Bharat Rakshak

eklavya wrote:

ramana wrote:I think May was deluded by Opinion polls and Labour's supposed decline.
The shift of young people to Labour is the surprise.
And SNP decline is another surprise.

She is not going to be displaced.

Actually she lost due to her own incredibly inept campaign. Defeat from the jaws of victory, etc. Plus the campaign exposed her lack of political acumen, wit and charisma. She really is as dull, clueless and a bullying bigot as most people imagine.

She is now toast. The only question is when the butter and jam will be applied. She will be gone before autumn. If the Tories want to salvage a future, they need to bring back George Osborne, who advised Cameron against holding the Brexit referendum.

KJo wrote:Help me understand.

May had absolute majority and was PM. Why the hell did she choose to have mid term elections? I read somewhere it would help her in Brexit, but how? She had a majority and could do anything she wanted. Now she has to beg the coalition members.

chetak wrote:she now has to go to the EU, hat in hand, as it were, personally weakened and britain politically diminished.

this may also weaken britain's negotiating position on bilateral trade discussions across the board.

eklavya wrote:

chetak wrote:she now has to go to the EU, hat in hand, as it were, personally weakened and britain politically diminished.

this may also weaken britain's negotiating position on bilateral trade discussions across the board.

Chetak,

Theresa May's defeat has given Britain the chance to fashion a sensible Brexit, where single market access is maintained, even if it means free movement of people, ongoing contributions to the EU budget, etc.

If she had obtained the brute majority she was hoping for, she would almost certainly have delivered the hardest of hard Brexits, which would have been a spectacular disaster for the UK economy.

The reality is that Britain holds no cards anyway, and most sensible people in Britain know it. If Britain loses single market access, the consequences for the UK economy will be quite disastrous.

Lisa wrote:

shiv wrote:Pardon the stupid question but what happened in the election?

Simple, Conservatives lost their majority and now need 4 more seats to secure a working majority (322 seat are needed in all they have 318). A party from Northern Ireland which has traditionally aligned itself with the Tories will give them 10 more seats, ie a majority of 6. That all folks.

P.S. Theresa May is an idiot.

shiv wrote:How come I am not seeing articles in India about the greatness of British democracy?

ramana wrote:Total 650
Need 326.
May got 318
DUP got 10
So total is 328
So margin of 2

Irony is she had 331 before going to elections.

Hubris.

Election latest: Theresa May tries to move on after humiliating result as critics begin to circle
Sources tell The Independent PM's move to embrace Northern Ireland's DUP could make problems for her in Westminster

Cosmo_R wrote:

Lisa wrote:
Simple, Conservatives lost their majority and now need 4 more seats to secure a working majority (322 seat are needed in all they have 318). A party from Northern Ireland which has traditionally aligned itself with the Tories will give them 10 more seats, ie a majority of 6. That all folks.

P.S. Theresa May is an idiot.

I thought it was 326 seats for the majority

Britain's shock election result has cast the special relationship into serious doubt
When Obama predicted Britain would go to the back of the queue he was right

David Usborne
Theresa May and Donald Trump meet beside a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the Oval Office of the White House on January 27, 2017 Getty
Up and down the avenues of New York City, billboards on bus stops and hotspot stations implore its denizens to cross the Atlantic for their holidays with pictures of favourite destinations like Edinburgh Castle, always with the recurring slogan about Britain being GREAT.

Making their wee speeches at an election-watch party at the British Consulate in Manhattan – distracting guests from the fine Indian buffet and news of returns on the BBC – UK diplomats meanwhile rehearsed the required line about “no two nations having more in common” and so on, complete with the usual chuckling reference to the time we set fire to the White House.

Well, I don’t know. Barely anyone in the country beyond the bounds of the Consulate and possibly a smattering of British-themed fish-n-chip pubs paid the blindest bit of attention to the political tremors going on in ye olde country. This would be on account of their having a few of their own to contend with. Comey commands the headlines here, not Corbyn or Clegg.

And Britain, after all, is confusing. Americans have seen more of Nigel Farage than they have of Theresa May, because of his past palling around with Donald Trump. They will watch a bit of Wimbledon and, who knows, they might take that trip. Because, GREAT should really read CHEAP, when you consider the fresh battering the pound took early Friday against the dollar.

What may sink in about the UK election results is a vague sense of additional unease about the state of the world at a time when everyone surely needs less of it. Britain has been the most important sinew in the post-World War II bond of democracy and economic prosperity between the US and all of Europe. That that connection seems in various ways to have frayed is good news for no one.

