Babak Belurs

Kamis, 18 Juli 2019

'No-deal' Brexit dealt blow by UK parliament - Aljazeera.com

British parliamentarians dealt a blow on Thursday both to the dying embers of Prime Minister Theresa May's administration and to the likely next leader, Boris Johnson, even before he's been confirmed.

MPs defeated the government in a vote that should thwart any efforts to suspend parliament in order to push through a "no-deal" Brexit.

Parliament has repeatedly voted against allowing a "no-deal" withdrawal from the European Union, and the notion of suspending - or "proroguing" - the elected chamber had been mooted as the most likely way the next prime minister would be able to force the United Kingdom to crash out without a deal.

Such an eventuality, analysts say, would trigger a near-unprecedented consitutional crisis.

Johnson has made the UK's withdrawal on October 31 - "with or without a deal" - the central thrust of his campaign to become the next leader of the country's ruling Conservative Party, and has never ruled out the possibility of proroguing parliament in order to get his way.

"Many assume Boris Johnson will be the next British prime minister," said Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from Westminster.

Tory leadership debate: Johnson edges closer to power

"During his leadership campaign he has set out a number of new red lines which will make getting a new exit deal with the EU more difficult, if that were even possible within the timeline we have. Now we have this vote which makes getting a 'no-deal' exit much more complicated for him.

"And so we're into the territory, presumably, of considering another extension before withdrawal, and during that time another general election. And that isn't a prospect relished by the Conservatives, because there's no guarantee they'd win it. Which means some Conservatives might even start pushing for a second Brexit referendum."

Rebellion

The move to block any suspension was backed in the House of Commons with a majority of 41 votes - 315 to 274 - after several senior government figures abstained.

Chancellor Philip Hammond, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Business Secretary Greg Clark and International Development Secretary Rory Stewart were among the Cabinet ministers who did not vote.

Margot James resigned as minister for digital and the creative industries to support the amendment.

"The prime minister is obviously disappointed that a number of ministers failed to vote in this afternoon's division," said a statement from May's office, which concluded with a slightly foreboding statement: "No doubt her successor will take this into account when forming their government."

In total, 17 Conservatives voted against the government, despite a three-line whip - essentially the strongest possible insistence from the leadership to toe the party line - indicating both the May administration's lack of authority now and the strength of feeling against "no-deal" on Tory benches.

The Conservatives are in power with a minority government by virtue of a supply-and-confidence deal with Northern Ireland's DUP. Their working majority is so slim that 17 of their own MPs voting against the government will worry the incoming administration. For all intents and purposes, Johnson has lost his ability to govern before even taking office.

How did they do it?

In a deft wrangling of parliamentary procedure, a relatively routine motion put before parliament - which essentially delayed the approval of a budget for the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland which has not sat for more than two years amid its own consitutional crisis - had an amendment added to it by Labour's Hilary Benn and Alistair Burt of the Conservatives.

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The amendment enshrines in law that the government must update parliament every two weeks on progress in talks to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly, and that parliament must be in session for five days after each update in order to debate it.

This, in essence, means the House of Commons will have to sit through the autumn session, and members can't be sent home in order for a "no-deal" Brexit to happen by automatic operation of law on October 31, while parliament is suspended.

The House of Lords, the UK parliament's upper chamber, strongly backed a bid to block any suspension of parliament by a margin of 103 votes on Wednesday.

Gauke said before the vote that proroguing parliament would be "outrageous".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "At a crucial point in this country's history, if you like - that parliament should not be able to sit, should not be able to express its opinion and its will, I think would be outrageous.

"I very much doubt that any prime minister would in fact suspend parliament in these circumstances, but I can understand the concerns that a lot of my colleagues have."

Gauke, Clark and Hammond are at the centre of influential Conservative politicians who will provide a counterweight to Johnson's push for an immediate exit from the EU.

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2019-07-18 19:22:00Z
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UK knife crime rises by 8 percent to record high as London mayor blames ‘austerity’ for sharp increase - Fox News

The knife crime epidemic plaguing England and Wales has reached a record high in 2018-19 with such offenses increase by at least 8 percent, new figures show.

The data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 43,516 police-recorded offenses involving a knife or sharp instrument, the highest figure since such records began in 2011.

BRITISH TEENAGERS SENT TO EAST AFRICA TO AVOID RISING UK KNIFE CRIME: REPORTS

The data doesn’t take into account the crimes recorded by Scottish authorities and Greater Manchester Police, which patrols parts of the 9th largest city in Britain, Sky News reported.

