Great Britain
September 28, 2019 — Steven Hayward
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
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July 24, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Boris Johnson is now prime minister of Great Britain, and the British establishment, including much of his own party, is horrified at this turn of events, just like the American Establishment (including the GOP hierarchy) were horrified by Donald Trump’s election. I can report on some of the early sentiment. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are said to be “bitterly opposed” to Johnson becoming prime minister. A cabinet secretary has been
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July 11, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the U.S. whose blistering and insulting dispatches about President Trump became public, has resigned his position. I don’t see that he had much choice. It is unrealistic to expect any president, and certainly not the current one, to deal with an ambassador whose contempt for him is this deep and now this public. And Britain would be poorly served by an ambassador to
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June 6, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I posted the full video of President Trump’s interview by Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain here yesterday morning, shortly after it had been posted on YouTube by GMB itself. Steve Cates writes from Catallaxy Files to note that he watched it as well until it disappeared. Steve has posted the excerpts still available on YouTube and linked to the full video posted at Bing. “All this is recounted in
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June 5, 2019 — Scott Johnson
President Trump sat down with Piers Morgan for a 30-minute interview on Good Morning Britain. Touting the interview as a world exclusive, GMB has just posted the video on YouTube. I have posted the video below. Morgan’s interview covers Trump’s state visit and America’s relationship with the United Kingdom. “In the half-hour long chat in Churchill’s historic war rooms,” GMB notes, “Trump clarifies his ‘nasty’ comments about Meghan Markle and
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May 28, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I haven’t found exactly what I’ve been looking for in the way of analysis of the European Parliament election results in the United Kingdom. The Telegraph’s weekly newsletter summary put it this way yesterday: The Conservatives have been decimated in the European elections and recorded their worst result in history, as Nigel Farage’s six-week-old Brexit party triumphed. The European elections, which were never supposed to happen, proved disastrous for both
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May 5, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Joe Biden claimed that 14 foreign leaders have called him to “voice concern” about President Trump. Among the 14, he said, was Margaret Thatcher. Lady Thatcher died in 2013, thus missing out on the Trump presidency. Biden then corrected himself, saying that he was actually referring to current British Prime Minister Theresa May. He called his mistake a “Freudian slip.” Freudian? Maybe. Both are female authority figures (though May’s
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May 4, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Today is the 40th anniversary of the election of Margaret Thatcher as the first female prime minister of Great Britain—a precursor of the election the following year of Ronald Reagan. Before her arrival many people thought England’s long, slow postwar decline was irreversible. “Britain is becoming a third world country . . . an offshore industrial slum,” Economist magazine correspondent Robert Moss wrote in 1977. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw recall in
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April 28, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Britain has a fracking industry–or could have one, anyway, if it weren’t for the Greens’ political clout. It finally became too much for Natascha Engel, Britain’s “fracking czar,” who quit with a blistering letter of resignation: Natascha Engel’s decision to walk away from such a high-profile role is driven, she says, by her dismay that Ministers are jeopardising Britain’s energy security because they would rather appease noisy green campaigners than
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March 5, 2019 — Steven Hayward
We have Hamilton, the musical, but the British now have its, um, very rough (strong language warning!) equivalent about Brexit. I think the continuing clown show within the British government over Brexit is one of the key stories of our time, and the outcome, like the 2016 vote itself, contains significant meaning for the United States, for the question of Brexit is the same as the question with Trump: Are
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February 19, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, seven members of Parliament left Britian’s Labour Party. They will remain in Parliament as an independent bloc. The Washington Post has the details. The leader of Britain’s small Liberal Democrat party said he hoped to work with this bloc. He also suggested that it might grow in the near future. The seven MPs cited several areas of disagreement with the direction of the Labour Party under its radical head,
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December 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Is it purely a coincidence that the governments of Britain, France, and Germany are all in deep trouble? Both Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron may not survive the week, and Angela Merkel is testing just how long a lame duck period is possible. Gee—I wonder what they have in common? It’s a total mystery. (NB: Theresa May and the Tories would likely already be gone were it not for the
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December 9, 2018 — John Hinderaker
We returned last night from 11 days of vacation in England, so normal posting will resume as soon as I have had a chance to catch up on the news. In particular, I need to figure out how the Democrats plan to impeach President Trump on the ground that he used his own money as consideration for a nondisclosure agreement with Stormy Danials (and, I take it, one other woman).
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October 6, 2018 — Steven Hayward
This week the Power Line Show takes a break from the All-Kavanaugh-All-the-Time format of recent weeks, and sits down with historian William Anthony Hay, author of a brand new biography of Robert Banks Jenkinson. What? You’ve never heard of Robert Banks Jenkinson? You might recognize him better by his “stage name,” Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1812-1827, during the windup of the Napoleonic wars and the War
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October 4, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I really hate to pick on British Prime Minister Theresa May, though it does seem evident that she’s totally botched the Brexit negotiations. I noted here several weeks ago that it is a good thing that May is a politician, because she obviously will never make it on “Dancing with the Stars,” and this week as if to prove the point her own party set her up for a another
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August 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend I finally finished reading Dominic Green’s long Weekly Standard profile of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory backbencher and serious Brexiteer. I learned a lot from reading Green’s profile, but what kept me going was the sheer entertainment of the thing. Wanting to hear what Rees-Mogg sounds like, I tracked down the highlight reel below on YouTube. I can’t get enough of it. Fortunately, it’s only part 1 of
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July 9, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Some years ago, during a leisure hour (or three) in a British pub up in Yorkshire, I asked an English acquaintance if he could explain Cricket to me. He paused a moment, and said, “No—I can’t.” And so I never have figured out anything about that peculiar game. Which is preface to this brilliantly done five-minute parody of British sports. Well worth your time:
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