Tuesday, 13 April 2021

POLITICO

POLITICO

Alex Salmond on Prince Philip, Scottish independence … and Eurovision

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 03:42 AM PDT

EDINBURGH — While most of Westminster was in the pub, POLITICO’s London Playbook caught up with Alex Salmond during a campaign stop for the former Scottish first minister's new pro-independence Alba Party.

Alba hopes to shake up May 6 elections to the Scottish parliament, a battle that could ratchet up the pressure on U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to grant a second Scottish independence referendum.

Salmond is looking to amass a “supermajority” for independence — and there’s no love lost between the former Scottish National Party leader and his successor as first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. The pair have been embroiled in a bitter public feud over her government’s handling of sexual harassment claims against him.

Speaking from the opposite end of a bench atop Edinburgh's Calton Hill, Salmond was happiest when given an opportunity to lay into broadcasters who he feels are unfairly excluding him from TV debates — such as the one taking place Tuesday night on STV.

Here’s what Playbook learned.

On Prince Philip

Salmond came armed with a news line following the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and the queen’s husband. The move has prompted eight days of national mourning in the U.K. Having met Prince Philip multiple times when first minister, Salmond said although they disagreed on many things, he "never found him taking the slightest offense from any of our disagreements — in fact he seemed to enjoy them." And, offering a word of caution to broadcasters and other politicians, Salmond said "the idea of prolonged mourning would not have been to his liking.”

On social media storms

Alba candidate Margaret Lynch sparked a social media storm when the Times reported she told a private women's conference that Stonewall Scotland and another Scottish group supported a declaration that advocates lowering the age of consent to 10. Asked publicly about this for the first time, Salmond stood by his candidate and claimed she had been misrepresented. He told Playbook that "not one single paper has actually reported what she said … the concern that was expressed was that two Scottish organizations subscribe to an international declaration where the language, to say the least, is somewhat difficult." The group that penned the international declaration has since released a statement confirming it has never advocated lowering the age of consent and describing the claims as "dangerous and irresponsible."

On the polls

As for Salmond's dream of a pro-independence supermajority in Holyrood led by SNP constituency and Alba members on the regional list, things aren't looking rosy just yet. POLITICO's Poll of Polls has Alba on just 3 percent, which if replicated on May 6 would see the party unlikely to pick up any seats. Salmond isn't worried yet though, saying this will pick up as the electorate learns about his party. As evidence, he tells Playbook he has surveyed 12 people atop Calton Hill. He says half of them are already intending to vote for his party and the other half hadn't heard of it. After explaining the electoral system to the latter, Salmond claims they are now all voting for Alba.

SCOTLAND ELECTION POLL OF POLLS (CONSTITUENCY VOTE)


All 2 Years 1 Year 6 Months Kalman Smooth Kalman

For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.

On talking to Whitehall about independence

If a supermajority is achieved, Salmond has said negotiations with Whitehall about Scotland's future should begin within a week. He doesn't accept the game is up if that's a short conversation involving the word "no," pointing to a "range of other tactics you can employ to force [Boris Johnson's] hand." The always-modest Salmond brings up his negotiations with David Cameron in 2011 as an example, insisting he persuaded Cameron "in the right direction" toward a Section 30 referendum as the least-worst option for the U.K. government.

On his shift to independence fundamentalism

Once known as a "gradualist" in the SNP seeking a slow approach to building support for independence, Salmond now strikes a less conciliatory figure. He pivots a question into an attack on his former protégé-turned-foe Sturgeon, over her indication a referendum could be delayed to 2024. This, he says, is "not really an inspiring rallying call to the independence movement."

On his own fitness for office

Salmond's go-to line when asked about the sexual harassment complaints brought against him is to say a majority-female jury acquitted him of all criminal charges last March. Despite this, his defense team admitted some inappropriate behavior in court — which Salmond is still unwilling to apologize for or even acknowledge, telling Playbook, "I know exactly what I've done and not done, believe me." A recent poll shows two-thirds of voters believe he is unfit for office, which he blames on media coverage around the case.

On Russia

Asked by the BBC last week four times if he believes Russia was behind the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, Salmond — who hosts a show on Kremlin-backed RT — refused to directly say he thought so. Given the opportunity here to answer the same question, he went slightly further than he did on the BBC but still without directly condemning Russia. "I don't think the two people associated with the Russian security services were in Salisbury to look at the size of the spire," he said. "Equally, I've accepted that we should be guided by the results of the international bodies in these matters." He maintains it was "improper" for the BBC to ask him this question.

