LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday defended his plan to unilaterally rewrite Britain’s divorce deal with the European Union as an insurance policy against the bloc’s unreasonable behavior — even as his former attorney general joined the ranks of once-loyal lawmakers condemning the contentious move.

Johnson said a planned law designed to override portions of the Brexit withdrawal agreement was needed because the EU might “go to extreme and unreasonable lengths” in its treatment of former member Britain.

“I have absolutely no desire to use these measures,” Johnson told lawmakers as he introduced the Internal Market Bill in the House of Commons. “They are an insurance policy.”

Johnson’s Conservative government has acknowledged that the bill breaches the legally binding withdrawal treaty that Britain and the EU have both ratified. The legislation threatens to sink the already-foundering negotiations between Britain and the EU on a post-Brexit trade deal.

The U.K. formally left the bloc on Jan. 31, but existing trade rules remain in effect until the end of this year under a transition designed to provide time to negotiate a long-term trade agreement.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks in the House of Commons in London, Sept. 14, 2020, in a video grab from footage broadcast by the UK Parliament’s Parliamentary Recording Unit.

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Ed Milliband, business spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, accused Johnson of “trashing the reputation of this country and trashing the reputation of his office.”

With an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons, Johnson is expected to have enough votes to push his legislation through Parliament despite opposition anger.

The bill easily cleared its first House of Commons vote by 340 to 263 on Monday. It will now face attempts to amend or overturn it during several days of detailed scrutiny by lawmakers before another vote.

Critics of move

There is wide unease within Johnson’s party about the law-breaking move.

Geoffrey Cox, who was the government’s top legal officer when Johnson negotiated the Brexit withdrawal agreement less than a year ago, said reneging on the deal would be an “unconscionable” breach of international law.

“I simply cannot approve or endorse a situation in which we go back on our word, given solemnly,” Cox, previously a strong supporter of Johnson on Brexit, told Times Radio. “The breaking of the law ultimately leads to very long-term and permanent damage to this country’s reputation.”

As part of the Brexit divorce deal, Britain and the EU agreed to keep Northern Ireland — the only part of the U.K. to share a border with the bloc — bound to some EU rules on trade, to avoid the need for border checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Both sides accepted the compromise to protect the open border, which helps underpin the peace process in Northern Ireland.

The Internal Market Bill would give the British government the power to override the EU’s agreed role in oversight of trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Johnson claims the EU has threatened to use “an extreme interpretation” of the withdrawal agreement to “blockade” food shipments from the rest of the U.K. to Northern Ireland unless Britain agrees to accept EU regulations.

The EU denies threatening a blockade and says it merely wants Britain to live up to the terms of the agreement. EU leaders are outraged at the prime minister’s proposal and have threatened the U.K. with legal action if it does not drop the proposal by the end of the month.

Two former Conservative U.K. prime ministers, John Major and Theresa May, have condemned the legislation. On Monday a third, David Cameron, said he had “misgivings.”

What mystifies some observers is that Johnson is repudiating a treaty that he himself negotiated and hailed as an “oven-ready” deal that would “get Brexit done.” That declaration of victory was key to Johnson’s successful December 2019 election campaign.

“There was a political imperative on the government to get an agreement and then to go to the electorate with the claim that they had, to coin a phrase, got Brexit done,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

“I think it possibly was the case in some senses that it was ‘make the agreement in haste and then repent at leisure.’ And what we’re seeing now is the repentance.”

What’s next 

Johnson’s move has dynamited the dwindling trust between Britain and the EU as they try to negotiate a new trading relationship.

Talks are due to continue this week in Brussels despite the chill in relations. Both sides say any deal must be agreed by next month so there is time for it to be ratified by Dec. 31.

If there is no deal, tariffs and other impediments to trade will be imposed by both sides at the start of 2021.

That would mean huge economic disruption for the U.K., which does half its trade with the bloc. A no-deal exit on Jan. 1 would also hit some EU nations, including Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, especially hard.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/europe/uks-johnson-defends-plan-rewrite-brexit-deal-says-eu-unreasonable

The post UK’s Johnson Defends Plan to Rewrite Brexit Deal, Says EU ‘Unreasonable’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron blocked the European Union’s attempt to delay Brexit for three months, raising the prospect the U.K. might not know whether it will get an extension until just hours before it is scheduled to be ejected on Oct. 31, even without a deal.

