Tag Archives: britain

United Kingdom

British voters take to polls today for historic EU referendum vote

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After years of preparation, it's now up to voters to make their choice.
After years of preparation, it’s now up to voters to make their choice.

So it’s finally here.United Kingdom Flag Icon

Polls are now open across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where voters are deciding whether to either remain a member of the European Union or to leave the European Union. It’s home to the largest city in the European Union (London) and, with 64.9 million people, it’s the third-most populous state in the European Union, after Germany and France.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. through 10 p.m. — that means that here on the east coast of the United States, polls will be closing at 5 p.m. ET, with the first results to arrive shortly thereafter. No official exit polls are being conducted, but private hedge funds are believed to have commissioned exit polls and early financial indictors could tell us know traders believe the result will go. In any event, the final result is expected to be announced by ‘breakfast time’ on Friday morning.

The United Kingdom joined what was then the European Economic Community in 1973 under Conservative prime minister Edward Heath, after two failed attempts at membership, in each case vetoed by French president Charles de Gaulle. Continue reading British voters take to polls today for historic EU referendum vote →

European Union, United Kingdom

Why British sovereignty would be even weaker after leaving the European Union

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Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg (left) meets European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (right). (EEA).
Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg (left) meets European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (right). (EEA).

Chief among the reasons that the ‘Leave’ campaign cites for its campaign to convince British voters to leave the European Union is sovereignty. European_UnionUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

Here’s Ambrose-Evans Prichard, with a well-written and thoughtful essay endorsing Brexit last week in The Telegraph:

Stripped of distractions, it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.

For some proponents of the ‘Leave’ campaign, sovereignty matters so much that the warnings of a significant short-term disruption to the British economy simply do not matter. In the long run, Brexit’s benefits will come, supporters hope, from the ability of future British policymakers to enact laws and regulations unhindered by the grinding bureaucracy of Brussels and Strasbourg.

That Brexit will lead to such full-throated British sovereignty is not so clear — at least if the United Kingdom wants to leave the European Union while still retaining access to the single market, one of the world’s most integrated free-trade zones.

Britain, contemplating divorce, already has a ‘separation’ with Europe 

It’s not always easy to sort the alphabet soup within the European Union, let alone the rest of Europe that lies outside the technical European Union. But arguably the United Kingdom today enjoys much more freedom than any of the other 27 member-states of the European Union. As British voters consider divorce from Europe, they would do well to consideration that their country is already in something of a separation with Europe.

Today, the United Kingdom is neither a member of the euro currency zone and monetary union, nor (like Ireland) the Schengen zone of free movement. The former means that the United Kingdom still has its own currency, the pound sterling, and the Bank of England controls British monetary policy. The latter means that the United Kingdom retains more control over its borders than even non-EU states like Switzerland and Norway (both party to the Schengen Agreement).  Continue reading Why British sovereignty would be even weaker after leaving the European Union →

Germany

As U.S. awaits DOMA decision, Germany’s constitutional court weighs in on gay rights

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By the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court will render decisions in two of the most important legal cases to affect same-sex marriage in the United States: Hollingsworth v. Perry, which could result in the repeal of California’s Proposition 8, a ballot measure that overturned the state legislature’s enactment of same-sex marriage, and United States v. Windsor, which could strike down the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act.  DOMA, a 1996 law that prohibits same-sex couples from federal benefits of marriage, has been struck down by lower U.S. courts as a violation of the ‘equal protection’ clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution.  Others have argued that it violates the right of states to determine their own marriage laws and the ‘full faith and credit’ clause of the U.S. constitution that requires states to recognize the law, rights and judgments of the other U.S. states. Germany Flag Icon

Both decisions are among the most highly anticipated opinions of the Court’s summer rulings.

But Germany’s top constitutional court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, got out in front of the U.S. Supreme Court last week with a landmark decision of its own that in many ways mirrors what proponents of same-sex marriage hope will be a harbinger of the U.S. decision on DOMA.

In a decision that could place pressure on chancellor Angela Merkel in advance of Germany’s federal election in September, the constitutional court ruled that same-sex couples in registered civil partnerships are entitled to the same joint tax filing benefits as those in opposite-sex marriages, exactly the rights that DOMA was originally enacted to prohibit in the United States.  The decision put the fight for German same-sex marriage on the front page of European newspapers in a summer when the parliamentary battles to enact same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom and France have otherwise dominated headlines.

