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The BBC's Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, says there are significant hurdles to reaching an agreement in talks between Conservative Party leader Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party. Labour seeks some assurance on Britain remaining in the customs union. Ironically the very reason Brexiteers such as Mr. Davis and Mr. Rees-Moog oppose the Theresa May deal - the arrangement on the Irish backstop a way for keeping the borders open between the two Irelands - is the reason Labour could find a way to support an agreement with Theresa May. For the Brexiteers this is unacceptable because it would keep Britain indefinitely in the EU.  There are two other obstacles. Theresa May has promised to resign after negotiating a compromise with Labour Party. Would her successor including possibly a Brexiteer such as Mr. Boris Johnson, support the agreed to deal with Labour. This is highly unlikely. Another obstacle is that a majority of Labour party members of parliament favor a second referendum, a ratificatory referendum, or a confirmatory referendum whatever you call it.  A related article today on this issue in BBC News by Katya Adler describes the person on the other side, the person who heads Germany's ruling CDU Party, and who is likely the next chancellor. This is AKK, Anne-Margaret Kampbrauer. She wrote an article in The Times about a month earlier with other German leaders saying she would love to see Britain change her mind and stay in the EU. She is in favor of a second referendum. Parts of the Conservative Party also support a second referendum- those Conservative MP's who are boxed in between the extreme Brexiteers who care for nothing except their vision of Britain outside the EU as a Franco-German arrangement, and the MP's who left the Conservative Party or now support a second referendum.  Kuenssberg says that necessity is the mother of invention and something could come out of the talks between May and Corbyn- but the obstacles she mentions may not be overcome leading to a new popular vote as the best option. ...

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48% of British voters see immigration as the most important issue says Ipsos. And 31% say their local area is housing more than its fair share of asylum seekers growing to 61% of Reform UK voters. Reform UK is now leading party with 34% of the vote to Labour's 25% and Liberals 11%. The report in the WSJ on Augu 28 shows how the Labour government did not live up to it's talk on immigration. It also shows how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson failed by opening up non EU immigration from Asia on the grounds that it would bring in the brightest and yet dropped the basic colege degree requirement paradoxically. Lobbying from health care home care increased migration for this field under Conservatives and is only now being reversed by Labour. Labour has been too slow and the culture of Britain and Labour has not changed enough to grasp the problem. Their are vested interests in Britain such as universities and home care health care that have influenced the conduct of policy so that migration on non-eu has replaced eu migration after Brexit but not attracted the most qualified immigrants. The 4% of the British population that entered Britain after Brexit as immigrants, millions arrived and now when Labour is trying to bring this down faces a large number of dependent applications.University students are now bringing in their dependents at rates that have skyrocketed. ...

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26,000 online votes of alumni of Oxford plus 5000 faculty and staff can vote and will determine who gets to be chancellor of a 1200 year old British university. Last election was in 2003 with 8000 voting. The last colonial governor of Hong Kong, and Conservative party chairman, Chris Patten was chancellor for 21 years. It is a post that lacks authority yet is influential. The principals of 2 colleges at Oxford are applying- Elish Angiolinia of St Hughs College and Jan Royall of Somerville College. Peter Mandelson, a Labour minister, and William Hague a former Conservative foreign secretary, are both running for the job.

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Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party wins election for president in South Korea 2025- 49% to 41% for Kim Moon-soo for the conservative candidate. South Korea's election was the result of the ouster of conservative president Yoon, who was a former prosecutor who split South Korean politics with a hardline stance and was ousted recently. Lee is a factory woker who seeks to keep South Korea firmly with the US in Asia, yet also seeks to balance this with good realtions with key trading partner China.

Biden invited Yoon to the White House as he sought to bring South Korea and Japan as firm partners in the Asia Pacific only to see Yoon ousted over losing support within his own conservative party for conspiracy theories and declaring martial law, lack of flexibility. The election of Lee offers an opportunity to bring South Korea back to moderation and unity in its internal affairs.

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Labor party in UK gets 35% of the vote with Conservatives at 26% and Liberals at 20%, in Britain's local council elections. Other parties including the Greens gained 19% of the vote. There isn't much the Conservatives have done to help the British people meet the cost of living crisis. The economy is in worse shape and the country is not prepared to take on the climate change crisis. Britain gets closer to a general election.

