Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is touring broadcast studios with UK demands for the Strait of Hormuz. Namely “not to have tolls, not to have restrictions, but to get that fully re-opened”…
Cooper said it was a priority for Starmer on his three-day trip:
“One of the crucial things that the prime minister will be talking to Gulf partners about is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz which is crucial for our Gulf partners. It is their trading route but it’s also vital for the global economy and no country should be able to hijack those international shipping transit routes in the way that Iran has. That’s why it’s so important we have this international cooperation to keep up the pressure to get the strait fully open. Not to have tolls, not to have restrictions, but to get that fully reopened.”
This runs counter to some statements from Trump and the intentions of the Iranian regime to charge something like $1 per barrel passing through the strait. That would be a disaster…
On the Today Programme Cooper congratulated her own government for what she said was acting early in the conflict: “We pre-deployed the F-35s.” No indication on whether British forces will be deployed to open the Strait of Hormuz…
Cooper additionally refused to say when the now-delayed Defence Investment Plan would come in, saying: “investment has already been allocated… we want to go further in future.” Labour incredibly is still refusing to get real on defence…
Yvette Cooper is playing down the UK’s involvement in ongoing US action against Iran despite Starmer’s U-turn last night. The RAF base on Cyprus was hit at around 10 p.m. at the same time as Starmer’s statement…
The Foreign Secretary told BBC Breakfast:
“It’s important to say the UK is not going to be involved directly in those strikes but in support and this is about ballistic missiles and launchers that are pointed at the gulf… it is not about support for any political or economic or any broader infrastructure targets.”
Yvette Cooper said on the morning round that it was a “deliberate decision” not to support the US because it was “not in the UK interest.” She told Times Radio:
“We are continuing to take all possible action, both diplomatic and now this, ensuring that we can work with our partners in the Gulf. What I would also say though is we do think that the diplomatic processes are important and we will continue to pursue those.”
There are reports that the surviving Iranian regime is making overtures to the US with a look to restart negotiations. That would be thanks to US and Israeli action bulleting the Ayatollah…
Defensive action can be extremely broad and significantly more proactive than Cooper is indicating UK armed forces will be this morning. Labour’s timorous position has been entirely unsustainable from the start…
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…
The Foreign Office clearly hasn’t let a cost-of-living crisis cramp its continental style. They’ve splashed £28,979 on furniture from the private members’ club Soho House for their offices in Paris. The taxpayer bill’s getting a bit chaise longue…
An FOI response reveals that in October, the FCDO Services’ “Interior Design Team” forked out for the luxury furniture to “use in representational areas of the Paris diplomatic estate.” Ooh la la…
Apparently nearly £29,000 at Soho Home gets you:
Let them eat cake!
Lammy isn’t the only one. They just hate looking at royalty, apparently…
On 2 May this year Yvette Cooper’s Home Office removed a portrait of Elizabeth II, Dorothy Wilding’s HM Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) Queen Regnant. On the same day as the Queen portrait was put away Cooper’s Home Office installed 27-year-old contemporary artist Winnie Hall’s painting Life Gets Harder, Trackies Grow Thicker, described as follows:
“This painting in red and white plays on the visual effect of a red Adidas track suit and striped trainers. A small faceless figure clad in this outfit in the centre of the painting expands outwards in a concertinaed Russian-doll type configuration to form other figures in the same tracksuit and trainers, and eventually grows too large to fit fully on the page. Life Gets Harder, Trackies Grow Thicker, the title explains. Hall grew up in London where the track suit or trackies are ubiquitous, particularly on sports grounds and gyms but also on the streets. She plays with the visual elements of colour and line in the apparel to abstract an item that many might consider mundane and everyday, creating a visual composition that draws us in. Her humour and playfulness in applying an art-led lens to this element of popular or street culture extends the vocabulary of abstraction outwards from the gallery to a wider audience.”
One month later the Home Office removed Charles Thomas Burt’s Queen Victoria arriving at Alderney, 1859. Those feelings of burning shame must have been too much to bear…
UPDATE: Sources close to Cooper insist that she retained a portraid of the Queen and also one of King Charles in her personal office. Blame the civil servants then…
The BBC has published an article this morning on the government’s plans for Digital ID to be forced onto 13-year-olds. It’s an article about Cooper’s morning round…
It says:
“Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the consultation plans, saying “lots of 13-year olds already do” have a form of digital ID.”
In the meantime BBC News at Ten last night completely ignored the massive China spy scandal that is currently engulfing Labour. The Licence fee providing its usual value for money. How did this one get past BBC Verify?
Lucy Powell on LBC, asked by Tom Swarbrick for her reaction to Labour MP Samantha Niblett’s call for a ‘summer of sex’ debate in Parliament: “I personally don’t own any sex toys, but each to their own… I’m not really sure that’s the right place for it, no.”