The Red Folder

Archived from July 8, 2024.

Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Publishing since January 2024.

International Stories

4 key international stories for the week:

1) Rishi Has Been Removed Robert Zhang

When giant projectors superimposed the words “LABOUR LANDSLIDE” onto the front of the BBC’s headquarters in London last week, the crowd gathered outside erupted in cheers and applause. Winning more than three times the seats as the Conservatives, the Labour Party had just put an end to fourteen years of Tory rule. The crushing defeat the Conservative Party faced in the United Kingdom’s recent general election - where they won a pathetic 121 seats to Labour's 412 - was not unprecedented. A myriad of grievances held by the British public, many longstanding and others more recent, culminated in the worst electoral defeat for the Conservative Party in history. It drastically altered the UK’s political landscape: not only did it usher in a new ruling party and prime minister (Keir Starmer), it also brought many smaller parties into the spotlight.

But how did this happen? Let's examine some key voting issues, and how they affected the election results.

The most important issue on voters’ minds was, surprisingly, healthcare. For years, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has experienced staffing shortages, staff strikes, and backlogs; as a result, there are 7.6 million cases on waiting lists, with the average waiting time standing at 13.9 weeks. This has largely been blamed on underinvestment, with healthcare spending growing by less than 2 percent under the Conservatives, down from 6 percent during the last Labour administration.

However, economic issues also played a large role in the election. The past 15 years have seen the lowest wage growth for generations, and the UK’s GDP per capita grew by just 4.3 percent from 2007 to 2023 - the lowest rate since 1826. Housing is also becoming increasingly unaffordable, with the average cost of a house reaching 8.3 times annual earnings, up from 6.8 times during the last Labour administration. Additionally, inflation has been exceptionally high in the last two years; while it has since declined to the lowest rate in three years, many households are plagued by a cost-of-living crisis.

Like in many other elections, migration also concerned voters. Since 2018, nearly 120,000 migrants have irregularly entered the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats; 13,195 have done so this year alone. As about 30 percent of voters consider migration to be a top priority, the Conservative Party had attempted to crack down on irregular migration, including through enacting a scheme that would deport a large number of such migrants to Rwanda for resettlement. However, not a single flight to Rwanda containing migrants has taken off, mostly due to legal challenges, frustrating many voters.

Evidently, the blame for these problems has largely fallen onto the Conservatives. As a result, other parties began to gain support - mainly Labour. While not outlining any particularly detailed policy proposals, they have grown to be widely viewed as the “anti-Conservatives.” As a result, their support has more than doubled since the UK’s last election in 2019. Interestingly, some smaller parties also rose to prominence. For example, the right-wing Reform UK party came in third, largely due to their anti-immigration stance, but did not win enough seats to meaningfully influence policymaking.

The Labour Party will begin enacting its agenda immediately. For starters, Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared the Rwanda migrant plan to be “dead and buried” on his first day of office, arguing that it had “never been a deterrent.” To replace the scheme, Labour has pledged to curb small boats crossing the English Channel by establishing a new border security command.

Starmer has also pledged to restart pay talks with junior doctors in an effort to end NHS strikes. He may even recruit a former health secretary, Alan Milburn, to help bring NHS waiting lists down.

As for economic issues, Labour has promised to increase dialogue with the EU to reverse some of the post-Brexit pains the country faces. For example, they seek to negotiate agreements on agriculture and livestock with the EU to reduce still-high food prices, and to sign deals to make it easier for British professionals to find work in EU countries. Labour also plans to ease restrictions on housing, pledging to build 1.5 million new homes in the next five years. Additionally, they may increase the minimum wage or encourage cities to adopt “living wages.”

Regardless of where you stand politically, this change in British leadership will unequivocally be one of the most impactful in the country’s history, affecting the economy, healthcare, migration, and more. While voters overwhelmingly placed their trust in Labour’s hands, we will have to wait and see if Starmer can deliver on the bold promises he has made.

Read more here:

2) France’s Second Round Election U-Turn Justin Palazzolo

‘Chaos’ is an apt word to describe French politics in the right, left, and center. After all, who can forget protests earlier this year that saw a convoy of French farmers spray cow manure on government buildings using their farm equipment. France’s recent national elections, despite a noticeable lack of animal excrement and tractor convoys, lived up to the country’s reputation with a rollercoaster swing from a right-wing advantage to a final leftist coalition victory after the second round.

The story begins with the European Parliament elections earlier this summer which saw Macron’s centrist Renew alliance trounced by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party. Despite not needing to call National Assembly elections for another 3 years, President Macron held a snap election since he claimed his government “couldn’t act as if nothing had happened”.

