A backbench Labour MP has invited members of the Awami League – the banned Bangladeshi political party belonging to ousted dictator Sheikh Hasina – to parliament. In case you needed any reminder of Labour’s close links to the organisation…
Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash is hosting a “drop-in session” next Monday afternoon with “members of the Bangladeshi community, including my constituents and people from other parts of the country, to discuss recent developments in Bangladesh.” This will apparently “provide an opportunity to hear directly about concerns relating to the conduct of the elections, restrictions on freedom of association, and wider issues impacting the community.” Those happen to be issues hammered repeatedly by the Awami League since an election put the opposing Bangladesh National Party in power…
Brash added in a round-robin email: “Representatives of the Awami League will also be present. They are constituents of mine whose party was recently banned by the current administration and, as a result, were unable to participate in the elections.” The party was banned with anti-terror legislation by the interim government led by Nobel Peace-Prize winning professor Muhammad Yunus…
Ex-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq – niece of Hasina – has been sentenced multiple times in absentia by Bangladeshi courts on several charges, which she denies. Guido has long reported the close links held at the very top of the Labour Party with the Awami League. Arm in arm – strange look for the ‘human rights lawyer’ PM…
Thirty-eight candidates are jostling for seats on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), with ballots opening in July. If May 7th delivers the wipeout the polls predict, these elections become the first internal mechanism through which members can pass judgement on Starmer’s leadership. Andy Burnham is watching with close interest…
The left is running three separate slates. Momentum’s Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance is standing on a platform that reads like a direct attack on Starmer, with suspending arms sales to Israel and a second Employment Rights Bill “that goes beyond the current diluted version” on the menu. A new group called ‘Restoration’, offering up five candidates, wants to “make Labour working class again”. Good luck with that.
The Burnhamite Mainstream is standing three candidates. That is eleven left-wing candidates splitting the vote across nine CLP seats, which in theory benefits the right-of-party Labour to Win slate running four.
Jonathan Ashworth has put his name forward after losing his seat in 2024. The race is on…
The Minister for Climate enjoyed a leisurely hours-long hike up to a glacier while on a taxpayer-funded “diplomatic mission” to Chile. Do DESNZ ministers enjoy a jolly even more than their jealous friends in the Foreign Office?
At the end of March Katie White – a climate activist elected to parliament at the last election and promoted to the Net Zero ministerial team – took a team to Chile (followed by Argentina) to undertake “introductory conversations” with the intention of striking a deal to extract critical minerals from the country. Miliband is going to need to find heaps of copper if he wants to push ahead with his Net Zero project…
One returning last week White said: “I was up at the Juncal Glacier and you can literally see it shrinking in front of you, which is quite something to take in when you’re standing there. You can see what that means for the landscape around it, too, how everything connected to it is shifting.” This is the kind of thing a gap year kid writes to their parents to justify asking for more cash after waking up on a bar floor in Thailand…
DESNZ has now put out a video of White’s stroll up the gentle mountainside – occasionally jocundly jumping over small streams – on its social channels. White spoke to a reporter from POLITICO while on the hike, which took “hours”…
The stroll was apparently also crucial “to prepare for talks with the new government about teaming up on the move to clean power.” Just watch the video…
According to reports DESNZ claimed White and Chile’s new Energy Minister Ximena Rincon agreed to work together “at pace to deliver the energy transition and build out resilient supply chains across renewable energy, electrification and nuclear.” No deal, and that statement does not appear on among DESNZ press releases – is Miliband embarrassed about his minster’s jolly?
UPDATE: A DESNZ spokesperson said:
“We make zero apologies for working with countries to tackle the climate crisis – the biggest long-term threat Britain faces. Minister White, in her role as the UK’s climate minister, championed our world leading clean energy sector to create further opportunities for British businesses in Chile. She also joined scientists and conservationists to see first-hand the immediate impacts of the climate crisis which are being felt all over the world, including in the UK.”
Starmer speaking at the end of his trip to the Gulf. Make up your own minds as to whether it was worth it…
“Well, the overarching impression here is the importance – as they see it – us standing with them as an ally, as a friend of theirs at a point of need. And there’s been reflection on the work we’ve done with them over the last six to seven weeks on collective self-defence. Here in Qatar, we’ve got a joint squadron. So, a real sense of here we are as an ally standing with our allies when it matters most to them. Obviously the discussion moved very quickly to the ceasefire. A sense that it’s fragile, that more work is needed, that the Strait of Hormuz has to be part of the solution, a very strong sense that can’t be tolling or restrictions on that navigation. And so we come away from here with a real desire on their part to work more closely with us on defence resilience, on economic resilience. That’s really important to us because this is impacting us back at home on our economy.”
Good to know there’s a “sense” that the Strait of Hormuz is important…
Starmer added that the UK has been “pulling together a coalition of countries, now over 30 countries, working on a political and diplomatic plan, but also looking at military capabilities and actually the logistics of moving vessels through these straits.” The proof will be in the pudding…
Starmer said to Robert Peston this afternoon:
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy businesses bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
