Britain is open to Germany joining the sixth-generation jet fighter Global Combat Air Programme led by the U.K., Italy and Japan, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Thursday.

“I’ve indicated to the chancellor in our discussion… our openness to Germany joining GCAP,” Burnham said in Berlin during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“That is something we seek to progress in the coming period working with our other partners Italy and Japan in relation to that as well,” he added.

POLITICO reported last month that Berlin has held exploratory talks about participating in GCAP after Germany’s combat aircraft plans with France collapsed earlier this year.

“This is neither a decision nor a preliminary decision. It is a first, small step in Germany’s efforts to seek—and possibly find—partnerships in this area,” said a senior German official, who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity.

“We are at a very early stage in reassessing our options. Germany has not made a decision yet. It is exploring all possible avenues,” they said. “However, you are aware of the chancellor’s position that he favors a European solution rather than Germany acting alone.”

Earlier this year, Canada became the first observer nation in GCAP, which could be a pathway to full future membership. Other possible members include Saudi Arabia.

However, the three GCAP members have been wary of opening the club, worrying about less work for each partner nation or delays to the program.

The CEO of Italian defense firm Leonardo, which is part of the GCAP industrial coalition within the program, said in July that if another country wants to join the program, it needs to happen within the next 12 months.

The British leader also outlined a new partnership with Germany to counter hybrid threats from countries such as Russia.

“The defense ministries have been tasked with exploring ways to expand this partnership,” said the German official.

LONDON — Germany wants the U.K. to raise tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for protection from Made in Europe rules, according to a person familiar with Berlin’s position.

Friedrich Merz’s government believes the move would show reciprocity on trade and counter accusations from other EU member states that Britain is trying to “cherry pick” the benefits of EU membership, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.

It comes as Prime Minister Andy Burnham met with the German chancellor on his first official visit to the country this week.

Burnham and Merz were due to talk about possibilities for Britain’s future relationship with the EU — after the British prime minister put rejoining the bloc back on the table of U.K. politics for the first time in a decade.

Berlin’s position on EV tariffs is significant as Germany has broadly backed a tolerant policy towards the U.K. on trade matters since Brexit — in contrast to more hard-line positions taken by countries like France.

The EU is in the process of drawing up new Made in Europe rules that would favor European producers over those outside the bloc — in response to trade practices by competitors like China and the United States.

The U.K. is worried that the measures will hit British business — especially automakers — and wants assurances from Brussels that it will get an opt out. If Berlin gets its way, those assurances could be dependent on emulating EU trade policy with regard to Chinese EVs.

Predatory strategy

Germany’s vaunted car industry, arguably the jewel in the country’s economic crown, has faced stiff competition from Chinese imports in recent years.

EU countries have accused China of dumping low-cost, state-subsidized electric vehicles into the European market and in December 2024 imposed countervailing duties as high as 35.3. percent on some manufacturers.

Industry Commissioner Stephane Séjourné accused China of pursuing a deliberate “predatory strategy” with state subsidies to the tune of €10,000 per vehicle.

The U.K.’s Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told POLITICO last month that the government was keeping tariffs “under review, to be frank, more closely than lots of other issues” and that “different parts of our own sector want different things from” the government’s policy.

Hamish Falconer, the U.K.’s minister for European relations, told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook Podcast this week that he was “surprised” at reports tariffs might be a condition of Made in Europe opt-outs, adding: “That’s not the kind of conversation that I’m having with my European counterparts.”

Going ahead with higher tariffs risks alienating Beijing, which has expressed serious concerns about the policy. It would also raise the price of electric vehicles on the market, potentially making it harder for the government to meet its decarbonization targets.

LONDON — Zack Polanski promised to smash Britain’s two-party political system — but his campaign for a U.K. parliamentary seat has leaned heavily on the idea that he can keep the existing prime minister honest.

POLITICO analysis of the online battleground in the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – which takes place Thursday — shows the Green leader has been pitching himself as a protest vote for Labour-backing constituents in the London seat, which has been held by Labour since its creation in 1983.

The party has spent nearly £5,000 pushing ads on Meta’s platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, promising that a Green win would help “keep the government in check.”

