Prime Minister Theresa May survived a confidence vote by the Conservative Party on Wednesday, but a mutiny by more than a third of her lawmakers indicated parliament was heading towards deadlock over Brexit.
Is the United Kingdom swinging against Brexit? That’s the conclusion of a 20,000-person mega-poll by Survation for Channel 4, which finds that Remain leads Leave by 54 to 46 per cent. The poll comes with the warm glow of being produced by the one traditional polling company to get the 2017 election result right, and also its size, but it is, of course, just one poll. It does, however, echo the general shift towards Remain that most polls have shown.
Diplomacy through portraiture had long been a staple of early modern statecraft in Europe and India. In a time where travel to another monarch’s realm could prove deadly, rulers sent their portraits in lieu of their persons as part of sensitive negotiations. Rulers interacted ritually with portraits as if they were not the representation of a person but the embodiment of that person.
Also Read: Historians And Policymaking: A New Chorus Singing An Old Ballad
Westerners make much of China’s obsession with “winning without fighting.” As though any sane statesman, Eastern or Western, relishes losing or longs to take up arms with all the dangers, hardships and perverse turnabouts of fortune that come with combat. Winning without fighting is what we call “diplomacy,” and it is a mode of interaction that spans all countries, civilisations and times.
The royal wedding is a national cultural event. There was a time, however, when it would have also been naturally understood as an expression of national interest and international ambition. If the British public hasn’t been thinking of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as diplomatic actors involved in a venture of international relations, that is a sign of their present roles — but also of how much Western diplomacy has changed since the days when royal marriages were major political events.
Throughout the negotiations, the EU has consistently been several steps ahead of Britain. Whereas the British cabinet has not even discussed the future relationship, Brussels has already prepared its position and is now issuing its negotiating guidelines. Indeed, Mrs May’s notion of Brexit red lines was always misconceived. Just as the EU sets the terms when countries apply to join the club, it also has the upper hand when a country decides to leave.
The fear of appearing weak affects modern women leaders too, according to Caprioli, perhaps causing them to over-compensate on issues of security and defence. She notes that women who emulate men, such as Thatcher, Meir and India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi – who claimed to be a ‘biform human being’, neither man nor woman – are more likely to succeed as political leaders. They must also contend with negative stereotypes from male opponents…
The British – terrorised by German bombing, demoralised by various defeats and large numbers of their soldiers taken prisoner, shaken by the desertion of Indian soldiers and the mutiny of Indian sailors, shivering in the record cold of the winter of 1945-46, crippled by power cuts and factory closures resulting from a post-war coal shortage – were exhausted and in no mood to focus on a distant Empire when their own needs at home were so pressing.
The British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration on more than one occasion in late 1952 to propose a coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, according to freshly declassified State Department documents. Posted today for the first time, two previously Top-Secret memoranda from senior officials at State refer to a series of communications and meetings beginning in October 1952 in which British officials tried to win U.S. approval of Mosaddeq’s ouster. The British government has steadfastly refused to release any materials that directly refer to its role in the operation that eventually took place in August 1953, and has consistently pressed the United States not to reveal any substantiation from American files.
It is interesting that in invoking historical justifications in the latest standoff between China and India in the Sikkim and Bhutan tri-junction area, neither party is keen to recall that the region once constituted sovereign principalities – of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan. Of the three, Bhutan is still independent, Tibet was taken over by China in 1951 and Sikkim became part of India only in 1975 by the exercise of Article 2 of the Indian constitution. The controversies behind these takeovers is another matter, but the moot point is that the histories of these erstwhile states have been splintered beyond recognition as they have been absorbed into other historical streams.
