Category Archives: Foreign policy

Labour avoids party split over Common Market – archive, 17 May 1971

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17 May 1971: Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle

Labour Party leaders last night came to the sensible conclusion that it was not worth splitting the Labour movement wide open over the Common Market when Mr Heath and the Conservative Party were already faced with the even more immediate and difficult problem of rallying a respectable Parliamentary majority for entry on the basis of Tory votes without the aid of Labour MPs.

That was, to all intents and purposes, the outcome of a full afternoon session of Labour’s national executive committee and the Shadow Cabinet of the Parliamentary Labour Party, at which Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle. For the time being, the heat is out of the European issue inside the party.

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Iran tells Middle East militias: prepare for proxy war

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Exclusive: Top military leader delivers message at Baghdad meeting as tensions rise

Iran’s most prominent military leader has recently met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned.

Two senior intelligence sources said that Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s powerful Quds force, summoned the militias under Tehran’s influence three weeks ago, amid a heightened state of tension in the region. The move to mobilise Iran’s regional allies is understood to have triggered fears in the US that Washington’s interests in the Middle East are facing a pressing threat. The UK raised its threat levels for British troops in Iraq on Thursday.

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May averts Tory mutiny by agreeing to set her exit date after Brexit bill vote

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1922 Committee agrees to let PM wait until after vote on withdrawal agreement bill in early June

Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for her departure as prime minister in the first week of June, leading MPs to believe she will trigger a leadership contest before the summer.

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said she would agree a timetable for the election of a new leader after her Brexit legislation returned to parliament for a final attempt in the week of 3 June.

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May vows to put Brexit deal to MPs in early June

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Prime minister hopes to forestall leadership challenge as talks with Labour continue despite lack of progress

Theresa May has pledged to give MPs another opportunity to vote on Brexit early next month, with or without Labour’s backing, after Jeremy Corbyn raised concerns about her ability to deliver on a cross-party deal.

The prime minister called a meeting with the Labour leader on Tuesday night to take stock of the Brexit negotiations, as the government sought to inject fresh urgency into the process. The pair held an hour-long meeting alongside the two parties’ chief whips.

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Brexit talks with Labour are blind alley, senior Tories tell May

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Prime minister under pressure from 14 senior party figures to abandon cross-party pact

Theresa May’s Brexit talks with Labour have been criticised as a “blind alley” as she came under intense pressure from 14 senior party figures to abandon the idea of a cross-party pact.

The former defence secretary Michael Fallon said the talks should be stopped, after he joined 12 other former cabinet ministers and Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, in warning No 10 against any deal that involved a customs union.

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Senior Tories press May to abandon Brexit deal talks with Labour

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PM told that any deal involving customs union would be ‘bad politics and bad policy’

Theresa May is under intense pressure to abandon cross-party Brexit talks, after a group of senior Conservative figures, including leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, issued a strongly worded warning against any deal that involved a customs union.

May’s cabinet, and Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, are both due to take stock of the talks on Tuesday, with neither side optimistic about the prospects for an agreement that could secure a majority in parliament.

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Poll surge for Nigel Farage sparks panic among the Tories and Labour

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Support for the Conservatives at the European elections slumps to 11%, less than a third of what the Brexit party is polling

Senior Tory and Labour politicians have issued frantic calls to their voters to back them in next week’s European elections after a new poll showed support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party had soared to a level higher than for the two main parties put together.

Related: ‘Labour should be pushing for a second referendum - I may vote Green’

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Thousands march in Cardiff calling for Welsh independence

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Demonstrators say Brexit and austerity have increased support for leaving the UK

Thousands have demonstrated in Cardiff to call for an independent Wales in what organisers said was the first such march in Welsh history.

Some protesters said they had been lifelong supporters of independence, while others said they were converted by Brexit and austerity. A recent poll for ITV Wales showed that 12% of people support self-government.

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We lost faith in joint efforts to halt wars. Result? Ask Syria…

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Once the great powers worked together. Now nationalist strongmen dominate the agenda

Suggestions that the war in Syria is winding down must sound like a sick joke to the people of Ras al-Ain. Their village, in north-western Idlib province, was targeted in an air raid last week. Five residents were killed, including three children, and at least 20 others were injured.

A local man, Hussein al-Sheikh, described to Al Jazeera reporter Farah Najjar how a building collapsed as the children ran for cover: “I was standing near the front door watching the kids play. Suddenly we heard another explosion... It was a difficult scene to watch. I can’t express what I saw.”

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Second Brexit referendum would be doing SNP’s work, Boris Johnson claims

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Ex-minister hits out at campaigners pushing for a fresh vote

Boris Johnson has accused supporters of a second Brexit referendum of “doing the work of the Scottish National party” by making a second Scottish independence vote more likely and threatening the union.

In a speech in Aberdeen on Friday, the former foreign secretary and perennial Conservative leadership hopeful sought to turn the tables on remainers who argue that Brexit would increase the risk of a second independence referendum.

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Donald Tusk: chance of Brexit being cancelled could be 30%

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EU chief says good reason to believe leave vote could be reversed in second referendum

The chances of the UK staying in the EU are as high as 30% as the country would be likely to reject Brexit in a second referendum, the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, has said.

