"Mr.
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How the world sees Greece
Showing posts with label david cameron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label david cameron. Show all posts
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Coalition has given up on renegotiation, Syriza says
The main opposition party Radical Left Coalition (Syriza) on Thursday repeated accusations that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his coalition government have backtracked on pre-election promises to renegotiate the terms of bailout loans to Greece, highlighting his decision to put off the government policy statement until after his meeting with the EU-IMF troika.
"Mr.
"Mr.
David Cameron wants to ban Greeks from Britain. What would Shirley Valentine ...
 Greek Reporter | David Cameron wants to ban Greeks from Britain. What would Shirley Valentine ... New Statesman (blog) Current affairs, world politics, the arts and more from Britain's award-winning magazine. Cameron prepared to stop Greeks at nation's border Greeks Lash out at David Cameron Greek party slams British PM over migration statement |
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Cameron prepared to stop Greeks at nation's border
Greek Reporter | Cameron prepared to stop Greeks at nation's border Taipei Times British Prime Minister David Cameron is prepared to override the UK's historic obligations under EU treaties and impose stringent border controls that would block Greek citizens from entering the UK if Greece is forced out of the single currency. Greeks Lash out at David Cameron Greek party slams British PM over migration statement Greek socialists attack Cameron on UK migration remark |
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Tuesday, July 3, 2012
David Cameron 'prepared to halt immigration of Greeks into UK'
Prime minister says it would be in UK's interests to impose stringent border controls if Greece is forced to leave euro
David Cameron is prepared to override Britain's historic obligations under EU treaties and impose stringent border controls that would block Greek citizens from entering the United Kingdom, if Greece is forced out of the single currency.
The prime minister told MPs that ministers have examined legal powers that would allow Britain to deprive Greek citizens of their right to free movement across the EU, if the eurozone crisis leads to "stresses and strains".
In an appearance before senior MPs on the cross-party House of Commons liaison committee, the prime minister confirmed that ministers have drawn up contingency plans for "all sorts of different eventualities".
The worst-case scenario is understood to cover a Greek exit from the euro, which could trigger a near-collapse of the Greek economy and the flight of hundreds of thousands of its citizens who are currently entitled to settle in any EU country.
The prime minister said Britain is prepared to take measures to avoid a major influx of Greek citizens. "I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep our country safe, to keep our banking system strong, to keep our economy robust. At the end of the day, as prime minister, that is your first and foremost duty."
Asked by Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, whether he would restrict the rights of Greek citizens to travel to Britain, the prime minister said he would be prepared to trigger such powers.
"I hope it wouldn't come to that," he said. "But, as I understand it, the legal powers are available if there are particular stresses and strains. You have to plan, you have to have contingencies, you have to be ready for anything – there is so much uncertainty in our world. But I hope those things don't become necessary."
Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed last month that the government was examining contingency plans but indicated that she did not see any "increased movement". May told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 on 10 June: "So far ... we're not seeing any trends in any increased movements despite obviously the significant problems already economically in a number of eurozone countries. But I think it's right that as a government across the board, we look at the contingency arrangements that you know might be needed in these circumstances."
In his appearance before the committee, the prime minister also appeared to give the impression that he might abandon plans to publish the tax affairs of senior cabinet ministers. His remarks came after former Labour minister Margaret Hodge asked whether the government would publish details of so called "sweetheart" tax deals between the HMRC and large companies.
Cameron promised to write to Hodge after considering the matter. But he added: "The fact that we have taxpayer confidentiality is hugely important. Imagine the dangers of politicians fiddling around with each other's tax affairs. It just doesn't bear thinking about."
It is understood that the prime minister will publish limited tax details of a handful of senior cabinet ministers by the next general election in 2015. Cameron is understood to feel he has to follow the "Boris precedent" – the commitment by the London mayor in the recent election to publish his tax details – though it is expected that the prime minister will publish a redacted version of his tax return.
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UK could curb migration if euro crisis worsens: PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain could restrict immigration of Greeks and other migrants from euro zone countries affected by Europe's sovereign debt crisis in the event of "extraordinary stresses and strains", Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday.
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Monday, June 18, 2012
Harper, G20 leaders to focus on eurozone woes
 CBC.ca | Harper, G20 leaders to focus on eurozone woes CBC.ca Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other world leaders at a meeting of the world's 20 most important economies can breathe a little easier after a political party that favours staying in the eurozone came in first in Greece's national elections Sunday. Leaders of the Group of 20 nations gather in Mexico G-20 Leaders In Mexico Concentrate On Euro Crisis G20 to press Europe for lasting fix for debt crisis |
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Campaigning ends ahead of crucial Greek elections
 BBC News | Campaigning ends ahead of crucial Greek elections BBC News Campaigning in Greece has ended ahead of a crucial election on Sunday which could determine its future in the eurozone. At a final rally, the head of the conservative New Democracy Party billed the vote as a choice between keeping the euro and ... Greek Parties Vie for an Uphill Task Redoing Greek bailout possible after vote Eurozone exit cloud hovers over Greece |
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Politics live blog: Thursday 14 June
Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's papers, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.
