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Disclaimer: Article is by Workers For a Free Palestine, the ones doing the blockade

Over 1,000 workers and trade unionists shut down access to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office headquarters in central London this Wednesday morning, demanding that the new Labour Government immediately halt all arms exports to Israel. To try to break the blockade, police dragged protesters across the floor at the Whitehall entrance and arrested six people.

The action comes as Israeli forces launched an assault on, and ordered the evacuation of, parts of a designated humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, killing nearly 100 people in one day, wounding several hundred more and forcing over 150,000 people to flee since Monday. It also follows one of the deadliest weeks in aerial attacks on Gaza since the onslaught started nine months ago and a damning new International Court of Justice ruling about Israel’s occupation clearly violating international law.

After Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns accused the Foreign Office of hiding legal advice that Israel is breaching International Humanitarian Law in Gaza in March, David Lammy – now Foreign Secretary – demanded the UK Government publish the advice and “suspend the sale of those arms” if the advice shows there is a “clear risk that UK arms might be used in a serious breach of international humanitarian law.”

Today trade unionists are calling on the Foreign Secretary “to practice what he preached in opposition” and “meet his own demands” by immediately publishing the advice and suspending the sale of arms. They are also calling on the Foreign Secretary to withdraw the UK’s legal bid to block the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. In Opposition, David Lammy called on David Cameron to drop this, accusing the Conservatives in May 2024 of “U-turning on one of Britain’s most fundamental principles: respect for the rule of law.”
[…]
The ICJ has ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories – the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – is a clear violation of international law. It ruled earlier this year that Israel’s actions in Gaza plausibly amounted to genocide and ordered Israel to comply with provisional measures, which it has failed to do. Even before the latest ICJ ruling, some 600 lawyers, legal academics, and former judges, including former Supreme Court justices and the Court’s former president Lady Hale, warned that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

Today’s blockade has been organised by Workers for a Free Palestine in support of civil servants and members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) . The Foreign Office and the Department for Business and Trade are involved in granting arms export licences, thus playing a fundamental role in the continued sale of UK weapons used by the Israeli army. Civil servants have requested to “cease work immediately” on arms export licences to Israel over fears they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza, and their union PCS is considering bringing legal action to prevent their members from being forced to carry out unlawful acts.

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GB Energy will be headquartered in Scotland and have £8.3bn in capital to invest – and [I] understands that among its first commitments will be a pledge to order a cluster of nuclear plants called small modular reactors (SMRs).
[…]
Asked about the timeline last week, Mr Miliband told Sheffield MP Clive Betts: “Our manifesto made it clear that we support new nuclear, including at Sizewell, and we also support the SMR programme.

“Part of our challenge is to examine the legacy left to us by the last government, but he [Mr Betts] should be in no doubt about my absolute support for the SMR programme. It is important, and we will strive to keep to the timetable set out.”

While renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal will have their place in meeting the UK’s future demand, the nuclear sector appears to have won the argument that the 24/7 power it provides must be in the mix in order to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
[…]
Proponents argue these mini-reactors are cheaper, easier to manage and safer than a much larger site such as Sizewell in Suffolk or Hinckley Point in Somerset.

In theory, once the first SMR proves to be a success, they can be prefabricated at scale, driving down cost. Future governments would then have the flexibilty [sic] to have them dotted all over the country in their hundreds, or even thousands, in order to meet their energy needs.

Rolls-Royce has said it hopes to build its first SMR for around £2bn and then subsequent reactors could cost as little as £1bn.

By comparison, the final cost for Hinckley Point could be as much as £46bn.

[I] understands Mr Miliband is set to order two sets of three SMRs, though they will not be operational until 2030 at their earliest.

Rolls-Royce also has memorandums of understanding in place with Estonia, Turkey and the Czech Republic.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a real turning point in how nuclear was seen for the positive,” said Mr Evans, [Rolls-Royce director of corporate and government affairs.] “I spend a lot of time talking to overseas governments, who are all looking to do SMRs.

“The energy security argument is really strong at the minute, I’ve definitely seen a shift and a change.”

Challenges remain, however. Nuclear plants have often gone way over budget and faced years of delays, while critics remain unconvinced that concerns over safety and disposal of nuclear material have been overcome.
[…]
A new report shared exclusively with [I] by lobby group the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP) claims that every £1 in public investment in the net zero transition will be worth £2.65 from the private sector and create an extra 168,000 jobs.

NPP argues that the North of England, which produces nearly half of the UK’s electricity, and is home to half the country’s most carbon-intensive clusters, is “uniquely vulnerable” to a botched transition to net zero.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/25421967

The first “multibank” in London, distributing everything from basic foods to baby products and toiletries, will be officially launched this week, amid continued concerns about levels of poverty as the school summer holidays begin.

The opening of Felix’s Multibank, which has the backing of former prime minister Gordon Brown and London mayor Sadiq Khan, is the latest in a growing network of multibanks.

Brown said the new project was opening at a time when the country’s approach to the problem of destitution would change. There have been continued calls from within Labour for Keir Starmer to take stronger action on child poverty.

Brown said: “The London Felix Multibank is the fourth of six that will be opened by the end of this year across Britain. It is opening at a time of transition from a Britain where child poverty has risen dramatically to one where we wish to see child poverty falling.

Very little is known as to why this happened, even by people deep within the GNOME project, so try to avoid wild speculation.

She's written exclusively in The Sun, which I've left out the URL field because it's The Sun. Here's what she wrote:

We cannot pretend everything is OK. Not when criminal gangs are making millions out of dangerous small boat crossings that undermine our border security and put lives at risk.

We have directed Immigration Enforcement to intensify their operations over the summer, with a focus on employers who are fuelling the trade of criminal gangs by exploiting and facilitating illegal working here in the UK – including in car washes and in the beauty sector.

