Tag: government

The government has conceded it is likely to hold the third meaningful vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal next week, following intense pressure from MPs for more clarity on the next steps after the extension of the departure date. In an often difficult appearance in the House of Commons, the Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng initially rebuffed questions on when the vote might take place, saying the timetable would be outlined soon. Kwarteng responded: “The government fully intends to have a meaningful vote next week.” The secondary legislation needed to change the departure date would also be tabled next week, he said, but declined to give any further details on timings, adding: “On this Friday I’m not going to say the exact hour and time of when the meaningful vote will take place.” Separately, No 10 said the EU’s agreement to extend article 50 was contingent on holding the vote next week. “The consideration is to hold it when we believe we have a realistic prospect of success,” May’s spokesman said. “My understanding of last night is that the extension to 22 May was contingent on winning the vote next week.” May will meet cabinet ministers in Downing Street and spend the weekend working at Chequers, her country retreat. “But we have made a decision – voting down her deal twice, by historic margins,” he told MPs. “It’s just that it’s a decision the prime minister is clearly incapable of accepting. It is her intransigence, her pandering to the hardliners in her party, and her refusal to compromise that has brought us to this point.” He asked Kwarteng to say when the third meaningful vote would happen, as well as how the government would comply with the ruling by the Speaker, John Bercow, that a new vote will only be allowed under Commons procedures if it is a notably different proposal. He added: “Ministers have constantly told us that responsible governments prepare for all eventualities. Asked by Labour’s Karen Buck if the government still planned to seek a consensus way forward if May’s plan fell again, he replied: “I think that if the meaningful vote is voted down then it would be reasonable to have a wide debate in the house to find what the house would tolerate and how it sees things going forward.”

The Conservative party’s second biggest donor has called for a government of national unity to be formed as soon as possible to solve the Brexit crisis. John Griffin, the taxi tycoon who has given £4m to the Tories over the last six years, said the party should reach out to MPs from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Scottish National Party if it is to emerge from EU negotiations with a successful deal. It follows similar demands from fellow Tories including Nicky Morgan and Sir Nicholas Soames. Other Conservative donors have threatened to withhold funds unless it solves the current political crisis, it emerged on Thursday. Griffin, founder of the cab firm Addison Lee, told the Guardian that Theresa May’s government should use a new team and adopt a different negotiating strategy with the EU. Morgan, the treasury select committee chair, told MPs in December that the Commons should come together to stop a no-deal scenario. A national unity government was first formed during the Napoleonic Wars in 1806 and last occurred in 1931. Soames has previously mooted the idea of a national unity government, telling Channel 4 News: “I must say, if I had my way, we would have a national government to deal with this. It is the most serious problem this country has faced since the war.” It emerged on Thursday that donations to the Conservatives are drying up as backers unhappy with splits over Brexit refuse to fund the party. All said they were unsure whether to give cash to the party at present.

The report portrayed such information as crucial to holding appointees to high standards. “Strong ethics programs are critical to ensuring public trust in government and the integrity of actions taken on the public’s behalf,” it states. “Political appointees, in particular agency heads, have a personal responsibility to exercise leadership in ethics. … [M]embers of the public need access to information on who is serving in political appointee positions. Otherwise, they are limited in their ability to discern whether appointees are performing their duties free of conflict.” Neither federal agencies nor the White House are required to publicly post full, up-to-date listings of political appointees or senior government officials, many of whom don’t face confirmation or public hearings by the Senate. “In the absence of comprehensive and timely data on political appointees serving in the executive branch, two nongovernmental organizations — the Partnership for Public Service and ProPublica — stated that they collect and report some data themselves,” the report notes. The report states that ProPublica’s Trump Town tracks all types of federal political appointees but “one limitation is that they rely on agency responses to FOIA requests and therefore the data may not be comprehensive or timely.” ProPublica staffers (including the author of this article) were interviewed by the GAO in 2018. The GAO recommended Congress consider legislation that would require the “comprehensive and timely information on political appointees serving in the Executive Branch to be collected and made publicly accessible.” The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is now considering the GAO recommendation. Launched in March 2018, Trump Town is a searchable database of 3,232 current and former Trump administration political appointees, including their jobs and offices, employment history, lobbying records, government ethics documents, financial disclosures and, in some cases, resumes. In 2012, a group of former federal officials in law enforcement, diplomatic and national security positions wrote to congressional leaders, saying a searchable list would “create significant threats to the national security and to the personal safety and financial security of the executive branch officials and their families, especially career employees.” The letter also called complete personal financial information of all senior officials on the internet a “jackpot for enemies of the United States intent on finding security vulnerabilities they can exploit.” The GAO report did not address this assertion, but it implied such circumstances are a long way off: “Until the names of political appointees and their position, position type, agency or department name, start and end dates are publicly available at least quarterly, it will be difficult for the public to access comprehensive and reliable information.” Filed under: The Trump Administration

