Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Agelastus]

Opinion piece in the Telegraph. Is the British press going mental? 

Is Theresa May guilty of treason? Plenty of readers think so. Politicians would be wise to listen up

Actually registered for a free account with the Telegraph to read the rest of this after your quote of the bonkers title.

Only to find the rest of the article was mainly concerning quotes from various letters to the Telegraph.

For those not swept away by anger, humour is a welcome resource. "I had hoped for a second Margaret Thatcher with the election of Theresa May," wrote a reader from Caithness. "Sadly I seem to have got a second Edward Heath." Finding a striking metaphor is useful too. "In getting off the bus," wrote a reader from Leicestershire with an impression of a half-complete Brexit plan, "I don't want to get my foot stuck in the door and be dragged along helpless."

There have in the past four or five days been so many metaphorical references to appeasement and Chamberlain, that one begins to feel sorry for Chamberlain.

I found the section quoted above to be mildly humorous, even.

And I also considered this to be probably correct as well -

Even in ordinary times, people who write letters to the paper are not quite the same as people who enjoy reading it.

[Zanza]

Opinion piece in the Telegraph. Is the British press going mental? 

Is Theresa May guilty of treason? Plenty of readers think so. Politicians would be wise to listen up

That ship sailed long ago:

[Razgovory]

It's weird that people are using the phrase "enemies of the people" these days.

[Josquius]

The headline says it all here:

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/the-government-is-about-to-start-stockpiling-processed-food-in-case-of-no-deal-brexit/



Expect May to make a speech "As for the food situation the following breeds of dog are edible..."

[The Larch]

Opinion piece in the Telegraph. Is the British press going mental? 

Is Theresa May guilty of treason? Plenty of readers think so. Politicians would be wise to listen up

Actually registered for a free account with the Telegraph to read the rest of this after your quote of the bonkers title.

Only to find the rest of the article was mainly concerning quotes from various letters to the Telegraph.

Can you post it here? It'd be soothing if it's only just an alarmist headline.

[Agelastus]

Can you post it here? It'd be soothing if it's only just an alarmist headline.

Here you go -

The postman, his stout legs clad in perennial shorts and reddened by the unaccustomed sun of the past week, staggered beneath the weight of two bulging sacks as he struggled up the path to the Daily Telegraph letterbox.

I speak figuratively. All but a handful of letters these days arrive at the Telegraph as email. But, by heaven, there have been a lot of them since Friday, when Theresa May held the Cabinet hostage, phoneless, in her Buckinghamshire hideout – hundreds and hundreds of them, whizzing from the electronic Cloud like shooting stars on a mid-August night.

All are read and the Editor takes notice of them, but only a fraction can be published. And not since the summer of the MPs' expenses scandal in 2009 has such an angry invasion force taken the Letters page by storm. For anger has indeed been their main propellant.

The anger arose mainly from a feeling of betrayal: that in the referendum the majority had voted for Brexit, but the Chequers plan did not add up to Brexit."No Brexit. No democracy. No confidence," ran one short letter from Derbyshire, like the lyrics of a Seventies punk single.

Some opinions were quite extreme. I do not think The Daily Telegraph has published any letter accusing the Prime Minister of treason. Legally she has certainly been guilty of no such crime. But plenty of letters sent in suggested she had been.

It is not like readers of The Telegraph to give way to bad manners, so who exactly are the people who have written in? They are not identical to Conservative voters, as a minority are Ukip supporters and a few indicate a preference for Labour. Many of them, observing the wiles and jostling for advantage of the politicians, now declare: "A plague on both your houses".

"Where are the politicians of principle who will honour the manifesto promises they were elected on?" asked a reader from Solihull. "Instead we have only traitorous members of the Cabinet who think only of their careers."

Quite a few, in their anger, declared that they will never vote again. I'm not sure they will keep to their resolve, as the months go by, but it is worrying. After all, the EU's democratic deficit motivated many to vote for Brexit in the first place. If someone is interested enough to follow politics in a newspaper and then put finger to keyboard to send a letter for publication, it is bad if they are not to be heard through the ballot box too.

Even in ordinary times, people who write letters to the paper are not quite the same as people who enjoy reading it. Yet in a time of crisis, there is a sense of fellowship among those who compete to find a place on the Letters page. It is common to see letter-writers remark that the published views of readers are wiser and more honest than the words of politicians.

For those not swept away by anger, humour is a welcome resource. "I had hoped for a second Margaret Thatcher with the election of Theresa May," wrote a reader from Caithness. "Sadly I seem to have got a second Edward Heath." Finding a striking metaphor is useful too. "In getting off the bus," wrote a reader from Leicestershire with an impression of a half-complete Brexit plan, "I don't want to get my foot stuck in the door and be dragged along helpless."