It’s surprisingly in many ways that France and the United Kingdom have been more progressive on same-sex marriage rather than Germany.  Although polls show nearly two-thirds of the British and the French support same-sex marriage, a February 2013 poll showed that three-fourths of Germans support same sex-marriage.  Moreover, UK prime minister David Cameron is the center-right leader of a Conservative Party that faces its most pressing political pressure today from the right, not from the center, and the virulent anti-marriage rallies in France and the widespread opposition to same-sex marriage on France’s center-right means that French president François Hollande’s push for marriage equality, a policy that he campaigned on in 2012, has met significant turbulence.

But Germany’s evolutionary approach to marriage equality has taken a more subdued path through the constitutional court in Karlsruhe as much as through the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament.  Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his coalition partner Volker Beck successfully pushed for the enactment of the Life Partnership Act in 2001 when the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party) controlled the government in coalition with Beck’s Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (the Greens).  Following the German constitutional court’s blessing of the law in 2002, the Bundestag followed up in 2004 with revisions to the law that increase the rights of registered life partners, including rights to adoption, alimony and divorce, though not parity with respect to federal tax benefits.

Since taking power in 2005, chancellor Angela Merkel has not pushed additional rights for same-sex couples, which puts her at awkward odds with her coalition partners, the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party), which supports marriage equality and whose former leader Guido Westerwelle (pictured above with Merkel), Germany’s foreign minister and its vice-chancellor from October 2009 to May 2011, is openly gay.

Both Merkel’s Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU, Christian Democratic Party) and the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, the more socially conservative and Catholic-based Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria), have been traditionally opposed to gay marriage, and as recently as March, the CDU and the CSU reaffirmed their opposition to extending tax benefits to same-sex partners, even though the February 2013 poll showed that two-thirds of CDU-CSU supporters favored same-sex marriage outright.

Despite parliamentary inactivity in Berlin, last week’s decision by Germany’s constitution court, however, is just the latest decision from Karlsruhe that has edged same-sex registered partnerships ever closer to full marriage equality.  Continue reading As U.S. awaits DOMA decision, Germany’s constitutional court weighs in on gay rights →

Argentina, Falkland Islands, United Kingdom

Does Argentina have a case in its fight for the Falklands/Malvinas?

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(18) 'Malvinas Argentinas' -- Torres de los Ingleses

On Sunday and Monday, 1,517 eligible voters in the Falkland Islands (or, if you like, las Islas Malvinas) turned out to vote in the referendum on its status as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.falklands flagUnited Kingdom Flag Iconargentina

Fully 1,513 voters supported the current status, and three voters disagreed.

That should be an open-and-shut-case, right?  Certainly under any principles of self-determination, a 99.74% victory for remaining under the aegis of the United Kingdom should be respected — the residents of the small islands that the United Kingdom (and the residents themselves) call the Falklands Islands and that Argentina call the Islas Malvinas, which lie just 310 miles off the coat of Argentine Patagonia (and over 8,000 miles from London).

Not so fast.

The dispute goes back to 1833 — and really, even further:

  • To the 1520s, when Argentines claims that Ferdinand Magellan discovered them on behalf of Spain.
  • To 1690, when the British say that captain John Strong first landed on the islands, naming them for Viscount Falkand.
  • To 1764, when both sides agree that France settled Port Louis, though the Argentine and British stories vary as to what happened next — a British expedition certainly arrived in 1765 but had left, however, by 1774.

By 1833, the British were back — it’s essentially pretty clear that UK settlers took control of the islands in that year, and that those settlers and their descendants have remained there continuously ever since.  But Argentina argues that it inherited the Spanish claim to the islands when it won independence.  It’s unclear whether Argentina’s then-ruler, Juan Manuel de Rosas, in 1850, as part of the negotiations for the Arana-Southern Treaty between the United Kingdom and Argentina, conceded the claim to the British. Maybe he did. Maybe not. It’s not formally a part of the treaty.

Of course, settlers in North America rebelled against UK colonial rule to great effect — and independence — in 1776.  But the claim here is different — and messier.

The UK-Argentine tussle only became more of an international tussle on Wednesday with the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires as the new Catholic pope, Francis, who has asserted the Argentine claim to the islands. (For his part, monsignor Michael McMarcam the head of the Catholic Church on the islands, says the new pontiff is welcome in the Falklands/Malvinas).

