Month: November 2022

President Xi told the Canadian PM, via a translator, this was inappropriate and accused him of lacking “sincerity”.

He was likely referring to reports that Mr Trudeau discussed alleged Chinese espionage and interference in Canadian elections at the sit down.

The talks, which happened behind closed doors, were the pair’s first in years.

In the footage, filmed by journalists at the now finished gathering of world leaders, President Xi and Mr Trudeau can be seen standing close to each other and conversing via a translator.

“Everything we discussed has been leaked to the papers and that is not appropriate,” the Chinese leader told Mr Trudeau in Mandarin.

It captures a rare candid moment of President Xi, whose image is normally carefully curated by Chinese state media.

After smiling and nodding his head, the Canadian PM responded by saying “in Canada we believe in free and open and frank dialogue and that is what we will continue to have”.

“We will continue to look to work constructively together but there will be things we disagree on,” he added.

Before Mr Trudeau could finish, President Xi cut his counterpart off and asked that he first “create the conditions” – eventually shaking Trudeau’s hand and walking away.

The short but revealing exchange highlighted tensions between China and Canada, running high since the detention of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 and Beijing’s subsequent arrest of two Canadians on spying charges. All three were later released.

But tensions recently resurged following the arrest of Yuesheng Wang, a public utility worker at Hydro-Quebec, who was charged with espionage.

Mr Wang “obtained trade secrets to benefit the People’s Republic of China, to the detriment of Canada’s economic interests,” Canadian police said in a statement.

At the time, Mr Trudeau and President Xi were at the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali.

While the party’s margin in the House of Representatives is razor-thin, it is enough to stall President Joe Biden’s agenda for the next two years.

But Democrats will keep control of the Senate when the new Congress convenes in January.

A handful of seats remain to be called.

The Republicans – who had hoped to win back control of both chambers – underperformed expectations in last week’s midterms.

But they won the seat they needed for their House majority on Wednesday when California’s 27th district went to incumbent Mike Garcia.

The Republican party is now projected to win between 218-223 seats in the 435-seat House, according to CBS.

But with votes in several cliff-hanger races still being tallied, their majority may not be clear for days or even weeks.

Kevin McCarthy, who was picked by rank-and-file Republicans on Tuesday to be their nominee to replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House, celebrated having “officially flipped” the chamber.

“Americans are ready for a new direction, and House Republicans are ready to deliver,” the California congressman tweeted on Wednesday night.

In order to be elected Speaker, the House Republican minority leader must win over majority support from the 435 members of the full House.

But Mrs Pelosi signalled she would not relinquish the gavel quietly, vowing in a statement on Wednesday night that her party would exert “strong leverage over a scant Republican majority”.

The first woman to hold the post, Mrs Pelosi, 82, said nothing in her press release about whether she planned to stay on as minority leader, amid speculation in Washington about her future.

Nancy Pelosi was able to accomplish a considerable amount with just a nine-seat margin, but she has proven to be singularly gifted at wrangling recalcitrant Democrats. There’s no guarantee Republicans, who run the gamut from moderates in suburban battleground districts to Freedom Caucus conservative hard-liners, will be equally co-operative with their party’s leadership.

A majority is a majority, however, and assuming Republicans can pull together to elect a speaker when the full chamber votes in January, they will reap the rewards of their midterm victory. House rules give the party in charge control over which legislation gets votes and which languishes in limbo. Republicans will also run all the House committees, with their sweeping oversight and subpoena powers.

While the fractious Republican caucus may not agree on much, they will be able to stop Joe Biden’s agenda in its tracks and force showdowns over federal budget priorities.

For a party that has watched Democrats rack up a string of legislative successes over the past two years, that by itself will be a significant achievement.

President Biden congratulated Mr McCarthy and offered to work with Republicans to deliver results for Americans.

“As I said last week, the future is too promising to be trapped in political warfare,” said the Democratic president.

“The American people want us to get things done for them. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them and on making their lives better.”

Mr McCarthy’s party had hoped that the president’s relatively low popularity, stubborn inflation, and the fact that congressional maps were redrawn by Republican-led state legislatures would add up to midterms victories for them.

The blame for last week’s lacklustre showing has largely landed on two party leaders: former President Donald Trump and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

On Tuesday night, the ex-president formally announced a third bid for the White House in 2024 from a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

In Washington on Wednesday, Mr McConnell was renewed as Senate minority leader, fending off a challenge from fellow Republican Rick Scott of Florida.

Non-congressional results are still trickling in more than a week after election day.

On Wednesday, congresswoman Karen Bass was projected to win the race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in America, after defeating billionaire businessman Rick Caruso.

The Democrat will become the first woman to hold the office and the city’s second ever black mayor.

He will say “difficult decisions” are needed to tackle soaring prices and limit mortgage costs.

But he faces a potential backlash from some Tory MPs who oppose big tax hikes.

The BBC understands the state pension and benefits will rise with prices. Energy support is likely to continue beyond April but will be less generous.

Labour said the country was “being held back by 12 years of Tory economic failure and wasted opportunities”, with working people “paying the price”

The final figures will be published as the statement is delivered but it is expected that around 55% of the measures will be spending cuts and 45% will be tax rises. This is likely to equate to around £30bn in spending cuts and £24bn in tax rises.