Government by parliament works when a party or coalition of parties can command a majority of MPs to pass laws. None of this applies today in Brexit Britain. A fortnight before the UK is due to Brexit, this country still has no agreed plan on how to do it. Politics used to be called the art of the compromise. People are much more strongly committed to their view on the EU than they are to any political party. That goes for MPs as well. A canny leader, like Wilson over the EEC in 1975, won't call a referendum unless they can be pretty sure of the likely outcome. But he gambled on membership of the EU and lost. Today the European Research Group has organised a party within a party and has repeatedly voted against the withdrawal deal painfully negotiated by its leader. In both the Labour and Conservative parties they are the ones calling the shots.

A group of more than 100 experts have sounded a pre-election alarm over Indian economic data, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of tweaking or burying unwelcoming numbers. His successor, a Modi ally, oversaw an economy-boosting cut in interest rates last month in his first monetary policy meeting. The 108 economists and social scientists said in an open letter on Friday that Indian statistics were "under a cloud for being influenced and indeed even controlled by political considerations". "How much more can this govt. embarrass us on a global level?," the party said on its official Twitter account. Economists in fellow emerging Asian giant China and abroad have long suspected that data there is also massaged, often noting that full-year gross domestic product hits Beijing's pre-set targets with suspicious regularity. The letter also questioned a revised growth rate of 8.2 percent in 2016-17, "the highest in a decade", that "seems to be at variance with the evidence marshalled by many economists". The letter also noted that a major and overdue survey on employment has still not been released. "The government's interference has created a huge problem." The government was yet to comment on the letter.

May: MPs 'need to face up to the consequences of their decisions' MPs will vote on Thursday on delaying Brexit after they rejected the idea of leaving the EU without a deal. As it happened: MPs vote on no-deal Brexit MPs narrowly rule out no deal Brexitcast: Something has changed In a series of votes on no-deal Brexit, the Commons first voted by a margin of four to reject no deal outright. That vote was on a motion which said the UK should not leave the EU without a deal specifically on 29 March, but with the option of a no-deal Brexit at any other time. Government ministers defied those orders and there were claims Theresa May had lost control of her party. But for Number 10 there's an opportunity too, because MPs will soon be presented with a new choice - back the PM's deal, which has already been defeated twice, or accept the chance of a delay to Brexit. MPs just voted clearly to say we should never leave EU without a deal 2. Votes on delay tmrw — Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) March 13, 2019 Report On Thursday, MPs will be asked if they want to delay Brexit until 30 June - to allow the necessary legislation to get through Parliament. But that is only if MPs back Mrs May's deal by 20 March, the government says. If they fail to back her deal by then, then the delay could be longer, Mrs May warned MPs, and it could clash with the European Parliament elections in May. Vote results MPs also voted by 374 to 164 to reject a plan to delay the UK's departure from the EU until 22 May 2019, so that there can be what its supporters call a "managed no-deal" Brexit.

Reaction to May deal ahead of vote Has anything changed in the Brexit deal? In his advice, Mr Cox said the extra assurances won by Mrs May in 11th hour talks with the EU "reduce the risk that the United Kingdom could be indefinitely and involuntarily detained" in the backstop if talks on the two sides future relationship broke down due to "bad faith" by the EU. And he said "the legal risk remains unchanged" that if no such agreement can be reached due to "intractable differences", the UK would have "no internationally lawful means" of leaving the backstop without EU agreement. In a statement to the Commons, Mr Cox later said: "Were such a situation to occur, let me make it clear, the legal risk as I set it out in my letter of November 13 remains unchanged." And ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg said: "The unilateral declaration doesn't add anything because it simply says 'we could ask to leave the backstop'. A "joint legally binding instrument" on the withdrawal agreement which the UK could use to start a "formal dispute" against the EU if it tried to keep the UK tied into the backstop indefinitely. The extra assurances wrought from weeks of talks with the EU will move some of the prime minister's objectors from the "no" column to the "yes". The EU warns 'this is it' The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 after voting to leave by nearly 52% to 48% - 17.4m votes to 16.1m - in 2016. Mr Juncker has warned MPs they would be putting everything at risk if they voted down the deal. "In politics sometimes you get a second chance," he said.

Happening Now: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies before the Homeland Security Committee hearing on "The Way Forward on Border Security." Nielsen will take questions from a Democrat-controlled House Committee for the first time. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a…

Democrats move farther left and push a socialist agenda. #Hannity #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The number one network in cable, FNC…

LIVE on the House Floor: Democratic members of Congress give speeches on the partial government shutdown, urging President Trump and others to work together on a bipartisan agreement. Watch the Senate LIVE here: https://youtu.be/TobeZtIaXZE FOX News Channel (FNC) is a…