For Macron this was a political gamble to secure a majority for his alliance. After being unable to secure a majority in June 2022, policy paralysis encompassed Macron’s government in a divided parliament. A combination of an inactive government amid a struggling economy and Macron being forced to pass an unpopular pension reform without a vote decked his popularity to a measly 27% approval rating. For the left and members of Macron’s own party snap elections were a dangerous gamble that threatened to hand the National Assembly to the National Rally.

For the first round, the National Rally carried momentum for the EU elections with nearly a third of the votes. The New Popular Front, a leftist coalition that sprung up in the prior 3 weeks to stop the National Rally obtained 28% while Macron’s centrist obtained a weak 20%. For Le Pen and her party, this was the closest to legislative control she had ever been. Her decade-long campaign to “de-diabolize” her party from the extremist image it garnered from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man with multiple hate speech convictions and who once suggested that Ebola was the solution to the “world’s population crisis”, has produced dividends in political success. The National Rally’s anti-immigration platform and focus on the cost of living crisis found popular appeal, especially with the sentiment that France has been left behind by globalization.

For the second round and runoffs of this election, the past was certainly not an indicator of the future. In the final results, the New Popular Front was the winner of this election with 180 seats total followed by Macron’s centrists with 160 seats. The National Rally came in third with about 140 seats, still better than their previous high of 89 in 2022. This complete political reversal accompanied the New Popular Front’s platform, as an alliance of environmentalists, socialists, and the communist France Unbowed party, they promised price caps for the cost of living crisis, a reversal of Macron’s pension and immigration reforms, and increased social spending funded by a tax expansion.

So what happened between the first and second rounds of the election to swing the pendulum of the National Assembly? First, Macron’s centrists and the NPF coalition joined in an effort to prevent the right from winning. In the days after the first round 200 candidates dropped the races often to give another candidate a better chance of defeating the National Rally. Tactical voting played a major role in denying the National Rally a significant number of constituencies they led after the first round. Second, turnout was at its highest for the second round of this election over the last 2 decades. For many voters, preventing the National Rally from winning was a reason to vote, especially spurred by the National Rally’s shock success in the first round. All of these factors combined to create an electoral situation that the National Rally’s momentum simply could not weather.

The NPF’s future is not cleared of obstacles however, many of their promises such as reversing pension and immigration reforms directly conflict with the centrists since they are part of Macron’s coalition. Furthermore, the parliament is almost split three ways, while in 2022 Macron’s centrists still held a relative majority. That means the logjam that Macron faced while policymaking will be even more pronounced for the NPF. What they have inherited, in essence, is the responsibility for France’s immigration and economic crises as the largest party without the ability to pass policy promptly. If a divided parliament and political gridlock prevent solvency on France’s numerous political issues for the NPF (it likely will, considering it is set to be worse than under Macron) the National Rally could gain an even better position in the National Assembly in the next election than the 53 seats they gained in this one.

Marine Le Pen reacted to the National Rally’s shock second round by stating that for her party “Victory is only deferred”. Depending on the next 3 years of France’s politics, she might be right.

Read More Here:

3) G7 Summit: The World's Most Exclusive Club for Solving Everything... Or Trying To Sahana Srikanth

Established in 1975, the Group of Seven (G7) is an informal bloc of industrialized democracies that meet annually to discuss issues of worldwide significance. With the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom (UK), the G7’s limited membership provides them an opportunity for effective decision-making and implementation. While they have an evident platform for clear dialogue, critics have noted that they often lack follow-through and exclude developing nations.

Unlike many global institutions, the G7 is not based on a treaty and is organized through a yearly rotating presidency. Each member nation takes turns hosting the summit and prioritizing the group’s discussions. Aside from the annual meetings, other meetings can occur throughout the year, including tracks on environment, health, foreign policy, and technology. G7 also aims to highlight economic governance, international security, and artificial intelligence.

While there is no formally recognized criteria for a member nation, collectively the G7 comprises the world’s wealthiest democracies. Their contribution to global GDP is around 43%, but their share has declined significantly in past years. Their economic power allows them to finance global issues, yet past years have demonstrated how the G7 struggles with execution.

During the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, all G7 nations cut interest rates and ran larger budget deficits to stimulate growth, but divisions opened up as their consensus disintegrated. Each country wanted to prioritize different elements of economic revival, and no dominant figure emerged to support developing the world’s poorest countries.