Barack Obama has some responsibility for making the special relationship somewhat less so. It wasn’t just the flap over removing Winston Churchill from the Oval office. (The old boy’s back now, of course, in all his dulled-bronze and glowering splendour.) He deliberately turned America’s gaze east and south towards Asia and in so much as he paid heed to Europe it was more to Merkel than to Cameron or Brown. Maybe after Brexit, he considered that smart.

It was Obama who warned Britain that leaving Europe would mean it going to the back of the queue for a new trade deal with America. He was widely criticised for it and even blamed for stoking anti-Leave sentiment ahead of Britain’s referendum. But there is no reason to assume he was wrong or that when negotiations for such a deal begin, the Trump administration will be anything but tungsten-tough in its stance. You saw what Trump told Germany about selling too many cars in America. Flipping trade flows to America’s advantage is the heart of brand Trump.

And as much as Trump appears to dislike regional trade treaties – he wants to tweak Nafta with Canada and Mexico and has put the kibosh on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP – it remains the case that when it comes to looking eastward the priority for his trade negotiators will be the putative Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union even if for the moment talks have stalled. Britain, presumably, won’t be part of it.

Put together the irritations in the US-UK relationship amount to a malaise, meanwhile. Some are multi-lateral in nature. Let’s leave aside consideration of whether Britain departing the European Union will make it a bigger or lesser force in the world, even if it’s hard to make an argument in support of the former. But which British leader would have ever imagined being lectured outside Nato headquarters by a sitting American president about defence spending levels while at the same time hearing nothing from him about the Alliance’s mutual defence provisions?

Will Jeremy Corbyn, the Bernie Sanders of the U.K., reshape his nation's politics? http://nyer.cm/WxcGPC6 #TNYarchive
12:07 PM - 9 Jun 2017

We meanwhile have the highly unusual spectacle of Britain publicly squabbling with the US in the sphere of intelligence-sharing – for years at the very heart of the security relationship between them – because of the apparent leaking by US officials to the American media of details of the police investigation in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester arena bombing. Trump promised to deal with that but only because stopping leaks is something of a fetish with him.

Still more dispiriting was Trump’s toxic sniping at the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, straight after the terror attack just a week ago at Borough Market. You may recall, he suggested that the leader of the nation’s capital had been “pathetic” in his response to the crisis. He willfully took Khan’s words out of context by suggesting he’d said Londoner’s shouldn’t be alarmed by what had happened and did it via Twitter, naturally. “It was stunning for all us in America, and indefensible,” former CIA and National Security Agency head Michael Hayden sputtered in The Guardian. Khan was himself withering in return. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I really don’t care…I really couldn’t be bothered about what Donald Trump tweets.”

There are more tests to come. Khan was also asked about that other small matter on the horizon – a state visit by Trump to Britain for tea with the Queen and whatever else May lays on for him. If May is the host, of course. Maybe put him on a polo horse. Or in the Tower of London. Khan said it should not happen and there are many, in Parliament and elsewhere, who share the sentiment. When the time arrives, Trump’s visit, unless a way is found to shelve it, is likely only to highlight how strained the so-called special relationship has become.

Some will meanwhile try to discern some greater electoral meaning from the shock outcome of the British vote. Did May’s failure to distance herself more from Trump harm her? Should Corbyn have gone the full Bernie Sanders? And what about for America and its current political maelstrom? Does the faltering of the hard-Brexit Tories spell an ebbing of the populist tide for Trump, who continues to play the isolationist-America First card with his base?

What we do know is that no one is doing very much to get the Anglo-American partnership happy again. Britain has Europe to worry about. And with the Russia-Trump investigation taking on a more menacing mien every day, America has America to worry about. Britain may be GREAT (and cheap) but who is going to make the Anglo-American relationship great again?

chetak wrote:
among other things, free movement of people was something that the brits did not want.

If that's something that's going to be left in, then why bother to leave the EU at all??

ramana wrote:Ekalavya What is single market access in UK parlance?

The EU single market: How it works and the benefits it offers

Brexit vote has thrown up big questions about future trading

March 31, 2017

© AFP
Britain’s vote to leave the EU has thrown the country’s trading relationship with Europe into doubt. That in turn opens up big questions about the future of the UK economy, which sends almost half of its exports to the bloc.

Here the Financial Times considers how the market works and what leaving it might mean.

The status quo: rights and regulations

Access to the single market requires acceptance of all four EU freedoms — of movement of goods, capital, services, and people.

