Trudeau calls it quits
On Monday the 6th, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau promised to resign from office. Upon finding a suitable replacement for leadership of the liberal party, he will step down from his 9-year long office.
The resignation was not a shock to the Canadian public, with Trudeau facing mounting pressure from within his party and among allied parties.
He personally stated that fighting ‘internal battles’ was preventing him from performing his job to the highest level.
This internal party pressure came to a head when deputy prime minister and ally, Chrystia Freeland resigned in December.
In her resignation letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of failing to address the claims made by Donald Trump over increasing tariffs on Canadian goods.
With the Canadian liberal party leaderless and losing support from its political alliances, its unclear how they will fare in the election this year and what this will mean in terms for Canada as a whole, especially with Trump closing in.
Trump’s expansion plan
In other news the president-elect Donald Trump has been making some bold claims about US expansion this week.
Through press conferences and on X, Trump has made it clear that he intended to expand US territory, even to the extent of potentially using ‘military force’ to achieve this.
On Tuesday Trump spoke at a press conference on his plans for his upcoming presidential term. He laid out his desire to economically pressure Canada into joining the US, even referring to them as the ‘51st US state’ on X.
Canadian prime minister, Trudeau, resigned only a day before over the mounting pressure within his party around this matter.
He further claimed his interest in purchasing Greenland, which is an autonomous state owned by Denmark. Although both Denmark and Greenland shut this idea down, it has caused Greenland to question its Danish ownership, which it has been entitled to leave since 2009.
Either way, Greenland does not wish to be absolved by the US, but Trump threatened that military force was not out of the question in his goal.
The final part of Trump’s expansion plan is concerning Central America, aiming to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’, as well as trying to gain possession of the Panama Canal.
The Canal is a major shipping route for thousands of companies as it’s the only way to pass through the Americas. Trump claimed that although it has been under control of Panama for 25 years, he wanted to reclaim US control in fear of Chinese influence.
Although these claims have been met with outrage from each country, it is unclear if Trump will carry these out, or if he even has the means to do so.
As with all of Trump’s statements, it is best to take them with a pinch of salt and see what comes of these bizarre plans.
Grooming gangs back in the limelight
Elon Musk struck again on X, bringing back the grooming gang debate into UK politics on Wednesday.
His comments sparked a renewed interest into the grooming gangs active in the UK, and claims that the current Labour government are involved in a cover-up.
At the beginning of the week, Musk claimed that the prosecuted far-right figurehead Tommy Robison was a political prisoner, jailed for his attempts at exposing grooming gangs.
This debate reached parliament, where both the conservative and reform party called for a review into this matter. Their request is to open a secondary inquiry, to add to the existing 2022 Jay Taylor report.
This debate is a sensitive matter as the criminals are supposedly from the Pakistani community, which has been a focus from individuals like Robinson and Rupert Lowe.
Lowe, in parliament, called for the PM to halt all Pakistani visas which is an escalation of a domestic matter to an immigration debate.
It is unclear the true extent of these gangs within the UK, however it is very unlikely that there is a government cover-up, as Starmer has promised to implement up to 20 of the suggestions from the report.
The matter is far from resolved and as far-right groups continue to gain support, cases like this one are sure to be brought to the limelight again.