Non-member countries are sometimes invited to be involved in G7 meetings, and while the EU is not a member of the G7, it attends the annual summits. Russia formally joined the group in 1998, as Clinton thought membership would appease Russia. However, finance ministries were cautious about conducting policy with Russia due to a small economy and large public debt. Russia’s illiberal democracy and descent towards authoritarianism provoked a strong reaction from global entities. In 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine resulted in their permanent suspension from the G7.

In June of 2024, President Biden and the G7 Leaders prepared to meet in Italy for the annual G7 summit. In line with G7 goals, The US Department of Treasury issued new measures to pressurize Russia for its actions against Ukraine, sanctioning over 300 individuals in Russia and outside its borders. The goal of this pressure was to destabilize Russia’s reliance on supplies from third countries, diminish their benefit from access to foreign technology, and suffocate Russia’s financial architecture. Russia has multiple transnational networks that launder gold and support the country’s production of unmanned aerial vehicles. US-G7 sanctions aimed to limit Russia’s creation and revenue from these investments.

During the actual G7 meeting, six main packages and agreements were reached regarding global sanctions. This included provisions of loans to Ukraine, imposing more sanctions on Russian entities, an emphasis on enforcing existing sanctions, considering more sanctions against Iran, calling on China to refrain from export controls, and prioritizing foreign investment screening. A great question the world has raised is if the G7 boasts accomplishments aside from unending sanctions. Indeed, they have attempted to achieve global goals, but their inability to align on action has hindered any meaningful progress.

For example, the G7 missed a massive opportunity to address the COVID pandemic. In December, the bloc’s nations rolled out the first COVID-19 vaccines, and produced them in record time. Yet it took them three months before the first dose had been distributed to an African nation. Over 50,000 people lost their lives to COVID before the first vaccine even entered the continent. In June of 2021, the bloc promised to vaccinate the world by 2022 to end the pandemic. Still, in 2022 scarcely 18 percent of the African continent was fully vaccinated. To put this shortfall into perspective, if Europe vaccinated its population at this rate, barely 1 in 4 people would be fully vaccinated across the continent.

The G7 has been held responsible for vaccine supply inequalities, vaccine over-purchasing, hoarding, and severely restricting access to essential supplies. Aid cuts and travel bans left many African populations at risk of sickness.

Both the UK and Canada failed to deliver even half of the number of vaccines they promised. The UK met just 39% of the 100 million doses pledged, while Canada could only meet 30% of the 50.7 million doses they announced. Richer nations had secured over half of the new Omicron mRNA COVID-19 vaccines before they were even approved for use, exacerbating inequalities that developing nations faced in vaccine access.

In 2023, the G7’s inability to empathize with developing countries was spotlit when they announced the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. This was supposed to mobilize investment in health, gender equality, and climate energy for African nations, but was met with scoffs for its true aim - countering China. It wouldn’t be the first time the G7 has led an initiative to checkmate China, but their promise of $600 billion to support infrastructure was a recipe for disaster. Given the US’ debt and past failures, such a project would become unfeasible and insincere. The G7 governments had no control over whether their private sectors would follow through, and even if their initiative succeeded, it wouldn’t replace Chinese reliance on African nations. As the Brookings Institute correctly puts it, PGII versus BRI is a false dichotomy. Unsurprisingly, many of the G7’s past projects have slowly evaporated, including the B3W (Build Back Better World, which was also an unfeasible attempt to get ‘back’ at China.

In 2022, the G7 announced that 323 million people were on the brink of starvation, and that even more would be in dire need of support by the end of the year. Yet the G7’s pledge of $4.5 billion to prevent hunger worldwide was barely a fraction of the necessary funding. Their consistent actions of promised money is simply not enough. Global critics say they could do more, like ban biofuels, cancel poor nations’ debt, tackle climate inequality, or virtually anything else. For every $1 in aid the G7 has provided, developing countries have had to pay $2 back to larger entities making bulk profits. Debt cancellation or stronger policy framework could genuinely enable countries to spend money on feeding the hungry instead of futile endeavors like repaying the world’s wealthiest.

Sadly, the problems of the past have only trickled into the present. The 2024 G7 Summit saw sanctions, yes, but beyond that, more promises of funding and grants and loans – a repetition of the pledges years ago. Italy aimed to strengthen the G7’s relationship with developing nations (quite shocking?) by inviting 12 developing countries in the Indo-Pacific, South America, and Africa. The idea is funding of 5.5 billion euros to develop African economies. Commentators suspect a distraction for Italy to crack down on African migration and position Italy as a resourceful energy hub. Internal motivation seems to drive the G7’s monetary promises. While this wouldn’t matter if their promises ended in action, it seems like future summits to come will reaffirm the truth.

History will always repeat itself – and the G7 will repeat their mistakes too.