And we are drawing up new plans for fast track decisions and returns for safe countries.

Most people in this country want to see a properly controlled and managed asylum system, where Britain does its bit to help those fleeing conflict and persecution, but where those who have no right to be in the country are swiftly removed.

David Lammy told MPs he had received reassurances about its neutrality in the wake of a review of alleged links between its staff and terror groups.

The UK was among several countries to suspend donations in January, after Israel alleged 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 2023 attacks by Hamas.
[…]
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Lammy said "no other agency" was able to deliver aid at the scale required to alleviate the “desperate" humanitarian situation in Gaza.

He added UNRWA was feeding more than half the territory's two-million population and would be "vital for future reconstruction".

He said he had been "appalled" by Israel's allegations, but the claims had been taken "seriously” by the United Nations.

He had been reassured the agency "is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality" in the wake of the April review, he added.

This included "strengthening its procedures, including on vetting," Mr Lammy said.

He told MPs a resumption of the UK's £21m annual funding would include money put towards “management reforms” recommended by the UN review.

The Foreign Office said £6m would be given to UNRWA's flash appeal for Gaza, and £15m to the agency's budget to provide services in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and wider region.

[…] Following Labour’s victory, the share prices of the major housebuilders rose, and the new Chancellor bragged about meetings with asset managers like BlackRock who were just waiting to invest in UK housing.

This enthusiasm from major real estate investors is for Labour’s housing and planning policies. Last week, Bloomberg described Labour’s proposals as a ‘revolution in planning’, while Rachel Reeves called planning ‘the single greatest obstacle to our economic success’. Planning, an area of the state which had received little attention from Labour or the Left, is now the central and defining area for reform in the incoming government’s programme. For Labour, planning reform is the key to unlocking growth, drawing upon a set of supply-side planning and housing policies developed by organisations that now tend to self-refer as part of a ‘YIMBY [Yes In My Backyard] movement’. Unfortunately, their proposals draw more from right-wing think tanks, astroturf campaigns and asset managers than they do the demands of workers, tenants and the labour movement.
[…]
The YIMBY view, which several leading UK politicians apparently endorse, is not simply that more homes need to be built, which is a fairly banal view. The YIMBY position, long held by right-wing think tanks, advocates for liberalising planning regulations to address the (largely imagined) problem of the NIMBY [Not In My Backyard], thereby stimulating mass private sector housebuilding and alleviating the housing crisis by reducing sale and rental prices.

There are three problems with their basic proposition. First, it is by no means clear that even a large-scale private house-building programme, such as building over 300,000 houses a year, would significantly decrease prices. The best that high rates of building could do is help slow the rate of price increases. However, since the early 2000s, the average house price to average income ratio has doubled its historical norm, rising from 4:1 to around 9:1. Based on recent annual average wage growth, it would take around 25 years of zero price growth to return back to something like affordability. Private housebuilding, which with a fair wind usually settles at around 170,000 a year, could easily be bolstered with a social housing programme that would reduce the rents paid by those currently in private rental housing more directly and more swiftly whilst hitting the 300,000 a year target. The impacts would be felt within years, not decades, as well as reducing the substantial housing benefit bill (a staggering £23.4 billion in 2022)

Second, it is also not clear that the various proposals to reform planning, ranging from zoning systems to Labour’s vague promise to ‘bulldoze’ regulations, would even lead to such a housing boom. Private housebuilders build at rates that ensure their profitability — it’s not in their interests to ramp up house-building rates beyond a certain point without some form of state subsidy. While it is true that planning is a source of delay and uncertainty for development, this is because it has been decimated as a public service through austerity and various policy ‘streamlining’ exercises. A strong public planning system linked with an actual industrial strategy can help us find a way through the pressures and trade-offs inherent in land-use decisions rather than creating folk devils out of groups of pensioners with a WordPress site.

Third, the YIMBY proposition is one that elides the problem of what constitutes demand for land and housing. The affordability problem began in the early 2000s, as demand for land and housing in major cities was increasingly driven by those with significantly higher spending power than individual households. Institutional investors, buy-to-let landlords, and a variety of international investors seeking ‘safe havens’ all bought up huge amounts of property in major cities. Added to this, the reduced capacity of local authorities to lead housing development and provide social housing has meant that demand for land is increasingly driven by those who have greater access to credit and can outcompete households, increasing rents and sale prices.
[…]
Rejecting YIMBYism does not mean rejecting housebuilding. What we want to see is houses as homes, not new opportunities for upward wealth redistribution. Indeed, the reason the YIMBY ‘movement’ exists is to divert focus from the real, egalitarian solutions for the housing crisis the Left has put back on the table in recent years, such as rent controls, major social housing programmes, and reversing austerity — solutions which require a shift in power against the rentiers that dominate the UK economy and a government with the courage to take that on.

Vance has previously described Britain under Labour as the first “truly Islamist” country with a nuclear weapon.

Lammy told BBC Breakfast: “Let me just say on JD Vance that I’ve met him now on several occasions, we share a similar working class background with addiction issues in our family. We’ve written books on that. We’ve talked about that.

“And we’re both Christians so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.”
[…]
Expanding on his views on Vance on BBC Radio 4, Lammy said he had started to discuss the US view on global defence at the security conference in Munich in February.

“Yes, he has had strong things to say about European defences, and he has had a point of view about Ukraine,” Lammy said. “That’s why I’ve been engaged with JD Vance for many, many months.”

The foreign secretary once called Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi sociopath” and “a tyrant in a toupee”, but has distanced himself from those comments as the US presidential election has approached.

More recently Lammy has spoken at conservative events in the US, telling the Hudson Institute in May that he “gets the agenda that drives ‘America first’”.