Tony Blair has delivered a stark warning of a popular backlash against austerity policies in the eurozone ahead of this Sunday's re-run election in Greece.
"You look at what the Greeks are being asked to accept: it's beyond tough," Mr Blair said in an interview with the Financial Times in Jerusalem.
The former long-standing UK prime minister, a self-professed pro-European, said the risk of unrest applied to Europe as a whole. "In the end, what people will ask is: 'Is the single currency worth it if that's what we're being asked to accept'."
Mr Blair's said the remedy should be a "grand bargain" between Germany and the rest of Europe to rescue the single currency. This would involve a pooling of European debt and a new push for growth, matched by deficit reduction through pension and welfare reforms.
George Osborne is facing further revolt over his budget from countryside, heritage and building groups who warn that he will inflict serious damage on Britain's "finest and most loved buildings".
Fifteen organisations, including the Federation of Master Builders, Countryside Alliance and Historic Towns Forum, have written to The Times urging a U-turn on the decision to levy VAT on alterations to listed properties.
They are furious about Treasury claims that one aim of the policy is to tackle an "anomaly" through which millionaires can install swimming pools without paying VAT because they own an historic home.
The groups have looked at more than 12,000 applications for alterations and found that just 34 related to swimming pools. They say that half of people who live in listed buildings are in lower socioeconomic groups, C1, C2, D, and E.
Brown should have admitted his round-the-clock interest in the media; it would have reinforced his argument about the recklessness of some newspapers. He had cause to be obsessed. More to the point, he was not alone. One of Murdoch's senior intermediaries described to me his discussions with Blair over whether the Labour government would offer a referendum on the proposed EU constitution as being like a "negotiation". The senior intermediary made clear to Blair that The Sun would not endorse Labour unless the referendum was offered. Blair told me in January 2005 that he knew The Sun would be backing Labour, five months before the election took place. I assume his confidence was based on the "negotiation". Blair once told me that dealing with the media was like sharing a flat with a demented tenant.
Gaining access to communications data is no longer a sophisticated means of gathering evidence. Just as mobile phones, e-mail and social media have become part of our lives, so this kind of work has become part of daily policing.
Already some forms of data are not available to us. This will only get worse if changes are not made. We must preserve our ability to make use of this vital intelligence and evidence.
I fully support public debate about this issue and understand concerns about privacy. That's why I think it is really important to be clear: I do not see this proposed legislation as being more intrusive than the laws we currently have. Police already have access to communications data; the problem is that for some services it is not currently collected and stored by the service provider.
Here's the start of the Press Association story about the opening of David Cameron's evidence to the Leveson inquiry.
David Cameron has long-held views about media regulation in the UK formed when he worked for a major commercial broadcaster in the 1990s, he told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards today.
As he began his evidence under oath at the Royal Courts of Justice, the prime minister said his seven years as corporate affairs director at Carlton "was quite a formative period".
The Tory leader has submitted an 84-page witness statement and three exhibits to the inquiry and will be questioned about them in an all-day session.
Asked about his time in television before quitting for a political career, he said: "Carlton was quite a formative period.
"I formed a lot of views about the media then which I still hold today."
He said he also formed relations with many journalists at that time, though those with Westminster media were forged more in his previous role as a ministerial special adviser.
In that role, he said, he acted as both a "mouthpiece" for his home secretary and chancellor bosses and as a "sponge", meeting people the minister did not have time to see.
Asked if he ever gave his own opinions rather than representing those of the minister, he said: "On occasion, I am sure I would have made clear to people my own views about something."
Pressed on whether he would have made clear that he was not speaking the mind of his political boss, he replied: "I would hope so."
David Cameron is giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry now.
You can follow the proceedings on our Leveson live blog.
Theresa May (pictured), the home secretary, has also been giving interviews this morning. She has been talking about the draft communications bill being published later and she insists this "isn't about snooping". According to PoliticsHome, this is what she told Sky News.
