David Lammy is set to have a showdown meeting with his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, at the Munich Security Conference this weekend in a last-ditch attempt to push through the Chagos surrender deal. Lammy is scrambling to get the agreement over the line—despite opposition from Chagossians, the British public, and many MPs in his own party. Trump’s team remains skeptical, fearing that handing the islands to Mauritius would pave the way for Chinese espionage against the US…
Senior Trump sources say the fate of the deal now hinges on Lammy’s performance in his meeting with Rubio later this month. If he can’t sell it, the deal could be dead in the water…
Even so, the Trump administration is still looking at alternatives. As Guido reported, one option on the table is for the US to buy Chagos outright. A scenario where the man Labour relentlessly smeared—Lammy once branded Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathiser”—ends up buying British territory would be nothing short of humiliating for Starmer…
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”