Home secretary visits Lampedusa in Italy as National Audit Office says scheme could surpass £580m by 2030 Several flights a month will deport asylum seekers to Rwanda “indefinitely”, the home secretary has said, as he argued that the £1.8m a person cost of the scheme was justified. James Cleverly, in his first interview since the government’s plan was approved by parliament on Monday, said he had booked a succession of initial flights and was preparing to order the detention of people seeking refuge in the UK so they could be sent to east Africa ..read more

Defence secretary says PM will make case for spending boost at Nato’s 75th anniversary summit later this year UK politics – latest updates All Nato countries should boost their defence spending to 2.5% of their GDP to meet the demands of a “more dangerous world”, the UK’s defence secretary has said. Grant Shapps said the prime minister would make the case at Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington DC this summer, after accepting that while the UK was the biggest spender on defence in real terms in Europe, Poland, Greece, Estonia and Hungary all spent more as a proportion of GDP ..read more

Rights chief also warns Britain will be ‘judged harshly by history for its failure to help prevent civilian slaughter in Gaza’ The UK has been accused by Amnesty International of “deliberately destabilising” human rights on the global stage for its own political ends. In its annual global report, released today, the organisation said Britain was weakening human rights protections nationally and globally, amid a near-breakdown of international law ..read more

Former UK diplomat Tim Cole calls for a radical reset of UK foreign policy based on honesty and respect David Lammy says the UK needs a refreshed foreign policy based on “progressive realism” (Labour’s foreign policy will be realistic about us as a nation, not nostalgic about what we used to be, 17 April). This is nowhere more true than in Africa where, in many countries, the UK is seen as untrustworthy and shortsighted, short of ideas and cash, petty and not strategic. Spending the aid budget on refugees at home, hoarding vaccines during the pandemic, not living up to commitments on climate f ..read more

Rishi Sunak has announced that UK defence spending would be boosted to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. 'Over the next six years, we’ll invest an additional £75bn in our defence. And it will be fully funded with no increase in borrowing or debt,' he said on a visit to Poland, adding that UK spending would be put on a 'war footing' UK to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, Sunak says UK politics – latest updates ..read more

PM announces plan to increase spending to £87bn a year by 2030 on visit to Poland UK politics – latest updates Britain will boost its defence spending to 2.5% of national output by the end of the decade, Rishi Sunak has announced on a visit to Poland, as he warned the UK had to be equipped to meet the challenges of an increasingly dangerous world. The prime minister’s plan, under which the UK would steadily increase defence spending to £87bn a year by 2030, comes after months of pressure from Tory MPs, including the defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to increase military spending to help count ..read more

Our shabby domestic reality is a far cry from the imperial grandeur of the Foreign Office. Politicians must recognise this Deciding on what the UK’s place in the world should be has been like watching politicians spin a wheel. Then spinning it again when the option they landed on doesn’t work out. First, it was the imperial power projections of Brexit, the reassertion of Britain’s place in the world unshackled by the limitations of equal partnership with Europe. You don’t hear so much about this any more (funny that). Instead, we now find ourselves in an era chastened by the embarrassing bomba ..read more

David Redshaw is staggered by Keir Starmer’s admiration for her, Brian Hughes says her government created the illusion of an economic miracle, while Charles EL Gilman disputes her total hostility to the EU Andy Beckett’s takedown of the Thatcherite myth is timely (Margaret Thatcher set Britain’s decline in motion – so why can’t politics exorcise her ghost?, 12 April). Most remarkable is Keir Starmer’s admiration for the “entrepreneurialism” she let loose. Starmer is clearly stuck in his New Romantic era and hasn’t done his history. The biggest burst of entrepreneurship came in the pre-Thatcher ..read more

Ideas of exceptionalism and ‘laissez-faire’ policies are still driving economic myths that should be stone dead There were fateful choices in the autumn of 1931 and the months that followed whose consequences affect us today. The beliefs still current in British exceptionalism – attachment to laissez-faire economics and pursuit of the chimera of global Britain – have their roots in the choices made then, which became embedded in our culture, especially on the right. Challenging what should be stone-dead myths and reinventing a conception of what Britain can and should be demands understanding ..read more

The foreign secretary’s actions are always ‘the right thing to do’. How marvellous! Trotters up, or down? Even if you once admired Danny Dyer’s immortal summary of post-Brexit David Cameron – “He’s in Europe, in Nice, with his trotters up” – there’s a strong case for wishing he’d stayed that way. When Cameron’s trotters were up, we were at least spared the surely more distressing spectacle of his trotters blithely ascending the moral high ground. When he was in Nice he wasn’t travelling the world and, with all the authority of a man who used to press the services of Lex Greensill on his former ..read more