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The recent decision by Iran to start enriching uranium, in breach of the JCPOA, shortly after the attack on two ships in the Gulf of Oman is a reminder of the Middle East’s penchant for unpleasant surprises. No sooner had the attack happened, than the US, followed by Britain, asserted Iran’s responsibility. There was intelligence proving this. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Corbyn queried its reliability and, even more predictably, was slapped down by the Foreign Secretary.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7172895/Britain-consider-joining-military-assault-Iran-Jeremy-Hunt-says.html
Which also seems to have been the position of the United States, as President Trump cancelled a planned attack on Iran.
Edit: OK, Second like Hunt...
Oh, wait
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1147432175333203969
But with Corbyn there is always a suspicion that he's questioning it because he doesn't want to support the US or UK in anything, and admires potential enemies more than his own government - a circumstance not helped by his long and lucrative links with Iranian TV, an arm of their government.
Assuming his supporters haven't borrowed Boris's own habit of telling the audience exactly what they want to hear (or what he thinks they want to hear), we are going to the land of the fantastic renegotiation for our summer holidays.
Even though we have a WA which has been agreed by both sides and which the EU have said can't be changed, we are now supposed to believe Boris will not only get a new deal but said deal will "unite the nation".
To quote a certain Mr V Meldrew "I don't believe it".
I cannot believe people are so stupid and desperate to believe or want to believe this nonsense. I suppose if you are a Conservative looking at a 20% poll rating and being taken over by the Faragists you'll believe any line a decent con-man (no pun intended) will peddle.
When we get to early October, what then? What if there's no deal on the horizon? Will Boris say something like "look, chaps, the Deal's just round the corner. Give me six more months and it'll be sorted.". That's up there with "the dog ate my homework" or "the cheque's in the post". Farage will have a field day and those so enthusiastic of Boris now will have had first hand experience of the saying "buying a pig in a poke".
I am absolutely convinced that is the tip of a huge iceberg of human exploitation. There are plenty of stories of three bedroom semi detached houses with 20 or more people living in them - the new slums.
While very many of those who come to the UK come to work and work hard and live within the law, we have also allowed in those who are less willing to go down that route and such individuals and groups are an integral part of organised crime in parts of London and elsewhere.
I'm surprised Boris hasn't spoken to the Police about this - perhaps he couldn't find a policeman in London, after all, he cut their numbers and closed the stations.
In Northern Ireland he has already voted for the backstop at MV3 even if he wants to try and renegotiate it to a technical solution to the Irish border straight away
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/26/boris-johnson-promises-australian-style-points-system-immigration/?hootPostID=2cca6bcfc505cc384100ad4e1d0063aa.
If you are an anti immigration hardliner you will be voting Brexit Party anyway and probably voted UKIP in 2015 too
On the one hand LotO should be holding the government to account and making sure the government does not overstep the line. On the otherhand the LotO is expected to show that he/she is qualified to be prime minister.*
In the area of military conflict this dichotomy is particularly noticeable: if you do not challenge the intelligence and government statements then you might end up letting the PM get away with it and neglecting your duty as LotO (IDS). If you do challenge the govenment's stance then you seriously risk being labelled as not prepared to take your country to war (Foot, Milliband, Corbyn). It is possible to navigate down the middle of this but it is a fine line to find. AFAIR Kinnock got this right in the first Gulf War, but then the start of that war was completely uncontroversial.
*Curiously, the opposition party needs to show that the leader is PM material, but if changing the leader when in government this ceases to be a requirement.
Let's pick out the options then: That won't happen because the Faragists want us to leave without a Deal and there are more than enough of them to block any hopes of a Conservative majority. Okay. At some point in September (perhaps during the Labour Conference), Boris announces there is no agreement with the EU and we will leave on 31/10 with No Deal but to confirm that is the people's will he will call a GE for say October 17th on a No Deal vs Remain platform.
He has to do the GE to stop the Commons turning on him and blocking a No Deal BUT that only works if Labour are stupid enough to fall into the elephant trap of wanting the election - that means it'll probably work.
Certainly the membership are happy to sacrifice everything to get their no deal fantasy .
May for all her faults realized that . She at least won’t be remembered for destroying the UK .
And for Bozo does he want to be the PM who did that .
I must admit that it was a long time ago, I was barely a teenager then and I was brought up in one of the most Conservative parts of the country and only had the Telegraph at home to read.
Not to mention that Labour on 18% and sinking may not fancy this election of yours
Probably more time to cement themselves as The Remain Party.
On the other hand, it's easier to be for Remain than Rejoin.
The Iranians are consulting the hadith to see if the best course of action is to seize a British vessel in the gulf or start legal proceedings in Gibraltar.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/tehran-fumes-as-uk-seizes-iranian-oil-tanker-over-syria-sanctions-1.3946906
Parliament has insisted on the right to approve the WA. What we have is a WA that May agreed to submit for ratification. That is very different.
I posted an article this week that shows why the timeline makes an October Election impossible unless he calls it in the first week of September..
and the commons isn't going to VoNC Boris in September. That would only occur as the deadline approaches...
As you know, I am probably as much of a Corbyn admirer as you are, but scepticism in such matters is entirely warranted.
I am as unionist as they come but the gig's up if the other lot don't want us. Boris et al are pretty clear the interests of Scotland (and Northern Ireland too) feature precisely nowhere on their radar. At least Theresa May cared.
Some people get worked up by fox hunting, which Tony Blair’s government banned. But the real measure of Blair and his place in the history books is the crime of Iraq, over a million dead due to a policy decision he pushed through.