Think of it this way: in a parallel world, imagine that the indigenous and Spanish settlers of Florida managed to withstand American invasion in the 1820s and form their own country.  Within a decade, the United States (or, if you’d like, the United Kingdom) took control of the Florida Keys and, despite their proximity to Florida (remember, it’s not a U.S. state but rather a sovereign nation in our parallel universe), formed settlements.  For generations, the US/UK and their Keys settlers and descendants held sufficient power to develop and deepen those settlements.  Is it necessarily an easy case, even 180 years later?  (Would your opinion change if you were Indian? Irish? Residents of Diego Garcia, the emptied British naval base in the Indian Ocean?)

The Argentine government argues that principles of self-determination don’t apply in the case of the Falklands/Malvinas, because the original generation of occupiers usurped the islands from Argentina, which was still in the growing pains of asserting its own independence.  But that was 180 years ago, and generations of Falkands settlers have called the islands their home ever since.  Is there a statute of limitations on such post-colonial claims?

For their part, Falklands settlers aren’t convinced:

I would like to know under what legislation the Argentine government calls it illegal. We approved it under our own laws here at the Falklands (Malvinas) and I was told that there is a meeting in the Argentine Congress on Wednesday to discuss its rejection. For a referendum that is illegal and for voters that don’t exist, they appear to be paying it a lot of attention.

The islands were the site of an infamous 1982 war between the United Kingdom (then under the leadership of prime minister Margaret Thatcher) and Argentina (then in the final years of Argentina’s last military junta that took power in 1976 and prosecuted the ‘Dirty War,’ in 1982 under the leadership of Leopoldo Galtieri).  Galtieri ordered an invasion of the islands in April 1982 (the joke is after one bottle of whiskey too many), hoping that his newly confirmed cold warrior bona fides from U.S. president Ronald Reagan would forestall a military response from the United Kingdom.

Galtieri was wrong. Continue reading Does Argentina have a case in its fight for the Falklands/Malvinas? →

France, United Kingdom

British, French governments poised to pass gay marriage into law

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Amid a flurry of parliamentary action in the United Kingdom and France, two of the largest countries in Europe and, indeed, two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are set to legalize gay marriage in the coming months.United Kingdom Flag IconFrance Flag Icon

The joint result gives an incredibly burst of global momentum for the idea of gay marriage and LGBT equality.

Even more striking, the gay marriage push has been pursued by two governments that couldn’t be much more different, ideologically — a right-wing, budget-cutting Conservative Party government in the United Kingdom and a leftist Parti socialiste (PS, Socialist Party) government in France.

Most immediately, in London yesterday, the British House of Commons voted overwhelmingly 400 to 175 to approve equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian partnerships in England and Wales.  Enacting same-sax marriage rights has been at the heart of UK prime minister David Cameron’s ‘modernising’ mission for the Conservative Party — i.e., pulling it to the forefront of supporting socially liberal causes, while the government continues pursuing a very conservative economic agenda.

Nonetheless, Cameron’s efforts, historic as they may be, have not been without a cost — despite the overwhelming support of his coalition partners, the socially progressive Liberal Democratic Party and of the opposition Labour Party, only 127 of Cameron’s 303 Tory MPs supported Tuesday’s bill.

That’s frankly somewhat of an embarrassment for the prime minister, who’s facing increasing pressure from backbenchers who are worried about the government’s unpopularity nearly halfway through its five-year term — young Tory MP Adam Afriyie is already reported to be considering an upstart leadership campaign against Cameron.  More worryingly than Afriyie, however, is the fact that Owen Paterson, the environmental secretary, led the Tory effort in the House of Commons against the gay marriage bill, and even Cameron’s attorney general, Dominic Grieve, abstained from the final vote.

For a party already perilously split on issues like the UK’s role in Europe, the vote has now opened a new rift over social progress as well, writes Polly Toynbee in The Guardian:

[Gay marriage], warn the old Tory chairmen of the shires, is “shaking the very foundations of the party”. If so, they really are done for. Cameron wrongly thought this a clause IV moment to parade a modernised party. Instead, he has revealed them as a nest of bigots. Disunity is electoral poison, and so is a leader losing control of his party. Rebel MPs, like runaway horses, lose their fear of whips. Gay marriage has become a proxy for other undisciplined craziness running through their veins, from hunting to Europe, privatising the NHS to breaking up the BBC, loathing windmills, loving fracking.