… and on Eurovision

After Adam Price, leader of the pro-Welsh independence Plaid party, told Playbook the music of Tom Jones and Charlotte Church would help an independent Wales flourish at Eurovision, Salmond instantly named Leith rockers The Proclaimers. Nothing to do, of course, with the fact the pair announced they were backing Alba last week.

Austrian health minister resigns, citing ill health

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 02:13 AM PDT

Austrian Health Minister Rudolf Anschober resigned Tuesday, saying he had developed health issues due to the amount of work he faced during the pandemic.

Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said he would be replaced by Wolfgang Mückstein, a general practitioner and member of the Vienna doctors’ association, as of Monday.

“The worst health crisis in decades … has completely changed all of our lives, including my life and my political work, of course,” Anschober told reporters during a press conference in Vienna Tuesday morning.

Noting that the pandemic began only a few weeks after he took up the job, he said that his time in office “seemed like 15 years” rather than 15 months. “I have practically been working ceaselessly for 14 months,” he said, adding: “I have obviously overworked myself.”

He also said he had faced death threats and has been under police protection since November.

Anschober said he had been diagnosed as suffering from high blood pressure, high blood sugar and early-stage tinnitus, which he described as “the logical consequences” of overworking. He already had to take a week’s leave due to health issues last month.

Following his doctor’s advice, he had therefore asked Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen to relieve him of his duties as of next Monday. Austria, he said, needed a health minister who is “100 percent fit” during this crisis.

This article has been updated.

UK goods trade with EU signals recovery

Posted: 13 Apr 2021 12:13 AM PDT

LONDON — Exports of goods from the U.K. to the EU showed signs of a partial recovery in February, according to official statistics released Tuesday, though data has been muddied by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In February, exports to the EU increased by £3.7 billion (46.6 percent) after a record fall of £5.7 billion (negative 42 percent) in January, figures reported by the Office for National Statistics showed. 

However, exports were still significantly lower in February, compared to 2020, before the end of the Brexit transition period. Imports from the EU also picked up, though only slightly, increasing by £1.2 billion in February after a record drop of £6.7 billion in January.

Shipping data also suggested signs of a rebound in British trade. The seven-day average of daily shipping visits increased from 290 on January 31, 2021 to 344 on February 28, 2021, the ONS said. This was consistent with signals trade had recovered somewhat in February, it added.

“Exports to the EU recovered significantly from their January fall though still remain below 2020 levels,” an ONS spokesperson said, while imports are yet to “significantly rebound.”

It was still too early to draw concrete conclusions about the overall impact of Brexit on trade, statisticians warned. The ONS noted survey data suggesting businesses' trading activities were being held back by Brexit frictions, such as extra paperwork and higher transportation costs.

Overall, the U.K. economy showed an improvement in February, with GDP growing 0.4 percent. Construction and manufacturing helped drive the return to growth, along with a small expansion, 0.2 percent, in the dominant services sector. 

However, while a return to growth is positive, it must be set against the wider economic rout triggered by the coronavirus. Economic output remained 7.8 percent below the pre-pandemic peak, the ONS said.

Facebook takes down (and restores) official page for French town of Bitche

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:46 PM PDT

Facebook has 99 problems, and the French town of Bitche is one.

According to local broadcaster Radio Mélodie, the Facebook page for the small town in northeastern Moselle was taken down on March 19, forcing Valérie Degouy, Bitche’s comms official, to create a new page on Monday named after its postal code: Mairie 57230.

Degouy told Radio Mélodie on Monday that she appealed the decision the same day the town’s page was taken down, but hadn’t heard back from the tech giant. “I tried to reach out to Facebook in every possible way, through different forms, but there’s nothing [I could] do,” she said, adding that she had “already had issues when I first created the page.”

Facebook restored the page after this article was published on Tuesday morning.

Another town in the region, Rohrbach-lès-Bitche, took preventive measures and renamed its page Ville de Rohrbach on Monday. “Facebook seems to be hunting a term associated with Rohrbach … we’ll let you imagine the reason,” the town said in a post announcing the move.

Bitche — the e is silent — is a fortress town famed mostly for the siege of Bitche, which lasted 230 days during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871. Today, it has a little over 5,000 inhabitants.

This is not the first time Bitche has been caught up in a censorship crossfire. In 1881, U.S. Ambassador to France Levi Parsons Morton took issue with the location of the American embassy on the Place de Bitche in Paris, named in honor of the town’s wartime effort. Morton, embarrassed by the embassy’s letterhead, asked Parisian authorities to rename the square — they obliged, changing it to Place des États-Unis.

This article was updated.

