Admittedly, Johnson did himself few favours with his bumbling performance when put on the spot by a TV reporter over photos of a young boy sleeping on a hospital floor.

But it wasn’t the NHS that made millions brave driving rain to mark an ‘X’ with a stubby pencil.

For most Tories – and many former Labour voters – it was, in the words of the only three words the campaign will be remembered for, to ‘get Brexit done’.

Simon Walters writes that the election was all about Brexit. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at Copper Box Arena in London in a last campaign effort the day before the General Election

And for Home Counties Tory Remainers egged on by Sir John Major, hectoring Jo Swinson’s Lib Dem Europhiles and Labour’s pro-Brussels London luvvies, it was to get Brexit undone.

The truth is that almost exactly three and a half years after the referendum the country is still deeply divided over whether the UK should leave the EU. Every party was tied in knots trying to grapple with Brexit fissures during the campaign.

Corbyn panicked when he realized his feeble fence-sitting was driving working-class Leavers in Labour’s so-called Red Wall of seats in the North into Boris’s arms.

A token pro-Leave Corbynista was sent North to try to curb the insurrection – and was greeted with a loud raspberry from one end of Hadrian’s Wall to the other.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer – a silken-tongued southern MP and arch-Remainer – was so invisible in the North he might as well have spent the campaign on Mars. But if you were a Labour supporter in pro-Remain Putney, south-west London, you could have been forgiven for thinking Starmer was Labour leader, not Corbyn.

Brexit party leader Nigel Farage pictured on the campaign trail in Hartlepool, the day before the general election

Starmer’s face, not Corbyn’s, was plastered all over one of the Putney Labour candidate’s leaflets in a straightforward attempt to milk the Remain vote and ‘Stop Brexit’.

Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson did the seemingly impossible when she was rejected by fellow Remainers who said her pledge to summarily revoke the Article 50 departure process from the EU made a mockery of the word ‘democrat’ in her party’s name.

She consoled herself by trying to wrestle the Foreign Secretary – karate black-belt Dominic Raab – out of his seat in Esher in the heavily Remain Surrey commuter belt.

Nigel Farage disappeared in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke when his Brexit Party supporters concluded he had become the biggest threat to his own declared objective.

Johnson got every Tory candidate to sign his Brexit pledge, but this did not prevent blood-letting between the Conservatives’ warring factions.

In Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve, standing as an independent after being thrown out of the party for his one-man crusade to block Brexit, called Johnson a ‘pathological liar’.

Parliament is widely held to have failed to do its duty over Brexit, with endless dither, delay, bickering and back-biting that reduced a once great nation to a laughing stock.

If only Brexit cheerleader Boris had moved into No 10 after the referendum instead of Remainer Theresa May, we would have ‘got Brexit done’ three years ago and moved on, goes the argument.

I am not so sure.

Current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pictured outside a polling station in his North Islington constituency in London

Before the referendum campaign began, veteran Brexiteer John Redwood told me it would be ‘the English Civil War without muskets’. That war lasted nine years, cost around 100,000 lives and split families for generations. But it but sowed the seeds for the nation’s future tolerance, prosperity and success.

The long-term consequences of Brexit may not be so profound. Most would settle for a decent trade deal with the EU, continued pet passports and controlled immigration while ensuring we have enough people to staff the NHS, care homes and the local Costa Coffee.

There has been vicious social-media abuse and threats to MPs on all sides. Tory Iain Duncan Smith received a dismembered rat through his letterbox just days ago.

But staying in the EU has not prevented neo-Nazi protests in Merkel’s Germany and Gilets Jaunes riots in Macron’s France.

The Parliamentary deadlock in Westminster has been petty, agonizing and frustrating – but in my view, the extra three and a half years spent thrashing out a hugely complex issue have not all been wasted.

Most people who turned out yesterday had a greater understanding of Brexit than they did in June 2016, when few had heard of the Customs Union, let alone knew what it was – including some MPs I could mention.

If you wanted to vote for or against Brexit yesterday, there were guides on how to vote tactically in every seat.

Before the election was called, the depressing prospect (to me, anyway) of the UK spending much of 2020 fighting a long, bitter second referendum seemed increasingly likely.