Notwithstanding the perils for Cameron, the bill will now proceed to the House of Lords, where it should pass relatively easily, and Cameron hopes to mark the law’s enactment later this summer.  Scotland, meanwhile, is considering its own gay marriage bill later this year — first minister Alex Salmond’s majority government, dominated by the Scottish National Party, is set to advance the issue after consultation on the bill ends in March 2013.

But France will be racing to beat Great Britain to the marriage chapel.

francegay

Over the weekend, the Assemblée nationale (National Assembly) of France approved a change in the definition of marriage from an agreement between a man and a woman to simply an agreement between two people, paving the way for the adoption of a comprehensive same-sex marriage and adoption bill later this year.

Gay marriage has also proven divisive in France, where a strong Catholic opposition to gay marriage has polarized political views on the issue.  Although France’s government won its most recent vote, it did so only with the support of the ruling Socialists — lawmakers from the conservative Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for a Popular Movement) of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the more far-right Front national (FN, National Front) of Marine Le Pen opposed the measure.

The conservative opposition has used amendment and other delaying tactics to stall the bill, despite a massive pro-LGBT rally in Paris late in January.

A recent poll shows that 63% of French voters support gay marriage.  A Guardian poll in December 2012 showed nearly the same level of support (62%) among British voters.

Europe has long been at the vanguard of extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Continue reading British, French governments poised to pass gay marriage into law →

European Union, United Kingdom

Clarke’s pro-Europe tone highlights referendum risk to UK Tories from the center

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Longtime senior Conservative Party grandee — and former chancellor of the exchequer — Kenneth Clarke (pictured above) in no uncertain terms yesterday said that a British exit from the European Union would be a disaster.United Kingdom Flag IconEuropean_Union

That Clarke is pro-Europe is certainly not a surprise.

As former prime minister John Major’s chancellor from 1993 until the fall of the Tory government in the 1997 Labour electoral landslide, Clarke was the most prominent pro-European in Major’s government — at one point, Clarke was even in favor of the United Kingdom joining the eurozone.  When Major’s government irreparably fractured over divisons on the UK’s role with respect to Europe, Clarke was most certainly the top general of the pro-European faction.

So it’s not a shock to see Clarke joining forces with Peter Mandelson, the former Labour veteran, and others for a cross-party effort to boost the United Kingdom’s continued presence in the European Union:

“There’s a broad range of opinion inside the [Conservative] party. The number of people who actually want to leave the European Union; it’s quite tiny. They get a disproportionate amount of attention. My guess is that there are about 30 who want to leave and when we first joined the European Community I think there was slightly more than that.”

He warned that it would be “pretty catastrophic” if Britain left the EU and said he was now resigned to fighting a referendum on the issue if the Conservatives win the next election.

“The background climate in this county has become … unremittingly hostile. I think somebody has got to make the positive case again. The climate of public opinion just needs to be reminded how essential it is if we really want the UK to play a part in the modern world,” he said.

But it’s another headache for UK prime minister David Cameron, who announced in a widely anticipated speech last week that he would seek to renegotiate the United Kingdom’s role in the EU and, thereupon, call a referendum on the UK’s continued membership by 2017 (obviously depending on the reelection of the Tories in the 2015 general election).

Clarke’s outspoken support shows just how difficult Cameron’s balancing act on Europe has become — and it will only be more difficult as a potential referendum approaches. Continue reading Clarke’s pro-Europe tone highlights referendum risk to UK Tories from the center →

European Union, United Kingdom

From Heath to Wilson to Thatcher to Cameron: continuity in EU-UK relations

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My friend and colleague, Dr. Michael J. Geary, and I, are in The National Interest today with a even-further revised piece on the history of relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union (pictured above are former prime ministers Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher).United Kingdom Flag IconEuropean_Union

In particular, we continue to argue that British participation in the EU — including UK prime minister David Cameron’s latest speech demanding a renegotiation of the UK’s position in the EU and a straightforward in/out referendum by 2017 — must be viewed within the long context of the tumultuous 40-year history of UK-EU relations:

But even as the Eurozone accepts that deeper union is necessary to make the single currency workable, it’s unclear that in the reality of today’s “multi-speed Europe,” Cameron would need to renegotiate anything in order to retain the fiscal prerogative at home—just 22 days ago, the “fiscal compact” took effect through much of the rest of the EU, despite Cameron’s refusal to ratify it.

