Tag: Great Britain

One shadow cabinet member said the moment at which Labour would table a no-confidence vote was getting “much, much closer”, but said it would depend on the stance of the DUP. In Brussels on Friday, EU leaders insisted they would not do any more to sweeten the Brexit deal containing the backstop that 100 Tory MPs want her to ditch. “We have to exclude any kind of reopening our negotiations on the withdrawal agreement. But of course we will stay here in Brussels, and I am always at Prime Minister Theresa May’s disposal.” The prime minister’s Brexit aide Olly Robbins had been holding secret negotiations since Monday over a two-stage plan to secure the legal guarantee that Downing Street believed could turn MPs in its favour. How No 10 tried, and failed, to contrive EU rescue of May's deal Read more The prime minister had been seeking a “joint interpretative instrument” that would put a duty on both sides to try to get out of the Irish backstop within 12 months of it coming into force. “The 27 member states have given assurances. “We have treated Prime Minister May with the greatest respect, all of us, and we really appreciate the efforts by the prime minister to ratify our common agreement,” Tusk said. He said he had been describing the “overall state of the debate in Britain”. Many questioned whether it would be worth making further concessions to the UK as suggested by May because they would not be accepted. She told reporters she had had “a robust discussion” with Juncker about his comments at the press conference and said she had been “crystal clear” about the assurances she was seeking.

British Prime Minister Theresa May delayed a vote in Parliament to approve her controversial Brexit deal. Nigel Farage reacts on 'America's Newsroom.' Read more on this story here: https://fxn.ws/2Eowpgb FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to…

The Democratic Unionist party (DUP) has rejected any regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and Britain in the Brexit deal, but there is already some divergence – and it will help keep the lights on, and the food safe, at the party’s annual conference on Saturday. Northern Ireland gets its electricity and trades its livestock in ways which distinguish it from mainland Britain and which have nothing to do with Brexit. Hard, soft or no Brexit, Britain must begin to heal its wounds | Martin Kettle Read more Northern Ireland is part of a single electricity market with the Republic of Ireland, it applies extensive checks on livestock coming from Britain and has distinct rules on the transport of hazardous waste – pragmatic, uncontroversial measures which are not deemed threats to Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. However, DUP leaders who gather in Belfast for the party’s conference will thunder anew against different rules for Northern Ireland and Britain envisaged in the Brexit deal, branding them an existential threat to the union and therefore reason for the party to issue its own threat to pull the plug on Theresa May’s government. The former foreign secretary Boris Johnson is expected to amplify that warning in an address to about 600 party faithful. Sammy Wilson, one of 10 DUP MPs who shore up the Westminster government under a fraying confidence and supply agreement, branded the leaders of the business and farming groups as “puppets” of Downing Street. “If you see divergence between GB and Northern Ireland, it would only be in those areas where it would make sense for Northern Ireland to be aligned with the EU,” she said. “It won’t be the case that a whole raft of EU law is dumped on Northern Ireland. “There cannot be a border down the Irish Sea, a differential between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK,” the party leader, Arlene Foster, told the BBC last month. Blanket opposition to any new regulatory divergence has shredded the DUP’s relationship with May, endangered its pact with her government and alienated traditional business and farming allies.

Schulz has sunk without trace in Germany; Hollande is no longer president of France; Merkel will not stand again. “There was real regret, of course, but also huge uncertainty, in the immediate aftermath of the referendum,” Zuleeg said. There was an understanding that a partner was leaving – not just any partner – and that how the EU responded would decide its future.” The foundations of Michel Barnier’s mandate as the European Union’s chief negotiator – no negotiation before article 50; no cherry-picking benefits of the single market without accepting all its obligations; no trade talks before Brexit – were laid at an EU summit held less than a week after the referendum. The mooted extension to the transition period is a new idea being put forward by the EU to help Theresa May square the circle created by the written agreement last December and the draft withdrawal agreement in March. The Irish and the EU will also still need the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which must be signed before the business of the trade deal can get under way. Otherwise it is a no-deal Brexit. “For France and Germany in particular, that’s the EU’s soul.” However, Brexit has also had an impact on the continent’s Eurosceptics, he added. If the early setting of the EU27’s red lines made it “very hard indeed for the UK to get a grip on any part of the process”, Zuleeg said, Britain really did not help itself: “Normally in negotiations you reach a compromise position, then present it to the other side. Britain couldn’t get to the compromise.” So the government kept postponing any internal decision on its Brexit position. “The EU forced it to choose between breaking the political promises made by Brexiters,” said Zuleeg, “or incurring significant economic harm.