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‘This was not a breach’: How Big Tech gaslights the world on data leaks

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:30 PM PDT

First Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Now Clubhouse.

After data on a combined billion Facebook and LinkedIn users appeared online last week, reports surfaced over the weekend that upstart social network Clubhouse had also leaked reams of user information.

But if you think any of the above is a problem, Big Tech has a message for you: 

You’re the crazy one.

The audio platform called the reports "misleading and false" and maintained it had not been breached or hacked. 

"The data referred to is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or our API," it said in response to data on 1.3 million users being posted online. 

It was a response seemingly straight from the Facebook playbook.

The social media giant had responded in a similar fashion earlier in the week to reports that data on 533 million of its users — including the EU's data protection chief — had been leaked.

"It is important to understand that malicious actors obtained this data not through hacking our systems but by scraping it from our platform prior to September 2019," read a Facebook blog post on April 6, explaining that scraping  was a common tactic used to lift "public information."

Several days later, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn suffered almost an exact replica of the Facebook leak, with half a billion user records — including full names, email addresses, and phone numbers — appearing online. 

It's response? Yes, you guessed it: The company said it was public data, and denied it was a data breach.

"It does include publicly viewable member profile data that appears to have been scraped from LinkedIn. This was not a LinkedIn data breach, and no private member account data from LinkedIn was included in what we've been able to review," read the LinkedIn response.

But not everyone is buying the companies' attempts to get themselves off the hook for leaking the data in their custody.

"Facebook seem to say there is no issue because they weren’t hacked. That in ways is worse," said Ravi Naik, a director at AWO, a data rights agency. 

"I think their response really speaks to a wider issue of how they see and treat personal data." 

But Facebook, LinkedIn and Clubhouse are by no means alone in trying to absolve themselves of blame. Read on to find out what to say if your company has leaked information online.

Say it's public data 

The response du jour. The data was public anyway, so what's the problem? See Facebook, LinkedIn and Clubhouse going large on the fact that much of the data was posted to public profiles. 

There's a hitch to this though. 

Firstly, in Facebook's case at least, the company seems to be adopting quite a liberal interpretation of what's public. Phone numbers that appeared in the online databases, for instance, were in many cases not included on public profiles, yet Facebook says they are public because people could still be discoverable by the numbers. 

Secondly, whether the data is public or not is not actually a factor in whether there's been a data breach. According to the legal definition, a data breach occurs if there's "a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed." There’s no mention of whether information is public or not.

We'll let you make your own minds up as to whether any of the trio of recent data incidents qualify. 

Don't tell the regulator (and definitely don't tell users)

If there wasn't a data breach, there's no need to tell the regulator and face a possible probe. See the logic?

Following news of the Facebook leak, its lead EU privacy regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission, said it had received "no proactive communication" on the incident from the social media company.

But regulators can take matters into their own hands once they do hear the news, as Italy's regulator did, announcing an inquiry into LinkedIn's data leak last week. 

There is a higher threshold for notifying users of breaches under EU rules, so if the regulators aren't being told, you sure as hell aren't. 

Ignore, and ignore again 

Why not just pretend it didn't happen? 

In January, the U.K.'s cybersecurity agency, the NCSC, wrote about the proliferation of ransomware. One (unnamed) organization was hit with ransomware and paid just under £6.5 million to recover their files — only to ignore the vulnerability in their networks. 

"Less than two weeks later, the same attacker attacked the victim's network again, using the same mechanism as before, and re-deployed their ransomware," the NCSC wrote. "The victim felt they had no other option but to pay the ransom again." 

Blame the intern (or a rogue employee)

One of the issues investigators looked into causing the major SolarWinds hack of U.S. and global organizations, discovered last year, was the use of a password "solarwinds123" that left servers vulnerable to attacks. 

In a testimony to the U.S. Congress, former SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson said the password issue was “a mistake that an intern made," CNN reported. 

Blaming the fall guy is a tried and tested technique.

When credit reporting agency Equifax announced in 2017 it suffered a breach affecting 147 million people, lawmakers summoned the leadership for an explanation. Former CEO Richard Smith told U.S. Congress that the mistake came down to one IT engineer: "The human error was that the individual who's responsible for communicating in the organization to apply the patch, did not," he said, according to the Verge. 

From the EU's own playbook — Call the leak misinformation

When the EU's own European Medicines Agency (EMA) got hacked late last year, the agency as well as affected drugmakers BioNTech and Pfizer were quick to respond with public statements to contain the damage. 

But in January, media outlets reported the compromised data included emails showing pressure was put on the agency to hurry up with coronavirus vaccine approval processes, prompting the agency to say some data circulating online “may have been taken out of context” and "not all of the documents were published in their integral, original form."

