Tag Archives: Theresa May

Scottish lawmakers to hold independence vote on eve of Brexit

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Just a day before Britain kick-starts Brexit proceedings, the Scottish parliament is on Tuesday expected to dismiss Prime Minister Theresa May’s overtures and back calls for a fresh independence referendum.

Lawmakers in Edinburgh are due to vote on Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon’s bid for a new referendum, despite the prime minister’s last-minute appeals.

The Scottish vote had been scheduled for last Wednesday but was postponed after the terror attack near the British parliament in London, the same day, in which four people were killed and dozens more injured.

The Brexit vote last year has spurred the independence campaign of Sturgeon, head of the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP), who argues that Scotland is being forced out of the European bloc against its will.

Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, but they were outnumbered by voters in England and Wales who backed Brexit.

– UK an ‘unstoppable force’ –
Sturgeon and May met in Scotland on Monday, with the prime minister reiterating that “now is not the time” for a referendum and describing the four nations of the United Kingdom as an “unstoppable force”.

The SNP leader has suggested an independence vote should be held by spring 2019 at the latest — before Britain leaves the EU — although after winning the backing of Scottish parliament she needs approval from London for a referendum to take place.

Rejecting such a request would be politically risky for May, whose government is also trying to prevent the collapse of the power-sharing arrangement which governs Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland executive collapsed in January following a dispute between the two main parties, the Democratic Unionist Party and Irish nationalists Sinn Fein, which failed to reach a new power-sharing deal by a 1500 GMT Monday deadline.

The British government has extended the talks and, if a resolution is not reached, fresh elections could be called or London could resume direct rule over Northern Ireland.

The fate of the province is one of the priorities set by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator. “We will not stand for anything that weakens dialogue and peace in Northern Ireland,” he wrote in the Financial Times on Monday.

– ‘Pulling together’ –
Despite May’s assertion that she will seek the best Brexit deal for all of Britain — including Scotland — she has failed to convince the SNP which has warned of the negative consequences of leaving the EU.

The economic uncertainty of Scotland outside the United Kingdom was a factor in voters rejecting independence in a 2014 referendum, but the SNP claims breaking away from the European single market would cost Scotland tens of thousands of jobs.

Scotland’s economic hand was strengthened on Monday when exploration firm Hurricane Energy announced the “largest undeveloped discovery” of oil in British waters, located west of the Scottish Shetland Islands.

But May also won a financial boost, with Qatar committing to invest £5 billion ($6.23 billion, 5.8 billion euros) in the UK economy within five years.

The announcement will allay fears of investors abandoning Britain when it leaves the EU and the European single market, which May has said is a necessary step to control immigration.

The prime minister made a plea for unity ahead of Britain’s historic EU departure.

“Now is the time when we should be pulling together, not hanging apart. Pulling together to make sure we get the best possible deal for the whole of the UK,” she told reporters.

“We are not afraid”, defiant Theresa May says, a day after the London attack.

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The authorities emphasized that they believed the assailant had acted alone and that they did not expect any further attacks; Mrs. May said that the nation’s threat level would remain “severe,” meaning that an attack was likely, and not raised to “critical,” signaling an imminent attack.

British Prime Minister Theresa May braces for second defeat over Brexit bill

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British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a second defeat on her Brexit bill Tuesday as the House of Lords votes on another change which would give parliament the final say on leaving the EU.

The bill empowering May to start the Brexit process has already been held up by a week after peers voted on March 1 for an amendment guaranteeing the rights of European citizens living in Britain.

Members of the unelected upper chamber are on Tuesday expected to back a second amendment, this time to give the parliament a vote on the final withdrawal deal and any future trade ties with the European Union.

But opponents of this fear it would cause economic and legal chaos, as all previous trade deals and contracts between Britain and its 27 former EU partners would become void overnight.

A poll released Tuesday by the Independent newspaper found that only 25 percent of British people would support leaving the EU without a deal, with 56 percent favouring other options at odds with May’s plans.

May has repeatedly urged the Lords not to amend the two-clause EU (Notification of Withdrawal) bill, saying it is designed only to implement the June referendum vote to leave the bloc.

She is under pressure to pass the bill quickly to meet her deadline of triggering Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which would start the two-year process of exiting the bloc, by the end of March.

