UK - Politika i društvo

KinderLad wrote:Zapravo ja mislim da je Corbynu vreme vec isteklo, ali necu to na ovom mestu da potenciram do kraja

паће wrote:Не знам тог Милнеа...

The leader of Estonia's far-right EKRE party (which is in government) has written to @BorisJohnson offering the new PM his advice and experience on how Estonia "restored its sovereignty" (from Soviet Union) in order to help with Brexit https://t.co/cNONt1tIgW

— Mehreen (@MehreenKhn) July 25, 2019

Nigel Farage teams up with Trump supporters to raise Brexit funds

World4Brexit lobbying body looks to be ‘antidote’ to pro-EU groups in UK


Brexit party leader Nigel Farage has joined forces with a group of Donald Trump-supporting Americans to form a lobbying body to raise money to help the UK’s departure from the EU.

The New York launch event for the new group — called World4Brexit — was attended by a string of the US president’s supporters and included figures such as Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager, and Phil Bryant, the governor of Mississippi.

Details of the event emerged as Boris Johnson, the UK’s new prime minister, took office this week vowing to take Britain out of the EU by October 31 with or without a deal with Brussels.

But Mr Farage told the Financial Times he is sceptical Mr Johnson will be able to deliver on his promise. “If Boris [Johnson] does Brexit that is great, but every sense inside me says he will fail,” he said.

The MEP said he had been urged by Mr Trump to join forces with Mr Johnson to “realign” British politics. But he played down the idea of a pact between the Conservatives and his Brexit party and questioned whether he could trust Mr Johnson.

The World4Brexit initiative is expected to draw informal advice from other former members of the Trump campaign, such as Steve Bannon, who has recently been in close liaison with other rightwing political movements in Europe.

Mr Farage, speaking just before the fundraiser at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan, said the donations would all be “above the board and legal”.

The cash would not go to political candidates and would be used to “dig deep, find out who is really running the show”, according to the fundraising documents.

Mr Farage described the attempts to raise money as an “antidote” to the pro-EU organisations in the UK supported by George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian-born US citizen. “Guess who is funding all the negativity — it is one George Soros. So let’s not get mad — let’s get even,” he said.

Fundraising documents claimed that “George Soros has dropped tens of millions of dollars on the “remain” side of this issue . . . [so] there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to support the effort to fulfil the people’s vote.”

In reality, Mr Soros’s main contribution to the Remain cause has been much lower, involving payments of £800,000 in total to “Best for Britain”, a group campaigning for a second referendum.

Mr Farage said that W4B was still in a “start-up” phase, and had been organised “at the American end” by Gerry Gunster, the American political strategist who in 2016 helped Leave.EU, the unofficial referendum campaign for the UK to leave the EU.

Its fundraising literature said “we have donors from all across the United States and across the globe”, and stressed that “all our money [raised] will follow the letter of the law in the eyes of the IRS”. As a not-for-profit organisation, it can take donations ranging from $5 to $5,000.

Mr Farage said he had enjoyed a warm meeting with Mr Trump at the White House on Wednesday. “Trump looks at the numbers and says it is obvious that these guys [Johnson and Farage] should work together,” Mr Farage said. “Trump wants to see a realignment of British politics. The Remain side is already having a realignment but now the right will have to realign too.”

Following Mr Johnson’s victory in the Tory leadership election and appointment as prime minister, the prospect of a UK general election this year has grown. It is now seen by bookmakers as an odds-on probability.

In those circumstances the Conservatives face a potential threat from the Brexit party — which came first in the May European elections — unless some kind of deal is reached.

Mr Farage said there were “grounds for conversation” if Mr Johnson was “incredibly brave” and called an election. But he admitted that an electoral pact was not “an easy thing” and could cause a “historic split” in the Conservative party given that many of its MPs “loathe” him.

“If Boris does a Theresa May and drops the ball I will be the worst enemy he has got and in those circumstances I will try to get the Brexit party to replace the modern day Conservative party,” he said.