With luck, it took place yesterday. And not a musket was fired.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7787071/SIMON-WALTERS-election-came-just-one-thing-Brexit.html

The post This election came down to just one thing – Brexit first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Despite three years of negotiations, infighting Estonians, the birth of the Brexit Party, the fall of UKIP and attempted party coups, the vast majority of the British public haven’t changed their minds on leaving the EU, that is according to one of the UK’s leading pollsters.

Talking to CGTN Europe, Joe Twyman, the co-founder of Deltapoll, notes that any swing from those who voted to leave the EU towards wanting to remain is chiefly only due to young people entering the electorate and old people passing away, rather than any significant decline of support from either camp.

“Younger people who tend to vote remain, and older people who tend to leave, have, as we euphemistically say … left the electorate.”

Anti-Brexit protests have been increasingly frequent as the deadline approaches. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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Pro-Brexit protesters have often expressed their preference for a no-deal exit from the EU. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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Boris Johnson has proved a divisive prime minister in his short time in office. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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The post ‘Majority of Britons haven’t changed their minds on Brexit,’ says leading pollster first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Mr. Lowe launched a scathing attack on the European Union as he condemned the bloc for being a “fig leaf of democracy”. He criticized the EU for being “ultimately run by the French and paid for by the Germans and us” and called on Boris Johnson to leave the bloc without a deal. The Brexit Party MEP also accused the bloc of “sacrificing Britain on the alter”.

Mr. Lowe said the EU has become a “federal European superstate”.

He told Express.co.uk: “As the proudest sovereign nation in Europe we have been sacrificed on the alter by this post-war European project.

“As a result of that, a lot of our constituents have suffered massively.”

“It is an absolute disaster and the worst outcome for all of us.”

He said that when he met with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier last month, he told the EU leader: “I wouldn’t sign this treaty if I had just lost to you in a war.”

Mr. Lowe also hit out at Remainers for being “entirely democratic”.

He said: “The Remain camp are disregarding the votes of 17.4 million people.

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Lee from Cardiff, a self-titled “reluctant Remainer”, said he will now be supporting the Brexit Party because the democratic vote of 17.4 million people should be respected. Speaking to Wales’ Brexit Party MEP James Wells, the Cardiff resident said: “I actually voted to Remain, reluctantly. I had been researching the European Union for a long time and was a reluctant Remainer. When the result came out, I thought ‘fair enough – that is the majority’.

“We should now leave on the terms that Cameron said we would leave.

“We should leave the customs union, we should leave the single market, and we should do it immediately.”

Lastly, the Remainer” said he would now be supporting the Brexit Party, despite previously being a Labour Party member.

He added: “I’d just like to say that until November 2017 I was a Labour Party member and I am equally dissatisfied with the response from the Labour Party.

“In its heartlands in south Wales, the West Midlands, the northwest and the northeast, the real Labour voters wanted to leave the European Union, and I’m afraid the Labour Party has just ignored its constituents.

“I shall be voting for the Brexit Party.”

The comments come after Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice criticized Theresa May and Tory leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt for ignoring his party’s letter outlining plans for a no deal Brexit.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and chairman Richard Tice delivered a letter to Number 10 earlier this month demanding to be brought in as part of the negotiating team for Brexit and no deal preparations.

At the party’s press conference on Monday, Mr. Tice took aim at Theresa May for ignoring the invitation as there were only four months left to go until October 31, the Brexit deadline.

The entrepreneur and MEP also said he had received no word from Tory leadership contest finalists Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt over any involvement with no deal preparations.

During the press conference, Mr. Tice said: “It is over two weeks now since we delivered a letter to the current Prime Minister Theresa May asking that we should be allowed in to look at the state of no deal preparations.

“It is pretty shocking that we have had no reply either from the Prime Minister or from any of the candidates.

“When you think there is still another four months to go, are we really inferring that nothing going on.

Brexit news: Tory leadership hopefuls to hold a series of hustings up and down the UK (Image: Express.co.uk)

“There is no one better than ourselves and some of our elected MEPs, given that we had a direct democratic mandate to be involved in the negotiations.