What the EMA didn't say, however, is whether the media reports were accurate — and what information exactly, in the leaked copies floated on the internet, wasn't accurate. 

If it is a hack, call it "sophisticated"

In a particularly egregious example of this PR fave, TalkTalk said in 2015 it had been the victim of a “sophisticated” cyberattack which hit thousands of customers.

But when the U.K.'s data protection authority fined TalkTalk a then record £400,000, it accused the telco of failing to "implement the most basic cyber security measures," allowing hackers to penetrate systems "with ease."

To add insult to injury, the company's then CEO, Dido Harding — now the head of Britain's new health agency — said at the time that she had no idea whether the company had taken basic security steps.

"The awful truth is, I don't know," she said in answer to whether customers' bank details had been encrypted.

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How the showdown between Russia and Ukraine could go wrong

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 07:32 PM PDT

Sarah Lain is a Kyiv-based associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

KYIV — For a country claiming it doesn’t want to go to war, Russia’s recent posture toward Ukraine looks awfully bellicose. Russian troops have massed and are building a military camp in the southwestern region of Voronezh, near the border. Russian state TV is priming Russians to expect a Ukrainian offensive.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently warned that renewed war in Ukraine would mean Ukraine's own destruction. Last week, Dmitry Kozak, the deputy head of Russia's presidential administration and a key negotiator on Ukraine, reiterated a message from 2014 that if necessary, Moscow would intervene to protect Donbas residents.   

Most observers say this does not necessarily mean imminent invasion, but the fact that Russian intentions are unclear is what is so worrying. The build-up on the border, as well as on annexed Crimea, gives Russia options should it wish to escalate. Russian President Vladimir Putin no doubt wants to maintain some unpredictability, and having such options is crucial for that, now the world is watching. Though a completely "accidental" war is unlikely, there is always a risk of miscalculation or over-reaction as a result.

As tensions rise, confidence-building measures aimed at containing the situation are failing. No stranger to stalemates, the OSCE-led Minsk negotiations have stalled once again. Additional ceasefire measures agreed in July 2020, which stabilized the situation for a few months, are breaking down. Russia has largely ignored a request for clarification over its military activity at the border, which Ukraine had asked for under the Vienna Document.

Some in Moscow claim Ukraine has added to tensions by pivoting to a more "hostile" approach to Russia over the past few months. So far, this is an exaggeration. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has actually been rather restrained in his rhetoric over the Donbas and recent Russian activity.

Certainly, the recent sanctioning of pro-Russian oligarch and Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk and his associate Taras Kozak no doubt irritated the Kremlin, but Moscow has been relatively muted in its public response. Ukraine has played games with its own announcement of ceasefire measures, diverging from the agreed Minsk process language on rules for returning fire, which has not added to trust. (Kyiv did correct themselves in the end.) It should be noted that Russia itself is no stranger to obstructive behavior as well.

Some point to two recently approved Ukrainian strategies as provocative: the strategy for the "de-occupation" and reintegration of Crimea and the recently approved military strategy. Both explicitly mention Russia as a threat.

Despite running a pro-peace election campaign, Zelenskiy has never been quiet about the need for Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine, or about the threat Russian poses to Ukraine's territorial integrity. His Crimea strategy focuses more on human rights and justice issues, and the military strategy spends a lot of time outlining reform linked to NATO membership aspirations.

Although NATO membership for Ukraine is an absolute red line for Russia, such Ukrainian aspirations are nothing new and thus are not a surprise — the documents are hardly a call to war. Still, one cannot assume how Moscow might interpret things. 

There has been disappointment too in Moscow that Zelenskiy has not simply implemented the Minsk Agreements. These call for Ukraine to grant the Russian-backed, so-called "republics" special administrative rights, while reintegrating them into Ukraine. This would allow Russia, in theory, to have permanent and significant influence on the country through the so-called republics, but with Ukraine paying for them instead of Russia.  

The lack of clarity over Russia's intent and game-plan, mixed with rhetoric reminiscent of 2014, means tensions are running high. This is when miscalculations can happen.

There is a fine line between deterrence and what is interpreted as offensive action. Everyone is watching what Russia might do, without much of a plan as to what the response would be should it escalate significantly. This also adds to the unpredictability. Although it is unclear what Moscow would gain from genuinely escalating in the Donbas, it is also important to remember the Kremlin has its own interests and threat perception — and every scenario should be considered, even those that may not seem likely. 

David Cameron, Britain’s biggest (hidden) lobbyist

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 07:31 PM PDT

David Cameron once warned that lobbying was Britain's "next big scandal."

