Category Archives: United Kingdom

John Major: Case for second Brexit referendum is credible

The Guardian reports: Sir John Major has become the second former prime minister within 24 hours to question the Brexit process, saying there is a “perfectly credible” case for a second referendum on leaving the European Union.

Speaking shortly after Tony Blair argued in an interview that Brexit could be reversed if the public changed its mind, Major said that the 48% of voters who wanted to remain should not be subject to the “tyranny of the majority”.

The former Conservative prime minister said in a speech at a private dinner on Thursday that the opinions of remain voters should be heard in the debate about how Britain left the EU, the Times reported.

In his first intervention over the issue since the 23 June referendum, Major said he accepted the UK would not remain a full member of the EU, but hoped any Brexit deal would mean the UK remained as close as possible to EU members and the single market, which he described as “the richest market mankind has ever seen”. [Continue reading…]

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Britain’s far right in 2016: fractured, unpredictable, dispirited … and violent

The Guardian reports: After years of austerity, and at a time of rising concern about immigration and uncertainty about the future direction of the UK, the political and economic conditions appear to be ideal for the far right. Across Europe – particularly in France, Denmark and the Netherlands – it is animated and resurgent, scenting electoral success just over the horizon.

In the UK, however, the extreme right is fractured, leaderless, confused and dispirited. It is also highly unpredictable and, on occasion, violent. Rather than one party or group – such as the British National party (BNP) or the English Defence League (EDL) – dominating the stage, a couple of dozen smaller groups vie for attention.

Some continue to contest local elections, but the growing popularity of Ukip in recent years has presented former supporters of the BNP and other far-right parties with an opportunity to vote for an anti-immigration party that is not considered disreputable.

Other groups favour so-called direct action, such as picketing mosques, invading halal abattoirs and harassing staff at Muslim-owned restaurants. Others still prefer to stage rallies and marches, bringing them into conflict with anti-fascist campaigners and, frequently, the police.

Each confrontation ensures that future events attract more people seeking violence. A handful of groups have started organising martial arts training and survivalist boot camps, and recent months have seen an increase in hate crimes. There has, in the words of the Met police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, been a “horrible spike” in such crime.

In many respects, racial nationalism in Britain in 2016 resembles that of the late 1990s, before the BNP was reorganised by its then leader, Nick Griffin. After taking control of the party in 1999, Griffin rid it of what he called “the three Hs: hobbyism, hard talk and Hitler”. Members focused more on a new enemy – Muslims and Islam. Activists swapped their boots for suits, grew their hair a little and began winning council elections. In 2009 the party won two European parliament seats.

Now the far right is back where it was almost 20 years ago, a series of micro-groups struggling to be seen and heard. Many of these groups have members in West Yorkshire, where Jo Cox’s killer, Thomas Mair, lived, although it appears he was not a member of any of them.

Paul Meszaros, the county’s coordinator for the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, says: “The far-right scene in West Yorkshire is no different to the rest of the country at the moment, which is unusual, because it used to be the BNP’s capital.”

Many veterans of the right are unsurprised by the waning of their fortunes, saying success has always been cyclical. At some point in the future, they predict, they will again be something of an electoral force.

Jim Lewthwaite, a former member of the National Front and a former BNP councillor in Bradford, says: “We’re going back to the same cyclical position as we were before 2001. The right is totally fragmented and on its back, waiting for something to happen.

“But remember how fast it went when it did take off? If things did happen, if Ukip were to fold, or if significant fragments of Ukip were to say we want a tougher line, and there were somebody leading it in our direction, or someone on our side that they trusted … we wouldn’t have to rebuild the organisation a second time.

“There are experienced people out there who are simply taking a back seat. They haven’t ceased to be nationalists, they don’t need to be reconvinced. They have concluded that nothing is happening right now, so there’s no point in doing anything. But if something caught on, and it started snowballing, they would get involved.”