The chancellor is likely to argue that this is not a return to the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s policy of austerity, with the balance of spending cuts to tax rises 80% to 20% under then-Chancellor George Osborne.

The government argues the measures are needed to fill a so-called fiscal black hole – the gap between what the government raises and spends.

However, some have questioned how reliable the forecasts are and the political decisions ministers are making.

The freezing of levels at which people pay various taxes will be a big theme of the statement. As a result of inflation and pay increases, people will end up paying more tax.

The threshold when the highest earners start paying the top rate of tax will be lowered to £125,000 from £150,000.

With inflation – the rate at which prices rise – now running at a 41-year high, many departments will see their budgets squeezed with below-inflation increases.

But it is expected the health budget will be protected and increase in real terms – even when price rises are taken into account.

The government will also save cash by making energy bill support less generous from April.

The Treasury is likely to say an Energy Price Guarantee will remain in place – but be set at a higher level. That means millions of households will see their bills go up by hundreds of pounds a year from April.

Under the current scheme a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity is expected to pay £2,500 annually. This figure is likely to rise to just over £3,000 but without the intervention the typical household bill would have hit £4,000.

Universal support payments will end but there will be targeted support for those on low incomes and pensioners.

The energy industry – including energy generators – will also be hit with a significantly expanded windfall tax to help pay for the support.

The BBC understands the state pension and benefits will rise with inflation – although this has not been officially confirmed.

An increased National Living Wage, from the current level of £9.50 an hour for over-23s, will also be confirmed.

After unexpected announcements in Mr Hunt’s predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s ill-fated mini-budget, no big surprises are expected from the chancellor.

Mr Hunt has already reversed almost all the tax rises announced in the mini-budget in a bid to stabilise financial markets.

Unlike Mr Kwarteng, Mr Hunt will publish independent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) alongside his statement.

The forecasts are expected to paint a grim picture, after the Bank of England warned the country is set for its longest recession since records began.

In his Autumn Statement, Mr Hunt is expected to say: “We are taking difficult decisions to deliver strong public finances and help keep mortgage rates low, but our plan also protects our long-term economic growth.

“At the same time, we protect the vulnerable, because to be British is to be compassionate.”

He is set to add that the UK is not “immune” to the global economic crisis “but with this plan for stability, growth and public services – we will face into the storm”.

However, some Tory MPs on the right of the party have already expressed concern about the prospect of tax rises.

Former cabinet minister Esther McVey has said putting up taxes is the “last thing” a Conservative government should be doing.

On Wednesday, she warned she would not support tax rises unless the “unnecessary vanity project” of HS2 was scrapped.

Simon Clarke, who was in Ms Truss’s cabinet, warned Mr Hunt not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater and overcorrect” by imposing too many tax hikes.

“I hope they will strike a balance which leans much more to spending reductions than tax rises to balance the books,” he told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme.

But former work and pensions secretary Stephen Crabb said he feared spending cuts could lead to “real risks to the quality of public services”.

He told the BBC the state pension and benefits “absolutely” need to rise with inflation and that the Energy Price Guarantee needed to be broader than just helping pensioners and people on benefits.

He added that he was confident Mr Hunt would make “the right decisions”.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the UK needed “fairer choices for working people and a proper plan for growth”.

“Britain has so much potential but we are falling behind on the global stage, while mortgages, food and energy costs all go up and up,” she said.

In a letter to MPs, Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle urged MPs to avoid using their phone for sensitive conversations or even having it in the same room.

“If hackers have switched on the microphone on one phone everyone in the room might be overheard,” he wrote.

The government is creating a taskforce to defend the UK from hostile actors.

Last month reports emerged that former prime minister Liz Truss’s phone was hacked while she was foreign secretary

The Mail on Sunday reported that private messages between Ms Truss and foreign officials, including about the Ukraine war, fell into foreign hands.

In relation to the letter, which was first reported by HuffPost UK, Sir Lindsay’s office said it did not discuss security matters.

However, it was shared with the BBC by an MP who received it.

In it, Sir Lindsay said: “As recent events have highlighted, hostile states continue to target Parliamentarians to gain insight into, or exert influence over, our democratic processes for their economic, military or political advantage.”

He warned no mobile phone could be made completely secure, but he shared advice from the government’s National Cyber Security Centre to minimise the risk of a phone being compromised.

The advice includes limiting the length of time messages are saved on a device and limiting access to microphones and location services.

One MP told the BBC the warning was necessary because “we are hopelessly slack” about information security.

Another described the advice as “perfect common sense”, adding: “I’m sure we are constantly being surveilled by state actors.”

The letter comes after an the government announced earlier this month that it was creating a special taskforce to defend the UK’s “democratic integrity” in the face of threats from hostile actors.

Security minister Tom Tugendhat said the taskforce would look at issues ranging from physical threats to MPs, to cyber-security.

The government’s National Security Bill, which contains measures designed to tackle threats such as spying, economic espionage, foreign interference and sabotage, is currently going through Parliament.

The bill seeks to make it an offence to interfere with the UK’s democracy and civil society through disinformation or by attacking its electoral processes.

A new Foreign Influence Registration scheme will seek to compel anyone acting for a foreign power or organisation to declare any political influencing activity that they are carrying out.