The Sun newspaper said Charlotte Church had angel delight between her ears for proposing when Syria first ran into trouble we should have intervened with jobs and money to prevent the slide to civil war. Unfortunately for the sun newspaper history books will make clear it was geo political games that prevented Lottys suggested intervention and actually stoked the hideous war with all its atrocities.
There’s clear tension building in Middle East between Shia and Sunni, and under Trump today there is unequivocal 110% support for the Sunni side. In a presidency known for policy flip flopping this has been a true constant. Some may call what he is doing vandalism and dangerous, but a counter argument is Obama’s response to the Bush regime was inactivity, without much clear sense of what he wants to do in the world. What is interesting is how Britain believes it can or can’t go along with what Trump does next, the degree we have actually have a choice anymore. Is it only history books on the next few years that can answer this, or can we answer it today?
Indeed, he was so hawkish that even Denis Healey, hardly a pacifist, was rather startled and not very happy. Although perhaps we should also note Healey was a military veteran and therefore understood better than Foot how risky the option of reconquest was.
Source: K O Morgan, Michael Foot paperback 2008, 410-415.
Members of a gang behind the biggest modern-day slavery network ever exposed in the UK have been jailed.
Police believe more than 400 victims were put to work in the West Midlands by the organised crime gang.
They tricked vulnerable people from Poland into England with the promise of work and a better life.
But their victims were made to live in rat-infested houses and work menial jobs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-48881327
Did anyone ever imagine that the UK would have slavery and shanty towns ?
Corbyn's problem is that even when he is right to be sceptical about a foreign policy issue, no-one sees it in those terms because he has spent 40 years supporting or giving the benefit of the doubt to any cause or government - no matter how cruel, repressive or barbarous - that is anti-UK, anti-US and/or anti-Israel. It is this, more than anything else, that has made him so unpopular. People do not believe he is on the UK's side.
If Johnson succeeds I think that "No Deal" would be a very short term state and unlikely to last beyond the end of 2019. The EU will not want that state to last any more than the UK and a longer term deal of in the interests of both parties would follow quickly. That is in contrast to the position up to now where the EU has chosen to play hardball in the hope that the UK will either chose to remain or accept May's abject "Deal" that would settle next to nothing other than to strengthen the EU's position in the negotiations that would follow.
Perhaps you would like to consider whether either the criminals or their victims would have been allowed to migrate to the UK if there wasn't unrestricted immigration.
You might also like to consider how much the whole sordid story will cost the taxpayer.
But you wont.
Because its so much easier to claim that its only Europe's 'best and brightest' who migrate to the UK or that immigrants don't put pressure on the public services.
And as I said did anyone ever imagine that the UK would have slavery and shanty towns.
To lower the tone now with reference to my particular obsession - Trump.
The presence of this deeply sub-optimal individual in the White House has unfortunately coloured my view of America to the extent that my default view as to whether we should support the US in any conflict, military or otherwise, with anybody at all is a big fat NO.
"Go Iran Go!" I tend to shout at the TV when this current conflict over the nuclear deal is being featured.
Not great, I know, but thankfully I only have another 18 months to survive in this condition. President Harris will cure me.
Will she also mitigate Jeremy Corbyn's anti-Americanism? Perhaps but probably not to the same extent. I sense it runs deeper in him than in me.
You may have missed it but Airbus confirmed in the last few days that their manufacturing base in the UK will remain irrespective of the Brexit outcome
How many of the 24 Chinese slave-workers killed in Morecambe Bay were from the EU?
Secondly your 'lets ignore it because someone other group might be doing it as well' line is rather nauseating.
Another thing I have acquired is an increasing distaste for British politicians posturing about the Middle East.
Whatever else his campaign, with active telephone calling and almost daily e mails, contrasts with nothing of any note from Hunt
Reality has reached Royal Leamington Spa.
There are criminals all over the world and one very basic thing unites all of them: they do not obey the law.
Or perhaps we would be better at stopping that immigration in the first place ?
And so doing would lead to the side benefits of increased capital investment in carwash machines or alternatively lazy lard arses having to do some exercise.
And as I've said before the people in those 60% Leave towns are seeing few of the 'best and brightest' immigrants but a lot more of the less desirable types.
That should look good on the side of a bus.
Zero communication from a candidate is counterproductive.
It is perhaps inevitable that both Boris and Hunt would find ways to do the wrong thing.
Will it be the hardline Leavers to whom he has promised a No Deal exit on 31 Oct?
Or will it be the more pragmatic centrist types to whom his "No Deal is a million to one. Don't worry about it," was addressed.
Or - and one should in fairness allow for this possibility - will his trademark combination of chutzpah and ambiguous political positioning be so effective in practice that he manages to square the circle and disappoint both?
Plus I don't want to exterminate minorities. This really is Hitler stuff.
If you look at current Home Office policy you are contradicting yourself, pretty poor attempt at justifying being a colony indeed.
But the BBC haven't reported it yet.
Now doubtless there are still a few geriatric old style villains alive on the Costa del Crime but as I remember the Spanish government were happy for them to migrate there together with their ill-gotten gains.
A pox on your union.
Hunt has been in Cabinet a long time, it won't do him harm to take some time out.
Heck, if Boris fans are wrong and his boundless charisma will not square the circle that is the Tories needing a GE to pass Brexit but also not being able to win a GE until they Brexit, then Hunt and Boris will both be in opposition soon anyway.
I was merely contrasting how other European countries engaged in nation building while the UK was much more of an unplanned adhoc basis.
And its a historical fact that many minority groups in Europe were expelled, exterminated or forcibly assimilated as the nation states slowly formed.