‘No deal with Trump without climate action,’ says Nandy
LABOUR LEADERSHIP candidate Lisa Nandy has said the UK should not strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the US if Donald Trump quits the Paris Agreement to tackle the climate crisis.
The backbench MP argued that Boris Johnson should use negotiations to pressure the US president to stay in the accord to limit temperature rises to well below 2C this century.
Setting out her vision of Britain’s role in the world after exiting the EU, Ms Nandy also defended freedom of movement and criticised Jeremy Corbyn on Russia and Brexit.
Mr Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and is working to sever US ties to the key environmental pact.
But the Wigan MP believes the Prime Minister’s trade negotiations could halt this.
“We should be clear now that we would refuse to agree any trade deal with a country that has not ratified the Paris Agreement,” she told the RSA in central London.
“We must use trade to support climate action, not hamper it.”
She praised the EU and Mr
Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama as inspirations for using trade deals to “drive up standards for people around the world”.
Asked about the ultimatum to the current president, she rejected that the position would harm the economy.
And she said the climate crisis was one of the greatest threats to the economy. “It’s not an either or and I don’t accept this false binary we’ve got to do both,” she added. Ms Nandy, who was one of Labour’s prominent voices calling for a soft Brexit after the referendum, criticised Labour’s outgoing leader and others in the Cabinet for the failure on the issue.
“We’ve allowed the right to frame the debate into a series of false binaries and in doing so allowed a fully fledged cultural war to be unleashed,” she said.
“The trap was set: you can be for your country or you can be for the world.
“And senior Labour politicians rushed headlong into it – it was a serious failure of leadership.”
She set out her internationalist vision to win back power, saying Labour has to “think bigger” than the EU and look to nations across the world for trade agreements and co-operation.
Ms Nandy is among the five contenders for Labour leadership alongside Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips, Sir Keir Starmer, and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
We must use trade to support climate action, not hamper it. Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy.
HOUSE OF Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, inset, has named two House chairmen who led President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry as prosecutors for his Senate trial.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the probe, and Judiciary Chair Representative Jerry Nadler, whose committee approved the impeachment articles, as among the managers of the prosecution.
“Today is an important day,” said Ms Pelosi, flanked by the team. “This is about the Constitution of the United States.”’
Mr Schiff and Mr Nadler will lead the seven-member team that includes a diverse selection of politicians, particularly those with courtroom experience. They include Hakeem Jeffries, Sylvia Garcia, Val Demings and Jason Crow.
Mr Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House last month on charges of abuse of power over his pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden as Mr Trump withheld aid from the country. He was also charged with obstructing Congress’ ensuing probe. The House was set to vote later in the day to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial on whether the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are grounds for his removal. The managers will then walk the articles across the Capitol to the Senate. Mr Trump’s trial will be only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history, and it comes against the backdrop of a politically divided nation. New details of Mr Trump’s efforts on Ukraine emerged late on Tuesday, increasing pressure on senators to call witnesses in the trial, a step that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been reluctant to take.