That’s why Europe should view Cameron’s speech not only in the narrow context of right-wing domestic politics or fiscal sovereignty, but within the wider scope of Britain’s troubled relationship with European integration. Ideally, Britain wants a European-wide free-trade area without the supranational institutional apparatus, something it proposed during the 1950s. Yet unless the euro implodes, that’s not the future of the EU.

Photo credit to Paul Grover.

European Union, United Kingdom

Taking a deeper look at Cameron’s EU speech and UK relations with Europe

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Over at EurActiv, Dr. Michael J. Geary, a friend and colleague at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and I have written a piece placing UK prime minister David Cameron’s speech from Wednesday in greater context in respect of existing European Union structures and the longstanding 40-year history of the United Kingdom’s tumultuous relationship with the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community.
United Kingdom Flag IconEuropean_Union

You can read it here.

We note, among other things, that Cameron’s latest gambit is well-placed within the UK’s long-standing discomfort as a member of Europe:

In fact, if Cameron’s latest gambit has a sense of déjà vu to it, it’s because it comes almost directly out of the political playbook of former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.

Just one year after [Edward] Heath secured British membership in the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community, Wilson sought to renegotiate the original deal and, in 1975 held a referendum on whether Britain would remain in the Community.

But British-EU relations have always been troubled, and even the British accession to the EEC is poised with original sin. Denied membership to the EEC twice during the 1960s by French president Charles de Gaulle, Britain finally gained entry in 1973 after months of protracted negotiations between pro-European Conservative prime minister Edward Heath and de Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou….

In some ways, British truculence goes back well beyond the era of European Union – in 1931, the United Kingdom was the first major European power to ditch the gold standard, goosing its own economic recovery while leaving the economies of Germany and France clamped to 24-carat chains.

We also place the speech in the context of what are likely to be negotiations, initiated by German chancellor Angela Merkel, for a new EU treaty that attempts to locate greater fiscal policymaker power with Brussels, at least among the eurozone nations:

[Merkel], who wants a new EU treaty granting greater fiscal control to Brussels (and to Berlin, in no small part), may be willing to trade more opt-outs to Cameron in exchange for green-lighting further integration for the core eurozone countries.

Cameron may also be hoping that he can use negotiations on the still uncertain EU budget for 2014 to 2020 as a bargaining chip.

Negotiations wouldn’t begin in earnest until after Cameron’s reelection in 2015 (still a questionable proposition) and after German federal elections expected in September 2013, so it’s impossible to know whether the 2014 budget or a new Merkel-led treaty effort would even come into play.

After all, it’s not clear if the eurozone will exist in its current form through the next five months, let alone five years. But if Merkel and French president François Hollande balk at Cameron’s push, will it be enough for him if he manages to, say, renegotiate an opt-out from the EU’s working time directive, or perhaps repatriate additional justice policymaker powers from Brussels?

United Kingdom

Labour leads, as Clegg and the Lib Dems struggle during UK convention season

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As conference season gets underway in the United Kingdom, the Labour Party, under relatively new leader Ed Miliband, now leads the Conservative Party by a 41% to 31% advantage in the latest Guardian/ICM poll, with the Liberal Democrats trailing at 14%.

Labour, which performed generally better than expected in the last election in May 2010 (which was supposed to have been a complete landslide for the Tories), hold 254 seats in the House of Commons to 304 seats for the Tories and 57 seats for the Lib Dems.  Although the next election is not expected until 2015, and the current Tory-Lib Dem coalition shows no signs of fracturing, despite some strains, Labour would be set to return to government.  That’s the best poll performance for Labour since well before the era of former prime minister Gordon Brown.

The support comes largely from the drop in support for the Lib Dems, who won 22% in the 2010 election and have watched support crumble as the junior partner of UK prime minister David Cameron’s government.  Just last week, Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (pictured above) recorded an apology for violating its 2010 pledge not to raise tuition fees — the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has voted to lift the cap on tuition fees to £9,000.

The move, which came in advance of this week’s annual Lib Dem conference, has dominated political discussion — Clegg’s video has even gone viral:

As we approach the expected 2015 election, if Lib Dem support remains subdued, the calls for a new leader will only become louder.  This week’s favorite is Vince Cable, who has been the business secretary in the coalition cabinet since 2010.  That’s perhaps ironic, given that Cable is just as pregnant with support for the central Tory program of budget cuts as Clegg.  Nonetheless, the Guardian/ICM poll showed that the Cable-led Lib Dems would increase their support to 19% from 14%.