This is about purely having access to the, sort of, who, when and where of these [internet] communications. It's not about listening to or looking at the content of what anybody's saying in these communications. Looking at that content will still require warrants and that still requires warrants to come up to the secretary of state, but this is about merely maintaining an ability that the police and others have at the moment to be able to have access to the same sort of data they've got at the moment, same information they've got they can use in prosecuting cases and stopping terrorists, but making sure that it can cover those new means of communication.
But David Davis, the Tory backbencher, told the Today programme that the plans would not affect experienced criminals.
The only people who will avoid this, avoid being covered by this, are the actually criminals because they are always around this. You use a pre-paid phone, you use an internet cafe to hack into somebody's wi-fi. You use what is called proxy servers, and those are just the easy ways. There are harder ways too and you know actually the 7/7 bombers went round it. Organised criminals go round it. Organised paedophile rings go round it. What this will catch is the innocent and the incompetent.
According to the Daily Mirror's James Lyons on Twitter, Mark Hoban is giving the banking statement in the Commons, not George Osborne. I'll amend the running order I posted earlier.
David Cameron has put out a statement today to mark the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands. Here's an extract.
Our resolve to support the Falkland Islanders has not wavered in the last thirty years and it will not in the years ahead. For the last 180 years, ten generations have called the Falkland Islands home and have strived hard to secure a prosperous future for their children. And despite the aggressive threats from over the water, they are succeeding. The Falklands economy is growing, the fishing industry is thriving and tourism is flourishing. Next year's referendum will establish the definitive choice of the Falkland Islanders once and for all. And just as we have stood up for the Falkland Islanders in the past, so we will in the future.
Iain Duncan Smith (pictured), the work and pensions secretary, was on the Today programme this morning defending his plan to change the way poverty is defined. I've taken the quote from PoliticsHome.
The key thing is what we don't measure with [relative poverty], and this is why we're launching the consultation today. If you just measure the relative income levels, you know nothing about what actually happened to the families. What we're after understands what actually happened to those families. Let's take, for example, a family which has drug addiction problems. We give them more money and they, according to the relative income levels, go above the poverty level. But in actual fact that family probably lives in some real difficulty because the parents, who are on drugs, don't spend the money on their children.Across the board, health, early intervention, dysfunctional families, whether they're in work or out of work, these are figures that are not looked at or tracked in the poverty figures. So, we're simply saying in the consultation, income matters, we're not departing from the idea of measuring income, but we are saying far better if we also now look at other measurements to let us know whether there's a life change taking place. The key thing is you attack poverty by knowing that what you do changes the lives of those people, so that they move on and out of poverty and sustain that.
My Guardian colleague Tom Clark was listening, and he has used Twitter to challenge Duncan Smith on three points.
IDS lie no1 - most of the poverty action up to 2003 was lifting people just below line. IFS showed where line drawn made no odds
— Tom Clark (@guardian_clark) June 14, 2012
IDS porky no 2 - problem is slump will make poverty better. Maybe, but that's why labour's target contained an absolute income line
— Tom Clark (@guardian_clark) June 14, 2012
IDS 3rd fib - poverty persisted because poor gave up on working. But 1997 to 2010 lone parent emp rate rose from 46% to well over 50%
— Tom Clark (@guardian_clark) June 14, 2012
I'm pretty sure that Winston Churchill never had to put up with the impertinence of being grilled by a public inquiry when he was prime minister, but these days it's almost part of the job and today David Cameron is doing his turn in the Leveson hot seat. The Daily Mail has got some colourful detail about the amount of preparation he's been doing.
Mr Cameron has been using two government lawyers, paid for by the taxpayer, to prepare for his appearance at the Leveson inquiry.
Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister has taken advice from the Treasury Solicitor Paul Jenkins, the head of the Government Legal Service, and from a leading QC.
Mr Cameron has been involved in three hours of intensive mock cross-examination over the last two days, effectively war-gaming his appearance before Lord Justice Leveson.
Tory sources have revealed that Andrew Feldman, the Prime Minister's close friend from university and co-chairman of the Tory Party, has been playing the role of Robert Jay, the chief counsel for the inquiry.
Lawyers have spent dozens of hours compiling a written statement for Mr Cameron and details of his meetings with media executives. But despite reports, senior government sources insisted that the experts have not been involved in personally 'prepping' Mr Cameron.
I'll be keeping an eye on Cameron at Leveson, although for full coverage you should read our Leveson live blog.
Otherwise, it's quite busy. Here's the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics releases poverty statistics.
9.30am: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, gives a speech on poverty. As Patrick Wintour reports, he will take the first steps to downgrade the Labour government's commitment to eradicate child poverty in 2020 by announcing that he is to publish a green paper looking at a range of new non-income indicators of poverty.
10am: David Cameron gives evidence to the Leveson inquiry. You can follow the proceedings on our Leveson live blog.