At a meeting in Brussels on Friday morning, diplomats from the EU’s 27 remaining countries deferred a decision on the postponement. While none of them want to be been interfering in the U.K.‘s domestic politics, France is at loggerheads with the others.

Macron wants to grant a delay until Nov. 30, or even sooner, to put pressure on the House of Commons to back Boris Johnson’s deal. Other EU governments see that as too much of a gamble because it could lead to a no-deal Brexit. They are pushing to postpone Brexit until Jan. 31 to allow time for a general election.

On Thursday, Johnson said he will seek an election on Dec. 12. But to hold it, he needs the support of two-thirds of members of Parliament, and the opposition Labour party has said it will block it.

The diplomats have given themselves until Tuesday to make a decision. If they don’t, the EU could convene an emergency summit of EU leaders that would leave the U.K. hanging as time ticks down toward the country’s scheduled departure. Without a deal or an extension, the U.K. would crash out of the bloc without the economic safety net of an agreement at the end of the month.

No EU government will refuse a delay of some sort — the question is when they will decide to grant it, officials said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net; Nikos Chrysoloras in Brussels at nchrysoloras@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Edward Evans.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/macron-blocked-eu-s-decision-to-delay-brexit-for-three-months-1.1337516

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It has been a long time coming. But now, with the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal looming large, Jeremy Corbyn has come up with a plan. Finally.

He envisages a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Boris Johnson as soon as possible. Should Johnson lose, Corbyn would take over as a caretaker prime minister for a short period of time during which he would seek to delay Brexit and call a general election.

After sitting on the fence for so long, Corbyn has now said he would campaign to hold a second Brexit referendum which would include the option to remain.

Even those with a scant interest in Brexit would be forgiven for wondering why it took the leader of the opposition Labour party so long to try and take advantage of what’s been handed to him on a silver platter amid the chaos of Brexit.

But it’s not that simple. To understand why Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has been unable to cash in on the way [former Prime Minister] Theresa May and now Johnson are dealing with the Brexit saga, it’s worth looking at Corbyn’s background and progression within Labour and how he managed to initially galvanize a party still stuck in the post-Tony Blair era.

Read more: Brexit: What’s gone wrong for the UK’s Labour Party?

String of victories

From what many observers perceived to be Labour’s golden years under Blair, the party went into free fall under his successor, Gordon Brown. In the 2010 general election, it lost 91 mandates in Parliament — the party’s biggest loss of seats since 1931. Brown’s successor, Ed Miliband, fared even worse. Labour were voted out of power in 2015.

Enter Corbyn. Against the odds, he managed to pull off three quite remarkable victories in a row. In 2015, with the party in disarray after a disastrous election result, he was elected party leader thanks largely to young activists who paid £3 (€3.25; $3.62 at current rates) to register as Labour supporters and take part in the leadership contest as nonmembers.

Read more: Germany’s SPD rank and file seek Labour’s ‘Corbyn factor’

Once Corbyn was on the ballot, his campaign manager coined the phrase “straight-talking honest politics,” portraying him as an alternative to the career politicians who were his opponents. Having been a Member of Parliament since 1983 and a local councilor before that, it could, of course, be argued that Corbyn, too, was in that mold.

In the wake of the EU referendum in 2016, the party establishment tried to ditch Corbyn for his perceived lukewarm opposition to Brexit. Again, he managed to mobilize young registered supporters, who carried him to another leadership victory. In 2017 he pulled off arguably his biggest coup when Labour won 40% of the vote in the general election.

But that is essentially where the fairy tale ends. While some observers praise Corbyn for sticking to his political principles, others say it’s exactly this kind of perceived stubbornness on Europe that has left Labour as an unfeasible alternative to the Conservatives.

