THE Scottish Tories effectively gave up defending Ruth Davidson’s seat against the SNP at the Holyrood election, official spending figures suggest. Despite the then-Tory leader winning the Edinburgh Central constituency in 2016, her party was outspent by the SNP and a Scottish Labour long-shot in May. Returns filed by the candidates also show the Scottish Greens virtually abandoned the pitch in Edinburgh Central after splitting the vote and helping the Tories win five years ago. Their spending fell 98 per cent compared to 2016. It followed warnings from the SNP not to vote Green in case history repeated itself. Edinburgh was the most intense political battleground in Scotland in May, with half of its six seats Unionist-held marginals which were heavily targeted by the SNP.
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Every British prime minister has a set of flagship policies that defines their legacy in office. For Margaret Thatcher, it was privatisation and deregulation. For Tony Blair, it was investment in public services and the Iraq War. For David Cameron, it was austerity and the ‘Big Society’.
What about Boris Johnson? For many, the answer is obvious: Brexit. But when it comes to domestic policy, the prime minister has yet to leave his mark on the country. After a year spent fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the closest thing his government has to a flagship policy is the much-trumpeted “levelling-up” agenda.
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Last week, a 12-year-old girl, Madina Rakhmatzhanova, was buried in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region – one of the youngest victims of the tragic conflict that erupted on the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border at the end of April.
The day before, Rakhmatzhanova had tried to escape shelling by Tajikistani forces, fleeing her village together with her mother and younger sister. But as she did so, she was hit by a shell fragment. Rakhmatzhanova died before reaching hospital.
In this mountainous corner of Central Asia, conflicts between residents, and border guards, flare up from time to time over disputed borders between the two states. But last week’s conflict was the largest in recent years, with dozens of people killed and injured, and hundreds left homeless.
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Boris Johnson’s new investment council includes a subsidiary of a German energy giant that is suing the Netherlands for €1.4bn for phasing out coal.
The Investment Council, which launched last month to drum up foreign investment into the UK, has talked up the importance of ‘sustainable’ investment and ‘green industries’ ahead of the COP26 Climate Summit.
But the council’s advisers include RWE Renewables, whose parent company took the Netherlands to a World Bank arbitration tribunal after the Dutch government decided to phase out coal.
The government’s announcement of this new advisory body quoted RWE Renewables CEO Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath saying that “the council will create the right framework for sustainable investment” in the UK.