“We should be allowed in to look at the state of these preparations so that we know what is going on.

“This way we can give confidence to the people on leaving with a WTO Brexit and that should happen now.”

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has also been vocal on his skepticism of Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson – warning the former London mayor could delay Brexit past 31 October.

Mr. Farage has claimed Mr. Johnson has already won the leadership contest but has said he will remain untrusting of the former foreign secretary until he delivers on his promise of delivering Brexit.

Both Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Mr. Johnson have said they would be prepared to take the UK out of the EU by October 31 with or without a deal.

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1145529/Brexit-news-latest-UK-BBC-EU-no-deal-today-Boris-Johnson-no-deal-Brexit-Party-Nigel-Farage

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The Brexit Party leader, who has never won a parliamentary seat, said that a so-called ‘clean’ exit from the EU could be achieved by Boris Johnson becoming prime minister, calling a snap election and forming an election agreement with the Brexit Party.

Farage walked through his logic at a Telegraph-hosted event, saying that if Johnson were to make sufficient preparations for a no-deal Brexit, he might spur the EU to offer “some sort of tariff-free deal”.

“And if Boris did that, and he was prepared to go to House of Commons to be voted down, to lose a motion of confidence, to go the country on a general election on that ticket and with the support of people of like me – he would win a massive, thumping majority,” argued Farage.

This would allow Johnson to break the parliamentary deadlock that agreed in a non-binding vote that the UK should not leave the EU without a deal.

Farage had said that there is “little chance” of the Conservatives delivering on the promise to leave the EU by October 31, even if Johnson becomes prime minister.

WATCH: Boris Johnson backer is asked SEVEN times how he’ll deliver Brexit by October 31

If Johnson tries to force the issue through parliament he will face “open civil war”, he wrote in the Sunday Express.

Concerns that his party could split the vote among Tory Brexiteers is one of the considerations Tory MPs will be taking into account as they decide who they are backing for leadership of their party and the premiership.

The Brexit Party has already demonstrated its ability to take vast chunks of voters out of the hands of the Conservatives during the EU elections, and ran a close second to Labour in the Peterborough by-election.

“To win the next general election we don’t have to become the Brexit Party, make an electoral pact with them in certain seats, or offer a coalition in parliament,” said Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson in a column for the Telegraph.

“We have to respect the referendum result and leave the EU, as we said we would,” she added.

“Doing a deal with the Brexit Party would be an admission of defeat. And we’re not dead yet.”

Source: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nigel-farage-tory-party-coalition-plan-1-6114276

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The European parliament elections last week have provided further graphic evidence that Britain and Europe are in the throes of a profound political and cultural upheaval.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party pulverized both Labour and the Conservatives by winning many more seats than either to become the largest single party in the European parliament – within just five weeks of being created.

Since Farage’s party stands for Britain leaving the European Union with no withdrawal deal, many Conservatives rightly believe that whoever they elect as their new leader (and therefore Britain’s prime minister) in the wake of Theresa May’s resignation will need to endorse a no-deal departure to have any chance of saving the party from total destruction.

That’s because they understand from this electoral meltdown that the fury of their mainly Brexit-supporting voters over the Conservative government’s failure to honor the 2016 referendum vote, exacerbated by the refusal of the Remainer-dominated parliament to leave with no deal, is off the scale.

Among other EU countries, which are similarly witnessing a revolt by the people against the erosion of their democratic independence and social cohesion, these elections produced a parallel collapse of mainstream parties and a rise of “populist” nationalists.

Many Jews have greeted these developments with unbridled horror. In Europe, they see the “populist” tide as threatening the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism. In Britain, Jewish community leaders try to paint Nigel Farage as an ally of the far-right and as an anti-Semite.

These reactions range from the grossly oversimplified, blinkered and ignorant to the grotesque.

Farage is no anti-Semite. He has repeatedly attacked the anti-Jewish policies of countries that ban Israeli Jews from entering. Remarks he has made about “globalists” and the “new world order” have been wrenched out of context to suggest falsely that he was talking about Jews rather than the EU. Other remarks about the Israel lobby in America have been similarly cherry-picked and distorted.