The “things” that could happen, and which Lewthwaite and others believe could lead to the far right becoming an energised and coherent force in British politics, include, of course, serious Islamist terrorist attacks. [Continue reading…]

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The worrying rise of Britain’s modern day ‘Hitler youth’

The Daily Mail reports: Neo-Nazi referrals to the government’s deradicalisation programme are overtaking Islamist extremism cases in parts of the UK.

Security minister Ben Wallace highlighted the increase in far-right radicalisation amid new figures showing almost 300 children were referred to officials.

The worrying statistics show 16 of the 300 flagged up for neo-Nazi links were under the age of 10.

Mr Wallace, Tory MP for Wyre and Preston North, told collegues in the Commons: ‘The Prevent strategy is seeing a growth in far-right referrals.

‘In some areas of the country, these Prevent referrals outnumber those about the other parts we are worried out.’

Parts of Wales are reporting figures of above 50 percent for far-right referrals to the Prevent strategy programme, senior fellow in extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Rashad Ali told The Times.

The landscape is similar in Leicestershire, according to the paper, who report far-right extremism makes up half of all cases. [Continue reading…]

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Europe’s leaders to force Britain into hard Brexit

The Observer reports: European leaders have come to a 27-nation consensus that a “hard Brexit” is likely to be the only way to see off future populist insurgencies, which could lead to the break-up of the European Union.

The hardening line in EU capitals comes as Nigel Farage warns European leaders that Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, could deliver a political sensation bigger than Brexit and win France’s presidential election next spring – a result that would mean it was “game over” for 60 years of EU integration.

According to senior officials at the highest levels of European governments, allowing Britain favourable terms of exit could represent an existential danger to the EU, since it would encourage similar demands from other countries with significant Eurosceptic movements.

One top EU diplomat told the Observer: “If you British are not prepared to compromise on free movement, the only way to deal with Brexit is hard Brexit. Otherwise we would be seen to be giving in to a country that is leaving. That would be fatal.”

The latest intervention by Farage will only serve to fuel fears in Europe that anti-EU movements have acquired a dangerous momentum in countries such as France and the Netherlands, following the precedent set by the Brexit vote. Ukip’s interim leader, who predicted both the vote for Brexit and Donald Trump’s US victory, told the Observer that while Le Pen was still more likely to be runner-up to an establishment candidate next May, she now had to be taken seriously as a potential head of state. [Continue reading…]

Toby Helm writes: From Paris to Brussels, and Berlin to Warsaw and Bratislava, there is much sadness that the British are leaving. In the central and eastern European member states in particular, governments will fight tooth and nail to ensure their people can still travel to, and work in, the UK post-Brexit.

The right to move around the EU has symbolised, more than anything else, the break from their pre-1989 past under Soviet influence.

From his office in Bratislava, Slovakia’s state secretary at the foreign ministry, Ivan Korcok, can see Austria and speaks of the “emotional” importance of the EU to all Slovakians. “Our people are buying their apartments and building their houses across the border over there in Austria. Slovakia is a very pro-European country. People are concerned about the British situation [if it means they will no longer be able to move to and work in the UK]. The older generation here see their kids travelling abroad, and thinking differently to how they did. If one day a child in Slovakia decides to study elsewhere in Europe, including in the UK, and they can afford to, they go, they just go! This is such an emotional thing in positive terms about the EU.”

Marek Prawda, Poland’s former ambassador to the EU and now head of the European commission in Warsaw, says: “For us, being an EU member is the inverse of what was said in your referendum campaign about ‘taking back control’. To us, being a member of the EU has been about gaining back control, about freedom, about security, about being able to run an economy in a modern way. EU membership was a chance to shape our own life. We are able to borrow and invest in our economy. We are part of a rational world.” [Continue reading…]

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‘Extreme surveillance’ becomes UK law with barely a whimper

The Guardian reports: A bill giving the UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world has passed into law with barely a whimper, meeting only token resistance over the past 12 months from inside parliament and barely any from outside.

The Investigatory Powers Act, passed on Thursday, legalises a whole range of tools for snooping and hacking by the security services unmatched by any other country in western Europe or even the US.

