Posts Tagged ‘Michael Gove’

Theresa May Gets Cracking

Monday, July 18th, 2016

David Cameron was in a no-win situation after the Brexit vote, but new PM Theresa May is a probably in a no-lose situation. If Brexit is successful, she gets to take the credit. If it fails, she can point out she was a Euroskeptic carrying out the public’s will against her own wishes.

May has named chief Tory Pro-Leave campaigner Boris Johnson as her foreign minister. Michael Gove stabbing Johnson in the back for his own chance at the Downing Street probably doomed Gove’s bid but made Johnson (who the London establishment hates) a more sympathetic figure. May naming him foreign minister not only pleases the Leave faction, it also works as a case of “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

(More of May’s ministerial appointments can be found here, but I’m not even going to pretend I recognize all these names.)

May had already made the laudable decision to to close the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

Brexit now has an official deadline of December 2018. It appears that everything is over but the shouting long, draw-out, painful EU negotiations.

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Still More Brexit Aftershocks

Thursday, June 30th, 2016

It’s a big story, and the reverberations continue to sound around the world:

  • Boris Johnson withdraws from Tory PM race in favor of fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove, who is expected to face-off against Remain backer Theresa May, “the no-nonsense domestic security chief.” Evidently the Washington Post doesn’t trust their readers to know what the Home Secretary (her actual title) does in the UK…
  • It sounds like the UK got out of the EU just in time: “Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault today presented a proposal for closer EU integration based on three key areas – internal and external security, the migrant crisis, and economic cooperation. But the plans have been described as an ‘ultimatum’ in Poland, with claims it would mean countries transfer their armies, economic systems and border controls to the EU.”
  • Brexit has caused such panic among our political elites that they’ve openly opposing democracy since it continues to thwart their will to power.
  • Marine Le Pen: “Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny?” The usual Le Pen caveats apply, but she’s not wrong here. (Hat tip: Zero hedge.)
  • Brexit has UK journalists in a snit:

    The utter incomprehension of some colleagues at the result would be comical were it not so injurious to the sub-constitutional role played by the Fourth Estate.

    There is a sense of indignation that a majority of voters did not cleave to the group-think. The whiff of class-hatred hangs heavy in the air. This morning I risked pariah-status in the canteen queue by suggesting it was patronising to ascribe the working class with prejudices we could neither test nor vouch for. Dismissing their opinions as motivated by xenophobia precludes any notion that those uneducated poor folk might actually have a coherent view on sovereignty or national self-determination.

    This democratic deficit has been well ventilated over the weekend. Janice Turner, in particular, wrote beautifully and wisely in Saturday’s Times about the folly of denigrating “retired miners who now drive taxi cabs”. It is no surprise that contrarians like the brilliant Julie Birchill, who has written at length about the demonisation of white-working class ‘chavs’, came out for Brexit.

    Part of the seething fury felt by some of my co-workers lies in that feeling of being hoodwinked, of not being as smart, as omniscient as they, hitherto, imagined. Their self-esteem is bruised. Nobody likes to find out that the world they thought existed turns out to have been built on miopia and wishful thinking.

  • These opinions are not confined to the UK:

    There’s a growing sense, not only in Great Britain, but in the US as well, that the elites, or the political class, or whatever you’d like to call them, are incompetent and have been leading us astray. And the response from elites is to call those criticisms illegitimate. Those doing the carping are assumed to be racists or nationalists, both of which, of course, are unpleasant, dirty types of people. Both the UK’s Leavers and the US’s Trumpers share some commonalities. Among them are skepticism over free trade and free immigration; concerns that elites dismiss as foolish and uneducated. And, of course racist.

    Snip.

    I think we’re about to watch the elites start paying a price for their incompetence, inattention and contempt. Euroskepticism is on the rise elsewhere in Europe. If EU membership were put to a popular vote in the Netherlands, Spain, or Sweden, there is a good chance that Leave would win there, too. Indeed, it’s possible that a vote to leave the EU might even win in France, the nation for whom creating and strengthening the EU has been the primary policy goal for 60 years.

    Perhaps the “Vote Remain, you virulent racist!” PR campaign for staying in the EU needs a bit more thought.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Eleven countries looking to strike trade deals with the UK. Including Germany. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “The idea of pitting Brexit against ‘globalization’ is historically ridiculous. A proudly independent Britain pretty much invented the global economy, centuries before the European Union. There is no reason Britain should suddenly have to choose between trade and independence, when it has so long benefited from both.”
  • Brexit will be good for growth and freedom.
  • France 2016 looks a whole lot like Britain circa 1978, though probably with better food.

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