Farage, a friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, is himself a somewhat Trumpian figure – a loudmouth who is careless about both his language and the company he keeps,, rough-hewn round the edges.

Of course, his association with President Trump is enough by itself to finish him off in the minds of many Trump-hating Jews, for whom the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel individual ever to have inhabited the White House looms nightmarishly instead as a supposed eminence grise to the Ku Klux Klan.

In mainland Europe, however, the situation is more complicated. The mainstream media, along with many Jews, tends to view all who want to uphold their country’s culture and democratic independence as “far-right” nationalists.

Some of these upstart parties are indeed troubling. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has Nazi origins.

In Austria, a corruption scandal involving the leader of the Freedom Party, which was part of the governing coalition despite its neo-Nazi links, has now brought the government down. Yet despite the furor, the Freedom Party’s voter support has remained broadly stable.

Hungary’s undeniably illiberal leader Viktor Orbán perceives that liberalism threatens the survival of his country by undermining its bedrock values, such as the family and cultural traditions.

Both Hungary and Poland are led by nationalists who are defending the integrity of their countries that was sacrificed to Hitler and Stalin. They resist Muslim immigration because they don’t want their populations to suffer the social disruption and dangers with which mass Muslim migration is now so obviously blighting other European countries.

Certainly, Hungary and Poland are themselves still riddled with anti-Semitism; and yet, right now, Hungary is arguably the safest country in Europe for Jews.

So why are so many getting so much of this so wrong? There are a number of reasons. First, there’s the implacable refusal to acknowledge that so many Muslims refuse to assimilate into Western culture. There’s a parallel refusal to acknowledge the rampant anti-Semitism they have brought with them, which is causing violence and intimidation against Jews across Western Europe.

Second, there is the stubborn insistence that the main threat of anti-Semitism is on “the right” when all the evidence suggests that the far bigger problem is on the left.

Progressive circles are institutionally anti-Jew, often (but by no means always) expressed through anti-Zionism. In Britain, the Labour Party is now being formally investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has received thousands of examples of Jew-hatred by party members.

The Greens, those populists of the left who also did well in the European elections, have a persistent problem with anti-Jewish prejudice. Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism cites Green Party members airing conspiracy theories about Jewish money-controlling politics, “Zionist pedophile rings,” or links between Israel and both Nazism and the Islamic State group.

In the United States, The New York Times recently bemoaned the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, though suggested that President Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu were helping fuel it.

This was preposterous on many counts – not least that one of the institutions that can reasonably be said to be helping fuel western anti-Semitism is The New York Times.

Its international edition recently published a disgusting cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading a kippa clad President Trump.

A short while before that, its literary pages published a review by novelist Alice Walker recommending a book by the virulent anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist David Icke. All this quite apart from the obsessional lengths to which the paper goes to demonize, dehumanize and delegitimize Israel, which it singles out alone in the world for such treatment.

In Germany, where the Commissioner for Jewish Life, Felix Klein, recently warned Jews not to wear a kippa in public, the huge increase in anti-Jewish attacks is officially blamed on the rise of the far-right.

Yet among German Jews who have experienced anti-Semitic harassment, many believe their assailants were Muslim extremists. According to Klein, the official line is unreliable because when it’s unclear who the perpetrators are, the authorities automatically classify them as far-right.

The third mistake being made is to assume that nationalism means fascism and anti-Semitism.

But it wasn’t nationalism that led to Nazism. A lethal cocktail of resentment, humiliation and racial theories fueled not German nationalism but Nazi imperialism, the desire to subjugate or destroy other countries and cultures.

If Britain hadn’t had such a strong sense of national identity in 1940, it would never have stood alone against Hitler.

It’s where national culture and identity are weak or denied altogether that anti-Semitism roars out of control. Far from the EU being a bulwark against all this, its erosion of national identity and democracy are actually incubating it.

The desire of the vast majority to uphold their nation’s culture, with democratically elected legislatures passing laws reflecting that shared national project, is not a route to the destruction of liberty, tolerance and decency. It is, in fact, the only way to defend them.

No one can tell how this great battle for national identity and culture will end. But in the all-too likely chaos, the Jews, alas, are likely to find themselves in the firing line from all sides.