People in Northern Ireland will “come to question the union” with England, Scotland and Wales if there is a no-deal Brexit, but discussion about a United Ireland now would be “provocative”, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

“I think if there is a hard Brexit on the 31st of October, if the United Kingdom takes Northern Ireland out of the European Union against the wishes of the majority of people in Northern Ireland, takes away their European citizenship and undermines the Good Friday Agreement in doing so, those questions will arise whether we like it or not and we have to be ready for that,” he told the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal.

Questioned about the demands from some that preparations for a united Ireland should begin, Mr Varadkar said work on a White Paper on unity, or establishing a forum on the future shape of Ireland, before Brexit could play into the view that Dublin is exploiting the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc, he added.

“We would totally play into that view and that accusation if we were to go down the road now of having a White Paper or having an all-Ireland forum or a forum on Irish unity. That obviously could change in the event of a hard Brexit happening. Those questions then do arise in a way they don’t at the moment.”

Mr Varadkar’s comments prompted a sharp rebuke from Democratic Unionist Party MP Ian Paisley who said the Government’s language was “unhelpful and unnecessarily aggressive”.

‘Brussels isn’t the only game in town,’ says Dominic Raab


The U.K.'s new foreign secretary said there's a Brexit deal to be done, but "the EU needs to move" to make it happen.

Speaking to the Times, Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary promoted to one of the top Cabinet jobs by Boris Johnson, said he had been speaking to EU capitals but had also spoken to Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state.

“I explained how pleased we were to have a U.S. administration, including the president, speaking so warmly about this country,” he said of his call with Pompeo.

“We’ve got a president who has spoken about this country with the kind of warmth we haven’t heard for quite a long period of time. Now people will have their views and it’s quite right that in domestic politics, pundits and politicians are [free to] express them about any leader. But I’m delighted that we’ve got a U.S. president talking about this country with such warmth.”

Donald Trump and Johnson spoke on Friday evening, with the president saying: "We're working already on a trade agreement. And I think it'll be a very substantial trade agreement, you know we can do with the U.K., we can do three to four times, we were actually impeded by their relationship with the European Union."

Raab told the Times that “Brussels isn’t the only game in town. We want a strong relationship with our European friends and partners. I prize that relationship. My father came from Czechoslovakia. I understand the historic context of our relationship and I feel very warmly about it. But we also want to raise our horizons.”

He also backed Johnson's line that the Irish backstop plan, a key pillar of Theresa May's Brexit agreement, has to be ditched, calling it “most obvious glaring flaw in the deal . . . but there are other issues. What I’m not going to do at this particularly sensitive moment is put all of the conversations that we’re going to have on this in the public domain.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/dominic-raab-brussels-isnt-the-only-game-in-town/

BORIS Johnson can force through a No Deal Brexit on October 31 even if his government collapses, the Attorney General has claimed.

The government’s law chief says there is no legal process to halt the process – even if they force a no-confidence vote in the PM.

London (dpa) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson's new government is "operating on the assumption" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said on Sunday.

Gove, who is in leading the Conservative government's no-deal preparations, said "the entire machinery of government will work flat-out" to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.

"The EU's leaders have, so far, said they will not change their approach - it's the unreformed withdrawal agreement, take it or leave it," he wrote in the Sunday Times.

"We still hope they will change their minds, but we must operate on the assumption that they will not," Gove said. "No deal is now a very real prospect, and we must make sure that we are ready."

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid said the government will fund one of Britain's "biggest ever public information campaigns" to prepare individuals and businesses for a no-deal Brexit.

KinderLad wrote:

“We’ve got a president who has spoken about this country with the kind of warmth we haven’t heard for quite a long period of time. 

“My father was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German. Neither will his son!"

- Mark François: The MP for Little England. #MarkFrançoispic.twitter.com/veDYSvhVPH

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) July 29, 2019