Union in crisis as polls reveal voters want referendum on Scottish independence and united Ireland. The UK is facing a constitutional crisis that will strain the Union as new polls reveal a majority of voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland want referendums on the break-up of Britain.
A four-country survey we commissioned, based on separate polls in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales, also found that the sense of British identity that once bound the country together is disintegrating. And in another significant move, the Scottish National Party (SNP) announced that it is prepared to call a wildcat referendum of its own if Boris Johnson refuses to grant one himself — a move that puts the two governments on a constitutional collision course. In Northern Ireland, a majority — 51 per cent to 44 per cent — want a Continue reading Get unlimited access on any device. This Brexit deal does not bring real sovereignty – whatever Boris Johnson wants you to believe. How the humanities became the new enemy within. The strain of conservatism that has now taken up residence in Downing Street is tireless in its identification of enemies.
The BBC and Channel 4 were put on notice during the latter stages of the election campaign, and the government is now openly pursuing the termination of the BBC licence fee. Dominic Cummings’ long-harboured resentment towards civil service mandarins is driving Whitehall reform, imperilling its independence. The vanguard of rightwing thinktanks and newspapers is redoubling its attacks on universities, with a pitifully thin Policy Exchange report on the topic this week earning a Times headline decrying these “sneering” institutions. Meanwhile, a bogey-ideology known as “wokeness”, constructed by conservative commentators and “free speech” advocates, now serves as an all-purpose bin into which any form of activism, complaint or critical theory can be thrown. Untitled. If you thought Brussels was tough, wait until corporate America writes the rules. Liam Fox announced today that Britain is “embracing the brave new world of free trade”.
Donald Trump has put us somewhere vaguely near the front of the queue for a British-American trade deal – if his comments to Michael Gove are to believed. MPs brag about how much easier it will be for us to finalise British trade deals than when we have to deal with those dysfunctional Europeans. It seems like we have a bright trading future ahead of us. But even if all of this comes to pass, and it’s a massive “if”, we should hold back on the celebrations because these new trade deals could make the toxic transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership look positively progressive by comparison.
If you thought the European Union was undemocratic, you’ll be truly shocked by the lack of power Westminster has to scrutinise trade deals. This deal will affect our public services, our ability to fight climate change and how our laws are made. ‘You can be anything in Ireland now, except English’ “Ireland is an unknown place to a lot of British people,” says Charlotte Matabaro, who was 15 when she moved from London to rural Co Tipperary, in 1995.
“You’re taught a very different history in British schools. When you come here and hear the other side, you have to take a step back. You have to re-educate yourself.” Moving here, says Ben Thompson, an estate agent from Sussex, you get a “very quick education in the fact that Britain didn’t treat Ireland very well”. In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything. Soldiers of the Caribbean: Britain's forgotten war heroes - BBC News. They fought against Hitler and helped rebuild Britain - yet the contributions of thousands of men and women from Caribbean colonies during World War Two have been largely forgotten.
Some 10,000 left their families and homes to join the British armed forces, working behind the scenes and on the frontline to defeat the Nazis. "We were British subjects and that was something to be proud of," said Victor Brown, a Jamaican who fought with the Merchant Navy. Although Britain was initially reluctant to let black people join the war effort, the rules were relaxed as the war progressed and casualties mounted. Enthusiasm to defend "King and Empire" was widespread across the Caribbean and Mr Brown, like thousands of others, was quick to sign up.
Stewart Lee - UKIP and Immigration. Tony Benn: 'a giant of 20th century politics' - video. The Bank of Salford could start a revolution in local finance. I have lived in Salford for 50 years.