Read more: Opinion: The wrong man at the wrong time

Corbyn’s EU stance

In a nutshell, Corbyn has always been a euroskeptic, as his track record shows:

Corbyn voted for Britain to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 Referendum Act. He opposed the creation of the EU under the Maastricht Treaty and voted against the Lisbon Treaty on more than one occasion in Parliament in 2008.

The day after the referendum in 2016, Corbyn was out of the starting blocks quicker than former Prime Minister May, calling for the immediate implementation of Article 50 — the two-year notice to leave the EU. In December 2016, he voted in Parliament in favor of the UK’s leaving the EU and for the process to start no later than March 31, 2017. In February 2017 he voted in favor of May starting the process of leaving the EU. In the summer of 2017, Corbyn opposed Britain remaining in the single market, even sacking from his team Labour MPs who favored the single market.

A delay to Brexit?

Even now, with a fresh campaign to oust Johnson and prevent a no-deal Brexit, Corbyn’s perceived tepid position on Europe could be his undoing.

Leaving aside the fact that several Tory rebels and other party leaders would struggle to endorse Corbyn (indeed, the leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, has already ruled out Corbyn leading an emergency government), the Labour Party itself is split over Brexit and there is no guarantee that it would win a snap election. An election would risk exposing the bitter tensions still further within the party.

Despite Corbyn’s stated intention to campaign for a second referendum, he has never made a secret of the fact that he is, in fact, a “lexiteer” — a leftist who wants to the leave the EU.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/brexit-cometh-the-hour-cometh-jeremy-corbyn/a-47092781

The post Brexit: Cometh the hour, cometh Jeremy Corbyn? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Last week, the UK’s official opposition Labour Party formally backed a policy that could lead to a second EU referendum.

So, finally, all those people who want to scrap Brexit altogether have something to hang on to, right?

Not exactly.

Let’s start from the beginning. The governing Conservative Party is bitterly divided on exactly what Brexit should look like.

Prime Minister Theresa May has put to Brussels her so-called Chequers plan for what she thinks the future relationship between the UK and the EU should be.

It uses lots of suspiciously Remain-friendly language like a “common rulebook for all goods including agri-foods” and describes a “facilitated customs agreement” that treats the UK and the EU “as if a combined customs territory”.

This means there would be no need for customs checks at the border — thus removing the need for a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

But it also leaves room for regulatory flexibility, allowing Britain to be competitive in certain areas once free from the EU and crucially, Chequers would see an end to legal oversight from the European Court of Justice in the UK.

Cabinet departures

May’s deal was an attempt to paper over the cracks in her party between those who want to remain very closely tied to the EU, those who want to storm off and go it alone and every position in between. She also has to make sure she doesn’t lose the 10 votes of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, who prop up May’s Conservatives in Parliament.

It didn’t work. Her plan led to two high-profile resignations. First, her Brexit Secretary David Davis. Then, her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

These two men — who since resigning have described Chequers as effectively wrapping “a suicide vest around the British constitution” and handing the “detonator” to Brussels (Johnson) and as a deal that “falls far short” of delivering “what the British people were promised during the referendum” (Davis) — have thrown their weight behind a different plan, which would see a far looser trading arrangement between the UK and the EU, but allowing for greater trading opportunities elsewhere.

If you can bear to read it, Johnson has outlined his plan for a “SuperCanada” free trade deal in no fewer than 4,500 words in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The timing of this pitch for his version of Brexit is significant, as it comes days before the Conservative’s annual party conference after months of speculation about May’s leadership.

A divided party is a major problem for May. Had she not lost her parliamentary majority in last year’s disastrous snap election, it’s possible that she could have forced her disgruntled MPs to swallow whatever Brexit deal she wanted.

But now, with two high-profile former ministers whipping up her rebellious backbenchers and the nightmare of her reliance on the DUP in parliament, it’s hard to see a way through for her.

Second vote?

This is where the Labour Party comes in.

Labour’s call for a second public vote would only happen in the event that May is unable to get her Brexit deal through Parliament, then fails to hold a general election. Of course, the unspoken reality here is that without a general election and taking power from the Conservatives, Labour lacks the authority to hold such a vote. And even then, Labour has been a little fudgy on the issue of whether Remain would even be an option on the ballot paper.