10am: Michael Gove, the education secretary, gives a speech at the National College for School Leadership conference.
10am: Vince Cable gives a speech on infrastructure at a Reform conference.
11.30am: Theresa May, the home secretary, publishes the draft communications bill, which contains plans to extend internet surveillance. As Alan Travis reports, the draft legislation will say that the government will pay internet and phone firms so that they can track everyone's email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use.
Around 12.30pm: Mark Hoban, a Treasury minister, will make a statement in the Commons on the government's plans for banking reform.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.
And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Jeremy Hunt Commons vote and PMQs: Politics live blog
Rolling coverage of all today's political developments as they happen, including PMQs and the Commons debate on Jeremy Hunt
Here's some Twitter comment on today's vote.
From Tory MP Gavin Barwell
Lib Dem MPs should think about precedent they're setting today. What happens if Con MPs abstain next time Labour target a Lib Dem Minister?
— Gavin Barwell MP (@GavinBarwellMP) June 13, 2012
From the Guardian's Patrick Wintour
Lib Dems say they cannot vote with Labour because they lied about the Iraq war but Labour is led by a leader that says he opposed the war.
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) June 13, 2012
Lib Dems justify abstention saying the vote will make no difference to PM's decision and precedent is to abstain when coalition disagrees.
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) June 13, 2012
Lib Dems not confirming BBC report that Cameron told Clegg why are you bothering with Leveson, no one cares.
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) June 13, 2012
From the BBC's Norman Smith
Tory MPs warning of "pay back" forwhat they say is Clegg treachery over Hunt by scuppering Lords reform
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 13, 2012
Tory MPs urging Cameron to take a stand against Clegg..."show who's boss"
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 13, 2012
Revenge for Hunt ?? Tory MPssay there could be a vote on Lords reform before recess (programme motion) which cd scupper bill
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 13, 2012
From PoliticsHome's Paul Waugh
The Tory MP (@JTomlinsonMP) who's been hauled back frm honeymoon for Hunt vote, has a sense of humour. Just tweeted link to his wedding pix.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) June 13, 2012
Tory @GlynDaviesMP is also missing a funeral cos of Hunt vote. As he Tweeted: "I utterly dislike the Lib Dems.." (via @colinko)
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) June 13, 2012
From Alex Belardinelli, an aide to Ed Balls
We think it should happen, but we're not going to vote for it - Jo Swinson explains how Lib Dems do their politics
— Alex Belardinelli (@abelardinelli) June 13, 2012
Stress testing is normally associated with banks, but today the coalition is going to experience some stress testing of its own when the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats split in a vote on whether there should be an investigation into whether Jeremy Hunt broke the ministerial code. As Patrick Wintour reports in the Guardian, today's debate will mark one of the most serious breaches of coalition unity since 2010. There's no chance that the Labour motion, calling for Hunt to be investigated by the prime minister's independent adviser on ministers' interests, will get passed. But, at this stage, it is not clear quite how much damage the Lib Dems will do to coalition unity by refusing to vote to defend Hunt? Will it be seen as a polite "agreement to differ"? Or will it be remembered as an act of treachery that will hasten the moment when the coaliton collapses?
In public comments this morning both sides have been seeking to play down the significance of the split. Grant Shapps, the Conservative housing minister, told the Today programme that the Lib Dem position was just a "reminder that we have different perspectives on things".
It's a reminder that this is two parties that have come together in the national interest to sort out these huge debt problems ... The important thing is that we continue to focus on the big picture, on avoiding getting into the situation of Spain or Greece.
And Don Foster, a Lib Dem backbencher, told the same programme that the debate did not matter much anyway because David Cameron had decided not to have an inquiry into Hunt.
It's not going to make a blind bit of difference, the prime minister's already made his mind up on the issue ... The best way Nick Clegg can make clear what he believes about this is to do what he has already done. He doesn't endorse the position the prime minister's made not to refer this to the independent adviser, it's as simple as that.
But is it really as good tempered as this? I'll be covering the debate in detail, and I'll be particularly interested in what Tory MPs have to say about the stance of their Lib Dem colleagues.
Here's the full agenda for the day.
9.30am: Tim Loughton, the children's minister, unveils plans to enshrine in law the rights of both divorced fathers and mothers to see their children.
10am: Nick Clegg gives evidence to the Leveson inquiry. In the afternoon Alex Salmond will give evidence.
12pm: David Cameron and Nick Clegg clash at PMQs.
12.30pm: The Jeremy Hunt debate begins. It should go on until about 4pm.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a summary before PMQs and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.
And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.
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