US Business

Rishi Sunak looked set for at least several years in the political wilderness after helping topple ex-prime minister Boris Johnson but then losing to Liz Truss in the summer’s Conservative leadership contest.

But her dramatic political implosion after just 44 days in office has provided an almost immediate opportunity for the Tory MP to make a renewed bid to become Britain’s first prime minister of colour.

It would be a historic landmark if the Hindu descendant of immigrants from Britain’s old empire in India and East Africa were to take command of the world’s fifth largest economy — albeit one gripped by severe crisis.

But after securing the support of more than 100 Conservative MPs and then formally declaring his candidacy on Sunday, that reality came a step closer. 

Standing in his way: former boss-turned-political foe Johnson — who he spectacularly fell out with this year — and fellow Conservative contender Penny Mordaunt, as well as another potential vote of party members.

Sunak failed in the summer leadership contest to convince the grassroots he was a better option than Truss. But having correctly predicted her economic agenda would spark economic turmoil, he may hope for more success second time around.

However, Johnson remains a favourite of the party faithful and some members see his former finance minister as a back-stabber, making any such ballot highly fraught for Sunak. 

Fabulously rich from his pre-politics career in finance, he has been mocked as out of touch with Britons struggling with decades-high inflation.

On the summer campaign trail, he wore expensive Prada loafers on a visit to a building site and faced accusations of “mansplaining” to Truss.

Video footage also emerged of a 21-year-old Sunak describing his mix of friends following his education at Winchester College, one of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, and the University of Oxford.

“I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are, you know, working class,” he said, before adding: “Well, not working class.”

– Dishy Rishi –

A details-oriented policy wonk with a background in economics, Sunak, 42, is set to market himself as a stable choice at a time of crisis.

An early backer of Brexit, he took over as chancellor of the exchequer in February 2020 — a baptism of fire for the Tory rising star as the Covid pandemic erupted.

He was forced to craft an enormous economic support package at breakneck speed, which he now insists must be paid off with sound fiscal plans.

In India, Sunak has been better known through his wife, Akshata Murty. She is the daughter of Indian tycoon Narayana Murthy, the billionaire co-founder of information technology group Infosys. 

The Sunaks met while studying in California and they have two young daughters, along with a photogenic dog. 

The ex-minister’s Instagram-friendly profile earned him the media nickname of “Dishy Rishi”.

Until last year, he held a US Green Card — which critics said suggested a lack of long-term loyalty to Britain. 

And he has been dogged by difficult questions over Murty’s failure until recently to pay UK taxes on her Infosys returns, which opinion polls suggest was viewed with deep disfavour by voters.

Sunak has also been damaged by the scandals of Johnson’s tumultuous premiership. 

He ended up with a police fine for breaching Covid rules, after joining a birthday gathering for the then-prime minister when he arrived early for a Downing Street meeting.

Johnson was also fined following an investigation into the “Partygate” affair.

Along with the controversy over his family fortune, the scandal sullied the reputation of the teetotal Sunak, who admits only to a fondness for Coca-Cola and sugary confectioneries. 

– Waiter to wealth –

Sunak represents the constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire, northern England — a safe Conservative seat he took over in 2015 from former party leader and foreign secretary William Hague, who described him as “exceptional”.

Sunak swears his oath of allegiance as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita. Theresa May gave him his first job in government in January 2018, making him a junior minister for local government, parks and troubled families.

Sunak’s grandparents were from Punjab in northern India and emigrated to Britain from eastern Africa in the 1960s.

They arrived with “very little”, Sunak told MPs in his maiden speech in 2015.

His father was a family doctor in Southampton on the southern English coas, and his mother ran a local pharmacy — a back story he never tired of telling on the leadership campaign trail.

Sunak waited tables in a local Indian restaurant, before progressing to Oxford and then Stanford University in California.

He insists that both his own family’s experience, and that of his mega-rich wife’s, are a “very Conservative” story of hard work and aspiration. 

He will soon learn if the party members can be won over at the second time of asking.

From the Pacific coast to the eastern seaboard, election denialism has seeped from US state capitols into village halls, bars and living rooms — sickening the US body politic and threatening democracy itself.

Two weeks ahead of the midterm election, Republicans up and down the ballot are embracing defeated president Donald Trump’s false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen and that voter fraud is rife.

The Washington-based Brookings Institution has identified 249 of these so-called “election deniers” — all Republicans — in the 567 races for the House, Senate and key statewide offices. 