Theresa May has been told that the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, is now “ready” to trigger a no-deal Brexit and regards this as the “likeliest outcome” following a “hostile and difficult” exchange with the EU’s chief negotiator, an explosive set of leaked government emails reveal. With continued speculation that Leave-supporting cabinet ministers could resign if May presses ahead with the plan to keep Britain in a customs union for the sake of an open Irish border, David Davis said: “This is one of the most fundamental decisions that government has taken in modern times.” Writing in the Sunday Times, he said: “It is time for the cabinet to exert their collective authority. This week the authority of our constitution is on the line.” Foster emerged from a meeting last week in Brussels with Michel Barnier, the French official leading the EU’s negotiating team, convinced that the prospects for a Brexit deal were fading so fast that, given Brussels’ stance on Northern Ireland, an agreement had become the least likely outcome. Senior government advisers were swiftly informed that the DUP leader was “ready” for the UK to crash out of the EU without a deal. Last week, the DUP, whose 10 MPs prop up May’s government, made it clear they would be prepared to vote down the budget this month, if the government pressed ahead with a Brexit deal that tied Northern Ireland closer to the EU than the rest of the UK. The prime minister will make a final appeal for ministerial unity on Tuesday at a cabinet meeting, amid rumours that more senior ministers could soon follow Boris Johnson and David Davis out of the government. One source said eight or nine cabinet ministers had serious concerns. The tensions have arisen because the EU has made it clear it will refuse to sign an overall withdrawal agreement – paving the way for a transition deal and the opening of talks on an EU-UK trade deal – if the UK insists on specifying a date by which customs “backstop” arrangements designed to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland must end. The Observer understands that the prime minister will try to get agreement for a compromise position, under which the UK’s intention to leave EU customs arrangements as soon as possible will be spelled out without naming a specific date. This is their chance of counter-revolution | Nick Cohen Read more The stark research by the Edelman public affairs consultancy found that while May needs 320 votes to secure a majority, she can rely on the support of only 277 of the 314 Tory MPs and two former Tories who now sit as independents.

A man who voted for the Conservative Party at yesterday’s local elections, as he has done in every election he’s voted in, is confused at why Britain seems to be becoming a worse place to live in. Michael O’Sullivan, 48, voted for all three of the Conservative candidates in his area and was pleased to see each of them retain their seats. ‘Now is not the time for any sort of progress whatsoever,’ beamed Michael. But Michael has also noted that Britain seems to have become a much worse place to live in over the last five-to-ten years. ‘Britain’s going to the dogs. My children are struggling to find decent jobs, it takes me two weeks to see my GP, I have no idea when I’ll be able to retire, Brexit has become a shambles, and everyone seems utterly miserable,’ Michael told us. However, Michael sees no correlation between who he votes for and the state of the nation. ‘It must be those bloody immigrants causing all this. Who else could it be?‘ asked the Conservative voter.

No, not Macron and Trump; rather, for the United States and France. But with the American president alienating many other world leaders, his working relationship with Macron, who is as willing as Trump to fête and be fêted, is signaling that no ally in Europe, or the world, perhaps matters as much to the White House than Paris. Just 15 years ago, Republican leaders in Washington snidely disparaged the French because they refused to follow Americans blindly into the Iraq War. The president invited no Democrats to the Tuesday dinner, making the point that like-minded foreigners are welcome but that Americans of the opposition party are not. Congressional Republicans long ago traded their political ideology for Trump. That’s literally trading country for party. In the world of militaries and national security politics, this all matters. The French flip-flop is yet another example of how Americans should know that the messaging and posturing of global political leaders often have little to do with, nor do they reflect the reality of, the military and intelligence relationships. Others are fighting and training forces in Africa, often alongside U.S. troops, in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger. That’s the diplomatic work that we’ve already started but we have to finish.

An entirely new genus of trees has been discovered in Britain by Prime Minister Theresa May that appears to grow missiles perfect for delivering airstrikes on Middle Eastern countries. The tree is being dubbed the ‘magic missile tree’ and will come as a huge relief to Britain as similar missiles would have previously costs over half-a-million pounds each to drop on unsuspecting brown people. ‘While the Conservative Party insists on very careful budgeting of anything that’d make Britain a better place to live, it can now make other countries a much worse place to live for free,’ said Hornugus Scrungle, a professor of economics. Britain has already tasked horticultural experts with growing further magic missile trees to provide it with even more military might. However, one was immediately fired when he suggested the tree might be genetically modified to grow actual money. ‘The idea of a magic money tree is laughable,’ said a stony faced Theresa May.

Britain has been buoyed by the news it will retain total control all Keiths in Europe even after Brexit. The British monopoly on Keiths will be kept strong after some worried that the EU may have took a slice of the Keith-pie as part of the Brexit agreement. But the Brexit negotiation team has confirmed that Britain will retain complete control of all Keith related production and maintenance for the foreseeable future. ‘This was one of the greatest concerns of these negotiations. Would we have to give up a chunk of our Keiths to Europe? We’ve worked very hard to make sure that wouldn’t happen and I’m happy to say we’ve achieved it,’ one negotiator told us. European nations like Italy, Germany and France will have to make do with only the occasional visit from a Keith on holiday as parents in those countries simply aren’t calling their children Keith. ‘A Keith is a real boon to any economy but parents refuse to call their children Keith outside of Britain. Even cash incentives haven’t worked,’ complained French President Emmanuel Macron. Britain hasn’t ruled out using their rich supply of Keiths as part of a trade agreement in the future, although that is still some years down the line.

New evidence has emerged that Jeremy Corbyn DID meet with Czechoslovakian spies back in the 1980s and shared some of the most secret and explosive jam recipes that Britain had to offer. The news comes as a blow to Labour and its leader, who’d previously denied any wrongdoing. ‘I’ve never even stopped flicking through a catalogue at the lingerie section,’ Corbyn claimed. Old Czechoslovakian jam jar labels clearly thank ‘Comrade Jeremy Corbyn’ for his help and dedication to the cause. ‘Before Jeremy, all we had was strawberry jam. It was nice but you get sick of the same jam all the time. Then he handed us a recipe book crammed full of the best jam recipes ever seen. And voters are furious with Jeremy. Will he share out our nuclear codes so willingly?’ questioned Bill Gammon of Yorkshire. Corbyn has yet to expand on the latest allegations against him, only saying: ‘I’ve got myself in a bit of a jam here, haven’t I?’