While Shashi Tharoor and William Dalrymple were writing best-sellers trashing British colonialism in India, the Chinese, it turns out, were buying up the current British establishment. Recent reports from London indicate how expansive the Chinese infiltration of the British ruling caste has been.
Millions of Hongkongers eligible for British National (Overseas) passports, their spouses and underage children will be allowed to resettle in the UK and given a path to British citizenship, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday. The historic change to the rights of Hongkongers born during the colonial era was announced hours after China officially imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong.
Relations between China and Britain are fraying amid growing concerns among British politicians about China’s economic influence and Hong Kong. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s tougher stance reflects increasing cross-party scepticism, while Chinese diplomats have not contradicted media reports that Beijing would retaliate if Chinese business activities are limited.
The modern colonial era began in the 15th century and, at its height, at the end of World War II, a third of the world’s population lived in territories ruled by foreign powers. The maritime European nations of Britain, Portugal, Spain, France and the Dutch Republic led the way in carving up the continents. The Brits were so rapacious, in fact, that Indian politician Shashi Tharoor humorously observed, “The sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark.”
The primary difference between the deals produced by May and Johnson revolve around the Irish question. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, would be part of any withdrawal process. Currently, there are no customs posts or physical checkmarks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This is partially because they’re in the same customs union under the European Single Market, and also because of the Good Friday Agreement of 1999, which put an end to The Troubles.
Read Here – The National Interest
Where to begin in considering the ten contenders to replace Theresa May as the Conservative Party Leader and, by extension, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? Maybe with the drugs.
From John le Carré’s novels to the insatiable popular interest in James Bond, Britain has long enjoyed, and cultivated, an image of producing superior spies. This reputation is based on more than myth. For decades during and following World War II, the painstaking real-world work of British intelligence officers was one of the United Kingdom’s primary sources of power.
Murdoch and his children have toppled governments on two continents and destabilised the most important important democracy on earth. What do they want?
Read Here – The New York Times
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.