“The picture of crime is a complex one. Overall levels of crime have remained steady, but this is not the case for all types of crime,” said ONS’ Mark Bangs, adding that there were increases in “violent crimes involving knives and sharp instruments” and “fraud and overall theft.”

LONDON MAYOR APPEARS EXASPERATED ON KNIFE CRIME QUESTIONS, ROLLS EYES AT REPORTER

The increasing knife crime is particularly evident in London, where Mayor Sadiq Khan has been trying to contain the problem.

While politicians and experts have called for different policing, Khan decried the rampant knife crime as the “human cost of austerity.”

“The sad reality is the violence we're seeing on our streets today is an appalling side effect of increasing inequality and alienation caused by years of austerity and neglect,” he said in public remarks earlier this week.

“The sad reality is the violence we're seeing on our streets today is an appalling side effect of increasing inequality and alienation caused by years of austerity and neglect.”
— Sadiq Khan

He added that there’s a “direct link” between poverty and violent crime, according to the data published the City Hall.

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This year there have been at least 33 fatal stabbings in London, while last year, knife crime took the lives of 135 people.

The capital also saw 3,301 knife crime offenses in 2017/18. This is a massive 42 percent higher than in the year ending March 2011, Sky News reported.

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2019-07-18 12:48:17Z
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Brexit: UK 'will have to face consequences' in event of no deal - BBC News

The UK will have to "face the consequences" if it opts to leave without a deal, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator has said.

Michel Barnier told BBC Panorama the thrice-rejected agreement negotiated by Theresa May was the "only way to leave the EU in an orderly manner".

He also insisted Mrs May and her ministers "never" told him during Brexit talks she might opt for no deal.

Publicly, Mrs May has always insisted no deal is better than a bad deal.

Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility has said the UK will fall into recession next year if there is a no-deal Brexit.

The fiscal watchdog said economic growth would fall by 2% by the end of 2020 if it left the bloc without an agreement.

'Not impressed by threat'

In his first UK broadcast interview - conducted in May before the start of the Conservative leadership contest - Mr Barnier was asked what would happen if the UK "just tore up the membership card" for the EU.

"The UK will have to face the consequences," he replied.

Asked whether the UK had ever genuinely threatened to leave in such a way with no deal, Mr Barnier said: "I think that the UK side, which is well informed and competent and knows the way we work on the EU side, knew from the very beginning that we've never been impressed by such a threat.

"It's not useful to use it."

Panorama: Britain's Brexit Crisis will be broadcast on Thursday at 21:00 BST.

Conservative Party leadership contender Jeremy Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the fact the EU "never believed that no deal was a credible threat" was "one of our mistakes in the last two years".

He said while there will be economic consequences to no deal, "we are much better prepared for no deal than we were before".

He said the issue of the Northern Ireland border could be solved with "existing technology" and the controversial Irish backstop, which aims to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, "isn't going to happen".

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, a key figure in Boris Johnson's leadership campaign, accused Mr Barnier of trying to "threaten" the UK.

He said Mr Barnier's remarks were an indictment of Britain's negotiating strategy and showed "how useless" Mrs May's approach had been.

Leadership frontrunner Mr Johnson was asked for an interview by Panorama, but he declined.

Elsewhere in the programme, Mrs May's de facto deputy David Lidington revealed that a senior EU official made a secret offer to the UK to put Brexit on hold for five years and negotiate a "new deal for Europe".

Mr Lidington said the offer was passed on in 2018 by Martin Selmayr, a senior aide to EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

"Martin sort of said, 'Look, why don't we have a deal whereby we just put all this on ice for five years?'

"Let's see how things go, let's get the UK involved with France and Germany, let's see how the dust settles and let's talk about whether we can come to a new deal for Europe.'"

In his own interview for the programme - also recorded in May - Mr Selmayr said he was "very certain" the UK was not ready to leave without a deal before the original Brexit deadline in March this year.

"We have seen what has been prepared on our side of the border for a hard Brexit. We don't see the same level of preparation on the other side of the border," he added.

In another interview for the programme, the EU Commission's First Vice-President, Frans Timmermans, said UK ministers were "running around like idiots" when they arrived to negotiate Brexit in 2017.

Mr Timmermans said while he expected a "Harry Potter-like book of tricks" from ministers, instead they were like a character from from Dad's Army.

In an interview in March 2019 with the BBC's Nick Robinson, Mr Timmermans said he found it "shocking" how unprepared the UK team was when it began negotiations.

