Politics

For Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, there is only one lesson to be learned from the compromise reached with the EU this week: blackmail works. With the deal, Hungary has managed to partly unblock EU pay-outs in exchange for lifting its veto on an EU aid package to Ukraine and a minimum global corporate tax rate. After the EU threatened to suspend €7.5 billion in funds for Hungary, Budapest vetoed the €18 billion aid package that the EU had prepared for Ukraine to keep its economy afloat during the war. Now, thanks to the compromise, the suspended amount of Hungary’s funds will be lower – only € 6.3 billion, or 18 per cent of the total amount that Hungary is set to receive. This is not a complete victory for Orbán.

Just as Brexit began with a few harmless-looking chips at what looked like an impregnable concrete wall, something similar may be happening with Britain’s attachment to the European Convention on Human Rights.  The latest episode was yesterday’s ten-minute rule bill from the Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, Jonathan Gullis. His Asylum Seekers (Removal to Safe Countries) Bill was nothing if not direct. Put bluntly, his plan would seek to avoid a repeat of the Rwanda debacle earlier this year by allowing asylum seekers to be flown to Africa, despite any orders from Strasbourg to the contrary. Like nearly all other ten-minute rule bills, everyone accepted this one was entirely quixotic.

'Let's all get behind Les Bleus for victory!' tweeted Emmanuel Macron shortly before France and Morocco met last night in Qatar in the semi-final of the World Cup. 'Without ever forgetting that sport brings us together above all in the respect and friendship between our two nations.' A worthy sentiment from the president but not everyone listened: certainly not some of the Moroccan fans in the Al Bayt Stadium, who greeted the playing of the La Marseillaise with a cacophony of whistling.   As for the match itself, the French did to Morocco what they had done to England in the quarter-final, punishing the profligacy of their opponents with two clinical strikes in a pulsating contest.

Keir Starmer had an unusually weak Prime Minister’s Questions today. He chose to attack Rishi Sunak on the nurses’ strikes, insisting that the Prime Minister could avert the walkouts, which begin tomorrow, by having a meeting with the nurses. ‘All the Prime Minister needs to do to stop that is to open the door and discuss pay with them,’ he claimed. He also described the first nationwide strike by nursing staff as a ‘badge of shame’ for the government.

If an election were held tomorrow, not only would Labour win, they would bury the Tories with a landslide majority of 314 seats, leaving the Conservatives with a forlorn rump of just 69. That's the verdict of an opinion poll from Savanta. Even for an embattled Tory party, the verdict is notably grim. According to the poll, not only would former prime minister Boris Johnson lose his Uxbridge seat – there would be no Tory MPs left in London at all. Rishi Sunak would also get the boot from his hitherto rock solid safe rural seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. Every single one of the famous Red Wall of former Labour seats in the north would fall and revert to their former allegiance, and there would be no Tories left north of Lincolnshire.

The corruption scandal embroiling the European parliament and the European Union’s institutions at the highest level is shaping up to be its biggest to date. Belgian police have arrested Eva Kaili, a vice-president of the parliament, and three others in an investigation into alleged bribes involving spectacular sums in cash, allegedly from Qatar, to influence EU officials and parliamentary voting. ‘The shockwave of 'Qatargate' is Le Monde’s take on a story it says threatens to 'destabilise Europe’s institutions’. This isn't an exaggeration: the probe ripples out to the whole progressive ecosystem surrounding the parliament. Among the suspects, according to the BBC, is former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, who now manages the human rights group Fight Impunity.

Rishi Sunak today gave a potentially game-changing statement in the Commons, finally committing the Conservatives to effective action when it comes to combating illegal immigration. The five-point plan unveiled by Sunak for addressing the issue of the Channel boats in the short-term will garner most of the headlines, but it is small beer compared to his most significant announcement. Electoral salvation for the Tories won’t come via a new ‘unified small boats operational command’, a doubling of immigration enforcement raids, 10,000 new non-hotel accommodation places, faster processing of claims or even a fancy new deal with Albania. These are all incremental measures that will, at best, help at the margins.

Rishi Sunak’s latest promises on asylum and immigration suggest the PM has learned very little from his Tory forebears. Ken Clarke used to compare eurosceptic right-wing Tories to crocodiles circling the prime ministerial boat. Most Tory leaders chose to feed the crocodiles buns to keep them happy. But what happens when you run out of buns? David Cameron knows the answer to that one. Sunak is also offering buns. But when the buns run out – or simply don’t appear – his problems will only grow. The PM is vowing to crack down on illegal Channel crossings. He promises to clear the backlog of asylum cases. He promises to reject more claims from Albanians.