The security agencies and police began the year braced for at least some opposition, rehearsing arguments for the debate. In the end, faced with public apathy and an opposition in disarray, the government did not have to make a single substantial concession to the privacy lobby.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: “The UK has just legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.” [Continue reading…]

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Gina Miller: The woman who put Theresa May’s plans for leaving the EU in peril

The Guardian reports: The businesswoman at the centre of the legal challenge to ensure parliament is consulted before Theresa May triggers Brexit has said the landmark case was motivated by her fear that the UK faced a “treacherous future”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Gina Miller said she knew the ruling would leave her unpopular with many EU referendum voters, but believed that the UK had failed itself and the rest of Europe by voting to leave the bloc rather than reform it from within.

“I was never binary remain or leave. I was very much of the sentiment, and still am, that it was about remain, reform and review,” Miller said. “The UK actually has a very powerful place in Europe … and we have not just let ourselves down but I think the whole of Europe down by not taking up that challenge.”

Before launching her case, the 51-year-old who runs the investment firm SCM Private with her husband, Alan, had spent a decade campaigning for transparency in investment and pension funds, and for reform in the charity sector. “I’ve stood up and made myself very unpopular,” she said. “But it’s not about being unpopular, it’s about doing the right thing.”

Miller told the Guardian she felt compelled to take some form of action following the referendum result in June, hiring City law firm Mishcon de Reya with her own money. “I simply couldn’t keep going to bed every night thinking, well what does [the Brexit vote] mean for my children, what does this mean for the future, what does it mean for everyone?” Miller said. “Knowing that there was no plan in place, and knowing that we were really facing a treacherous future … I just felt I had no other alternative.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Nicola Sturgeon has said the Scottish government will “actively consider” whether it will formally join in the next legal battle over the right of MPs to vote on article 50 after the British government’s defeat in the high court.

Scotland’s first minister told Holyrood on Thursday that the court ruling was “hugely significant and it underlines the total chaos and confusion at the heart of the UK government”.

Sturgeon hinted that the SNP’s 56 MPs in Westminster would vote against the triggering of article 50, given that Scotland voted to remain in the EU. [Continue reading…]

Heather Stewart writes: If you’re an ardent remainer hoping the high court judgment is a chink of light that could ultimately result in Britain remaining in the European Union, don’t hold your breath. Brexit itself was not on trial – but Theresa May’s bullish approach to it, and ultimately her political judgment, was.

If the government fails in its bid to have the ruling overturned on appeal, the Brexit secretary, David Davis, has made clear he would put a bill before both houses of parliament, presumably authorising the government to trigger article 50.

But while there are plenty of MPs on both sides of the House of Commons who backed remain during the referendum campaign, and still believe Britain would be better off in, only a handful of diehards now say they want to block Brexit.

One prominent pro-EU MP on the Conservative back benches told the Guardian “almost every one of my colleagues, apart perhaps from Ken Clarke, will vote to trigger article 50”.

In the House of Lords, meanwhile, where there is a strong remain majority, Labour’s leader Baroness Smith says there is little appetite for trying to prevent it. “It’s not a case of the Lords trying to block the government,” she insists. [Continue reading…]

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British high court rules parliament must vote on Brexit to trigger Article 50

Polly Toynbee writes: A momentous constitutional decision was taken by the high court of England and Wales this morning. A prime minister’s absolute power to do what they like, when they like, regardless of laws and treaties, was struck down. Theresa May cannot tear up our right to be EU citizens without the authority of parliament. Those rights were bestowed by parliamentary votes in a series of treaties. She can’t high-handedly abandon them and trigger our exit from the EU without parliament’s agreement.

Judges, wisely, do not generally want to usurp the power of elected governments to govern. Laws made by judges are a poor substitute for those made by elected MPs in parliament. But this is a matter of the profoundest constitutional importance, with deep implications, controversial whichever way they had decided. They rightly pronounced that parliament is sovereign – which is what the Brexiters claimed we were voting on, until it no longer suited them.