"We thought they are so brilliant," he said. "That in some vault somewhere in Westminster there will be a Harry Potter-like book with all the tricks and all the things in it to do."

But after seeing the then-Brexit Secretary David Davis - who resigned over his disagreements with the deal - speaking in public, his mind changed.

"I saw him not coming, not negotiating, grandstanding elsewhere [and] I thought, 'Oh my God, they haven't got a plan, they haven't got a plan.'

"That was really shocking, frankly, because the damage if you don't have a plan...

"Time's running out and you don't have a plan. It's like Lance Corporal Jones, you know, 'Don't panic, don't panic!' Running around like idiots."

'Playing games'

Mr Timmermans - interviewed two months before Mrs May announced her resignation - also criticised Boris Johnson's approach to Brexit negotiations from when they began.

"Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but it is about time we became a bit harsh. I am not sure he was being genuine," he said.

"I have always had the impression he is playing games."

Negotiations between the UK and EU began in 2017 after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the Article 50 process to leave the bloc.

At the end of 2018, a withdrawal agreement was settled between the two sides and EU officials said the matter was closed.

But MPs voted against the plan three times, which led to a number of delays to the exit date - now set for 31 October.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49021081

2019-07-18 05:02:22Z
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Rabu, 17 Juli 2019

Britain Struggles to Define Role in Hong Kong Protests - The Atlantic

When millions of people took to the streets of Hong Kong in recent weeks to protest an extradition bill that would make it easier for people arrested in the city to face trial elsewhere, including mainland China, several countries, such as Canada and the U.S., as well as the European Union defended the protesters.

But for perhaps no country is this more personal than Britain. As Hong Kong’s former colonial power, Britain played a primary role in the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty more than two decades ago. It’s also a signatory to the agreement guaranteeing Hong Kong’s limited autonomy from Beijing—a status protesters fear is now under threat. But the political impasse over Brexit is dominating British political discourse, ensuring that issues like Hong Kong remain in the foreign-policy periphery.

Still, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt raised the topic in a statement marking the 22nd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China.

“It is imperative that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and the rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people, are fully respected,” he said. “We have made our position on this clear to the Chinese Government, both publicly and in private, and will continue to do so.”

For the Chinese, however, what may have been acceptable in the 1990s, when Beijing was still a rising power, is no longer acceptable now. Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to London, framed Hunt’s remarks as improper interference in China’s internal affairs.

“In the minds of some people, they regard Hong Kong as still under British rule,” he said in response, adding: “They forget … that Hong Kong has now returned to the embrace of the motherland.”

Read: Why these Hong Kong protests are different

Britain’s connection to Hong Kong isn’t tenuous. Prior to its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the city was considered the last jewel of Britain’s colonial empire. When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, setting the terms of Hong Kong’s eventual transfer to Chinese control, both sides agreed that Hong Kong would retain for 50 years following the 1997 handover certain rights and freedoms not seen in mainland China. Under this “one country, two systems” arrangement, Hong Kong enjoys a degree of autonomy from Beijing, including an independent judiciary, and a separate financial and immigration system. Unlike residents of mainland China, for example, the people of Hong Kong have the right to freedom of expression and protest.

At the time, Britain envisioned that it would, if necessary, be able to help maintain Hong Kong’s autonomy. In briefing notes that have since been declassified by the British Foreign Office, Thatcher was advised to reaffirm that Britain would have the “right to raise any breaches with China after 1997” and that it “would not hesitate to do so.” Despite London’s concerns over the proposed extradition bill (which was suspended in response to the protests, though not withdrawn completely), it has stopped short of declaring the proposal a breach of the British-Chinese agreement—a charge that has only been made once, following the Chinese government’s crackdown on Hong Kong booksellers in 2016.

Some, such as Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor to Hong Kong, have argued that the efforts to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy are enough to warrant further British action.

“The proposed legislation was at the very least a breach in the spirit of the joint declaration,” Benedict Rogers, the founder of the British NGO Hong Kong Watch and the deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission, told me, noting that a failure to act could be interpreted by China as a “green light to continue encroaching on Hong Kong’s freedom.”

Still, such action would likely be ignored by Beijing, which has already stated in recent years that the agreement, much like Britain’s hold on Hong Kong, is merely historical and no longer holds any “practical significance.”

“There is nothing explicit in the joint declaration … no phrase that can be used to justify saying Britain has some legal responsibility to Hong Kong anymore,” Tim Summers, a former British diplomat and a Hong Kong–based senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank, told me, explaining that even if Britain were to speak more forcefully on this issue, it lacks the leverage to change Beijing’s thinking. “More than what the U.K. says, Beijing is more sensitive to opinion and views in Hong Kong,” he said.