But a Lords source from the opposition Labour party told AFP it expected to win its amendment “handsomely” on Tuesday thanks to cross-party support.

– ‘Incentive for a bad deal’ –
The start of the Brexit talks will loom over this week’s EU summit in Brussels, which May will join for the first half before leaving her fellow leaders to discuss their future without Britain.

EU leaders have signalled that the upcoming negotiations will not be easy, amid fears that other member states could follow Britain out the door.

May is optimistic she can get a deal, but has also warned she is willing to walk away from the negotiations, saying that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal”.

Her spokesman said this position risks being undermined by the Lords’ demands on a final vote.

“We don’t want a process that incentivises the EU to offer us a bad deal in the hope that it stops us leaving,” the spokesman said.

“At the end of the day the referendum has taken place, the public voted and that must be respected.”

However, Labour’s Brexit spokeswoman in the Lords, Baroness Dianne Hayter, said: “We need the best possible deal to lessen the social and economic aftershocks of the referendum result.

“Engaging parliament throughout the process can only but help improve the prime minister’s negotiating hand, and a vote at the end will, I am sure, be conducted in the best interests of our country.”

– ‘Parliamentary safety net’ –
Peers voted by 358 to 256 last week to amend the bill to ensure ministers protect the rights of more than three million European citizens liviing in Britain after Brexit.

The change dashed May’s hopes of securing approval for the bill this week, as it must now return to MPs in the lower House of Commons for deliberation, likely on March 13.

Ministers will seek to overturn the change and, with a majority for their Conservative party in the Commons, are confident that this can be achieved.

The second amendment on a final Brexit vote, however, might be harder to remove as reports say up to 20 Tory MPs might rebel against May to support it.

One of them is Anna Soubry, who said a “proper vote” on the divorce terms was crucial.

“If we are faced with a potentially catastrophic ‘falling off a cliff’, the least we can do is provide a parliamentary safety net,” she wrote in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

 

Source: AFP

Brexit Bill Clears First Hurdle in U.K. Parliament

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Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to take Britain out of the EU easily cleared its first legislative hurdle on Wednesday, paving the way for the government to launch divorce talks by the end of March.

May’s government is seeking approval for a new law giving her the right to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty – the legal process for leaving the bloc – after the Supreme Court ruled she could not take that decision unilaterally.

The bill could complete the legislative process by March 7.

May wants to begin exit negotiations with the EU by March 31, starting two years of talks that will define Britain’s economic and political future and test the unity of the EU’s 27 remaining members.

Lawmakers voted by 498 to 114 in favour of allowing the bill to progress to the next, more detailed legislative stage. Earlier they rejected an attempt to throw out the bill, proposed by pro-EU Scottish nationalists.

The Scottish National Party’s Europe spokesman Stephen Gethins described the vote in a statement as “a devastating act of sabotage on Scotland’s economy”.

A majority of voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland in last summer’s referendum backed remaining in the EU, while voters in England and Wales supported Brexit.

Wednesday evening’s votes came after two days of impassioned speeches in parliament, which have underlined the lingering sense of shock among the largely pro-European political establishment that 52 percent of their constituents voted to leave the EU in the June 23 referendum.

Despite presiding over a Conservative Party divided over staying in the EU, May, who campaigned for a ‘Remain’ vote, secured almost unanimous support from her lawmakers for the legislation.

The opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had also pledged his party’s support for the bill at this stage, but 47 of his lawmakers defied his order and voted against the bill.

Labour and other opposition parties will try to amend the bill at the next stage – due to start next week – to give parliament greater scrutiny over the Brexit talks.

Never Again To The Bomb That Missed Our Backyard – By Azu Ishiekwene

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In a week when Africa riveted on former President Yahya Jammeh’s tantrums, an event that could have shaken the continent to its core slipped below the radar.

Or maybe we didn’t think it was sufficiently important. It emerged early in the week that the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, had knowingly concealed information about a failed missile test when she appeared in Parliament to ask for 40 billion pounds to replace the Trident, the UK’s flagship missile defence system.

The Guardian UK, which published the story, mentioned “West Africa,” the test target, by accident in its more than 800-word copy.