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The Times takes a good look at Liz Truss, who she is, what are her good points and areas she will need to work on. It says Truss was ignored by Conservatives including Theresa May after  being brought in by Cameron as Environment Secretary in 2014. She comes from a intellectual family with her father a Math professor and her education at Merton College, Oxford University. She also had the opportunity to build on her economics and accounting background at Treasury, and at the Ministry of International Trade where she signed a number of trade deals for Britain.  What has changed her was her decision to learn and develop on her own after being ignored in the Conservative party. She shifted from Remain to becoming an aggressive supporter of Brexit and coming out decisively for Boris Johnson as prime minister.  She is willing to challenge the Treasury and others in the civil service when she feels she needs to. Her challenge says The Times is to develop the skills that are needed to work with others and take the country forward. One advantage she has is that she has confidence in her own experience and education to have strong personalities work in her team. Another quality that helps her is that she is not ideologically a conservative, so that she is willing to try new ideas to get the economy working and move Britain forward. And adding to that she has the depth that Cameron and Johnson lacked with her experience gained in parliament, at Treasury, in the International Trade ministry, and recently as Foreign Secretary. She may well be the underestimated candidate compared to a mostly predictable Sunak. ...

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Gerald Seib of the WSJ describes the huge wave of young supporters who helped Labor party leader Corbyn in Britain's 2017 general election. He cites an analysis by the Financial Times that shows young people backed Labor over the Conservatives by 51 points more than the national average. People over age 65 backed Conservatives by 32 points more than the national average. This points to a staggering age gap of 83 points, said the Financial Times. Young people failed to turn out in large numbers during the Brexit vote, and this was a large factor in the pro Brexit win. One exit poll shows turnout went up by 12% in 2017 compared to the 2015 parliamentary election. Only 26% of voters in a WSJ/NBC poll for ages 18-34 years say they approve of U.S. president Trump's performance, 64% disapprove. Seib says the movement of Corbyn is similar to the Bernie Sanders movement in the U.S. and has implications for a similar surge of support showing up in the U.S.

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Boris Johnson looks ahead to a vision of Britain ten years from now as it did in the depths of the second world war, as Britain faces a second wave of the pandemic with doubling of cases to 14,000 new infections daily in 11 days. His speech was made to the Conservative Party conference.

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A vote on Brexit giving parliament a bigger voice if no deal is reached with the EU was defeated narrowly in parliament with 324 for and 298 against. Tory members led by Mr. Grieve called for parliament to take part in future strategy if no deal is reached by March 2019. British prime minister Theresa May argued that this would weaken Britain's negotiating position with the EU in Brussels. Mr. Grieve and Tory dissenters agreed to support the government. The recent election with Labor winning 40% of the vote leaves the Conservative Party's Mrs. May dependent on a small number of MP's from Northern Ireland for her government to survive. Some members of May's cabinet feel cutting off Britain from the EU market will hurt the economy in their districts, and a junior minister resigned. 

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A cap on the number of medical students by the Conservatives is seen by Labor Shadow Secretary for Health as shortsighted. He says Conservatives have concluded that there is no point in increasing medical students as they will come into the workplace when the Labour party is back in government. The NHS desperately needs more doctors.

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Prime Minister's questions in the British parliament will be very uncomfortable if Nadhim Zahawi is still head of the Tory party say Conservative party MP's in this report in The Guardian. Zahawi has a tax settlement with the British tax authorites which has led to much criticism leading to pressure for him to resign. 

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Scotland joined with England and Wales to form Great Britain in 1707, at a time of increasing opportunities for Scottish people in the expanding British Empire. Britain's shipbuilding industry had a major base in Glasgow. During the Thatcher Conservative government Scotland suffered, and decades of globalization led to gradual deindustrialization for Scotland, the demise of the shipbuilding and other industries. The Labor Party under prime minister Blair pursued a "devolution of powers" policy, creating the first Scottish parliament following a referendum in 1999. Ironically this has changed the fortunes of the Scottish Nationalist Party led by Jack Salmond, a economist first elected to the British parliament in 1987. Salmond became head of the party in 1990 and led it to second place in 1999 elections, followed by a win in 2007 and 2011 elections. Salmond is seen as a vigorous campaigner, who can speak above others and not seen as a good listener. The party gained the confidence of Scottish voters by running a competent administration led by businessmen who were well aware of problems in local communities. Programs such as free prescriptions for medicines were popular with voters. The Labor Party stands to lose its voter base in Scotland (former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown is from Scotland), and the Conservative Party will also suffer a blow with a yes vote to independence. Polls show voters don't fully trust Salmond, but a majority 39% support an yes vote to 38% no vote, with 23% undecided. Britain just emerging from a deep recession would lose Scottish oil revenues of about 6 billion pounds, and the economy would suffer as business waited to see how things would turn out before making investments. Scotland now manages health, education and transport. Even without independence Scotland now stands to gain more powers and control, and control a higher percentage than the 60% of Scotland's budget that the Scottish government manages today. Scotland represents about 148 billion pounds or 9.2% of the UK GDP....

