Yvette Cooper is visiting the African mainland for the first time with a trip to Ethiopia. The FCDO is framing this as a small boat migration mission…
Co-conspirators will remember that Rayner visited Ethiopia recently as Deputy PM and managed to achieve very little. The safaris are meant to be enjoyable…
The FCDO says “new co-operation includes job creation partnerships backed by UK investment to tackle the economic drivers of illegal migration as well as stronger partnerships to tackle criminal smuggler gangs in the Horn of Africa, and speeding up returns.” A Joint Development Agreement will fund two energy projects worth more than $400 million…
Cooper says Border Security Command funding (from the Home Office) will go to Ethiopian law-enforcement agencies “to help them carry out more effective investigations and improve information-sharing.” Good luck…
While there the Foreign Secretary is announcing £17 million of additional foreign aid funding to charities and so on. Over in Pakistan the FCDO has begun funding that country’s border security. The gravy train goes on…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”