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/europe-starts-to-fray-at-the-seams/

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In this image made available by UK Parliament, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, London, Wednesday, May 22, 2019. British Prime Minister Theresa May dug in Wednesday against a growing push by both rivals and former allies to remove her from office as her attempts to lead Britain out of the European Union appeared to be headed for a dead end. UK PARLIAMENT VIA AP MARK DUFFY

LONDON

British Prime Minister Theresa May was hunkered down with close allies Thursday as she considered whether to give in to relentless pressure to resign, or fight on to save her Brexit plan and her premiership.

With her authority draining away by the hour, May delayed plans to get lawmakers to vote on her European Union withdrawal bill — May’s fourth and likely final attempt to secure Parliament’s backing for her Brexit blueprint.

Conservative lawmakers, who increasingly see May as an obstacle to Britain’s EU exit, have given her until Friday to announce her departure date or face a likely leadership challenge.

May has resisted pressure to resign before, and her spokesman, James Slack, insisted she would still be in office when U.S. President Donald Trump comes to Britain for a June 3-5 state visit.

“She looks forward to welcoming the president,” he said.

But May’s fate looked sealed after the resignation late Wednesday of House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, who said she could not support May’s withdrawal bill. The draft contains measures aimed at winning support from the opposition, including a promise to let Parliament vote on whether to hold a new EU membership referendum.

That concession was the final straw for many Conservative lawmakers and ministers, who are urging May to scrap the bill.

Leadsom said May’s Brexit plan did not “deliver on the referendum result” that saw voters in 2016 opt to leave the EU.

“No one has wanted you to succeed more than I have, but I do now urge you to make the right decisions in the interests of the country, this government and our party,” Leadsom wrote in a resignation letter to May.

May moved quickly Thursday to replace Leadsom with former Treasury minister Mel Stride.

But she also delayed the bill, which May previously said would be published Friday and put to a vote during the week of June 3. There was no mention of the bill on the parliamentary schedule for that week that was published Thursday.

Government whip Mark Spencer told lawmakers that “we will update the House on the publication and introduction of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill” when lawmakers return from an 11-day recess on June 4.

The political turmoil weighed on the pound, which fell to $1.2601 on Thursday, its lowest point against the dollar since early January.

Meanwhile, the number of Conservative lawmakers calling on May to resign was growing. The party’s legislators want May to agree on Friday that she will quit, triggering a Conservative leadership contest. If not, they are likely to try to topple her.

“I want her to give a timetable for when she will go,” said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the committee that oversees Conservative leadership races.

He said that if she did not set a departure date, there would be “overwhelming pressure” for a no-confidence vote in her.

If May quits as party leader, she will likely remain as caretaker prime minister for several weeks while Conservative lawmakers and members vote to elect a successor.

May became prime minister soon after the June 2016 EU membership referendum and has spent her entire tenure trying to deliver on that decision.

She seemed close to success when she struck a divorce agreement with the EU late last year. But lawmakers have rejected it three times, and Britain’s long-scheduled departure date of March 29 passed with the country still in the bloc.

Many Conservatives blame May for the delay, and want her replaced with a more ardent Brexiteer such as former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

May says another leader won’t be able to strike a better deal with the EU, which insists it will not renegotiate Britain’s departure terms.

Digital Minister Margot James stood up for May, saying the prime minister was being “hounded out of office because Parliament will not make a decision and the parties just have an inability to compromise.”

If May stays on until next week, pressure is likely to increase when results come in from this week’s elections for the European Parliament, with Conservatives expecting to receive a drubbing. Many British voters on both sides of the Brexit debate look set to use the election to the EU legislature to express displeasure over the political gridlock.

Opinion polls show strong support for the single-issue Brexit Party — largely from angry former Conservative voters — and for pro-EU parties including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

The election is being held on Thursday in Britain, but results won’t be announced until all 28 EU countries have finished voting late Sunday.

British newspapers were unanimous Thursday in declaring that the end was nigh for May.

The Conservative-backing Daily Telegraph said in an editorial that “either Mrs. May must go as soon as humanly possible, or the Conservative Party must finally remove her.”

