U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China seeking to balance her desire to build a powerful post-Brexit trade relationship with a clutch of political concerns. At the start of a three-day trade mission, May said she would raise the sensitive topics of China's human ...
The British presence in the European Union is over and Japanese businesses should be aware of the consequences, France's foreign minister said in Tokyo. Jean-Yves Le Drian was responding to a question about Brexit on the final day of a visit to Japan, during which ...
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has garnered a large following on social media with rambunctious postings, said he sometimes tweets from bed, though he occasionally allows others to post his words. Trump frequently uses Twitter to announce policy, assail his adversaries and to tangle with ...
IT’S a fair bet that when Theresa May sat back and relaxed on her 12-hour flight to China yesterday, she wasn’t listening on her headphones to the Bob Marley song Who The Cap Fit.
Shame, she would have marvelled at the accuracy of his lyrics… Man to man is so unjust, children, Ya don’t know who to trust.
Your worst enemy could be your best friend, And your best friend your worst enemy.
Doesn’t that sum up perfectly the parlous state of the Conservative Party as it revels in yet another round of blue-on-blue bloodletting, Brexit versus Remoaners, winners versus losers?
When will Tory MPs grow up and start putting the needs of the country before the urge to rub out their party leader – and with her their own party?
We’ve all known for a long time that while those whom we elect may be intellectually sharp (I exclude Jeremy Corbyn from that category, of course), when it comes to common sense they are sadly lacking.
Their clamour for Mrs May to be replaced as prime minister is based on a curious but false assumption – that the voters would welcome yet another round of political shenanigans, that business would applaud the prospect of yet more uncertainty and that Brussels would give us an easier time over Brexit if someone else were in Number 10.
You should always be careful what you wish for. What if that someone else were not Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond or Amber Rudd (to name but three of the Tories who mistakenly consider they’d make a better job of it)?
What if it were Marxist Corbyn, with his henchman John McDonnell as Chancellor and his juvenile revolutionaries in the Cabinet? Whatever some Tory MPs say about Mrs May needing to be “a lion not a tortoise” – a cruel and unjustified barb from George Osborne’s former lackey Robert Halfon – surely even the dimmest among them can see that kicking her out could hand Corbyn power.
Not content with destroying their party, do they really want to destroy the country too? Many of them have an axe to grind, however.
A well-sharpened axe at that. Nicky Morgan has never forgiven Mrs May for giving her the boot because she was a useless Education Secretary and Anna Soubry delights in moaning to anyone who will listen that the referendum result was “a terrible, terrible mistake”.
Theresa May visits university on her three-day China visit
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What if 'someone else' were Jeremy Corbyn?
She believes she knows better than 17.4 million Brexit voters. Others are dyed-in-the-wool Europhiles who would love nothing more than to throw a gigantic spanner in the works and bring Brexit to a grinding halt.
Chancellor Philip Hammond doesn’t even try to disguise his animosity towards Brexit and were it not for the fact Mrs May has such a wafer-thin majority, backed by the DUP, he would surely have been sacked months ago.
Mrs May is not in the mould of a Churchill or a Thatcher, and some may wish she were more visionary and inspirational.
But one thing is true – if she’s not the best prime minister we’ve ever had, she’s the best one we’ve got right now and she is better than any alternative that could be dreamt up.
It is the duty of Conservative MPs to give her their fullest support. Just as Clement Attlee put aside political differences to give Winston Churchill his full backing during this country’s darkest hour, so today’s crop of political pygmies should do the same.
They insist that it would be much easier for Mrs May to attract their support were she able to galvanise them – and the nation – with a stirring speech.
She needs to set out with brilliance and coherence her vision of Britain after Brexit and her strategy for achieving what so many of us voted for.
If only she were an orator like Tony Blair. If only she were a smooth operator like David Cameron. If only, if only… If only they would wake up and see that what this country needs more than ever is someone who is not a slippery snakeoil salesman.
Someone who says what they mean, albeit it in a somewhat stilted manner, who is true to their word. Someone honest. Someone with principles. Someone who doesn’t cut and run when the going gets tough. That someone is Theresa May.
How can so many Tory MPs be so blind that they cannot see that? Or is the truth that they do not want to see it? Have their personal grudges, their lust for power, distorted their judgment and turned them all into Brutus, the ally only too willing to plunge in the dagger?
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Mrs May is better than any alternative that could be dreamt up
If 48 Tory MPs write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee calling for Mrs May to resign, he is obliged to ask her to stand down and to hold a leadership election.
If anything near that number genuinely exists, who would those 48 treacherous saps see as being the perfect leader of this country, the person who would stand up to the EU and get a formidable deal from Merkel and Macron, who would give Corbyn a well-deserved bloody nose, who would unite not just the party but the nation?
The candidates whose names are being bandied around Westminster are scary. The very idea that any of them is suitable for the highest office is laughable. Except it’s no joke.
No one is laughing. This is deadly serious. Our future is at stake.
Those who seem to think leaving the single market will cause growth to slow need to explain why there was no visible boost to growth when we joined. Project Fear has its alter ego -- Project Fantasy about benefits of EU membership that never actually materialised
If you look at the ONS -- Office for National Statistics -- figures for UK growth you discover that the UK grew by around two thirds in the two decades before we joined the EEC, but grew by only around a half in the two decades that followed.
The growth rate then declined a little more for the two decades from 1992 when they “completed” the single market.
Those who seem to think leaving the single market will cause growth to slow need to explain why there was no visible boost to growth when we joined.
Indeed, the completion of the single market included the worst period of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a crucial part then of their construction of a single market, which pushed us into a nasty recession.
The latest leaked reports about slower future growth have all the reliability of those Treasury forecasts of a recession in the winter of 2016-17 which proved to be so wrong.
Mr. Redwood's writing is re-posted here by his kind permission. This and other articles are available at johnredwoodsdiary.com
MRS Merkel is said to have made journalists fall about laughing with her mockery of Theresa May. The German Chancellor said that when she asks our Prime Minister what she wants from Brexit Mrs May replies: “Make me an offer.”
Lord Lawson: There's still everything to play for with Brexit
Cue much hilarity, according to ITV’s Robert Peston.
It’s not funny though is it? How dare Angela Merkel mock the British Prime Minister in this way.
It is absolutely shameful how European leaders and EU bureaucrats have treated our people and our nation since the referendum in 2016.
We are not at war with any of these countries yet we are treated like pariahs merely for following through with a democratic decision made by a majority of voters.
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Angela Merkel has shamefully mocked PM Theresa May
It is absolutely shameful how European leaders and EU bureaucrats have treated our people and our nation since the referendum in 2016
We are mocked and vilified and threatened at every turn.
The Common Market which eventually morphed into the EU was created in the chaotic Europe of the post-war years.
The entire continent owes Britain a debt of gratitude for its stand against the Nazis and the part it played in creating a secure and peaceful post-war world.
All this has been wilfully ignored or forgotten.
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The EU leaders act like victors but they are terrified of losing the UK's financial support
The EU leaders act like victors when the fact is they are terrified of losing the UK’s financial support.
Mrs May and her negotiators have been reasonable to a fault, wanting to find agreement and compromise.