The single market is predicated on the belief that these four freedoms drive prosperity.

The EU is a customs union. Its members impose common tariffs on imports from non-EU countries and can trade freely with each other.

Members automatically benefit from trade deals that the EU strikes with other countries but cannot set their own tariffs.

To create a fair internal market, the EU is committed to a common regulatory framework to prevent one company — or country — from gaining competitive advantage by getting rid of regulations.

Countries must promise to implement common rules and to recognise each other’s standards.

This means that companies everywhere in the bloc can then sell their products and services throughout the EU.

These policies are designed to both reduce trade costs and open up markets.


A visual explainer to the EU


Quantifying the impact of the single market

A Treasury paper found that trade in goods was 73 per cent higher between EU member states than would have been the case in a free trade area (where no tariffs but other barriers remain), while trade in services was 16 per cent higher.

An analysis by the OECD of membership of the European Economic Area, found trade in goods was 60 per cent higher than if trading partners simply relied on World Trade Organisation rules.

Trading with the EU post Brexit

In theory, the UK should be able to relatively easily negotiate a free-trade deal with the EU for goods, because it already complies with current regulations and there are no tariffs in force at present.

But Neil Williams, chief UK economist at Hermes, said that any deal would probably still take several years to agree “just to end up close to square one”.

For the service sector, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the UK economy, the negotiations will be much harder. Most existing trade deals exclude services and the deals with the EU that do include services also require free movement of people and common regulations.

Even assuming some sort of free-trade deal is done, other non-tariff barriers could be expected to add costs for business.

Complying with rules of origin

These are an important component to preferential trade deals. They are designed to prevent products from countries not covered by the deal from entering the trading bloc.

If only some of the UK’s exports are covered by the free-trade deal, companies will have to check individual goods to see whether they are compliant. This is “particularly cumbersome for small and medium enterprises”, Rebecca Driver, director of Analytically Driven, said.

Multiple regulatory regimes

Over time, EU rules will diverge from UK rules. UK companies wishing to export to the EU will need to comply with both sets of rules.

Border inspections

On a practical level, without full membership of the single market and mutual recognition of standards, companies will face border inspections.

In the era of just-in-time delivery and integrated supply chains where even a day’s hold-up can cause problems, this is likely to be of more importance than it was historically.

All these factors collectively add up to an increase in barriers to trade with Europe that the victorious Leave campaign hopes would be offset by other benefits of leaving.

UK Election 2017: Theresa May to form fragile govt after poll debacle, uncertainty over Brexit talks
Jun, 09 2017

British Prime Minister Theresa May will form a government supported by a small Northern Irish party after her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority in an election debacle days before talks on Britain's EU departure are due to begin.

A stony-faced May, speaking on the doorstep of her official Downing Street residence, said the government would provide certainty and lead Britain in talks with the European Union to secure a successful Brexit deal.

May said she could rely in parliament on the support of her "friends" in Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party after her governing Conservatives failed to emerge as clear winners.

Confident of securing a sweeping victory, May had called the snap election to strengthen her hand in the European Union divorce talks. But in one of the most sensational nights in British electoral history, a resurgent Labour Party denied her an outright win, throwing the country into political turmoil.

EU leaders expressed fears that May's shock loss of her majority would delay the Brexit talks, due to begin on 19 June, and so raise the risk of negotiations failing.


Her Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn, once written off by his opponents as a no-hoper, said May should step down and he wanted to form a minority government.

But May, facing scorn for running a lacklustre campaign, was determined to hang on. Just after noon, she was driven the short distance from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen Elizabeth for permission to form a government — a formality under the British system.

With 649 of 650 seats declared, the Conservatives had won 318 seats and Labour 261 followed by the pro-independence Scottish National Party on 34.

The shock result thrust Northern Ireland's centre-right DUP into the role of kingmaker, with its 10 seats enough to give the Conservatives a fragile but workable partnership.

"Our two parties have enjoyed a strong relationship over many years and this gives me the confidence to believe that we will be able to work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom," May said.

This was likely to involve an arrangement in which the DUP would support a Conservative minority government on key votes in parliament but not form a formal coalition.

But with the complex talks on the divorce from the EU due to start in 10 days, it was unclear what their direction would now be and if the so-called "Hard Brexit" taking Britain out of a single market could still be pursued.

After winning his own seat in north London, Corbyn said May's attempt to win a bigger mandate had backfired.

"The mandate she's got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence," he said. "I would have thought that's enough to go, actually, and make way for a government that will be truly representative of all of the people of this country."