What now? The government will appeal to the supreme court in December, though some suggest May should dash to the Commons immediately for a quick vote, before an as-yet hazy coalition of cross-party remainers has time to organise and solidify. If the appeal fails, will MPs galvanise? Leaving it to the unelected Lords is no answer.

There are times when MPs need to rise above their party interests, their own interests and the views of their constituents. That may risk being voted out, but they may earn more respect by standing up for the national interest as best they can determine: that’s what representative democracy is for. In times of war or national crisis, defending the country from grave error, at whatever personal cost, is their duty. Brexit is the greatest threat to national wellbeing since the war, and this will test the mettle not just of individual MPs, but of the nature and purpose of a representative democratic system. [Continue reading…]

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The crisis in the West’s liberal democracies is strengthening the Kremlin’s hand

Natalie Nougayrède writes: Lenin once said: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Vladimir Putin is no Lenin, nor can his regime – run by an elite that enjoys offshore accounts and oligarchic privileges – quite be described as anti-capitalist. Yet in Russia’s new confrontation with the west, the Kremlin’s strategy is to exploit western weaknesses and confusion as much as it is geared towards showing a bellicose face, whether in Ukraine, Syria or cyberspace. Perhaps this is why the head of MI5 has warned of the need to fend off Russia’s hostile interference.

Lenin is not Putin’s ideological guru. Foreigners, whether public officials or investors, who have at length met with Putin sometimes point to his particular brand of pragmatism (even if Angela Merkel once said he “lives in another world”). If he senses strong pushback, he adapts. If he detects gaps, he strikes at the Achilles heel.

There is little doubt Russian power is on the offensive. Since 2014, when it deployed its troops in Ukraine and annexed territory there, and since its policies in Syria have been analysed as overtly hostile to western endeavours, “Russian aggressiveness” has become a mainstay of the west’s official political discourse. But beyond boasting about Russia’s nuclear forces, demonstrating its new conventional military capacities and activating an army of internet trollers (none of which should be minimised), Putin’s regime is banking on the hope that western democracies will falter and be unable to offer up genuine resistance.

He’s essentially waiting for that rope to be handed over. Brexit is one section of it, because in Russian eyes it has the potential to divide the west. The growth of national-populist movements in Europe and elsewhere is another, because it echoes the Kremlin’s illiberal narrative and produces useful allies. Radical leftwing anti-Americanism also fits handily into the picture, as it did decades ago when pacifists demonstrated in the west while missiles were being deployed by the eastern bloc during the cold war. [Continue reading…]

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Remain means remain: Nicola Sturgeon cannot be ignored on Brexit

By Andrew Scott Crines, University of Liverpool

The meeting between Prime Minister Theresa May and the leaders of the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations was a significant moment in setting the tone for the Brexit negotiations ahead.

May has pledged to advance a single UK position when negotiations with the EU begin next year. This pledge could be interpreted in either of two ways. She could be attempting to compel the nations of the UK to conform to the Westminster government’s Brexit position, or she could be opening the door to other positions in the hope of destabilising the moves towards leaving the EU. The former is the most likely, however May cannot be seen to be overtly imposing the will of the Brexiteers on the devolved institutions without risking political consequences.

In the case of Scotland such consequences are well advertised. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wants to at least keep Scotland in the single market and, really, her ultimate goal is to stay in the EU. The Scottish people voted to remain, which Sturgeon is interpreting as a solid mandate to oppose moves in London to take Scotland out.

Similarly, Northern Ireland voted to remain. The deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, warned of dire consequences if it is also taken out of the EU, both economically and constitutionally. Only Wales and England voted to leave, which was enough to deliver a Brexit vote.

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What Theresa May really thinks about Brexit shown in leaked recording

The Guardian reports: Theresa May privately warned that companies would leave the UK if the country voted for Brexit during a secret audience with investment bankers a month before the EU referendum.

