Questions over UK's relationship with EU as Donald Trump's US election victory leaves Labour with a headache.
Today, in the grand and leafy surroundings of Blenheim Palace, Keir Starmer will host around 45 European leaders for a one-day summit. It’s the fourth meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), President Macron’s brainchild to bring together a pan-Europe forum going beyond just EU member states.
The SNP have a range of points they can make to appeal to pro-EU Scottish voters. John Swinney has been emphasising the economic benefits of migration at a time of low unemployment and labour shortages.
It’s been easy, since Brexit, to look at the European Union and see a better, more effective politics compared to that in the UK and Scotland too. Yet, as the EU sets out on its next five year cycle, the EU’s politics and democracy is looking distinctly wobbly.
If your business or job is in a sector increasingly hit by the twin biodiversity and climate crises, do you demand deeper, more rapid climate measures or do you demand environmental measures are weakened or binned? If you’re an EU farmer, the answer, it seems, is the second.
As 2024 begins, the EU’s leaders are not short of key challenges to tackle – including the urgent foreign policy issues of Gaza and Ukraine, climate change, migration, new debt rules and more. But it is the upcoming European Parliament elections in early June that are worrying many.
For the first time since 2004, the European Union is heading towards another “big bang” enlargement. On Wednesday, the European Commission proposed opening accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova. It also suggested Georgia be given candidate country status and outlined tough political conditions that would let talks open with Bosnia and Herzegovina too.
Urgent and rapid action on climate change is needed now.
WITH all the challenges facing the Scottish Government, first minister Humza Yousaf might have been forgiven if he put questions around joining the European Union on the back burner for a while. Yet Mr Yousaf chose to visit Brussels at the end of June and, in various recent speeches, has made sure to emphasise the SNP goal is independence in the EU, not just independence.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is getting known for rapid policy U-turns. Most notably, Labour’s flagship policy of spending £28 billion a year on green investment has been postponed to the middle of the next parliament. Rachel Reeves, shadow Chancellor, is prioritising fiscal rectitude, with an apparently deep-seated, if bizarre, fear that the markets might take her for the calamitous, economy-wrecking Liz Truss.