Opposition parliamentarians were not necessarily mad that the prime minister had taken them for a ride, although that was part of the problem. They couldn’t understand how this secret had been concealed from them since June and why they had to find out through the backdoor that the missile, which was tested in Florida, US, backfired.

For Africa, the problem was different. If the UK had actually fired the missile at West Africa, it could have landed in Accra, Abuja or Abidjan.

It’s convenient to argue that the missile was unarmed, that it carried only a dummy. But if UK parliamentarians can be outraged by the concealment and the potentially “catastrophic consequences” of the test, I’m bereft that not a whimper of objection has come from Africa, the target.

It was not even reported or mentioned in passing online or offline.

Compare the deafening silence in Africa to the huffing and puffing in Washington and London following any real or rumoured attempt by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to test his missiles, which are potentially far less deadly or dependable.

The unarmed UK missile that backfired in June has a range of 12,000km, which means it could land in any West African country from Florida where it was fired. And with a nuclear payload of 1900 kilotons, which is nearly 95 times the destructive capacity of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Trident missile could leave swathes of the region, including Nigeria, in ruins.

But the continent’s leaders were too preoccupied to notice. Jammeh was busy negotiating a safe passage for his men and asking for an oil block in Nigeria as condition for stepping down; President Muhammadu Buhari was away on a medical holiday abroad while the military authorities were hunting down journalists over spurious charges of criminal libel. And in South Africa, after surviving an internal rebellion, President Jacob Zuma was busy devising a system for ANC members to spy on one another.

Who is looking after the shop?

Of course, we can’t even complain that Africa is not being treated with respect when its leaders are absent.

And it’s not the first time in a decade. Did former President George Bush consult with Africa before setting up AFRICOM in 2007? Or did France discuss with the AU before deploying 3,000 troops to secure its interests in the region one year later?

The point is that contempt tends to feed on itself, breeding even more contempt. If the UK, which obviously still treats the continent as its footstool, sees nothing wrong in aiming a dummy missile at us, there should be at least one leader apart from Robert Mugabe with enough mojo left to ask Whitehall to point its payload elsewhere.

“What’s the point?” some would ask. Aren’t our leaders committing more devastation than the 12 nuclear warheads of the Trident combined?

See what the continent went through to get rid of Jammeh; consider the nonsense still going on in Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s Equatorial Guinea and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; the fading hopes in South Africa; the rising crisis of expectation in Nigeria, and the millions of people across the continent broken and bruised by years of corruption and incompetent leadership.

Could the Trident do worse, really?

That is an unfair question. It paints the continent with the same brush of prejudice, completely ignoring the energy and innovative spirit of the vast populations of the young and the stories from bright spots like Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda.

Let’s be clear. We may have our problems – compounded by bad leaders and complicit followers – but nothing justifies turning the continent into a playground for nukes, with or without a payload.

The continent’s silence was shameful and a quiet approval to the world to do even worse.

We have endured toxic waste, blood diamonds, poaching and cheap substandard goods, not to mention apartheid, slavery and racism, from countries that claim to love the continent more than it loves itself.

To let the UK – or any other country – make the continent the new testing field for missiles is a luxury we cannot afford. It has to be said loud and clear: the backfired nuke test in Florida should be the last.

 

Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Paris-based Global Editors Network.

British PM must get parliament approval to trigger Brexit – Supreme Court

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The UK Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Prime Minister Theresa May must get parliament’s approval before she begins Britain’s formal exit from the European Union, EU.

 

The UK’s highest judicial body dismissed the government’s argument that Ms. May could simply use executive powers known as “royal prerogative” to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and begin two years of divorce talks.

 

However, the court rejected arguments that the UK’s devolved assemblies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales should give their assent before Article 50 is invoked.

 

“The referendum is of great political significance, but the Act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result,” said David Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court which ruled by eight to three against the government.

 

“So any change in the law to give effect to the referendum must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by an Act of Parliament.”

 

Ms. May has repeatedly said she would trigger Article 50 before the end of March but she will now have to seek the consent of lawmakers first, potentially meaning her plans could be amended or delayed, although the main opposition Labour Party has said it would not slow her timetable.

 

Last week Ms. May set out her stall for negotiations, promising a clean break with the world’s largest trading block as part of a 12-point plan to focus on global free trade deals, setting out a course for a so-called “hard Brexit”.

 

Source: Reuters