There have in the past four or five days been so many metaphorical references to appeasement and Chamberlain, that one begins to feel sorry for Chamberlain.

It even seemed to some on Tuesday that Lord Carrington, who as Foreign Secretary resigned honourably on the invasion of the Falklands, had been permitted by Providence to die at this moment of national danger as a reminder to politicians how they ought to behave.

A few people have written to say: "Give us back our Letters page." They mean they want to discuss Wimbledon, the rescue of those boys in Thailand, or the RAF and England football. They need not worry. Normality is returning (or else we're all going to hell in a handcart).

But for every letter regretting the day's focus on Brexit, hundreds arrive expressing a strongly held opinion about it and demanding a place in print and in the eternal glowing muniment-room of The Telegraph online.

The author's profile on the Telegraph says he "writes about the world's faiths, especially Christianity. He also comments frequently and blogs on the uses and abuses of the English language."

Most of his recent articles would agree with that; not sure what particular bit of internal paper politics gave him this opinion piece - quite possibly it was a case of the editor saying "I want this written, the slowest person out the door has to do it" or equivalent.

[Syt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/world/europe/trump-brexit-theresa-may.html

With May's Government Teetering, Trump Gives It a Shove

LONDON — President Trump put his brand of confrontational and disruptive diplomacy on full display Thursday, unsettling NATO allies with a blustering performance in Brussels and then, in a remarkable breach of protocol, publicly undercutting Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain in an interview published hours after landing in her country.

In the interview with The Sun, Mr. Trump second-guessed Mrs. May's handling of the main issue on her plate: how Britain should cut ties to the European Union. He cast doubt on whether he was willing to negotiate a new trade deal between Britain and the United States, and praised Mrs. May's Conservative Party rival, Boris Johnson, as a potentially great prime minister.

The interview was published as Mr. Trump and Mrs. May were wrapping up what appeared to be a chummy dinner at Blenheim Palace — earlier, they had walked inside holding hands — and a day ahead of the president's scheduled meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle. There was no immediate response from the British government.

"Well I think the deal that she is striking is not what the people voted on," Mr. Trump said in the interview, speaking of the approach Mrs. May is taking to Britain's exit from the European Union, or Brexit, under which the British economy would effectively continue to be subject to many European regulations.

Speaking of Mr. Johnson, who resigned this week as foreign secretary in protest over Mrs. May's Brexit strategy and who has long been seen as likely to challenge her for her job, Mr. Trump said: "Well I am not pitting one against the other. I'm just saying I think he would be a great prime minister. I think he's got what it takes and I think he's got the right attitude to be a great prime minister."

Coming after his combative performance in Brussels with leaders of the 28 other NATO nations, the day amounted to a global disruption tour unlike anything undertaken by any other recent American president.

In Brussels on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he supported NATO but seemed to suggest that the United States could leave if the allies didn't increase defense spending. He claimed credit for pressing members to pledge increases in their military budgets, though some denied any such promises were made.

Mr. Trump did sign on to a NATO plan to improve military readiness across the Continent, and the allies agreed to take a tough stance against Russia, particularly regarding its annexation of Crimea.

But the NATO meeting created a picture of discord days before Mr. Trump was scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Sun's interview with Mr. Trump, conducted Wednesday in Brussels, signaled a new twist on the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States. The White House went into damage control mode after it was published on Thursday night.

"The President likes and respects Prime Minister May very much," Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr. Trump's press secretary, said in a statement. "As he said in his interview with The Sun she 'is a very good person' and he 'never said anything bad about her.'"

The statement said Mr. Trump "is thankful for the wonderful welcome from the prime minister here in the U.K."

But in the interview with The Sun, Mr. Trump said he had been made to feel unwelcome in London by the large protests planned against him and the hostility of London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, who has been an outspoken critic of the president.

"I think your mayor has done a terrible job, but when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?" Mr. Trump said, alluding to his decision to spend little time in London on this trip.

The president's comments were likely to stoke acute tension within Mrs. May's Conservative Party, following the publication on Thursday of the government's plan for exiting the European Union, which would keep Britain tied to European Union rules on goods and agricultural products.

Mrs. May has been making the case for a free trade deal with the United States and argued that Brexit was an "opportunity" to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties and spur economic growth both in Britain and in the United States. British officials hoped that Mr. Trump's visit would help that process.

Mr. Trump appeared to dash those hopes. Mrs. May's plan is intended to minimize the economic impact of Brexit, which could be severe because the European Union is Britain's biggest trading partner. But Mr. Trump appeared to side with pro-Brexit critics who argue that by keeping many of the European Union's economic rules, it would inevitably reduce the scope for a separate trade deal with the United States.

Even before it was released as a white paper on Thursday, Mrs. May's proposal had prompted the resignation of three government ministers, including Mr. Johnson, the foreign secretary who had argued for a cleaner break with the European Union.