In one campaign video, Polanski takes credit for a series of Labour U-turns on their “most unpopular policies” over the last 12 months. A victory in the seat, he claims, would add further pressure on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to listen to the Greens, rather than “Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, or their corporate donors.”

An additional £7,000 has been spent by the party promoting graphics of recent newspaper headlines it thinks demonstrate the influence it holds over Burnham’s Labour government — including a Guardian story flagging a possible delay on North Sea gas field decisions until after the by-election.

“When Zack Polanski speaks, Labour listens. That is the power of the leader of the Green Party,” the accompanying ad copy states.

Building Brand Zack

The by-election marks Polanski’s first attempt to win a seat in the House of Commons.

The left-wing leader oversaw a rapid polling increase for the Greens after taking charge in September 2025, snatching a Labour safe seat in Gorton and Denton under former Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer the following February.

But its polling momentum appears to have stalled since Labour switched to Burnham, and the party has also faced internal rows over anti-semitism.

The party has spent around £8,000 on targeted ads highlighting endorsements for Polanski from local residents, including former independent candidates and NHS workers.

And at least £500 of that has been spent promoting effusive praise of the Green leader from his own local hairdresser.

Alongside a picture of the pair hugging, barber Rami is quoted saying: “I’ve been cutting Zack’s hair for years. When you chat to him you can tell how much he really cares.”

A significant number of the showcased endorsements come from former Labour backers and members as Polanski seeks to convince voters that Burnham’s majority — and the mid-term timing of the contest — means they can register a protest vote in the symbolic seat previously held by Starmer.

One standalone advert features former Labour member Gopa, who says: “We all know there will still be a Labour government whoever wins, so I’m excited for a Green candidate who will listen to us and help push Labour to do better.”

Other endorsements include a Labour member of three decades who says she is now backing Polanski after her former party “lost its way and let me down.” Ex-Labour councillor Naser says he’s switched his allegiance to “keep the pressure on, and keep Labour in check.”

The Labour pitch

By contrast, Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali has kept her campaign local.

She has spent more than £21,000 with Meta promoting dozens of slick cinematic clips and polished graphics pitching herself as a “local champion.”

Supported by Labour’s well-oiled digital team, Abdi-Wali’s online campaign focuses heavily on her experience of arriving in the area as a child refugee, and her subsequent career as a local councillor.

Labour has also pumped more than £20,000 into Google’s ad program. The majority of that sum was spent on bitesize YouTube ads, with the remainder spent on buying up sponsored Google search results in an attempt to grab the attention of voters hunting for information about the contest.

Also running

Britain’s hard-right Restore Britain has also been making a pitch to voters in Holborn and St Pancras — while openly admitting it has no chance of winning in “one of the most left-wing seats in Britain.”

Rupert Lowe’s party has spent around £30,000 on Meta ads positioning itself as a “genuine patriotic alternative” to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK — which has not spent significant cash in the contest.

Restore’s spending included £1,500 promoting a “quiz” comparing comments from Reform politicians with Restore’s more hard-line agenda. A further £2,000 went on promoting a graphic of the “ten reasons” why voters should support it.

That list includes removing “millions of foreign nationals who hate who we are,” a promise to “reverse the Islamification” of London, deport “foreign tramps who ruin our city” and force “healthy” benefit claimants to clean graffiti and pick litter.

In a further attempt to present his insurgent party as a credible alternative to Reform or the Conservatives, Lowe’s paid online content repeatedly describes the by-election as a “free hit” for right-wing voters to “vote with your heart.”

“They don’t want the capital reformed, or conserved,” one paid ad states. “They want London restored.”

The Trump administration pressured diplomatic officials from the EU, Canada and Lithuania to pull out of an international conference on disinformation after organizers announced panels warning of the threat posed by American government officials and the country’s influence broadly, according to excerpts of a State Department cable seen by POLITICO.

The conference, titled #Disinfo2026, included sessions that described the U.S. as a “foreign information manipulation and interference” actor, or “FIMI,” which bothered the Trump administration, according to the cable. The conference is being held Wednesday and Thursday in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The State Department asked American embassies in several European countries and the EU to express Washington’s concerns and “assess” whether the governments involved in the conference agree with the U.S. being characterized as a FIMI actor, according to the cable.

FIMI is an EU term used to describe activities that try to distort public information, such as spreading disinformation online, usually by foreign actors such as Russia. The conference conflates the U.S. with “foreign adversaries like Russia and China,” which is a “false equivalence” that “obscures the scale and nature of Russian and Chinese interference in our democracies,” the cable states.

The demarche request appears to be an unusual administration effort to use allied government pressure to silence criticism from European citizens and Americans abroad (three U.S. citizens appeared on one of the panels that prompted the cable). It also marks an acceleration of the Trump administration’s years-long pressure campaign on the continent, which includes U.S. criticism of perceived EU censorship.

The recipients of the cable included U.S. embassies in France, Norway, Romania and Poland. The embassies each were told to tell their hosts — verbally, not in writing — that the U.S. was unhappy with the panels on American disinformation, according to the cable and a U.S. official, who, like others, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

One of those panels, titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back” featured two American researchers and a former CIA official and looked at how the U.S. had become a disinformation threat to Europe. Another, titled “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure,” asked legal experts to weigh in on the threat of U.S. government travel bans against European figures.

The State Department asked some of those countries — but not all — to reconsider participating in the event, said the U.S. official familiar with the cable, which came from the secretary of State’s office.

Officials from Norway, Romania and Poland still appear on the conference agenda. Spokespeople for the ministries of foreign affairs in Norway, Romania and Poland did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. officials also contacted France’s Foreign Ministry, but it did not withdraw from the conference.

The Trump administration and its allies have repeatedly tried to pressure EU allies to align with Washington’s standards of free speech, which some in Europe consider to be too broadly defined. These efforts have included public criticism, closed-door lobbying against EU laws and visa restrictions for Europeans.

Domestically, the administration has dismantled U.S. government organizations that fight disinformation, including at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans have also taken issue with some European laws that force social media platforms to be more active in combating false information online, such as laws requiring age verification for potentially harmful content, which some have said amount to censorship.

As of Monday, Canada and Lithuania asked organizers to remove their ministry logos from conference materials, according to a conference participant, and the European External Action Service followed on Tuesday. European news site Rapporteur first reported on the removal of the foreign ministry logos.

“To me, I see a very strange reaction from the State Department to a conference of researchers using our First Amendment free speech rights to talk about how to stop lying and manipulation that undermines democracy and hurts our families and hurts our children,” said Adam Fivenson, who works for the Center for Security, Innovation and New Technology at American University and was on one of the panels the Trump administration took issue with. This panel still proceeded as scheduled.

The cable also notes that top officials in the State Department’s global public diplomacy section reached out directly to Canadian officials to express frustrations with Ottawa’s participation in the conference. This part of the State Department, led by Sarah Rogers, handles the public-facing aspects of diplomacy that are aimed at building support for U.S. goals among foreign populations.

Asked for comment, the State Department said in a statement: “While we are unable to comment on the details of diplomatic conversations, it should not be a surprise that countries would disaffiliate from this conference upon learning that it labeled the U.S. a ‘FIMI threat.’ Labeling the United States a ‘FIMI threat’ — a term normally reserved for describing influence operations of adversaries — undermines shared goals and should alarm those involved.”

After speaking with U.S. officials, Canada and Lithuania pulled their support from the conference, meaning they don’t appear on panels or in conference materials. The EU’s External Action Service, its diplomatic arm, was also removed from official programming.

Images reviewed by POLITICO show conference banners with the logos of all Canadian, Lithuanian, and EU diplomatic services covered. France remains the sole “main supporter.”

Spokespeople for the EEAS and Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry both said they withdrew because some of the conference programming didn’t align with their official positions, though they did not specify what those positions are.

The cable draws a clearer line between U.S. engagement with Lithuania and Canada and their decision to pull public support for the conference. After speaking to the local U.S. embassy, “Lithuania’s Foreign Minister [Kęstutis] Budrys stated the U.S.-focused sessions did not represent the views of the Lithuanian government and committed that no one from Lithuania MFA would participate,” the cable reads.