What is possible, however, is this: May’s Brexit plan could fail to make it through Parliament which, after some boring constitutional nonsense, could lead to her government falling, forcing a general election.

Presumably, both parties would then offer detailed outlines of their Brexit plans in their election manifestos, offering the public a clear choice. Should either party win an outright majority, then there may be no need for a second public vote.

For what it’s worth, the Labour Party is not tremendously clear on Brexit, either. Loosely speaking, Labour wants to remain in the Customs Union to avoid a hard border in Ireland and keep all the benefits of single market access (for those who really care, you can read the Labour Party’s Six Key Tests for a final Brexit deal, which Jeremy Corbyn somewhat amusingly forgot in a broadcast interview last week).

Even more confusingly, Corbyn also said last week that he would vote with the government to push through May’s Brexit plan if she committed to remaining in the Customs Union, which would mean the Conservative plan being dictated and voted through by Labour. That would lead to even more chaos for both parties.

It’s hard to predict exactly how MPs will vote when the Brexit deal arrives. The majority of the House of Commons was opposed to Brexit, yet still voted to trigger Article 50. With the threat of a no-deal crash exit hanging over them, will they vote against May and risk a calamity?

Or will the unhappy Remainers hold their nerve and hope that events will play in their favor? And it’s worth remembering that all of this is still Britain negotiating with itself — Brussels has not agreed with May’s Chequers proposal, the only plan formally on the table, soon after it was published.

So, what does the next six months look like for Britain? From the madness described above, goodness knows. But given the divisions in British politics and May’s habit of clinging onto power, business as usual and months more of zombie governance is as likely an outcome as any.

Source: http://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/national/494649771.html

The post With six months to go, Brexit is still baffling first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Leading Brexit supporters, meanwhile, warned the British government not to delay or water down the divorce from the 28-nation bloc. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Prime Minister Theresa May must deliver the “full British Brexit” that voters were seeking.

• U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson talks Brexit “meltdown,” lauds Trump in leaked audio

Britain voted 52 percent to 48 percent on June 23, 2016 to quit the EU, and its official exit is slated for March 29, 2019. But the country – and its Conservative government – remain divided about what kind of economic relationship it wants with the EU.

Opponents of Brexit, many waving EU flags, marched through central London to Parliament on Saturday, calling for a referendum on whatever divorce deal is agreed between Britain and the EU.

The crowd numbered in the tens of thousands, with organizers estimating 100,000 people took part. Police did not give an official estimate. A rival pro-Brexit march, demanding that the U.K. not compromise with the EU, drew a far smaller crowd.

The People’s Vote campaign, which organized the march, argues that public opinion is turning against Brexit as the economic costs become clearer.

It came as senior Cabinet ministers, including Liam Fox and David Davis, insisted the U.K. is prepared to walk away from talks without an agreement, BBC News reports.

The protest is part of a “summer of action” by campaign groups designed to increase pressure on May and Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

James McGrory, one of the organizers, said voters were “made all kinds of promises” during the Brexit referendum.

“But two years later, all we’ve got are broken promises, an economy that’s already feeling the strain of Brexit and a government paralyzed by internal divisions,” he said.

Protester Matthew Mann, a Briton who is married to a French woman and lives in The Netherlands, said he was “here to show what a European looks like.”

“I have lived and worked across Europe – it’s home,” he said.

The leaders of both Britain’s Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party oppose holding another Brexit referendum, though many members of both parties disagree. Smaller parties, including the Greens and the centrist Liberal Democrats, support having a new Brexit vote.

“Brexit is not a done deal. Brexit is not inevitable. Brexit can be stopped,” Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable told the crowd.

The government is determined to see Brexit through but May’s Cabinet is split over how to proceed, with Brexit-backing ministers such as Johnson calling for a clean break so that Britain can strike new trade deals around the world. Others, including Treasury chief Philip Hammond, want to keep closely aligned to the bloc, Britain’s biggest trading partner.

In an article for The Sun newspaper, Johnson said May must not deliver a “half-hearted” Brexit, which he likened to a roll of toilet paper – “soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long.”

