In a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party at Westminster on Monday night, Gordon Brown accepted that his party has suffered badly in recent months as the recession has hit the UK. He warned MPs to ‘brace themselves for a fresh battering from voters in the coming weeks as the recession deepens’. Brown admits recession will be bad for Labour.
Binyamin Netanyahu was yesterday invited by the Israeli president to form a new government, making him the prime minister, once again. This is bad news for the ongoing peace process in the region, as Netanyahu is as set on creating peace between Israel and Palestine as Bush was on signing the Kyoto agreement. In his acceptance speech he did not once mention the stalled peace process or the idea of a two-state solution, but instead he used the opportunity to issue a stark warning to Iran over it’s nuclear advances. A blow for peace in the Middle East.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is currently in Japan on the first leg of an Asian tour. She took the opportunity there to speak out about, and to, North Korea. She issues a stark warning at the same time she extended a hand offering help. Clinton’s warning to North Korea.
World leaders and financial experts were not surprised when the UK and the US entered deep recessions, and some were even smug enough to suggest that it would not hit their own country as their economy is not based on ‘a property boom and massive consumer debts’. Recession hits Europe, not just the UK.
Barack Obama’s rescue package has finally been approved by both houses of congress, thereby securing the President his first major victory in office. The passing of the $787bn economic stimulus package has been described by it’s author as ‘historic’ and ‘a major milestone on our road to recovery’. Obama’s first major victory.
Geert Wilders is banned from entering the UK, due to the fact that the British government thinks he is inciting hatred. He is saying that Islam ‘is not a religion, it’s the ideology of a retarded culture’. He has compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and has demanded that the Islam Holy book is banned. ‘Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims’ he told the Guardian newspaper a year ago. Censorship in the UK.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has been in dire straits. So dire that it had to receive £20bn of taxpayers money to not go bust. On top of that, they are expected to post losses of billions of pounds in three weeks time. So imagine my surprise when I learned today that RSB has set aside £1bn to be paid out as bonuses. For what? Is the practice of a bonus not to award someone who has helped their business succeed, not fail? RBS bankers might receive ‘taxpayer’ bonus.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is not impressed by Gordon Brown’s measures to tackle the UK financial crisis. Mr. Sarkozy told a domestic television audience Thursday that he will not follow the British Prime Minister in cutting VAT, claiming that it had ‘absolutely no impact.’ Sarkozy not impressed by Brown.
Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, is in Washington and has had talks with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state. Miliband was the first foreign secretary to hold face-to-face talks with Clinton, which emphasises the hope of continue the strong bond between the two nations. Mrs. Clinton said at the news conference after the talks that the relationships between the US and the UK was ‘certainly special in my eyes’, although she admitted there had been a slight change. Without elaborating, so it leaves me to speculate if the end of Tony Blair’s range and the arrival of Gordon Brown did make for more caution actions on the UK’s behalf. Miliband and Clinton on ‘special relationship’.
More than 2000 business and political leaders have for 5 days discussed how best to tackle what is now being called ‘the crisis of capitalism’. They found no collective answer. Mostly, the problems, and not the solution, were discussed. This was not quite in tune with the forum’s official theme this year; shaping the post-crisis world. That was a bit premature. No answers from Davos.