Mark Bayer, president of Bayer Strategic Consulting and a former chief of staff in the US Senate, told AFP that US democracy was at its “highest risk of unraveling” since World War II.

“Allegiance to the ‘Big Lie’ was a major campaign theme for many deniers running for office. How might these candidates respond to losing their own elections, fair and square, in November?” he said.  

No one has ever offered proof of significant fraud in 2020, and yet the torrent of disinformation from Trump and his allies has convinced much of the country that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president.

Many of Trump’s supporters, such as Terri Privett, a Republican interviewed by AFP at a recent political event in Vero Beach, Florida, have been won over by his fallacious argument that his large crowds relative to Biden’s prove he was cheated. 

“You’ve got one guy that’s in office who got empty circles around him, you know that they stole the election. Then you go to a Trump rally and there’s like thousands upon thousands trying to get in,” the 53-year-old cable company employee told AFP.

– Five-alarm fire –

Trump, who endorsed more than 200 Republicans in their nominating contests for November’s election, made belief in his “Big Lie” a prerequisite for his support.

“Political analyses indicate that most democracies do not end by revolution or military coup but erode from within,” said Barbara Wejnert, an internationally-renowned political sociologist who teaches at the University of Buffalo.

“And that could be the case for American democracy if election deniers are elected, as well as if Trump is elected again as the president.”

None of this would matter if the controversial candidates were fringe outsiders. But their elevation to the mainstream is a five-alarm fire, according to activists.

Brookings estimates that 145 of the 249 election deniers — 58 percent — look highly likely to win their races. 

Vindicating fears for democracy, almost half are sitting House members who voted to bar certification of the 2020 presidential election, despite having no evidence of malfeasance.

When it comes to the fight for democracy, the most important races are in the 39 states electing governors, attorneys general or secretaries of state. 

These officials manage elections, oversee vote tallying and certify results, making them the front line in the defense of US democracy. 

Lobby group States United Action estimates that 58 percent of the population, living in 29 states, has an election denier running to oversee their elections. 

– ‘Democracy is fragile’ –

University of Southern California professor Ann Crigler, who has written extensively on politics and the news media, echoed fears that defeated election deniers would attempt to undermine faith in their result.

But the victors would present a bigger problem, because they would be in positions of power to change election rules to the advantage of their favored candidates.

“Democracy is fragile and vulnerable to corruption if not for vigilant, honest participants in the process of voting and governing,” Crigler told AFP.

Adding to the concern, the battlegrounds with the highest number of election-denying candidates — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia — are almost all crucial swing states that invariably decide who controls Congress and the White House. 

“Making things up or denying the facts is fundamentally undemocratic. In short, by denying what the evidence tells us, you risk the very foundations of our democracy,” said John Geer, dean of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University.

“(A) functioning democracy requires fidelity to the accomplishments of those in power. If things are bad, let the other side rule. If things are good, support the status quo,” he said. 

“But if we are untethered by evidence, we no longer have accountability. We, therefore, risk the very democratic freedoms our founders fought for, if we ignore evidence.”

Months without rain have left farmers across the vast US Midwest, part of the country’s essential “breadbasket,” seeing crop yields in freefall, with some fields too damaged to harvest.

At the 4,000-acre (1,600-hectare) Tucker Farms in Venango, Nebraska, “we were only able to harvest… around 500” acres, most of it wheat, said Rachel Tucker.

Much of the rest had shriveled up under a relentlessly hot sun.

The drought has attracted grasshoppers, which threatened the flowers the Tuckers also grow — until they brought in praying mantises to control the winged pests.

If the American West has been suffering through water shortages for years, the Midwest has not seen conditions this bad since 2012.

“It’s even worse than 2012,” said Tucker. “Much worse.”

Her husband, whose grandfather farmed these same fields, says things have not been this bad since the so-called Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.

The story is just as grim to the south, in western Kansas.

“I was catching up with some older farmers this morning,” said Marc Ramsey, whose family has farmed near the small town of Scott City for nearly a century.

“Guys that are in their 70s and 80s are saying, you know, they haven’t even experienced anything like this in their lifetime. So it’s pretty bad.”

Rainfall has been almost nonexistent since late July, he said. Two inches “was all we’ve had, basically all year.” 

Rex Buchanan, director emeritus of the Kansas Geological Survey, said one thing seems different from the dry years of 2010-2012: “It seems like when the rain shut off, it just completely shut off.”