Read: The search for a Brexit-era Margaret Thatcher

In any case, Britain’s responsibility to Hong Kong may be irrelevant. The country’s diminishing international presence—precipitated, in large part, by its political upheaval at home—hasn’t made its leverage any stronger. Its imminent exit from the EU, paired with its desire to strike bilateral trade deals around the world, has limited what Britain can (or is willing) to say to countries with whom it disagrees—so much so that the candidate tipped as most likely to become its next prime minister opted against defending Britain’s diplomat in Washington in order to please the American president.

“Britain would be in a stronger position if it can mobilize other countries to stand with it,” Rogers said. “What we can do alone is more limited than it used to be.”

But Patten, who has remained a strident critic of China’s influence in Hong Kong, as well as Britain’s response, or lack thereof, recently wrote that he subscribes to the “rather old-fashioned view that doing the right thing in foreign affairs is usually the right thing to do.”

“Britain may have lost some of its soft power recently. It would be nice to think, however, that it still understands how to behave with integrity,” he wrote in the Financial Times. “Our own ‘golden age’ with China should put more emphasis on honour and less on ‘fear and greed.’ That is where our national interest really lies.”

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic.

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2019-07-17 05:00:00Z
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Senin, 15 Juli 2019

Extinction Rebellion protesters block roads in UK cities - BBC News

Environmental campaigners are blocking some roads across the UK in protest against "inaction" on climate change.

Extinction Rebellion are using five boats to stop traffic in Cardiff, Glasgow, Bristol, Leeds, and London.

The group, which is calling on the government to declare a climate emergency, said it was beginning a five-day "summer uprising".

Police said road closures could hamper the ability of the emergency services to respond to incidents.

It comes after Extinction Rebellion staged an 11-day protest in April that brought several parts of London to a standstill.

Some of the 1,000 people arrested during that protest appeared in court this week.

The five boats unveiled on Monday were each named after an environmental activist and bore the message "act now".

A blue boat was placed in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in west London, and protesters practised yoga and meditation in the middle of the road.

Transport for London said several buses had been placed on diversion due to the protest.

Extinction Rebellion said the protesters were there "to demand the legal system take responsibility in this crisis, and ensure the safety of future generations by making ecocide law".

"We also stand in solidarity with climate activists around the world who are sacrificing their freedom to fight for climate justice," it added.

The group is calling on the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service to drop cases against those arrested during the April protests.

Outside Cardiff Castle in Wales, a number of Extinction Rebellion members parked a green boat in the street, causing severe delays to bus services.

Demonstrators also set up tents on grass in front of Cardiff City Hall.

Stephen Lingwood, 37, from Extinction Rebellion Cardiff, said: "People are dying right now of climate chaos in places like India. It's only going to get worse.

"We're at the beginning of the sixth mass extinction and a climate genocide and the government's inaction is, in my view, criminally irresponsible."

Protesters set up camp on Bristol Bridge with a pink boat bearing the message "tell the truth", as Avon and Somerset Police and traffic management used concrete blocks to close the road to traffic.

Chief Inspector Mark Runacres, an area commander at Avon and Somerset Police, said the force had cancelled officers' rest days to make sure it had "sufficient resources" during the protest.

"Any unplanned and lengthy road closure could impact on the ability of emergency services to respond to incidents," he said.

"We... are factoring this into our plans so we can continue to keep the public safe,"

He added officers would be "robust" in dealing with any anti-social behaviour and disorder.

Campaigners in Glasgow blocked Trongate at the intersection of Gallowgate and High Street with a 25ft purple boat.

One message on the vessel said: "The future you fear is already here".

Glasgow City Council said Trongate was closed to all eastbound traffic between Albion Street and High Street.

The local authority urged road users to consider taking other routes and said there could be congestion on surrounding streets.

Meanwhile, on Victoria Bridge in the centre of Leeds, activists unveiled a yellow boat.

One demonstrator, Alex Evans, 43, said: "My eldest child is nine years old and for each of those nine years I've watched her future get steadily worse while everyone waits for everyone else to do something on climate change.

"Now we're out of time and we can see climate breakdown all around us. Enough's enough: it's time to act now."

Extinction Rebellion says the UK must act immediately to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.

The government announced in June it would commit to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

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2019-07-15 13:54:11Z
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