"I would have done it much differently," Mr. Trump was quoted as saying. "I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn't listen to me." Instead she went "the opposite way," he said, and the results have been "very unfortunate."

If Britain sticks to Mrs. May's approach toward Europe, Mr. Trump said, "that would probably end a major trade relationship with the United States."

Before arriving in Britain, Mr. Trump had described Mr. Johnson as a friend and said he might be in contact with him during his visit to Britain, which is scheduled to end on Sunday after the president visits one of his golf resorts in Scotland.

When he resigned on Monday as foreign secretary, Mr. Johnson made a fierce attack on Mrs. May's strategy for Brexit saying the "dream is dying, suffocated by needless self doubt."

In his interview, Mr. Trump struck a highly negative tone about the European Union itself, arguing that the United States had "enough difficulty" with the bloc.

"We are cracking down right now on the European Union because they have not treated the United States fairly on trading," he said.

In recent weeks British business has been increasingly vocal about the risks of a clean break with the European Union, with warnings from Jaguar Land Rover and Airbus among others that they could leave the country, putting thousands out of work.

But hard-line Brexit supporters have been fiercely critical of Mrs. May's Brexit plan and fear that, after negotiations with the European Union, it could be watered down further.

Mr. Trump's favorable comments about Mr. Johnson are therefore likely to be seen as an implicit criticism of Mrs. May. In his letter of resignation on Monday, Mr. Johnson said that, under Mrs. May's proposals, Britain was "truly headed for the status of colony."

Mr. Johnson once described one government Brexit customs plan as "crazy" and, in leaked comments, also accused Mrs. May's government of lacking "guts." He compared her negotiating style unfavorably with that of Mr. Trump, and he compared her new Brexit plan to excrement.

In The Sun interview, Mr. Trump also renewed his criticism of Mr. Khan, the mayor of London, with whom he has clashed on several occasions, and who gave protesters permission to launch a giant orange balloon of the president depicted as a baby in a diaper carrying a cellphone in one of its hands.

"Take a look at the terrorism that is taking place," Mr. Trump said. "Look at what is going on in London. I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism."

The Sun's article was published just as a lavish black-tie dinner that Mrs. May was hosting for Mr. Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, at Blenheim Palace was breaking up, and guests in formal gowns and tuxedos were leaving the estate.

Chris Ruddy, the chairman of Newsmax and a confidant of Mr. Trump who attended the dinner, said there was no hint of tension between the president and Mrs. May during the event itself, which he called "a love fest between Britain and the United States."

"The president has always been for Brexit full speed, but I'd really like to see the full interview in context," Mr. Ruddy said, suggesting that Mr. Trump's comments may not have been as direct a broadside against Mrs. May as they were portrayed to be in The Sun. "I went over and chatted directly with the president and the prime minister, and he indicated to me that the special relationship between the United States and Britain was better than ever."

The Sun posted audio recordings of large portions of the interview.

Mr. Ruddy said he learned of the interview as he was driving away from Blenheim, and British friends began texting him expressing shock and surprise about what Mr. Trump had said.

[Richard Hakluyt]

He is such a boorish oaf 

[Josquius]

Wonder how much trump was told to do this by those more in line with him.
And got to hate how a trade deal with America is suddenly seen as such a good thing. Remember how scare stories about TTIP were so prominent in the campaign?

[The Brain]

the event itself, which he called "a love fest between Britain and the United States."

Maybe even as great as Loveday in 1458 between Lancaster and York.

[Syt]

Wonder how much trump was told to do this by those more in line with him.

I think Trump's gut feeling when someone gives him advice is to do the complete opposite out of spite and to prove his power and agency.

[Tamas]

This whole Britain standing alone and strong isn't working out that well, is it?

The EU has been saying "keep to our rules or you don't get squat "

Now the US President has joined in saying "do as I say or you don't get squat. Also you should have a different PM lulz."

The days of the Empire are long gone I am afraid.

[mongers]

This whole Britain standing alone and strong isn't working out that well, is it?

The EU has been saying "keep to our rules or you don't get squat "

Now the US President has joined in saying "do as I say or you don't get squat. Also you should have a different PM lulz."

The days of the Empire are long gone I am afraid.

Therefore we need to forge a new empire. 

[Tamas]

Well the Sun  interview has been declared fake news by The Man himself.

[Duque de Bragança]

This whole Britain standing alone and strong isn't working out that well, is it?

The EU has been saying "keep to our rules or you don't get squat "

Now the US President has joined in saying "do as I say or you don't get squat. Also you should have a different PM lulz."

The days of the Empire are long gone I am afraid.

Therefore we need to forge a new empire. 

Nah, the Falklands[spoiler]/Malvinas[/spoiler] are still British, so the Empire is still there.