– Dwindling groundwater –

Drought has hit the three major US crops: wheat, corn and soybeans, and the US Department of Agriculture recently had to lower its nationwide yield predictions. 

Along With Kansas and Nebraska, the Midwestern state of South Dakota has also been hard-hit.

In normal times, these three states provide one-third of US winter wheat production, and one-fourth of the corn output. 

Approximately 30 percent of Marc Ramsey’s land is irrigated and, meaning that portion is doing better than his other fields. Tucker Farms’ single irrigated field also fares better than the others. 

But even some of Ramsey’s irrigated fields are producing only 80 bushels of corn per acre, less than half the usual rate.

High levels of water usage have led to “pretty dramatic declines” in aquifers across western Kansas, Buchanan said, adding that farmers in some areas “have really struggled.”

“They’ve seen some wells go dry. They’ve had to return to dryland farming,” meaning without irrigation.

– ‘You just worry’ –

With water rights strictly limited, Buchanan said some farmers have banded together in agreements on more cautious use of subterranean water, drawing as much as 20 percent less than permitted. 

Ramsey, like the Tuckers, carries crop insurance covering exceptional losses.

But a year like 2022 can push up premiums, which were already rising due to increased commodity costs.  

Insurance “covers your cost of productivity, for the most part,” Ramsey said. “And so we’ll be here next year and try it again.”

But insurance doesn’t refill dwindling aquifers — something that autumn rains usually take care of.

The lack of soil moisture “will be a concern going forward into winter and next spring without a change in what we are currently seeing,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Though Buchanan says that “there’s certainly an awareness (among farmers) about climate change,” despite the political sensitivity of the subject in the United States. 

Farming is always difficult and unpredictable work — and in years like this, said farmer Rachel Tucker, “you just worry about the suicide rate.”

“So I’m hoping that everybody can stay in high spirits, and hope for the best next year.”

Thousands of people, including many of Iranian origin, marched Saturday in Washington to show support for nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini last month.

They chanted slogans such as “Women, life, freedom” and “Justice for Iran” as they walked from the National Mall — the vast green expanse that is home to the Washington Monument — to the White House.

Siamak Aram, one of the organizers, said attendance would surpass 10,000 by the end of the procession and that this was the fifth such rally in Washington, in solidarity with women-led protests in Iran that are now in their sixth week.

“I believe this is the biggest one,” Aram told AFP.

Some of the protesters came from other cities such as a 28-year-old woman from Boston who gave her name only as Mahshid and wore a T-shirt that read “Help free Iran.”

“We do not want this tyrant regime anymore, who is banning us from our simple human rights and from our freedom,” said Mahshid, who left Iran three years ago to complete a master’s degree in architecture in the United States. Like other people at the rally, she declined to give her last name, fearing for kin that remain in Iran.

One sign held by a young woman had a hair strand attached to it and read: “Our hair may offend you but our mind will end you.”

Amini died last month in police custody after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women. Her death has fueled the biggest protests seen in the Islamic republic for years.

Other rallies in support of the protesters in Iran were also held Saturday in Berlin and Tokyo.

In Washington, a woman named Marjan, aged 55, said she was pleased that the rally featured both people who have lived in Iran and others who have not.

“You see different ages, different religions, different beliefs,” Marjan said.

A childhood friend of hers named Negar was visiting from Britain, where she said she has also attended rallies like this.

“This is an amazing revolution led by women really, and they’re the most oppressed people in Iran,” said Negar, 53.

Of Saturday’s march in Washington, she said: “The least we can do is be here.”

Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni was sworn in as Italian prime minister on Saturday, promising to work closely with her international partners, despite the divergent views of her coalition allies.

The first woman to head an Italian government, Meloni took the oath before President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, once home to popes and kings of Italy.

“Ready to work with NATO, that is more than a military alliance: a bulwark of common values we’ll never stop standing for,” she tweeted in response to a message of congratulations from its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

And she was equally positive in her response to congratulations from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Italy is and will always be on the side of the brave people of Ukraine that is fighting for its freedom and for a rightful peace.”

Her post-fascist Brothers of Italy party — eurosceptic and anti-immigration — won the September 25 legislative polls, but needed outside support to form a government.

But her pledge to work closely with NATO and back Ukraine contrasted with the stances of her partners in her coalition government, who are both considered close to Russia.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, is a long-time fan of President Vladimir Putin. So, too, is former premier Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia.