He probably didn’t imagine that he would be at the center of that scandal and that his actions would shine an unfavorable light on the government transparency system that the former prime minister himself helped set up.

The current government is treating the scandal, which has seen successive newspaper stories about Cameron’s attempts to influence British ministers on behalf of his post-government employer, a now-collapsed financial firm called Greensill, so seriously that it’s just launched an independent inquiry, and the opposition Labour Party wants to grill ministers in parliament Tuesday.

Yet transparency campaigners and even Westminster's lobbyists themselves point out that the steady drumbeat of revelations comes in spite of, and not because of, the U.K.'s promises about open government.

“The whole system doesn’t work, everyone knows it doesn’t work, everyone’s known for years it doesn’t work. David Cameron knew it didn’t work, which is exactly why his actions didn’t turn up anywhere on any official disclosure,” said Steve Goodrich, senior research manager at Transparency International UK.

The Greensill saga has two main parts. There's the access afforded to the firm’s founder Lex Greensill when Cameron was in government, with Greensill brought in to combat “wasteful contracts” and advise on supply-chain finance. Then there are the headline-grabbing efforts by Cameron to lobby for Greensill once he'd left office and, in 2018, become a paid adviser to the firm.

Text messages sent to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, making the case for Greensill to be part of a key coronavirus business lending scheme, have raised eyebrows, as has a reported drink with Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Although Cameron’s pleas were ultimately rejected by the Treasury, Sunak told the former Conservative leader he had "pushed" officials to consider the proposal.

Cameron broke weeks of silence Sunday night to acknowledge he had learned "important lessons" from the row and say he should have engaged Sunak "through only the most formal of channels” to ensure “no room for misinterpretation.” Yet Cameron also pointed out he was "breaking no codes of conduct and no government rules.”

That, argue those pushing for transparency reform, is precisely the point.

‘Groundhog Day’

Despite being a former world leader with a contacts book most lobbyists would die for, Cameron, who left office in 2016 after unsuccessfully campaigning against Brexit, did not have to log his Greensill work with either main Westminster watchdog.

Rules laid down by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), meant to police the new jobs that ex-ministers and senior officials take, cover only the two years immediately after such figures leave government. Cameron’s Greensill work started in 2018, meaning he was free to pursue any subsequent opportunity without seeking the watchdog’s advice.

Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government (IfG) think tank, said ACOBA’s shortcomings were clear. “Essentially the way ACOBA works is all the people who probably don’t need telling consult it assiduously and the ones who are doing something more questionable don’t bother,” she said. “Or they get the advice but ignore it and then there’s nothing that ACOBA can do apart from publish a letter which may or may not get much attention.”

White acknowledged that sanctioning those no longer on the government payroll may be difficult in practice, and that overly stringent rules could dissuade people from going into politics in the first place. But even bolstering the link between ACOBA and parliament would help give it “teeth.” Cameron's Labour predecessor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, on Monday called for a five-year ban on lobbying by ex-prime ministers.

Britain's statutory lobbying register — set up by Cameron's own government in 2014 — also provides no record of the ex-prime minister's lobbying. While Westminster’s third-party "consultant lobbyists” have to disclose their activity with the regulator or face the prospect of a fine, Cameron was under no obligation to detail his influence work because he was directly employed by Greensill.

It’s a gap in the register that has long prompted warnings from parts of the lobbying industry itself.

"To me, this is Groundhog Day," said Iain Anderson of CICERO/AMO, a communications agency. Britain should, he said, adopt a "register of lobbying, rather than lobbyists," logging attempts to influence government regardless of whether those approaches come from people working for trade associations, businesses, think tanks — or ex-prime ministers.

Lobbying, Anderson said, will never be "the most popular profession in the world," but he argues that a more comprehensive register could prompt a “huge reset in public attitudes to lobbying because people would be able to see it.”

Goodrich of Transparency International agrees that “fundamental” reform is needed. “We are one of the few advanced Western democracies that doesn’t have a comprehensive register of these activities — one that covers everyone from consultants to those working in-house — with clear information about who is trying to influence who, about what and when,” he said.

Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Rachel Reeves told POLITICO the saga “illustrates perfectly” the “toothlessness of current lobbying rules” as well as a “complete disregard for any self-driven integrity.” Her party wants the register to include in-house lobbyists, and the opposition is promising its own wide-ranging ‘Integrity and Ethics’ commission to bring in “a fairer framework for commercial lobbying.” The Cabinet Office, which oversees transparency in the U.K. government, did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Transparency revolution’

Those hoping to find evidence of Cameron's lobbying efforts through Britain's open data on ministerial meetings will also be disappointed. Cameron appears nowhere on the government’s transparency logs in connection with his Greensill work, and such releases do not cover letters, emails or phone calls.