A recording of her remarks to Goldman Sachs, leaked to the Guardian, reveals she had numerous concerns about Britain leaving the EU. It contrasts with her nuanced public speeches, which dismayed remain campaigners before the vote in June.

Speaking at the bank in London on 26 May, the then home secretary appeared to go further than her public remarks to explain more clearly the economic benefits of staying in the EU. She told staff it was time the UK took a lead in Europe, and that she hoped voters would look to the future rather than the past.

In an hour-long session before the City bankers, she also worried about the effect of Brexit on the British economy.

“I think the economic arguments are clear,” she said. “I think being part of a 500-million trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe. [Continue reading…]

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Brexit: Leading banks set to pull out of UK early next year

The Guardian reports: Britain’s biggest banks are preparing to relocate out of the UK in the first few months of 2017 amid growing fears over the impending Brexit negotiations, while smaller banks are making plans to get out before Christmas.

The dramatic claim is made in the Observer by the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, Anthony Browne, who warns “the public and political debate at the moment is taking us in the wrong direction”.

A source close to Brexit secretary David Davis said he and the chancellor Philip Hammond had last week sought to offer reassurance that they were determined to secure the status of the City of London.

However, the government’s stated intention to take control of the freedom of movement into the UK is widely recognised among officials to be a hammer blow to any chance of retaining the present terms of trade for banks, particularly given the bellicose rhetoric of major politicians on the continent. [Continue reading…]

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The crew are cutting each other’s throats on Mrs May’s leaking ship

Andrew Rawnsley writes: It is the classic Spitting Image sketch of Margaret Thatcher in her pomp. The satirists created a scene in which the rubber puppet of the prime minster sat at a restaurant table surrounded by her cabinet. She orders raw steak. The waitress then asks: “And what about the vegetables?” Motioning to her cringing ministers, Mrs T replies: “They’ll have the same as me.”

That was a caricature. In his recently published memoir, Ken Clarke contends that the “Iron Lady” liked ministers who argued back and she promoted him even though they had many humdinger rows. But the Thatcher legend remains very lively in the Tory imagination. It was played up to by Theresa May when she arrived at Number 10 just over 100 days ago. “Iron Mayden” and “the new Maggie” were among the welcoming headlines in the rightwing press. Her team didn’t object. They did not discourage anyone from portraying her as a reincarnation of the dominatrix of folklore.

In her early days at Number 10, there was an ambition to achieve a grip over government more steely than that achieved by Mrs T even at the zenith of her power. Ministers reported that they were being forbidden to make any statement or give any interview unless it had first been cleared through Number 10. I wrote at the time that Mrs May would discover that she would not be able to impose such a stifling level of control. What I did not foresee – and neither did she nor anyone else – is just how rapidly cabinet cohesion would unravel. Discipline is now breaking down in a way that Mrs T would never have tolerated.

There are almost daily reveals of confidential papers prepared for internal discussions between ministers, especially of anything touching on Brexit. Mrs May says she will not give a “running commentary” on how she plans to approach the negotiations. We don’t need one because we have a running tap of leaks from within her cabinet. These are being accompanied by a drip feed of poisonous briefings, as some ministers try to promote themselves and their ambitions at the expense of rivals they seek to thwart or damage. [Continue reading…]

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Moscow vows to hit back in row over RT TV channel’s UK bank accounts

Reuters reports: Russia has promised to retaliate against Britain after a British state-owned bank said it was withdrawing its services from Kremlin-backed Russian broadcaster RT.

RT said on Monday that NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), had given notice it intended to withdraw its banking services from the channel’s British arm. RT accused the bank of attacking freedom of speech.

RBS responded by saying it was reviewing the situation and would contact RT to discuss the matter, which caused a furor in Russia where the Russian Foreign Ministry said it looked like a politically-motivated move to silence an inconvenient outlet. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Dmitry K. Kiselyov, the head of RT’s parent organization, was placed on the European sanctions list in 2014 over his encouragement of the annexation of Crimea. Barclays, the company’s previous bank in Britain, closed its accounts in July 2015.

