The future looms menacingly for the United Kingdom, and the impending disaster is entirely the making of its own politicians. The cause of the present crisis is not so much the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, but the cack-handed manner in which ‘Brexit’ has been handled by members of Britain’s Parliament. The about-to-leave…
One of the rallying cries of the Brexit movement, whose supporters want Britain to leave the European Union, is the slogan “Let’s Take Back Control” — meaning, in the words ofThe Atlantic magazine, they imagine that by quitting Europe “they would be returning power from Brussels back to lawmakers in Westminster and, by extension, to…
US President Donald Trump rolled into the UK on Monday, dishing out scorching insults like it was going out of fashion. Surely Brexit Britain has suffered enough humiliation already? Before he had even touched down on the tarmac, Trump had already branded London’s mayor a “stone cold loser” who has “done a terrible job.” But he had set the ball rolling…
There is a story about an enthusiastic American who took a phlegmatic English friend to see the Niagara Falls. “Isn’t that amazing?” exclaimed the American. “Look at that vast mass of water dashing over that enormous cliff!” “But what,” asked the Englishman, “is to stop it?” My father, Claud Cockburn, used to tell this fable…
The best thing that can be said about outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May is that she did not cause irreparable harm to her country or the world. The worst that can be said is that she stubbornly sat by and passively facilitated a phenomenon which caused millions of people to lose faith in a…
A week from today, Europeans may be able to gauge how high the tide of populism and nationalism has risen within their countries and on their continent. For all the returns will be in from three days of elections in the 28 nations represented in the European Parliament. Expectation: Nationalists and populists will turn in…