The Daily Mail, which has been supportive of May, said that “despite her valiant efforts to deliver an honorable Brexit, she has finally run out of road.”

Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom leaves the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, Wednesday May 22, 2019. Andrea Leadsom, a senior member of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet, has quit over Brexit, in a new blow to the embattled British leader. Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom says she is resigning because she does not believe May’s Brexit plan delivers on voters’ decision to leave the European Union. May is battling to stay in office amid demands she resign over Britain’s stalled departure from the bloc . PA VIA AP YUI MOK

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly session of Prime Ministers Questions in Parliament in London, Wednesday, May 22, 2019. KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH AP PHOTO

Source: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/nation-world/article230734324.html

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The European Parliament elections are fast approaching, where 28 countries will head to the polls to select their MEPs. All UK attention is on the domestic political implications. Will the Brexit Party triumph? Why are we holding elections when we voted Leave in 2016?

But there is an equally important, even wider question: what will these elections mean for the EU? Here, the answer is worth digging into in some detail. The result could shake up the bloc’s traditional political groupings and change the direction of the policy agenda of the EU going forward, which will have implications for the whole of Europe, including the UK, whether inside or outside the EU.

The European Parliament elections will shape the direction of the EU for the next five years, and potentially for much longer. The parliament has a crucial role in determining policy and the occupants of key offices. Here is the current political make-up of the European Parliament and the likely make-up of the next parliament, after the elections in May, based on current national opinion polls.

The overall balance of power between the left and right is unlikely to change very much. But the size of the political groups, and the potential coalitions that will form, are likely to change quite dramatically. The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group will be considerably smaller, while the centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) is likely to be larger, especially if President Macron’s La République en Marche! party joins that alliance.

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is also likely to lose seats, although it should remain the largest group in the parliament. Meanwhile, the populist parties on the right of the EPP are likely to be considerably stronger, particularly the new European Alliance of Peoples and Nations (EAPN) group, formed by Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen.

The next figure shows the likely changes in the sizes of the key coalitions.

The grand coalition between the EPP and S&D, which has traditionally dominated the parliament, is likely to fall below a majority of seats in the parliament for the first time: down to about 44 per cent of seats. A centre-left bloc and a centre-right bloc will also be down considerably. Meanwhile, the “EU critics” – in the groups on the right of the EPP as well as in the radical left European United Left/Nordic Green Left (EUL/NGL) – are likely to win over one-third of the seats.

These changes will have immediate effects on the way the EU works. The first action of the new European Parliament will be to “elect” the next Commission president. Although the EU governments in the European Council formally propose a candidate for Commission president, the convention is that that candidate hails from the largest political group in the newly elected parliament—as they did with the most recent two presidents (José Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker). If the parliament rejects the nominee of the European Council, leaders must propose a new candidate.

The problem for the governments is that the traditional grand coalition between the EPP and Socialists (S&D) will need to expanded to include the Liberals (ALDE) as well as the Greens (G/EFA). This will be an unwieldy alliance. And the EPP candidate for Commission president, the German politician Manfred Weber, is unlikely to be supported by the Socialists or the Greens.

Most commentators are now expecting a compromise candidate to be chosen, as part of a wider package deal for all the key new offices in the EU: the Commission president, the Council president, the European Central Bank president, the European Parliament president, and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs. There are enough offices to share between these four political groups. But, expect the newly emboldened populists in the parliament, led by Salvini and Le Pen’s MEPs, to oppose this “grand stitch up.”

The outcome of the election, with smaller traditional coalitions and a much more fragmented chamber, will also shape the EU legislative agenda in the coming years. This is because EU legislation in almost all policy areas now requires the majority support of MEPs for it to pass. Legislative coalitions in the parliament have traditionally been formed issue-by-issue, with different coalitions being dominant in different policy areas.

In the 2014-19 parliament, a centre-right coalition – between the EPP, ALDE, and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – has tended to win on legislation relating to regulation of the single market (such as financial services regulation), reform of the eurozone and international trade agreements.

Meanwhile, a centre-left coalition – between S&D, ALDE, G/EFA, and EUL/NGL – has tended to win on legislation relating to justice and home affairs (such as the free movement of people, and policies towards refugees), environmental standards and international development issues (such as EU spending on development aid).