“The level of detail that’s provided about these discussions is quite threadbare,” said Goodrich, leaving “no real indication of what the intent is of those who are attending the meeting.” In the U.S. and Canada, he pointed out, lobbyists are required to be “very clear about what they’re trying to influence,” while in the U.K. it’s down to government, and broad-brush descriptions like “to discuss business” or “introductory meeting” are accepted.

Cameron took office pledging to be a reformer, vowing to lead a "transparency revolution," and arguing in 2013 that open government was "absolutely fundamental to a nation's potential success in the 21st century." On some fronts, his government did boost transparency. As well as introducing the lobbying register, it opened up much more information on state contracts and Whitehall spending.

Yet even on these measures, Institute for Government analysis finds a stalled revolution, with government departments responding more slowly to Freedom of Information requests and lagging on spending data. “It’s always the case that you can stick a load of data in the public domain which is more or less easy to interrogate and say, ‘Oh, we’re being transparent therefore everything’s fine.’ Transparency is essential, but it doesn’t necessarily mean everything’s fine,” said the IfG’s White.

In a bid to draw a line under the row, the U.K. government on Monday outlined plans for an inquiry into Greensill’s government engagement, to be led by Whitehall auditor Nigel Boardman. “We recognize the public interest here and that's why the PM has commissioned this inquiry,” Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said, promising the probe would report shortly.

Another body, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which advises on government ethics, is already reviewing the U.K.’s wider standards set-up, and has made clear that lobbying is now in the frame. A review of Britain's lobbying laws — pre-dating the Cameron stories — is also underway, although few are expecting significant changes.

For those urging change, the Cameron saga offers the chance to think big. "Now is absolutely the time to revisit this, to revisit it on a cross-party basis — and therefore have something that’s going to stand the test of time," said Anderson.

Sofagate scars linger as von der Leyen, Michel hold peace talks

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 02:26 PM PDT

It was a Sofagate ceasefire but hardly a permanent peace pact.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel tried Monday to move beyond the seating scandal that overshadowed their visit to Ankara last week and highlighted tensions between two of the EU’s top leaders and their institutions.

The two met at Commission HQ in Brussels on Monday for their first tête-à-tête since last Tuesday’s incident, in which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Michel sat in stately chairs while von der Leyen, the first female president of the Commission, had to settle for a seat on a nearby sofa.

Critics accused Erdoğan of trying to divide the two leaders and of downgrading the female president, while Turkish officials insisted they had simply followed protocol. But Michel also came under heavy fire from across the European political spectrum, accused of having been complicit in allowing von der Leyen to be treated poorly.

After Monday’s meeting, officials from both sides gave bland readouts. The Commission said the two presidents had focused on “topical issues,” while a Council official spoke of “constructive” discussions. But it was clear that tensions lingered between the two leaders and their teams over the episode, which laid bare divisions at the top of the EU for a week as the two camps were unable to bury the hatchet.

The Ankara visit was the only topic of the meeting, underscoring just how much of a distraction the matter has become considering that the EU’s top presidents are still trying to manage a pandemic, and secure final ratification of both the Brexit deal and the EU’s budget and recovery plans.

Following the meeting, a Commission official said bluntly that “the president made clear that she will never allow such a situation to arise again.”

Beforehand, von der Leyen's head of cabinet, Björn Seibert, floated a plan to clarify treaty rules on the preeminence of EU institutions and promote equal representation on foreign visits. But that plan did not appear to have gone down well with the Council.

The Council official said any change in rules or treaties had to be dealt with in an appropriate format, such as a forthcoming Conference on the Future of Europe, which is meant to delve into how the EU could be reformed.

The divergence reflected what many in Brussels see as two presidents being at loggerheads and two institutions competing acrimoniously for more clout on the international stage. While some tension between the two bodies is baked into their different roles — the Commission is the EU’s executive while the Council represents national leaders — diplomats said this episode was extraordinary.

“I have rarely seen such a level of animosity” between the two institutions, one EU diplomat said. “It risks damaging our [external] action and it’s hard to understand, not only for ordinary citizens.”

Another EU diplomat lamented that the two institutions were spending so much time on the issue. “Lucky is the organization that has the leisure to devote so much time and energy on protocol issues,” the diplomat said.

A third diplomat said Sofagate could be harmful to the EU: “Many outside the EU say that the EU foreign policy is a joke, and now we have this. We surely didn’t need it.”