In Moscow, the management of RT said on Monday that its lawyers were dealing with the banking situation and that the network would remain in operation.

“We have no idea what this is connected with, because nothing new happened to us, and we received no threats — neither yesterday, nor a day before yesterday, or a month ago,” the RBK news website quoted Ms. Simonyan, the editor in chief, as saying.

Jonathan Eyal, assistant director of Russian and European security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that the bank’s action might have reflected concerns over RT’s links to the Kremlin. “Certain questions are being raised over the corporation and its sources of funding,” he said, “and the bank must have been aware that this is not a happy commercial transaction.”

Mr. Eyal noted that some financial institutions had recently faced large fines for handling questionable accounts, and he speculated that NatWest may “prefer the controversy of closing the bank account over dealing with a business that may have tainted money.”

Beyond that, he said, the bank may be following a lead, either directly or indirectly, from the United States, which has been weighing its response to Russian hacking of American computers and servers. The bank’s action could be a kind of “veiled sanction,” he said, aimed at “trying to convey to the propaganda sources that they are increasingly finding their life difficult in the West.” [Continue reading…]

In 2015, following the closure of Kiselyov’s Barclays account, The Independent reported: Mr Kiselyov is a leading TV personality on state-controlled Rossiya 1 television and warned last year, in the wake of the Crimean referendum on 16 March, that Russia could turn the United States into “radioactive dust”.

“Russia is the only country in the world realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash,” Mr Kiselyov said at the time, standing in front of a large screen depicting a mushroom cloud produced by a nuclear explosion.

He added that President Vladimir Putin was a much stronger leader than Barack Obama, pointing to opinion polls on his screen. “Americans themselves consider Putin to be a stronger leader than Obama,” he said. “Why is Obama phoning Putin all the time and talking to him for hours on end?”

Crimea voted 93 per cent in favour of coming under Russian rule in the controversial referendum, while Kiev said it would not recognise the results.

Mr Kiselyov previously caused outrage when he called for tougher anti-gay laws and suggested that homosexuals should be barred from donating organs, blood and sperm because they were not fit. [Continue reading…]

In spite of numerous claims being made that the withdrawal of NatWest banking services amounts to an attack on free speech, the bank’s decision is no such thing. RT has been censured 15 times by Ofcom (Britain’s equivalent of the FCC) for breaching broadcast regulations but it hasn’t been shut down. The Russian network, funded by a government that has very little appetite for free speech, has less interest in defending freedom than it has in exploiting free speech in order to corrupt democracy through the propagation of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Coincidental with NatWest’s decision, the Express reports: Russia’s VTB Bank has announced it will move its European headquarters out of London in the wake of Brexit.

The state-controlled bank is the first major lender to desert the UK following its historic decision to leave the European Union (EU). [Continue reading…]

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UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for 17 years, court rules

The Guardian reports: British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade, senior judges have ruled.

The investigatory powers tribunal, which is the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said the security services operated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years.

Privacy campaigners described the ruling as “one of the most significant indictments of the secret use of the government’s mass surveillance powers” since Edward Snowden first began exposing the extent of British and American state digital surveillance of citizens in 2013.

The tribunal said the regime governing the collection of bulk communications data (BCD) – the who, where, when and what of personal phone and web communications – failed to comply with article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) between 1998, when it started, and 4 November 2015, when it was made public. [Continue reading…]

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Offshore secrets of Brexit backer Arron Banks revealed in Panama Papers

The Guardian reports: The network of offshore companies linked to the man who financed Britain’s campaign to quit the European Union has been revealed in previously unpublished documents from the Panama Papers.

The British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar emerge as key locations in the financial affairs of Arron Banks, who spent £7.5m funding Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign group ahead of the Brexit referendum on 23 June. New details of Banks’s financial dealings are contained in the massive leaked database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which has revealed the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.