With the newly fragmented parliament, each of these coalitions will be smaller and majorities will be more difficult to form. As a result, populist EU-critical MEPs, particularly on the right, will be able to shape the policy agenda.

These MEPs are also likely to be able to win key policy-making positions in the parliament, such as committee chairs and legislative report-writing roles (rapporteurships). With this new influence, expect these MEPs to demand more restrictive refugee and asylum policies, more spending on EU external border controls, more powers for national governments to run deficits in the eurozone, and more protectionist trade policies.

The headlines across Europe following the elections in May are likely to focus on the electoral gains of the populist eurosceptics across Europe, at the expense of the centrist pro-Europeans. And these gains will matter. The new parliament will be a difficult partner for the governments and the Commission, who will not be able to rely on a stable coalition. The result could be policy gridlock in the EU in the coming years, which could further encourage anti-European sentiments in many countries.

By Simon Hix, Professor of Government at the London School of Economics. This piece is from our report ‘The European elections and Brexit,’ and was originally published in Prospect.

Disclaimer: 
The views expressed in this analysis post are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative.

Source: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-european-parliament-is-about-to-undergo-profound-change/

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European Commission Violeta Tomic voiced her support for the concept of a “European nationality” to allow citizens to be independent from an individual country. Nationals of European Union member states are currently granted EU citizenship as part of their countries’ membership of the bloc, which grants them the freedom to reside and travel to all countries in the union. Asked whether she would back plans for a new nationality plan free from single country’s legal requirements and constraints, Ms Tomic told Euronews: “It is possible, and it’s not a bad idea.”

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Theresa May speaks in Parliament in March Photographer: Mark Duffy/U.K. Parliament

Follow @Brexit, sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, and tell us your Brexit story. 

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May will face a challenge from activists in her Conservative Party after enough signed a petition opposing her leadership and Brexit strategy to force an emergency vote on her future.

The beleaguered premier, who survived a confidence vote by members of Parliament in December, is set to face the judgment of local party leaders and other senior grassroots members at a special meeting of their National Convention — described as “the parliament of the voluntary party.”

May was told Monday by Andrew Sharpe, chairman of the convention, that more than 10 percent of chairmen and women of local parties had signed a petition calling for her to go — meeting the threshold for an emergency meeting, the Sun newspaper reported.

Tory activists and lawmakers angry at May’s handling of Brexit have been looking for ways to remove her from office as her premiership has lurched from crisis to crisis. The party’s constitution disallows another challenge by MPs until December — a year after their last attempt — forcing activists to take the issue into their own hands.

‘Not the Right Person’

May’s office played down the significance of the proposed meeting, saying any vote would not be binding and, in any case, it is not clear if it would be passed. There will also have to be a 28-day delay before any such gathering is held.

The petition, backed by more than 70 local party leaders according to organizers, says that “we no longer feel Mrs. May is the right person to continue as prime minister to lead us forward in [Brexit] negotiations.” It goes on to say that the signatories “ask therefore that she considers her position and resigns.”

Read more: U.K. Labour’s Split on Brexit Referendum Threatens Election Push

While May would not be required to quit by the party’s constitution if she lost such a vote, it would make it harder for her to meet her pledge to remain as prime minister until Brexit is delivered.

May has failed three times to get the deal she reached with Brussels for Britain’s divorce from the European Union through Parliament — in part because it is opposed by hardline Brexiteers in her own party — and has faced an increasing backlash from rank-and-file members frustrated at her failure to deliver the divorce they want.

Activists have refused to campaign for the party and some have even said they will vote for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in European Parliament Elections scheduled for May 23 after the premier agreed a delay in leaving the bloc until Oct. 31.

“There’s a lot of anger and despair among activists and chairmen,” petition organizer Dinah Glover said in a video posted on Twitter last week. May “is no longer the solution but is a sadly becoming the block to Brexit,” Glover said.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/u-k-s-may-facing-challenge-from-grassroots-tories-over-brexit

The post U.K.’s May Facing Challenge From Grassroots Tories Over Brexit first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.