Berlusconi was this week heard in a leaked recording talking about his warm ties with Moscow and appearing to blame Russia’s war in Ukraine on Zelensky.

– Salvini as deputy –

Meloni’s appointment is an historic event for the eurozone’s third largest economy and for Brothers of Italy, which has never been in government.

It won 26 percent of the vote last month, compared to eight and nine percent respectively for Forza Italia and the far-right League.

Meloni’s 24-strong cabinet, including six women, suggests a desire to reassure Italy’s partners. She appointed Giancarlo Giorgetti as economy minister, who served under the previous government of Mario Draghi.

Giorgetti, a former minister of economic development, is considered one of the more moderate, pro-Europe members of Salvini’s League.

Meloni also named ex-European Parliament president Antonio Tajani, of Forza Italia, as foreign minister and deputy prime minister.

Salvini will serve as deputy prime minister and minister of infrastructure and transport, which will likely disappoint Salvini.

He wanted the role of interior minister, a post he previously held between 2018 and 2019. That went instead to a technocrat, Rome prefect Matteo Piantedosi.

A formal ceremony for the handover of power from Draghi to Meloni will take place on Sunday before the premier leads the first cabinet meeting.

– ‘Constructive cooperation’ –

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Meloni.

“I count on and look forward to constructive cooperation with the new government on the challenges we face together,” she tweeted on Saturday. European Parliament speaker Roberta Metsola tweeted in Italian that “Europe needs Italy”.

Von der Leyen and Meloni later held telephone talks, which the Commission chief described as “good”, adding: “We will work together to address the critical challenges of our time, from Ukraine to energy.”

US President Joe Biden congratulated Meloni and called Italy a “vital NATO ally and close partner”.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz also congratulated her on Twitter in English, adding: “I look forward to continue working closely together with Italy in EU, NATO and G7.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said it was a “big day for the European Right”.

The talks to form a government had been overshadowed by disagreements with her two would-be coalition partners.

Italian news media made much of the recorded comments by Berlusconi praising Putin, remarks he insists have been taken out of context.

Salvini, too, is a long-time fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has criticised Western sanctions on Russia.

Despite her eurosceptic stance however, Meloni has been firm in her support for Ukraine, in line with the rest of the European Union and the United States.

But the tensions with her coalition partners are already raising questions as to whether she will be able to maintain a parliamentary majority in Italy’s notoriously volatile parliamenary system.

– Challenges ahead –

Meloni’s coalition wants to renegotiate Italy’s portion of the EU’s post-Covid recovery fund. 

It argues the almost 200 billion euros ($197 billion) it expects to receive should take into account the current energy crisis, exacerbated by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has hit supplies of Russian gas to Europe.

But the funds are tied to a series of reforms only just begun by Draghi’s government, and analysts say Meloni has limited room for manoeuvre.

Meloni had campaigned on a platform of “God, country and family”, sparking fears of a regression on rights in the Catholic-majority country.

Pro-Russian authorities on Saturday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city “immediately” in the face of Kyiv’s advancing counter-offensive.

The call came as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a “massive attack” on Ukraine, following reported strikes on energy infrastructure that resulted in power outages across the country.

And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became the latest world leader to reproach Moscow for its talk of using nuclear weapons.

Kyiv’s forces have been advancing along the west bank of the Dnipro river, towards the Kherson region’s eponymous main city.

Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow’s troops, and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

In recent days, Russia has been moving residents in the region — which Moscow claims to have annexed in September — east to Russia, in efforts Kyiv has denounced as “deportations”.

“Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank” of the Dnipro river, the region’s pro-Russian authorities announced on social media.

A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had made the crossing.

Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said Russians were removing property and documents from banks and the passport office as they withdrew.

Ukraine’s general staff said Moscow’s forces had abandoned two more settlements in Kherson and were evacuating medical personnel from a third, accusing them of looting local civilians.

– A ‘serious threat’ –

Earlier Saturday, Japan’s Kishida denounced Moscow’s comments regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

“Russia’s act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

The 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use “must not be ended”, said Kishida, speaking in Australia.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

Earlier this month, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that the Russian army would be “annihilated” if Russia launched such an attack.

Washington has also warned Moscow of “catastrophic” consequences should they use such weapons.

Japan is the only country ever to have been hit with nuclear weapons: the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people, and the second US bomb on Nagasaki, three days later, which killed 74,000 people.

