requirements of those who want to pursue technical paths.

He will say that schools in England are judged by Ofsted on their performance against the English baccalaureate (EBacc), described on the DfE’s website as a collection of GCSEs “considered essential to many degrees”.

He will argue that this has left England with an education system designed for some but not all young people. In Greater Manchester, about two-thirds do not pursue the traditional university route.

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The neets rate has remained at 12% or higher for several decades. According to labour market statistics published by the Office for National Statistics in February, the UK unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24 was 14.8%, up from 11.9% the year before.The problems is bound up with ethnic inequalities, with young people from Black Caribbean backgrounds having a neet rate more than double that of young people with white British backgrounds. Regional inequalities are also substantial, with neet rates of 15% in the north-east of England, compared with 9.4% in the south-west.

Results from a recent survey of schools in the Greater Manchester region based on 100,000 students reveal that many young people are losing their sense of connection with school as they progress. While 67% of pupils told the #BeeWell survey that they felt a sense of belonging in year 7, this dropped to 51% by year 10. About 64% of pupils reported “good” wellbeing in year 7, compared with 55% in year 10.

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To balance the EBacc, Burnham and his team have developed a Greater Manchester baccalaureate, or MBacc – a selection of subjects linked to seven sectoral gateways to the Greater Manchester economy. The ambition, by 2030, is to provide a high-quality 45-day work placement for every young person who wants one, linked to T-levels and BTecs.

He will call on the DfE to change schools policy and bring in a principle of parity between academic and technical education and the devolution of responsibility for the post-16 technical system. He will say: “Different regions of England have different economies and therefore it stands to reason that post-16 technical education is a prime candidate for devolution. The Department for Education’s long-running resistance to this is a significant barrier to growth.”

The mayor will say that the country’s failure to tackle longstanding problems such as the rise in neets is a reflection of the top-down way in which it has been run. Burnham will call for radical change in the architecture and culture of the British state, with the new devolved bodies across England being given a much greater role in setting direction.

From April 1st, water bills are rising … and so are we

Starmer and Reeves are siding with the private equity firms and hedge funds who own our water.

Together we’ll make the threat of mass, coordinated non-payment credible — and put this failed industry and government out of business.

31% price hike?

We pay ever-higher bills while water firms dump billions of litres of sewage in our rivers and seas – and hand billions of pounds to their shareholders.

But they are reliant on our compliance…

So what if we refuse to pay?

From the Poll Tax to Don’t Pay, refusing to pay en masse is a powerful act.

Right now, private water is vulnerable as the industry strains under a mountain of debt – if we act now, we can force the private profiteers out and take back our water.

Thousands have already joined

Starmer and Reeves are siding with the private equity firms and hedge funds who own our water, so we need many thousands more people to join us.

Through mass non-payment, we can protect each other from bill hikes, push back against greed of water bosses and put an end to this failing industry.

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

Quakers in Britain strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship which they say is a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo.

Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House.

They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have criminalised many forms of protest and allow police to halt actions deemed too disruptive.

Meanwhile, changes in judicial procedures limit protesters' ability to defend their actions in court. All this means that there are fewer and fewer ways to speak truth to power.

Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest, acting themselves from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet.

Many have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage and prison reform.

Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.

“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.

“Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy."