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Britain Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on August 27, 2016 8 Comments
Despite concerns that Prime Minister Theresa May will not uphold the June 23rd Brexit vote, it doesn't look like she is willing to let a three-ring circus develop in which protesters tout bogus climate change links to Brexit or equally bogus claims of economic doom. The Telegraph is reporting that she will invoke Article 50—the mechanism outlined in the Lisbon Treaty for leaving the European Union—without a vote in the Commons, thus denying the "Remain" supporters the opportunity to block or delay Brexit. The Telegraph reports:
Theresa May will not hold a parliamentary vote on Brexit before opening negotiations to formally trigger Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, The Telegraph has learned. Opponents of Brexit claim that because the EU referendum result is advisory it must be approved by a vote in the Commons before Article 50 - the formal mechanism to leave the EU - is triggered. However, in a move which will cheer Eurosceptics, The Telegraph has learned that Mrs May will invoke Article 50 without a vote in Parliament

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 25, 2016 2 Comments
In January 2016, we addressed the rising tide of aggressive and sometimes violent conduct by anti-Israel protesters who disrupt appearances by Israeli and pro-Israel speakers, Anti-Israel protest at Kings College turns violent:
For several years we have been documenting the increasingly aggressive tactics of anti-Israel protesters on campus. Recently, an Israeli professor’s guest lecture was disrupted at the University of Minnesota Law School, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee at UT-Austin (led by law student Mohammed Nabulsi) disrupted an Israeli Studies event....

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 22, 2016 5 Comments
It looks like British Prime Minister Theresa May has become the next Margaret Thatcher as she dominated her first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs). She said:
You refer to me as the second woman Prime Minister, in my years here in this House I've long heard the Labour Party asking what the Conservative Party does for women - well, just keep making us Prime Minister.
Then she railed against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 17, 2016 11 Comments
The Brexit vote that resulted in David Cameron stepping down has also prompted a range of apocolyptic fear-mongering that British trade would collapse. In fact, numerous countries are beginning to explore free trade deals with Britain after its EU exit.  With the 2019 date for Britain's exit from the EU looming, the United States and Australia have emerged "at the front of queue" to line up trade deals.  Such deals with just these two countries "alone could be worth billions of pounds to the British economy." Australia, in particular, sees the opportunity to open up trading with Britain as a "matter of urgency." The Guardian reports:
Australia has called for a free-trade deal with Britain as soon as possible, in a boost for the newly appointed prime minister, Theresa May. In a phone call on Saturday, May spoke to her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, who expressed his desire to open up trading between the two countries as a matter of urgency.
For her part, May states her belief that these talks are important in terms of showing that Brexit can work out well for Britons.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 11, 2016 6 Comments
Energy Secretary Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race for prime minister on Monday morning, leaving Home Secretary Theresa May as the only candidate left standing. Current Prime Minister David Cameron said he will leave on Wednesday since there is no need for an election. The Conservative Party officially named May as his successor:
"Obviously, with these changes, we now don't need to have a prolonged period of transition. And so tomorrow I will chair my last cabinet meeting. On Wednesday I will attend the House of Commons for prime minister's questions. And then after that I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation. So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening," Cameron told reporters outside 10 Downing Street on Monday.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 07, 2016 5 Comments
The United Kingdom will have its second female prime minister after David Cameron resigned when the kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The second ballot pushed Home Secretary Theresa May and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom to the front. Justice Secretary Michael Gove came in third, thus eliminating him from the race. Conservative members will vote for the next prime minister and announce the winner on September 9.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 12 Comments
British Prime Minister David Cameron told Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to leave his post, a day after his party passed a no confidence motion against him. "It might be my party's interest for him to sit there, it's not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven's sake, man, go!" he said at the House of Commons. (Video after the jump)

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 27, 2016 8 Comments
People inside the Labour Party have accused party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his office of hampering the party's campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. From The London Times:
Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, said that it often felt as if figures in the leader’s office were “working against the rest of the party and had conflicting objectives”.

Posted by New Neo on June 26, 2016 19 Comments
To be quite blunt about it, a great many people in Britain have just given a big middle finger to leaders who have ignored their concerns about national identity and autonomy, and their right to make decisions within their own country about the nature of that country. These principles used to be the bulwarks of a democracy such as Britain, with a long and proud tradition that has not yet died. Although the EU plan was designed to weaken that tradition---and probably has to a certain extent---the tradition is still strong enough, and the provocation great enough, to cause a majority of British voters to give a big resounding "no" to an EU scheme they've found to be increasingly intolerable, with diminishing rewards and increasing drawbacks. Anti-EU feeling among the people of member-states isn't limited to Britain, although it may be strongest there because Britain was a relative latecomer to the EU and retains some of its non-continental island identity. But nationalist movements are afoot in France, and Donald Trump represents the American version (although of course we're not in the EU and therefore have no need to vote to get out of it).

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 25, 2016 31 Comments
Could there have been bona fide reasons for Brexit? Not if you believe Joy Reid. On her MSNBC show today, Reid suggested that old and rural voters, who tended to vote Leave, had "hijacked the future of the young." She also blamed voter discontent on Prime Minister David Cameron's "austerity" program. Guess Reid reckons that people would have been happier with a UK that looked like Greece. Ron Insana chimed in to suggest that older voters were "re-romanticizing" their past, leading Reid to see a symmetry with Trump campaign, which she claims is being driven by the "nostalgia voter."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 25, 2016 79 Comments
I must admit, few arguments related to the "settled science" of climate change astonish me anymore. But until today I failed to fully appreciate the extent of eco-activist creativity! Panicked progressives are now asserting the Britain's vote to leave the European Union will cause adverse effects on the environment. Yes....#Brexit will cause Climate Change.
Despite being an issue that knows no borders, affects all and is of vital interest to future generations, the environment was low on the agenda ahead of the UK’s historic vote to leave the European Union. The short answer to what happens next with pollution, wildlife, farming, green energy, climate change and more is we don’t know – we are in uncharted territory. But all the indications – from the “red-tape” slashing desires of the Brexiters to the judgment of environmental professionals – are that the protections for our environment will get weaker.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 24, 2016 28 Comments
The reaction to the British vote to leave the EU focuses heavily on the money. It will cost Britain jobs. The Pound is getting pounded. The EU will extract a price as bureaucratic retribution. Britain shot itself in the economy. The departure allegedly will destroy young people, female workers, the arts, science, universities and students, just about everything else British, and even .... Massachusetts! The pre-vote analysis summed up the issues broadly as follows: "Remain" voters focused on the economy, while "Leave" voters focused on immigration, sovereignty, loss of control to the EU bureaucracy.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on April 29, 2016 2 Comments
In the latest of a series of damaging embarrassments, Britain's Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has suspended two Labour MPs for anti-Semitic comments.  Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone were suspended for suggesting Israel should be relocated to the United States, and suggesting that Hitler was a Zionist.

Labour and Corbyn

Labour, Corbyn, Shah and Livingstone each have a history of anti-Semitic incidents.  In February, Legal Insurrection reported on the Oxford University’s Labor Club (OULC)'s anti-Semitism scandal, including the resignation of its President and a slew of complaints by other OULC members.  While the Conservative government ordered an investigation, we wrote in February:
The devil’s in the details, though.  Even the good news that the government will investigate apparently rampant anti-Semitism on UK campuses has strings attached.  Former OULC member and leader of the national Labor Party Ed Miliband called for current Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn to “personally look into” issues at OULC. Corbyn, in turn, is very much part of the problem.  He calls Hamas “friends” and has met with leaders from both Hamas and Hezbollah.  In September he spoke to the Labor Friends of Israel and refused to actually say the word “Israel.”  Corbyn’s website still peddles the malicious lie that “Israel must lift the ongoing siege of Gaza.”  The idea of Corbyn investigating anti-Semitism by a Labor-ite is insulting.
Things have only grown worse.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on April 06, 2016 9 Comments
The BBC aired footage of notorious MI6 traitor Kim Philby briefing agents of East Germany's Stasi secret police on Monday. Philby and his "Cambridge five" cohort of British double-agents working for Soviet bloc organizations eviscerated Britain's intelligence organs and stunned Britain between his recruitment in the 1930s and his flight to Moscow in the early 1960s. Recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s, Philby was nevertheless a decorated British intelligence officer and reputedly in line to be the next head of MI6 (Britain's CIA) by the late 1940s. Over the course of his career on behalf of the Soviets, he betrayed untold Western assets and intelligence missions in the East. Finally under suspicion in the early 1950s, Philby "exposed" two Soviet agents who had already been blown or would be imminently to clear his own name.  Despite that measure, Philby was forced to leave British intelligence in 1951.  Tasked with identifying the third member of the spy ring Philby had exposed, British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan told the House of Commons in 1955, "I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man', if indeed there was one."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 03, 2016 8 Comments
I don't know Kay Wilson. But I've seen her on social media, both Facebook and Twitter. She frequently makes reference to how she was carved up and butchered by Palestinians, but harbors no hatred of Palestinians. Israelly Cool has extensive archives on Kay Wilson. I never really knew her story, though. But that story is in the news in Britain as part of the British coming to terms with their role in supporting terrorism against Jews in Israel through financial aid to charities and the Palestinian Authority. Several of our recent posts have addressed this British soul-searching:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 02, 2016 0 Comments
British civil and governmental societies are undergoing a soul searching as to the role Britain plays in funding terrorism against Israel and the BDS movement. As Jonathan reported, Britain Rocked By Revelation Of Taxpayer-Funded Palestinian Terror:
Great Britain’s Foreign Office and Department for International Development (“DFID”) have funneled million of Pounds, at least, to terrorists.  The report from the Daily Mail details how the UK’s policy of spending .7% of revenue on foreign aid distorts priorities and leads it to fund terror.  The Daily Mail report builds on a broader investigation from Palestinian Media Watch (“PMW”) evidencing the Palestinian Authority’s (“PA”) attempts to hide banned payments to terrorists from Western donors.
Anti-Semitism acting under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement also has garnered attention recently in Britain, British Campus Anti-Semitism on Display During Israel Hate Week:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 31, 2016 6 Comments
British intelligence agency MI5 is reportedly tracking up to 25 ISIS terror plots threatening to bring Brussels-style devastation on to British streets. Security forces have increased surveillance on as many as 50 Islamists believed to be planning eminent terror attacks in the country. Despite ramped up counter-terrorism measures, senior security officials fear that there might be other undetected sleeper cells in the country capable of carrying out terror attacks without prior warning. In a related development, British government has raised concerns over a potential attack on country's nuclear power plants. Officials warned that ISIS terrorists operating on British soil could try to get hold of nuclear material or carry out cyber-attacks on nuclear reactors.
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