Throughout the conference, Cable and Clegg have both emphasized that the Lib Dems will run in the next election as a separate party, not jointly with the Tories or in favor of any particular coalition.

All things considered, today’s polls are of limited utility nearly 30 months before the next election.  Furthermore, I still think — despite a strong performance by shadow chancellor Ed Balls and an increasingly sure footing for Ed Miliband — that the polls are a reflection less of Miliband’s stellar leadership than of the collapse of the Lib Dems under Clegg and the tepid reviews of Cameron’s Tories, given the austerity program that chancellor David Osborne is pushing forward with, even with the UK mired in a double-dip recession.  So there’s much time for the economy to turn around, and if so, Cameron and Clegg will both in better shape going into an election expected in 2015, and Miliband still seems like (and remains closer to) Neil Kinnock, the perennial loser of the 1980s and 1990s British politics than to Tony Blair, who delivered three consecutive Labour routs.

The left has savaged Clegg because he refused to apologize for the actual hike in tuition fees (and not just for breaking the pledge), but the more damning criticism is that by offering up such a mealy-mouthed apology and by refusing to stand up to the Tories on not just student fees, but the direction of the economy, Clegg sounds like just another politician.  Given that Clegg’s ascent into government came largely from his freshness and the appeal of a new approach to government (Cleggmania!), that is perhaps the most dangerous aspect for Clegg’s leadership.  Continue reading Labour leads, as Clegg and the Lib Dems struggle during UK convention season →

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Is Kenneth Clarke — and his experiment with prison reform — finished in British politics?

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Longtime observers of British politics will note with some alarm recent reports that justice minister Kenneth Clarke may be headed out of UK prime minister David Cameron’s cabinet, pursuant to a widely expected cabinet reshuffle in early September.

To contemplate this is to see the final curtain drawn on one of the ‘big beasts’ of British politics in the past three decades — as has been noted, Clarke won his first ministerial role when UK chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne was just one year old.

The Telegraph reports that Cameron is considering replacing Clarke with Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary (and the ill-fated former leader of the Tories from 2003 to 2005), or Nick Herbert, a junior justice minister.  Even more odd is the way in which Clarke has issued a statement on the potential reshuffle:

“I have never had any conversations of any kind with the Prime Minister or anyone acting on his behalf about a reshuffle. I am totally laid back about a reshuffle and am waiting to see whether or not it affects me,” he said.

Clarke is, simply put, one of a kind: a bloke in a party of toffs.

Second to Boris Johnson, perhaps, Clarke connects with the British people in a way that few Tories have managed in recent times. Continue reading Is Kenneth Clarke — and his experiment with prison reform — finished in British politics? →

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Not a good day for the Lib Dems

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That Chris Huhne has resigned as Cabinet minister is horrible news today for the Liberal Democrats, who haven’t had the easiest year and a half, politically speaking, in the Coalition.  But it’s just the latest in a long string of unfortunate scandals, personal and public, that have beleaguered several of the Lib Dems’ brightest stars.

Huhne, who lost two narrow leadership elections, the first in 2006 to Menzies Campbell and the secon in 2007 to current leader Nick Clegg, had been one of the younger rising stars among the Liberal Democrats, serving as Spokesman for Home Affairs from 2007 to 2010 and was serving, until today, as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change under the Coalition government. Continue reading Not a good day for the Lib Dems →

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Miliband v. Miliband

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If you’re like me, you find the inherent fratricide of the UK Labour Party a deliciously fascinating element of UK politics, with a weak Ed Miliband in office and his older and more experienced brother David Miliband waiting in the wings.

So imagine my delight to see this article by big brother David in the New Statesman earlier this week. As The Guardian‘s Nicholas Watt notes, it’s really a slap at Neil Kinnoch, the Labour party leader from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Labour was out of office.

David’s article even coins a term — “Reassurance Labour” — as a mocking retort against the trade unionists and other more stridently leftist voices who argue that Labour should return to its traditional roots, voices to whom little brother Ed owes his election as leader.  It’s hard not to read the New Statesman article as David laying down his marker for a leadership campaign after the failure of his brother’s Labour leadership. (Don’t forget that last year, David’s camp actually leaked the speech he would have given had he won the leadership).  Notwithstanding that the article praises little brother Ed four times, it’s hard not to read between the lines. Continue reading Miliband v. Miliband →