The bloc’s most senior official claimed the British public had only truly debated Brexit after the 2016 referendum and there was significant reason to believe the leave vote could be reversed.

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‘Global Britain’ is doing its foreign policy on autopilot | Martin Kettle

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Paralysis over Brexit means the country is burying its head in the sand over the very real challenges ahead

The European elections Theresa May never intended Britain to participate in are now only two weeks away. They are inevitably being fought as a proxy contest for Brexit by all the political parties. The results will be interpreted as a verdict on Brexit too, just as last week’s English local elections have been, and probably in much the same careless way.

Yet it would be a stretch to pretend that, for once in our recent history, the UK’s European elections are actually focusing on Britain’s and Europe’s place in the 21st-century world. The truth is far less flattering. These elections can better be understood as another episode in the national – and, in particular, Conservative – trauma over the historic decline of British power, of which the referendum was an interim climax. The elections are therefore unlikely to be cathartic or cleansing. On the contrary, they are dragging us deeper into the ongoing psychodrama that was intensified by the vote in 2016.

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British-Irish deal to guarantee rights of citizens after Brexit

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Ministers to sign agreement securing rights conferred under common travel area

The rights of Irish people in the UK and British citizens in Ireland are to be guaranteed in a Brexit side deal to be signed by the countries’ two governments.

Sources say the memorandum of understanding will put the rights already conferred on citizens of both nations under the common travel area (CTA) on to a more secure footing.

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Labour MPs say they won’t back a Brexit deal without a people’s vote

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Corbyn faces opposition from at least 60 MPs to a customs pact with May without a second vote

Jeremy Corbyn will not be able to get enough of his MPs to back a Brexit deal without the promise of a second referendum, even if Theresa May makes a big offer on a customs union and workers’ rights this week, senior Labour figures believe.

Senior party sources said they believe two-thirds of Labour MPs, including several shadow cabinet ministers and many more frontbenchers, would refuse to back a deal without a people’s vote attached.

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Brexit: John McDonnell pours cold water on May’s customs union plan

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Shadow chancellor says he has no trust in PM and likens Brexit talks to dealing with firm that is going bust

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has poured cold water on Theresa May’s plan to offer a temporary customs union to win Labour over to a Brexit deal, saying the cross-party talks were like “trying to enter a contract with a company going into administration”.

McDonnell said his party wanted to do a deal as quickly as possible but would require a permanent customs union to provide stability for businesses, not just an interim arrangement until the next election.

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Britain’s sitting MEPs on their long goodbye: ‘People say, “You’re still here!”’

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They thought they’d be out of Brussels weeks ago – instead they continue to work in limbo. We followed four through months of near-exits and false dawns

When the Newcastle upon Tyne result came in, Linda McAvan knew it was all over. It was 23 June 2016 and, after a day knocking on doors, the Labour MEP and remain campaigner was at her local count in Sheffield. Things started to go wrong before midnight. Newcastle was meant to be a comfortable victory, but remain only scraped home. Then Sunderland voted to leave. Across McAvan’s Yorkshire and Humber constituency, counts were called: Craven, Scarborough, Sheffield; leave, leave, leave. In the small hours, David Dimbleby called it: “We’re out.” At a stroke, 73 British members of the European parliament were handed their redundancy papers.

These MEPs, who make up nearly 10% of the 751 members of the European parliament, did not lose their seats immediately: this was just the start of the UK’s odyssey to leave the European Union. While the past three years have seen Westminster convulsed by cabinet resignations, missed deadlines and political deadlock, British MEPs have carried on their business more or less as usual. Now, they face the once-unimaginable prospect of a fresh European election – an event that some hope will be a proxy referendum, while Nigel Farage seeks to repeat his 2014 landslide with a new Brexit party.

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Britons most positive in Europe on benefits of immigration

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Findings contradict assumption UK is more hostile than European neighbours

British people are more persuaded of the benefits of immigration than any other major European nation, according to a global survey, which has also found that almost half of Britons think immigrants are either positive or neutral for the country.

The YouGov–Cambridge Globalism survey found that 28% of Britons believed the benefits of immigration outweighed the costs, compared with 24% in Germany, 21% in France and 19% in Denmark. A further 20% of British people believed the costs and benefits were about equal, while 16% were not sure.

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Will the UK commitment to development become another casualty of Brexit? | Preet Kaur Gill

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Uncertainty and the falling pound are jeopardising aid that millions of people worldwide rely on, says the shadow development minister

Since the 2016 referendum we have all learned a lot more about the depth of the relationship between the UK and the EU; whether it’s joint cooperation on research, or the potential impact of leaving the EU on agriculture exports.

When considering the effects of Brexit, parliamentarians have focused their attention on our constituencies and the country as a whole. International development has only raised its head in discussions of post-Brexit trade deals.

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Anger as Corbyn faces down calls for Labour to back new Brexit vote

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Labour NEC resists pressure to unequivocally support second referendum in EU election manifesto

Jeremy Corbyn has faced down a challenge spearheaded by his deputy, Tom Watson, for Labour to signal its unequivocal backing for a second Brexit referendum in the forthcoming European election campaign.

In a move that sparked an immediate backlash among remain-supporters, Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), announced that its manifesto for the election would be “fully in line” with its longstanding policy.

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