Brexit

Breaking: Trussed

Featured image Breaking news out of London: Liz Truss is out as PM after just 44 days in office, the shortest premiership in British history. Yesterday the Conservative Party, with its largest majority in decades, fractured over several of Truss’s proposals, throwing the House of Commons into chaos. If an election were held today the Tories would lose in a landslide to Labour, even as European conservative and populist parties are surging elsewhere »

Taking heart from Hartlepool

Featured image I hoped that the June 2016 vote in favor of Brexit might be a harbinger of the outcome in our own presidential election but feared this was wishful thinking. I was thinking — I think I was thinking — of the wave that brought Mehachem Begin to power in 1977, Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and Ronald Reagan in 1980. And so it proved to be. Reading Melanie Phillips’s long column »

The Brexit deal

Featured image The United Kingdom and European Union have reached a post-Brexit trade agreement after many months of negotiations. The no-deal Brexit that many expected and some feared has been avoided. I lack the knowledge to evaluate either the deal or a no-deal scenario. Instead, I’ll present for consideration the views of the estimable Melanie Phillips. She’s delighted, above all, that the UK is finally free of the EU. I know enough »

Brexit Gets Done

Featured image Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 stunned many observers and was part of an international populist wave that included President Trump’s election later that year. Britain’s “Remainers” were never reconciled to the popular vote and worked for years to prevent Brexit from actually taking place. Now, after years of negotiation and posturing, Britain and the EU have finalized a Brexit agreement. This is good news, I think, »

How Brexit will help Britain get vaccinated

Featured image I believe the UK is the first Western nation to approve a vaccine against the Wuhan coronavirus. Apparently, it is also leading other European nations when it comes to efficiently purchasing that vaccine. Why? John Fund suggests that the answer is Brexit. Regarding purchasing of the vaccine, Fund quotes Hugo Fry, the British managing director of Sanofi, the world’s fifth-biggest drug maker. According to Fry, the UK’s decoupling from the »

Nigel Farage Bids Farewell to the EU

Featured image We’re less than 48 hours away from Britain’s exit from the European Union (oh happy day!), and today at the EU Parliament in Strasbourg the irrepressible Nigel Farage took a well deserved victory lap. Very much worth watching the whole five minutes here, especially for the cheeky violation of EU Parliament rules against displaying national flags at the end. Watch all the way through to the churlish chairlady, who has »

A working-class revolt

Featured image The editors of Spiked (or spiked, or sp!ked) have distinguished themselves as intense advocates of Brexit in the populist vein. They convened to record a podcast in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s earth-shattering electoral kaboom. Among the questions they address are how Labour will ever recover from this remarkable defeat, whether the Tories can really become a blue-collar party, and what happens now? Brendan O’Neill, Tom Slater and Fraser Myers »

The Best Commentary You Will See on the British Election [Updated]

Featured image Election results are still coming in, but it is clear that Britain’s Conservatives have won a great victory, enough to give them a working majority in the House of Commons that will will allow them to proceed, at long last, with Brexit. Late this afternoon, after exit polls indicated a Tory victory, two of my policy fellows at Center of the American Experiment sat down to discuss the election and »

Thoughts on the British election

Featured image Yesterday, John wrote about the upcoming election in Britain. Having just returned from England, I thought I might add the following observations: John is right that the polls favor the Tories. Indeed, the poll by YouGov he cites predicts a big victory for that party. And, as John notes, YouGov’s poll of the last election was just about spot on. The YouGov poll seems reasonably in line with other surveys. »

Poll Predicts Tory Sweep

Featured image The London Times headlines: “MRP election poll: Boris Johnson heads for big majority.” Boris Johnson is on course for a comfortable majority, according to a polling model that accurately predicted the election outcome two years ago. The Conservatives would win 359 seats, Labour 211, the SNP 43 and the Liberal Democrats 13 if the election were held today, according to a seat-by-seat analysis based on current polling by YouGov for »

Donald Trump, Commander Brexiteer

Featured image Forget the photoshopped medal of honor for the Hero Dog: When the media takes in the conversation below between President Trump and Nigel Farage, they are going to flip out more than a Sea World dolphin on cocaine. I ran into Farage once very early in the morning when we were both checking out of the discreet Washington hotel that we both like to frequent, and although we had a »

Who are you?

Featured image UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is bad in so many ways it can warm your heart just to see him laughed at. That is the inference I draw from the video that I found on Twitter (below) and thought was current. Dating from 2016, it is still making the rounds because it remains relevant and entertaining. Wake up. Watch this again and again and happiness today is guaranteed. “ »

Prorogues and Pro-Rogues

Featured image I won’t pretend to have substantial knowledge of the intricacies of Britain’s unwritten constitution, or the workings of their judicial system that has sat uneasily beneath the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy since at least the time of Sir Edward Coke and Blackstone. One of my favorite books on my law shelf can help explain the conundrum for anyone not steeped in British law: It is Theodore Plucknett’s A Concise History of »

Going (pro)rogue

Featured image Today comes word that the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament unconstitutional. I thought only our Supreme Court was able to act in such a blatantly high-handed fashion. Here at the Spectator and here at Spectator USA, however, Richard Ekins anticipated this result a few days ago: Who runs Britain? When Boris Johnson’s lawyers made their case in front of the Supreme Court »

Deplorables

Featured image Spiked has posted the film below “about the transatlantic populist revolt” with this introduction: Brexit and Trump were two ballot-box revolts that, though different in many ways, shared one clear thing in common: the fury they provoked from the establishment. Politicians and commentators, in the US and UK, immediately denounced voters as uneducated, racist and deplorable. Democracy itself was called into question. We travelled from the Rust Belt to the »

Breakfast with a Brexiteer

Featured image The American Interest has published an extremely interesting interview with Andrew Roberts, the accomplished historian and biographer of Winston Churchill. The interview is published under the headline “Breakfast with a Brexiteer.” Asked by his interlocutors how he conceives of the role of leadership in a democracy — how he sees the will of the people versus the will of leadership — “We hear British colleagues say, with all these threats »

Ringo Gets It

Featured image Readers of a certain age probably remember Ringo Starr fondly. He always seemed sensible, for a rock musician, and it appears that money hasn’t driven him to the left, as happens with so many. Here Ringo says what he thinks about Brexit. It’s common sense, clearly and effectively expressed: Legendary Ringo Starr says "The people voted and they have to get on with it. You had the vote, this is »