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4h agoJewish leaders turn down meeting with Conservative council candidate jailed for antisemitism
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council have said they will meet the Conservative Party to discuss the selection of a former neo-Nazi as a council candidate, but declined to meet Joshua Bonehill-Paine himself.
In a joint statement, the two groups said:
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council have declined the Conservative party’s invitation to meet with a former neo-Nazi with criminal convictions for antisemitic hatred.
The severity of Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions.
Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a major political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration.
We have agreed to meet the Conservative party to discuss their decision-making processes and to urge them to rescind this decision.
Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2016 after he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment of Labour peer Luciana Berger, who is Jewish.
He was previously jailed for producing an advert for a neo-Nazi rally illustrated with a picture of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz which promised “an absolute gas”.
He has since apologised for his past offending, and said he has now dedicated himself to “challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face”.
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The taxi app company Uber and the autonomous technology developer Wayve have been granted the first minicab licences in London allowing them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now.
The companies said they would start trips in the UK “later this summer” before the full public launch.
The San Francisco-headquartered Uber and London-based Wayve are racing against the Google-owned Waymo and its Chinese equivalent Baidu’s Apollo Go to launch self-driving taxi services in London. Their progress is being watched closely because the British capital will be one of the first cities in the world to have American and Chinese tech firms operating on the same roads.
Uber and Wayve said more than 100,000 Londoners were on their waiting list for the self-driving taxis.
Transport for London (TfL), the capital’s licensing authority, granted 15 private hire vehicle licences to Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles equipped with Wayve’s artificial intelligence driving software, as well as surround cameras and radar. The companies said TfL had confirmed they reached the required safety standards.
A TfL-licensed private hire driver will sit in the driver’s seat during trips to intervene if necessary, although the software is expected to control the car.
John Swinney has defended his Holyrood election campaign following an attack from Nicola Sturgeon.
But the first minister refused to say whether he had spoken with his former boss about her public criticism.
In a new foreword for her memoir, the former SNP leader said the campaign was detached from the issues impacting Scots, as she criticised it for lacking “vision” and “big picture thinking”.
Swinney told the Press Association: “The election campaign resulted in an SNP win. It resulted in the biggest gap between the SNP and our nearest opposition party (since devolution).
“So I think, on objective data, it demonstrates the SNP ran a strong, commanding election campaign, we got a big win from the people of Scotland, and I’m very pleased to have led that campaign.”
He added: “The SNP has just won the election and has commanded the confidence of the people of Scotland with an election campaign that related to what I thought was the most important issue facing the people of Scotland in the election campaign, which was the cost of living challenges that people are facing.”
The government is not “actively” considering an inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein’s UK activities, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson has confirmed.
They said that while the department was “reviewing what is possible” and would “look at all options to support victims”, a public inquiry was “not being actively considered”.
Lisa O’Carroll
A former Conservative MP who quit after his attempts to secure a soft Brexit were blocked is proposing a new European confederation to bring the UK, Ukraine and others closer to the EU.
In a paper for think tank Demos, Nick Boles argues for the transformation of the existing European Political Community (EPC) into a new European confederation – a treaty-based body distinct from the EU, open to both EU and non-EU states alike.
The EPC, the brainchild of Emmanuel Macron, was launched four years ago in Prague and brings together leaders of 40 European states including the 27 EU member states.
It is designed to give those outside the EU, from Georgia, Albania and the Balkans to Iceland and Norway, a means of meeting other leaders twice yearly without a secretariat or agenda.
Boles suggests the EPC could not be elevated into a formal structure bound by treaties giving participants participation in the single market, an expansive youth mobility scheme and Nato-style mutual defence guarantees, instead of the EU’s mutual assistance guarantees without Schengen membership or Eurozone participation.
The most challenging part of his proposal is participation in “the single market”, something the EU will not allow access to without partner countries accepting free movement of people as well as goods, pretty much one of the red lines of the turbulent Brexit debates running up to December 2020.
Instead of a referendum, the proposal suggests holding a citizens assembly ahead of seeking the mandate through a general election manifesto to build democratic legitimacy.
Boles says he hopes his 21-page paper “triggers a debate, not just in Britain but in Ukraine and across Europe and that others, with greater expertise and political clout than me, will pick up the baton and run with it”.
Many see the change in Labour leadership and the appointment of a new Europe minister, Hamish Falconer, as an opportunity to reimagine and energise the EU-UK reset talks which some EU diplomats felt had lost momentum in recent months.
Polanski criticises 'egregious, grotesque' profits being made from climate crisis
Zack Polanski has been speaking in London this morning, where the leader of the Green party of England and Wales called on prime minister Andy Burnham to take more action over the climate crisis.
Appearing alongside British naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham, Polanski said “I wish people were talking about the climate crisis every day” and suggested that Burnham should have called a Cobra meeting over wildfires.
He emphasised the real effects of the latest heatwave, saying “Over the last few days and weeks, we’ve seen shocking scenes of wildfires and the report of 3,000 heat-related deaths. That is a number that can easily get lost, but I think we need to sit with that reality: 3,000 people have died because of extreme heat.”
He said that tackling the crisis needed to be linked back to the cost of living, saying “If people are worried that tackling the climate crisis will come off the backs of working people, I share that worry. It does not need to be that way.
“We need to recognise that BP doubled their profits during the US-Iran war, and that Barclays’ profits have gone up by a third – while advising clients on how to profit from extreme heat. That is egregious, grotesque, and needs to be called out.”