– Air defence ‘highest priority’ –

In his evening address Saturday, Zelensky said Ukraine was working with international partners to extend sanctions to “all Russian propagandists, so-called ‘opinion leaders’ and show business representatives who support or justify terror”.

Russian media workers and celebrities who had backed Russia’s invasion “should receive a full package of individual sanctions so that they can’t do anything around the world at all”, he added.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that he had had his first call with Italy’s newly appointed foreign minister Antonio Tajani.

Wishing him success, Kuleba stressed that Ukraine’s “highest priority” was to “swiftly receive air defence systems”.

Russian air strikes on energy facilities across the country have left more than a million households in Ukraine without electricity, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency Kyrylo Tymoshenko said earlier on Saturday.

Fresh strikes targeted energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s west, Ukraine’s energy operator Ukrenergo said on social media, and officials in several regions of the war-scarred country reported power outages.

“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Zelensky said earlier Saturday. “The world can and must stop this terror.”

Power outages were reported in other parts of the country and local officials repeated calls to reduce energy use. Some parts of Ukraine have already cut their electricity use by up to 20 percent, according to Ukrenergo.

In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, at least two civilians were killed in strikes on Saturday, according to the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Nearly 15,000 people were left without electricity, he added.

Russia last week reported a “considerable increase” in Ukrainian fire into its territory, saying attacks had largely concentrated on Belgorod region and neighbouring regions of Bryansk and Kursk.

Pro-Russian authorities on Saturday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city “immediately” in the face of Kyiv’s advancing counter-offensive.

It comes as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a “massive attack” on Ukraine, following reported strikes on energy infrastructure that resulted in power outages across the country.

And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became the latest world leader to reproach Moscow for its talk of using nuclear weapons.

Kyiv’s forces have been advancing along the west bank of the Dnipro river, towards the Kherson region’s eponymous main city.

Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow’s troops, and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

In recent days, Russia has been moving residents in the region — which Moscow claims to have annexed in September — east to Russia, in efforts Kyiv has denounced as “deportations”.

“Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank” of the Dnipro river, the region’s pro-Russian authorities announced on social media.

A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had made the crossing.

Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said Russians were removing property and documents from banks and the passport office as they withdrew.

Ukraine’s general staff said Moscow’s forces had abandoned two more settlements in Kherson and were evacuating medical personnel from a third, accusing them of looting local civilians.

– A ‘serious threat’ –

Earlier Saturday, Japan’s Kishida denounced Moscow’s comments regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

“Russia’s act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

The 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use “must not be ended”, said Kishida, speaking in Australia.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

Earlier this month, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that the Russian army would be “annihilated” if Russia launched such an attack.

Washington has also warned Moscow of “catastrophic” consequences should they use such weapons.

Japan is the only country ever to have been hit with nuclear weapons: the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people, and the second US bomb on Nagasaki, three days later, which killed 74,000 people.

– ‘Afraid for our lives’ –

At a train station in the town of Dzhankoy in the north of Crimea, a peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Kherson residents were boarding a train for southern Russia, an AFP reporter saw Friday.

“We are leaving Kherson because heavy shelling started there, we are afraid for our lives,” said Valentina Yelkina, a pensioner travelling with her daughter. 

More than a million households in Ukraine have been left without electricity following Russian strikes on energy facilities across the country, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Saturday.

Fresh Russian strikes targeted energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s west, the national operator said earlier, with officials in several regions of the war-scarred country reporting power outages as winter approaches.

Russians “carried out another missile attack on energy facilities of the main networks of Ukraine’s western regions”, Ukraine’s energy operator Ukrenergo said on social media.

“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” said Zelensky. “The world can and must stop this terror.”

Power outages were reported in other parts of the country and local officials repeated calls to reduce energy use. Some parts of Ukraine have already cut their electricity use by up to 20 percent, according to Ukrenergo.

“Saturday in Ukraine starts with a barrage of Russian missiles aimed at critical civilian infrastructure,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. He once again urged Kyiv’s allies to hasten the delivery of air defence systems.

In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, at least two civilians were killed in strikes on Saturday, according to the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. Nearly 15,000 people were left without electricity, he added.

Russia last week reported a “considerable increase” in Ukrainian fire into its territory, saying attacks had largely concentrated on Belgorod region and neighbouring regions of Bryansk and Kursk.