Protocol politics

Soon after the incident, von der Leyen and Michel's teams gave differing accounts of what had happened. Michel's team said everything ran followed to protocol, asserting the Council president is higher in the diplomatic pecking order. The Commission argued that von der Leyen should have been seated in the same way as Erdoğan and Michel.

While officials cited treaties and legal texts and pointed to previous examples, many observers said the issue ultimately came down to political symbolism, and the EU had messed up badly on that front.

Later in the week, Michel admitted he may have made a mistake but said he feared speaking out at the time would have caused a diplomatic incident. He expressed regret and distress over the episode.

Adding to the confusion was an apparent disconnect between the Council team and the local EU delegation in Turkey in making arrangements for the visit. Officials also noted that the Commission had not sent its own advance protocol team, citing coronavirus restrictions.

At a regular news briefing earlier on Monday, Commission spokesman Eric Mamer refrained from making any assessment of current relations between the Commission and the Council. He noted rather drily that “cooperation between the Commission and the council presidents will of course and naturally continue to the benefit and in the interest of the EU and of its citizens.”

Sofagate prompted outrage from many female MEPs, who argued it was less about protocol and the pecking order of EU institutions and more about problems linked to male leadership.

"What happened in Ankara happens often to women: Men very naturally tend to take the first place, leaving women behind,” Iratxe García Perez, the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, told POLITICO. “Then we are left in a situation in which we have to fight for our place, as if leadership was about strength and about imposing yourself.”

“It's time to change that perspective,” Garcia added.

Michel and von der Leyen will hold an "exchange of views" on the Turkey visit with Parliament President David Sassoli and the assembly’s political group leaders on Tuesday. They are also scheduled to discuss the trip, as well as broader relations between the EU and Turkey, at a plenary debate with MEPs next week in Brussels.

David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.

Germany’s conservative death match

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 02:16 PM PDT

BERLIN — After months of polite jousting, soft jabs and gentle ripostes, the friendly duel over Angela Merkel's succession finally reached its inevitable final round: a battle to the death.

The two men vying to become the conservative standard bearer in the race for chancellor – Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Armin Laschet and Markus Söder, head of the center-right alliance's Bavarian wing, the Christian Social Union — squared off on Monday (from afar), each claiming he was the rightful heir to Merkel's mantle. 

"My position is clear," Laschet said after receiving the strong endorsement for his candidacy from the CDU's executive committee. "I want a modern Germany!" 

The bigger question is whether German voters want him.

In addition to leading the CDU, Laschet is the premier of Germany's biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. But his poll numbers are sagging, both nationally and at home, fueling doubts over whether he is the right candidate. 

"This is the most important job there is in Germany," Söder, who enjoys broad popularity both at home in Bavaria and across Germany, responded later in the day. "I'm ready for it!"  

For months, the two had insisted a final decision would be taken after somber reflection between Easter and Whit Sunday (May 23) in some form of amicable tête-à-tête. That plan hit a wall over the past couple of days, however, as both men acknowledged the only conclusion they've been able to reach is that they both want a chance at the brass ring.   

Yet time is of the essence. The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on public support of the conservatives and many in the party rank and file want a candidate sooner rather than later in the hope the selection will give the bloc a boost as the campaign for the September 26 election gets underway. 

The Greens, which polls suggest have become the center right's most formidable rivals, are expected to announce their candidate for chancellor on April 19. 

On Monday, both Laschet and Söder sought and received the support of senior functionaries in their respective parties. Though the two sides insisted on Monday that they wanted a quick resolution, it's not clear how nor when the question of who will lead the center right into the coming election campaign will be decided.  

The best guess by most party officials was "by the end of the week." The problem is that the parties have never agreed on a formal process for choosing a joint candidate, partly because it was usually clear. The CDU is several times larger than the CSU, which only operates in Bavaria, and the two have long had a tacit understanding that the "big sister" would have the final say.    

Longstanding alliance

The alliance of their two parties, known to Germans simply as "the Union," has dominated German politics since the war, led by the likes of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Merkel. No CSU leader has ever become chancellor, but two have been the bloc's candidate, only to lose — in 1980 and in 2002.

In 1979, Franz Josef Strauß, the godfather of Bavarian politics, edged out the premier of Lower Saxony — Ernst Albrecht, the father of Ursula von der Leyen and an ally of Kohl's — in an acrimonious contest to become the candidate. The victory was short lived. Strauß not only recorded the conservatives' worst result since the war, his feud with Kohl, who would go on to win the chancellory four years later, left a deep rift in the alliance that took a generation to repair.