Polanski also criticised media coverage of the climate crisis, saying “I can call [the crisis] out as a political leader, but you also have a role to play.”
He continued, saying “I know some of you do – this isn’t a blanket condemnation of the media, as we have journalists doing brilliant work. But the contrast between how much we hear about whatever Nigel Farage or Reform want to talk about versus how little we hear about the climate and nature crisis is pretty glaring.”
Polanski on Conservative antisemitism row: 'I don’t believe anyone should be pushed out of public life permanently'
Zack Polanski has entered the fray over Kemi Badenoch defending the decision to allow a man jailed for antisemitism to stand as councillor for the Conservatives.
PA Media reports that the leader of the Green party of England and Wales said he did not believe “anyone should be pushed out of public life permanently.”
He is quoted as saying that, while he didn’t know the specifics of this case and so was “going to be careful about wading in”, he thinks “someone can say something or even do something and make a mistake. Now, I think the important point is that we don’t just apologise and move on, there has to be a clear recognition of what they did wrong and what they’re going to do in the future to rectify it.”
Polanski continued “I don’t believe anyone should be pushed out of public life permanently. I do believe that there has to be spaces for people to rehabilitate, no matter what they say or no matter how heinous what they do is.”
Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zack Polanski, speaking earlier today. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPALuciana Berger, who was targeted by Joshua Bonehill-Paine in a campaign of antisemitic abusein 2016, said he fell short of the bar for standing for public office. She said she lived today with the “profound and deep impacts” of those events.
Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally. In 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at Berger. He also has a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burglary of a police station.
Geneva Abdul has this piece looking at Andy Burnham detailing his wife Marie-France van Heel’s reaction to his third Labour leadership bid – “not again, they’ve told you twice they don’t want you” – in a new podcast interview.
Women must not feel pressure to have ‘ideal birth’, says Yvette Cooper
Jessica Elgot
Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals.
Cooper, who returns to the department 27 years after she was the minister for public health under Tony Blair, said maternity and child health would be a major focus in the role, where she will also be expected to implement significant reforms to social care.
In an interview with the Guardian, she said the culture change should address any pressure on women to have a particular kind of birth experience, after families have repeatedly raised the alarm about an unwillingness by some maternity units to escalate interventions because of a desire for more natural births.
“I would worry about any mum feeling pressurised that there is somehow a kind of an ideal birth experience to live up to when it’s always different in every case, and you have to follow the evidence, you have to have informed choice,” she said.
In one of her first acts as health secretary, Cooper said she intended to re-introduce binding national maternity standards, which were dismantled under the early Conservative NHS reforms and replaced with fragmented trust-by-trust practices.
Jewish leaders turn down meeting with Conservative council candidate jailed for antisemitism
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council have said they will meet the Conservative Party to discuss the selection of a former neo-Nazi as a council candidate, but declined to meet Joshua Bonehill-Paine himself.
In a joint statement, the two groups said:
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council have declined the Conservative party’s invitation to meet with a former neo-Nazi with criminal convictions for antisemitic hatred.
The severity of Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions.
Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a major political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration.
We have agreed to meet the Conservative party to discuss their decision-making processes and to urge them to rescind this decision.
Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2016 after he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment of Labour peer Luciana Berger, who is Jewish.
He was previously jailed for producing an advert for a neo-Nazi rally illustrated with a picture of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz which promised “an absolute gas”.
He has since apologised for his past offending, and said he has now dedicated himself to “challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face”.
Burnham not considering public inquiry into UK activities of Jeffrey Epstein
Aletha Adu
Andy Burnham is not actively considering a public inquiry into the actions of Jeffrey Epstein in the UK, despite claims to the contrary, it is understood.
The victims’ minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said on Tuesday had the prime minister had agreed to meet Epstein’s victims, was “looking into” an inquiry and was “taking this very seriously”. A separate inquiry into the alleged actions of the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed is also being considered. But the Guardian understands a public inquiry is not being actively considered by No 10.
Davies-Jones told BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, when asked if a public inquiry was on the table: “We are looking into this, we are reviewing what is possible … same with Harrods survivors. We already have a statutory inquiry under way for the grooming gangs victims. I have been assured that the prime minister is taking this very seriously.
“He will meet with those victims and he is looking at what is possible, now he has access to all of the information as prime minister, to see … what action we can take.”
Haroon Siddique
An official investigation has been launched into charities in England and Wales donating funds to illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine.
The Charity Commission will aim to establish the amount of charitable funds going to illegal settlements, whether the spending was in furtherance of their purposes and any regulatory action that may be necessary.
The investigation follows the Guardian’s reporting about the issue. Last year, it revealed that two UK charities had transferred approximately £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the Israeli-occupied territory.
In June, the Guardian published details of a formal complaint made by the Labour MP, Melanie Ward, to the regulator in which she said that 32 charities in England and Wales had donated at least £28m to Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law. The Guardian understands that the inquiry is a direct response to Ward’s complaint.
Announcing the investigation, which will initially focus on eight unnamed charities, Stephen Roake, assistant director, high risk compliance at the commission, said: “Serious allegations have been made about UK charities operating in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, so our first step is to establish the facts. Only then can we determine if regulatory action is required, based on our findings and the evidence we see.
“Our fact-finding will also help us develop regulatory guidance for charities, which will to help ensure public trust and confidence in charities.”