Banks is a close friend of the Ukip leader, revealing last month that the two men went “skinny-dipping” in Bournemouth to celebrate Farage’s short-lived retirement from heading the party. Banks has also been at Farage’s side in America, where he has been supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. [Continue reading…]

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Britain, get real: Brexit means whatever the EU says it means

Joris Luyendijk writes: If you still believe Britain will get a sweet deal out of Brexit because “the EU needs the UK more than vice versa”, ask yourself: why don’t we hear European politicians pleading with Britain “not to punish the EU over Brexit”? Why is the pound plunging against the euro and not the other way around? Why do we not hear of companies escaping from the EU to “free-trading Britain” while there is almost a traffic jam in the other direction? Why do EU leaders look rather relaxed when Brexit comes up, even cracking the odd joke or two about sending the British foreign minister, Boris Johnson, a copy of the Lisbon treaty so he can read up on reality?

The negotiating cards with the EU are “incredibly stacked our way”, the Brexit minister, David Davis, told the House of Commons on Monday. The cards certainly are “incredibly stacked” – but not in the way Davis imagines.

To understand why, get a map of the EU and find Slovenia, a nation of 2 million people. No, that is Slovakia, with 5.4 million, almost three times bigger. Next look up Lithuania (population: 3.3 million), Latvia (2 million), Estonia (1.3 million) and Luxembourg (500,000).

Now repeat after me: all these EU members, as well as the other 21, hold veto power over whatever deal the UK (65 million) manages to negotiate with the EU (population: 508 million).

That is right, 1.2 million Cypriots can paralyse the British economy by blocking a deal, and the same holds true for Malta (400,000). Did I mention the Walloon parliament in Namur (get that atlas out again) has veto power too? And then there is, of course, the European parliament in Strasbourg. [Continue reading…]

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Theresa May in ‘U-turn’ over pre-article 50 Brexit debate in parliament

The Guardian reports: Theresa May has accepted the need to have “full and transparent” parliamentary scrutiny before triggering Brexit, as Labour demanded answers to 170 questions about leaving the EU.

In a last-minute concession, the government accepted a Labour motion calling for MPs to have more say over the strategy for leaving the EU before article 50 is triggered by the end of March.

May had been facing her first government defeat over the motion on Wednesday, as a number of Conservatives indicated they were prepared to vote with Labour to demand greater public debate over the Brexit negotiating strategy.

The concession does not go as far as specifying that MPs should get a formal vote on article 50 or any Brexit deal and slightly amends Labour’s version to say the government’s negotiating position must not be undermined.

However, it does mean there will have to be a substantive parliamentary debate on No 10’s strategy at a later date before the UK embarks on Brexit. One Tory MP said this meant the Commons would have to broadly approve the negotiating position before article 50 is invoked. [Continue reading…]

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Activists decry British plan to suspend key human rights convention

VOA reports: Rights activists and lawyers are up in arms over Britain’s plan to suspend an international human rights convention during times of war, a step the government said would protect British troops from “spurious” legal claims of torture and murder against them.

The move by British Prime Minister Theresa May followed years of mounting anger in the Conservative Party and the country’s tabloid press over thousands of cases filed against soldiers who served in Iraq. The British government has spent about $135 million since 2004 defending the cases, many of which were launched under the European Convention on Human Rights, and the government has paid out $24 million in the settlement of 326 cases without admitting liability.

Britain’s tabloid press has railed against what they see as meddling, unelected European judges, arguing they are wrecking British law.

Under the plan, Britain would temporarily suspend parts of the Human Rights Convention before planned military actions. The suspensions would mainly focus on Article 2, which imposes upon the 47 signatory states the duty to refrain from unlawful deprivation of life, to investigate suspicious deaths and to prevent avoidable deaths.

Established in 1953 and effective across Europe, the convention grew out of a continent-wide determination never to see again the appalling rights violations of the Second World War and was inspired partly by Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill. It was drafted in large part by the British Conservative politician and Nuremberg trials prosecutor David Maxwell Fyfe. [Continue reading…]

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