Loading ...We all woke up in the United States this morning to the news that Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, died at age 87. There’s not much I can add (Andrew Sparrow’s live blog at The Guardian is a good place to start) to what will certainly be a week’s worth of paeans [...]
Filed under: United Kingdom | Tagged: conservative, thatcher, tory, uk, United Kingdom | 1 Comment »
Boris Johnson, reelected last year as London’s major and often discussed as a potential Tory successor to prime minister David Cameron, had a very bad weekend. In an interview with the BBC’s Eddie Mair, Johnson hemmed and hawed over whether he once invented a quote 30 years ago as a young news reporter, lied to [...]
Filed under: United Kingdom | Tagged: bbc, boris, boris johnson, Cameron, conservative, johnson, london, osborne, tory, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, has set September 18, 2014 as the date for the referendum on potential Scottish independence. Polls have been relatively consistent, with support for independence at around 30% to 35% and with support for continued union with England at around 50% to 55%. But the up-or-down vote will come in 18 [...]
Filed under: Scotland, United Kingdom | Tagged: Cameron, Clegg, conservative, EU, European Union, labour, liberal democrat, orkney, referendum, salmons, scotland, scottish national party, shetland, SNP, tory, UKIP, United Kingdom | 1 Comment »
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. Fully 1,513 voters supported the current status, and three voters disagreed. That should be an open-and-shut-case, right? Certainly under [...]
Filed under: Argentina, Falkland Islands, United Kingdom | Tagged: argentina, bergoglio, britain, Cameron, falkland islands, falklands, fernandez de kirchner, francis, islas malvinas, kirchner, malvinas, pope, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
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. That Clarke is pro-Europe is certainly not a surprise. As former prime minister John Major’s chancellor from 1993 until the fall [...]
Filed under: European Union, United Kingdom | Tagged: britain, Cameron, conservative, EU, European Union, irish referendum, labour, merkel, referendum, tory, uk, UKIP, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
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). In particular, we continue to argue that British participation in the [...]
Filed under: European Union, United Kingdom | Tagged: britain, Cameron, conservative, European Union, euroscepticism, merkel, referendum, tory, uk, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
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 [...]
Filed under: European Union, United Kingdom | Tagged: britain, Cameron, conservative, European Union, euroscepticsm, merkel, referendum, tory, uk, United Kingdom | 1 Comment »
UK prime minister David Cameron, calling the democratic legitimacy of the European Union ‘wafer thin,’ has this morning pledged to renegotiate a new settlement with the European Union for the United Kingdom, and then a straight in-or-out referendum within the United Kingdom by 2017. Well, then. Today’s address was probably the most important speech of [...]
Filed under: European Union, United Kingdom | Tagged: Cameron, conservative, European Union, labour, liberal democrat, referendum, schengen, tory, UKIP, United Kingdom | 1 Comment »
Certainly, today’s sad news from Newtown, Connecticut — the site of a gun massacre that left, so far, 18 children and nine adults dead, will once again ignite a debate over the proper role of gun laws in the United States. The reality is that, despite the efforts of officials such as New York mayor [...]
Filed under: United States | Tagged: australia, bloomberg, brazil, canada, concealed carry, czech republic, firearms, guns, israel, japan, obama, samurai, second amendment, United Kingdom, United States | Leave a Comment »
After placing second in a by-election in Rotherham last Thursday, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has vaunted to the center of British politics, with newsmakers wondering whether UKIP will, after two decades, finally emerge as a real force in British politics. The by-election, which resulted after Denis MacShane, a Labour MP, resigned due to the ongoing [...]
Filed under: United Kingdom | Tagged: BNP, Cameron, conservative, euroscepticsm, farage, great britain, labour, lib deems, liberal democrats, miliband, tories, uk, UKIP, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
They’ve certainly screwed their courage to the sticking place now. UK prime minister David Cameron has agreed with Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond on the terms of a referendum, to be held in Scotland in autumn 2014, as to whether Scotland should seek independence or remain part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern [...]
Filed under: Scotland, United Kingdom | Tagged: Cameron, Clegg, conservative, devolution, devomax, great britain, holyrood, independence, labour, miliband, referendum, salmond, scotland, SNP, uk, United Kingdom, westminster | 2 Comments »
UK prime minister David Cameron stopped by The David Letterman Show (a popular late night show in the United States, for non-US readers), and flubbed a few questions. Notably, Cameron couldn’t name who composed Rule Britannia (Thomas Arne wrote the music — not Edward Elgar, as Cameron suggested — and James Thompson wrote the poem [...]
Filed under: United Kingdom | Tagged: Cameron, Clegg, conservative, just for fun, lib dems, liberal democrats, tory, uk, United Kingdom | Leave a Comment »