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC the EU needs to understand that Britain is willing to walk away from the Brexit talks without agreement if necessary, because “no deal would be better than a bad deal.”

Amid the uncertainty, EU leaders are growing frustrated with what they see as a lack of firm proposals from the U.K about future relations. A paper setting out the U.K. government position on future relations, due to be published this month, has been delayed until July because the Cabinet cannot agree on a united stance.

Many businesses warn that a failure to reach a free-trade agreement between Britain and the EU would be an economic disaster. European plane-maker Airbus warned Friday that it could leave Britain – where it employs about 14,000 people – if the country exits the EU without an agreement on future trading relations.

Katherine Bennett, the company’s senior vice president in the U.K., said “a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic.”

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-brexit-march-london-today-2018-06-23/

The post Tens of thousands anti-Brexit protesters march in London, demand new vote first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

While acts of violent anti-Semitism dropped by 9 percent between 2016 and 2017, other incidents such as abuse and harassment are on the rise and have led to a “certain corrosion of Jewish life.” The study blames the surge on “the constant rise of the extreme right, a heated anti- Zionist discourse in the left, accompanied by harsh antisemitic expressions, and radical Islamism.”

In its latest annual, global assessment of anti-Semitic incidents, the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University concludes that “Europe’s largest Jewish communities are experiencing a normalization and mainstreaming of antisemitism not seen since the Second World War.”

“There has been an increase in open, unashamed and explicit hatred directed against Jews. The Jew as exploiter, the Jew as killer, the Jew as banker. It is like we have regressed 100 years,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor was quoted as saying in a statement.

While improved security measures may explain the drop in anti-Semitic violence, the report argues that Jewish communities are in fact experiencing an unprecedented “feeling of distress.” Stepped-up security may have stopped attacks, they write, but it has also highlighted the threats that have made those efforts necessary in the first place.

The report connects separate incidents, arguing that they are part of a broader trend that will likely continue in 2018. “The same pattern has continued this year,” the authors write in their assessment.

In recent weeks, thousands marched in London against what they perceive to be blatant anti-Semitism in Britain’s mainstream Labour Party. In France, the Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating whether anti-Semitism was a motivation for the killing of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor last week. There has also been a string of anti-Semitic incidents in German schools in recent weeks. And in Poland, a renowned anti-racism activist was recently branded a traitor after speaking out against the nation’s controversial anti-defamation law concerning Holocaust complicity.

“The result is of a Jewish community in many places around the world living in fear,” Kantor was quoted as saying in a statement. “Neither the public nor the private space are perceived as safe for Jews, as was seen by the recent horrific and brutal murder of Mireille Knoll, who survived the Holocaust to be stabbed and burnt in her home. The general feeling shared by Jews, as individuals and as a community, is that antisemitism has entered a new phase, and is widespread in most parts of the world,” said Kantor, referring to the Paris murder.

Kantor and the authors of the report also voice harsh criticism of British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, referring to the controversy surrounding him as a “normalization of antisemitic discourse in mainstream politics.”

“His followers and supporters openly share on social media some of the most malevolent Holocaust denial and international Jewish banking conspiracies reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, some of this is sometimes even condoned by Corbyn himself,” Kantor said.

Known as a fierce critic of Israel, Corbyn has recently faced numerous allegations of having supported anti-Semitic views. He later acknowledged that he used to be a member of a Facebook group where anti-Semitic content was shared, though the Labour Party leader claimed that he never came across those specific posts.

A number of Polish politicians also faced harsh criticism by the authors of the Wednesday report over “public statements containing antisemitic messages.” The report only includes incidents from 2017 — prior to the passage of a law designed to make certain allegations of Polish complicity in the Holocaust illegal.

The center’s index of anti-Semitic incidents is based on reports referred to the organization, mostly by local watchdogs.

While the scholars’ methodology has been criticized for failing to take into account some incidents because it relies on external reports, the authors argue that their statistics offer a uniquely comparable analysis of anti-Semitism events.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/11/resurgent-traditional-antisemitism-behind-corrosion-of-jewish-life-report-warns/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.24dc0f6fca63

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