I raised my family here; this is where my roots are. Salford is a great city and we have a proud history. But there is a terrible and shameful secret that haunts our community, one that we have to be honest about and address. We have a problem with debt. In Britain, a third of people do not earn enough to cover their living costs. As our city's first directly elected mayor I have made it part of my mission to use every power I have to try to lift living standards and tackle debt. We have established an employment standards charter for the public, private and third sectors – which pushes for a full living wage, is tackling in-work poverty and is combating the odious practice of blacklisting. All of this is important. Setting up a bank isn't easy. We are also working with employers, local communities, workers and other organisations to bring the resources we need into the city.
Is Britain sleepwalking towards a European exit? Slowly but surely, Britain is detaching itself from the European project, slipping into an EU membership category of its own, one marked "outlier nation".
That, at least, was the impression left by statements emanating from a European Union summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on Friday, where the UK's reputation as the club's most awkward and unhappy member was underlined yet again. It is also the clear lesson from a landmark four-nation poll of attitudes to Europe carried out by Opinium in the UK, Germany, France and Poland and published by the Observer. The survey shows not only that British people regard the EU much more negatively than do citizens of other countries, but also that the citizens of other EU nations think Britain brings few benefits to the union. As a result, more people on the continent seem happy to see us leave than seem keen for us stay.
That, in itself, should worry pro-Europeans profoundly. Migrants contribute £25bn to UK economy, study finds. Migrants coming to the UK since the year 2000 have been less likely to receive benefits or use social housing than people already living in the country, according to a study that argues the new arrivals have made a net contribution of £25bn to public finances.
People from European Economic Area countries have been the most likely to make a positive contribution, paying about 34% more in taxes than they received in benefits over the 10 years from 2001 to 2011, according to the findings from University College London's migration research unit. Other immigrants paid about 2% more than they received. Recent immigrants were 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than people native to the UK and 3% less likely to live in social housing, says the report written by Professor Christian Dustmann and Dr Tommaso Frattini.
Amid Tory disarray, Labour's critical moment looms. The madness of the Tory party defies belief.
Forget banging on, these out-of-control crazies are in the grip of a brain fever, crushing themselves to death in a stampede for the Euro-exit. Top dogs fight over the bone of the leadership, but who in their right mind wants to lead this rabble? Is it catching, does this frenzy infect the voters? No, Europe remains remarkably low – and falling – on their list of concerns. Out here, a cascade of bad news this week was ignored by the unhinged government benches. What else? While Tory MPs obsess over Europe, the NHS showed symptoms of imminent trouble. Majority of British children will soon be growing up in families struggling 'below the breadline', Government warned - UK Politics - UK.
Within two years, almost 7.1m of the nation’s 13m youngsters will be in homes with incomes judged to be less than the minimum necessary for a decent standard of living, according to a new report.
The figures, which emerged a week ahead of George Osborne’s Budget, suggest that an unwanted legacy of the Coalition’s squeeze on spending will be to leave more children living close to poverty. The north of England: The great divide. The Manchester metropolis: a rare bright spot IN 1962, as Britain pulled slowly out of recession, Harold Macmillan told an audience that he was determined to “prevent two nations developing geographically, a poor north and a rich and overcrowded south”. The price of failure, the Conservative prime minister said, would be that “our successors will reproach us as we reproach the Victorians for complacency about slums and ugliness.” If Macmillan has escaped reproach, it is not because he succeeded, but because the task was so hopeless. The north’s industrial economy had begun to crumble after the first world war; subsequent wars and government policy slowed the decline, but could not stop it. Forget the Queen's jubilee. Let's have a knees-up for the Magna Carta.
The glossy newspaper supplements are out, the BBC (supposedly a hotbed of subversive lefties) is preparing wall-to-wall coverage, MPs are going on holiday for two weeks, the populace is ready to put out the flags and the picnic tables. In an orgy of deference, we are celebrating Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne. If any other country were paying homage to an unelected head of state in this way, while the living standards of the majority of the population fall and schools and hospitals struggle with diminishing resources, we would call it "the cult of the personality" and probably think about invading.