Söder has taken pains to point out that he and Laschet get along famously and aren't at all similar to Kohl and Strauß. Even so, the risk of a deeper split is serious enough that Wolfgang Schäuble, president of the German parliament and the only senior conservative to work closely with Kohl and Strauß, has warned against holding a vote on the candidacy in the Union parliamentary group, as happened in 1979.  

Yet Söder's camp is eager to do just that, knowing full well that their man would have a good chance of winning. While Laschet has the support of the party mandarins, his backing among conservative MPs, whose jobs depend on his success in the fall, is less secure.

Last week a group of CDU MPs from Baden-Württemberg issued a statement urging Laschet to make way for Söder, whom they called a "powerful and promising candidate." CDU chapters in Berlin and Hamburg added their voices to those calls on Monday, endorsing the Bavarian over the leader of their own party for the chancellor job. 

That support explains why Söder has decided to stand his ground and fight. If the cohesion of the Union were his primary concern, he could have made a graceful exit over the weekend after Laschet made clear he wouldn't step aside.   

Truth is, Söder has been eying the chancellor job for years and quietly waiting in the wings as the CDU struggled to sort out its leadership for the post-Merkel era. The CDU's first choice, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned suddenly last year after a short stint, saying she didn't feel she had the necessary support to continue. What followed was a lengthy contest to find a replacement that was further complicated by the pandemic. 

Even before Laschet prevailed in the race to succeed Kramp-Karrenbauer and lead the CDU in January, many questioned his suitability as a chancellor candidate. 

Söder was and remains vastly more popular. The Bavarian led the field of potential candidates to succeed Merkel in a poll released Sunday, recording 37 percent, compared to just 13 percent for Laschet. Söder has even overtaken Merkel as Germany's most popular politician, according to another poll published by Bild on Monday. 

The overwhelming public preference for Söder, steady for months, is the reason Laschet tried to make his candidacy a fait accompli on Monday by securing the backing of his party apparatus and then quickly announcing it to the world in a press conference. But, as Söder's camp pointed out, the functionaries who populate the CDU's decision-making bodies don't represent the "breadth" of the party or its base. What's more, many of them are beholden to Laschet in his position as party leader. 

The Union's parliamentary group is due to meet on Tuesday. Laschet said on Monday that the assembly wouldn't vote on a chancellor candidate, but as pressure rises, he may be powerless to halt such a step.

Even if there is a ballot, however, the result wouldn't be binding. Ultimately, the two parties have to come to an understanding, meaning that one of the men will have to back off. 

Söder said Monday he didn't expect a decision until later in the week, when he planned to organize a small CSU delegation to meet with Laschet and his team. 

In the meantime, he's betting that the public support he enjoys will convince the CDU it has no choice but to back him.

"What matters is what the voters think," he told Bild Live in an interview on Monday.

Ireland to stop giving AstraZeneca vaccine to most under 60

Posted: 12 Apr 2021 01:50 PM PDT

DUBLIN — Ireland will stop using the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on most people under the age of 60 because of the potential danger of rare blood clots, complicating a delay-prone rollout.

The government accepted its experts’ advice Monday night to restrict use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which had been earmarked for a fifth of upcoming vaccinations, particularly of health care workers and adults with high-risk medical conditions. Hospitals cancelled all clinics due to administer the vaccine on Tuesday.

Ireland joins a growing list of European countries that have stopped giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under a certain age, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany. European regulators last week confirmed a "possible link" between the jab and "very rare" cases of blood clotting, but backed continued use of it in all adults.

A government official told POLITICO that at least 50,000 people who have received a first dose of Vaxzevria — the brand name for AstraZeneca's product — could receive a different vaccine as their second dose.

The new policy specifies that second doses of Vaxzevria should be restricted to those aged 60 and older, or with high-risk conditions, while others will have their second scheduled dose delayed for four weeks.

The U-turn means Vaxzevria chiefly will be used on people in their 60s, pending more data on clotting risks. Until now, Ireland has used other vaccines for people aged 70 or older, citing insufficient clinical evidence of Vaxzevria’s efficacy on the elderly.

Ireland hopes to roll out the single-jab Janssen vaccine this month, but the restrictions on the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab raise doubts about the government's ability to meet its goal of fully inoculating the population by September.

Monday's announcement came hours after Ireland fully reopened its schools for the first time since Christmas and eased a rule requiring people to stay within 5 kilometers of their home.

The Irish have relied chiefly on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccination with about 776,000 doses administered, versus fewer than 235,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca shots.

Barely 313,000 of Ireland's 4.9 million residents have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data.
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