Brexit risks

"We need a government that can act," EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. "With a weak negotiating partner, there's a danger that the (Brexit) negotiations will turn out badly for both sides."

The EU's chief negotiator said the bloc's stance on Brexit and the timetable for the talks were clear, but the divorce negotiations should only start when Britain is ready. "Let's put our minds together on striking a deal," Michel Barnier said.

But there was little sympathy from some other Europeans.

"Yet another own goal, after Cameron now May, will make already complex negotiations even more complicated," tweeted Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian premier who is the European Parliament's point man for the Brexit process.


May's predecessor David Cameron sought to silence Eurosceptic fellow Conservatives by calling the referendum on EU membership. The result ended his career and shocked Europe.

German conservative Markus Ferber, an EU lawmaker involved in discussions on access to EU markets for Britain's financial sector, was scathing.

"The British political system is in total disarray. Instead of strong and stable leadership we witness chaos and uncertainty," he said, mocking May's campaign slogan.

Sterling tumbled as much as 2.5 percent on the result while the FTSE share index opened higher. The pound hit an eight-week low against the dollar and its lowest levels in seven months versus the euro.

"A working government is needed as soon as possible to avoid a further drop in the pound," said ING currency strategist Viraj Patel in London.

"Dreadful campaign"

Conservative member of parliament Anna Soubry was the first in the party to disavow May in public, calling on the prime minister to "consider her position".

"I'm afraid we ran a pretty dreadful campaign," Soubry said.

May had unexpectedly called the snap election seven weeks ago, even though no vote was due until 2020. At that point, polls predicted she would massively increase the slim majority she had inherited from Cameron.

May had spent the campaign denouncing Corbyn as the weak leader of a spendthrift party that would crash Britain's economy and flounder in Brexit talks, while she would provide "strong and stable leadership" to clinch a good deal for Britain.

But her campaign unravelled after a policy u-turn on care for the elderly, while Corbyn's old-school socialist platform and more impassioned campaigning style won wider support than anyone had foreseen.

In the late stages of the campaign, Britain was hit by two Islamist militant attacks that killed 30 people in Manchester and London, temporarily shifting the focus onto security issues.

That did not help May, who in her previous role as interior minister for six years had overseen cuts in the number of police officers. She sought to deflect pressure onto Corbyn, arguing he had a weak record on security matters.

"What tonight is about is the rejection of Theresa May's version of extreme Brexit," said Keir Starmer, Labour's policy chief on Brexit, saying his party wanted to retain the benefits of the European single market and customs union.

Analysis suggested Labour had benefited from a strong turnout among young voters.

The campaign had played out differently in Scotland, the main faultline being the SNP's drive for a second referendum on independence from Britain, having lost a plebiscite in 2014.

SNP leader and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it had been a disappointing night for her party, which lost seats to the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Sturgeon should take the prospect of a new independence referendum off the table.


Published Date: Jun 09, 2017 08:01 pm

MEXICO CITY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Britain Friday to quickly launch Brexit talks with the European Union after Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a harsh election setback.

"We are ready for the negotiations. We want to do it quickly, respecting the calendar," Merkel said during a visit to Mexico.

She said talks with Britain on its withdrawal from what will now be the 27-member EU would start "in the coming days."

"We were waiting for the election in Britain, but in the next few days these talks will begin. We will defend the interests of the 27 member states, and Britain will defend its own interests," she told a press conference.

The UK is truly a great country. Its voters have done the impossible and committed suicide twice in the matter of a year

Rishi Verma wrote:
video: how uk madrassas teach hate - esp against the hindus

shiv wrote:How come I am not seeing articles in India about the greatness of British democracy?

chetak wrote:twitter

The UK is truly a great country. Its voters have done the impossible and committed suicide twice in the matter of a year

panduranghari wrote:

chetak wrote:twitter

Could you point to this tweet? Thanks.

giving workers some power and wages

UlanBatori wrote:The darn thing is that if Mays had come to power with a 2/3 majority, that would have pretty-much guaranteed Scotchstan Brexit and maybe Occupied Ireland also getting Azadi, both with French/German assistance. Just like Ryan's Daughter. Now I am not so sure.

UlanBatori wrote:Perhaps the world is heading for Segmented Economies with walls around each. Asia trades inside Asia. Russia trades inside Russia. America trades inside America. Europe trades inside Europe. Africa trades with Africa, Australia with Australia (and NZ). England belongs nowhere so they trade within England.