According to a Guardian/ICM poll last week, the royal family is more popular than ever, with only 22% believing Britain would be better off without a monarchy, and as few as 10% preferring, on the Queen's death, an elected head of state rather than a King Charles or William. That is unsurprising. Elizabeth II has understood all that. Mosquebusters - By Spike Johnson. Click here for pictures from inside the world of Mosquebusters. LONDON — It is winter, the middle of December, and I find myself making an odd phone call. Pacing around my living room, I kick at the carpet as I dial the number. "Hello? " I say. Bringing Mecca to the British Museum by Malise Ruthven. Over the next two months the great domed interior of what used to be the British Museum’s reading room, where Marx researched Das Kapital and Bram Stoker (creator of Dracula) was a reader, is host to Hajj, a remarkable exhibition that celebrates the most sacred event in the Islamic calendar, the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The exhibition seems more than a cultural event—a milestone, perhaps, in the public recognition and acceptance of Islam at the heart of British life. Conceived by British Museum director Neil MacGregor and the museum’s Islamic art curator Venetia Porter with assistance from the Saudi Arabian government, it is an unusual collaboration between a museum dedicated to secular learning and the current rulers of Islam’s holiest sites, who have lent many important works. Britain and the EU summit: Europe's great divorce. An amateur government. © The Prime Minister’s Office For all the modish talk of modernisation, all too many of the bad headlines and public relations blunders that have beset the coalition have sprung from an old-fashioned, old-chums-all-together way of conducting the serious business of government.
This amateurish culture is far from the purposeful professionalism of Margaret Thatcher’s days. A typical example was the ruination in 2010 of some perfectly sensible proposals to improve the management of the national asset of commercial forestry which ended up in an unmannerly row between the Forestry Commission and the National Trust on one side and the government on the other.
Britain and the EU: The Failure of a Forced Marriage - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. It was to be expected. And now it's official: The British have elected not to join the treaty governing Europe's new financial system. Prime Minister David Cameron refused. Does that mean, then, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have failed? Not at all. The British “Non” - Harold James. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space LONDON – At the just-concluded European Union summit, British Prime Minister David Cameron vented decades of accumulated resentment stemming from his country’s relationship with Europe. Following in Henry VIII's Footsteps? Why the super-rich love the UK. Here's something you definitely shouldn't do if you're even a tiny bit leftwing and suffer from high blood pressure: look at a document called the Forbes cost of living extremely well index. Philip Hensher: Is it a castle – or is it just a source of capital? - Philip Hensher - Commentators.
It's been argued that inequalities in wealth in Britain greatly exceed inequalities in income, an injustice which a tax on the value of property would begin to address. And there seems no doubt at all that property, even now, is insanely overvalued. Very ordinary one-bedroom flats in very ordinary parts of London are 10, 15 times an average London salary. The woman who lives in a shed: how London landlords are cashing in. Maria's front door has a house number – 48 – screwed in to the wood and its own letterbox, but it isn't possible for a postman to get here to deliver anything. George Osborne's growth policy is turning British cities into Detroit UK.
Extremism in Britain's House of Lords. The horror of female genital mutilation in the UK. **Advisory: Graphic language and descriptions of a sexual nature** London, United Kingdom – "After the pain, it was the screaming that I'll never forget. It wasn't just mine and my sister's screams, there were so many other girls there - all being cut. I've never heard screams like that again and I don't think I ever will. " Tumultuous Britain. There are three leading views about the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain.
Life in limbo for UK’s irregular migrant children and families. "Britain’s Cultural Kowtow" by Ma Jian. His story, our story. The knock at the door. Britain Unveils Electronic Mass Surveillance Plan. The slow creep of complacency and the soul of English justice. The Falklands War’s 30-Year Dénouement by Marcelo G. Kohen. The Falklands’ new boss. The Falklands Syndrome: the 30 year legacy of Iron Britannia.
Free exchange: Nudge nudge, think think. Mayors: The best job in politics? How the Daily Mail Conquered England.