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Boris Johnson, who heads a minority government in Britain following resignation of Theresa May, will do just about anything to push Britain out of the European Union by October 31st. He has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension of the October 31st deadline. The British parliament is dead set on preventing that and has passed legislation requiring a extension of the October 31st deadline to January 2020. Johnson is even willing to go to jail for breaking the law, on the grounds that he is simply supporting the people's referendum choice over an elected parliament. This is itself a strange situation because the elected representatives in parliament decide for the people, and views in a referendum can change over time. Johnson says the reports of Britain's economy taking a blow from simply falling out of the European Union without a negotiated deal are exaggerated. He even once said all it means is that there might be "a shortage of Mars chocolate bars." Before becoming prime minister with a one vote majority in parliament which he promptly lost on the first day parliament met, Boris was a journalist who was elected Mayor of London. His only other position was for a brief period with controversy as Foreign Secretary in Theresa May's government. By taking in as chief adviser the head of the Brexit referendum Leave campaign Mr. Cummings, Mr. Johnson shows he believes he could win a general election with a carefully orchestrated campaign like that of Leave that blames the Labour Party, and the Scottish National party for stopping Brexit and halting the people's mandate.  The question is whether Cummings has gone too far or Boris Johnson has gone too far using Cumming's methods and views. Many Conservative moderates were expelled from the Conservative Party by Johnson and Cummings leaving the Conservative Party in self-destructive mode and the worst shape it has been in its history. It is not clear that after 10 years of austerity and rule by the Conservative party, and the mess from the single minded pursuit of Brexit that has overshadowed Britain's other priorities, that the British public would simply give a broken Conservative Party another mandate without thinking carefully about all the consequences. More so amid the lack of trust that is a feature of the Boris Johnson minority government.  ...

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For the first time the public in Britain believes the Labour party under Keir Starmer can do better than the Conservatives under Johnson to improve healthcare, give respect and dignity to workers and families lost in the last two decades, improve incomes, and tackle the pandemic. Labour now is up by 4 points and Conservatives down by 3 points in a YouGov poll done for The Times. Following the lead of Scholz in Germany with the SPD in alliance with the Greens, and Biden in the US, Britain is faced with a real choice for the future.

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The Times looks at local elections in Britain this week, and a swing to the Labor party of 700 seats given Labor's 15 point lead over the Conservatives. This is a dry run for the general elections that Keir Starmer is preparing for, as Britain ripped by crises like the rest of Europe and the US, faces another once in a generation period to decide what kind of a society to create for the future. The blue wall refers to former Labor party supporting constituencies that voted for Boris Johnson in the mistaken assumption that the  Conservatives could deliver for British workers and families. A similar situation exists in the US as president Biden seeks to gain traditional Democratic states such as Pennsylvania and the midwestern states such as Wisconsin, southern states such as Georgia, and western states such as Arizona.

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Young people form different parts of UK give their views in The Guardian. Contrarian youth form 9% of the Reform UK base in recent analysis shown here. It is not the key to Reform winning as most of the voters are disillusioned with Conservatives and Labour parties, some may not vote others may split vote between many parties. 

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Britain's parliament voted 328 to 301 to take control of the agenda on Brexit. This includes 21 rebel Conservative Party MP's including Mr. Hammond and Ken Clarke. This means parliament can now set the January 2020 new date to replace October 31, 2019, as the date for Brexit. A new general election would also be called in the event that Labour party cannot form a new unity government under Mr. Corbyn. A no confidence motion on the minority government of Mr. Johnson would be the next step after putting off Brexit to January 2020.

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"This year something has happened in Labour. The hope of a Labour victory has turned into a belief." Keir Starmer UK's Labour party leader says being dull does not bother him. One of the big differences with the UK Conservatives is now on display says Starmer on windfall profits of fossil fuel companies to be taxed in the call by Labour. "One of those big differences is between a Labour party that wants the fossil fuel giants to contribute more of their windfall profits to pay for the energy price freeze, and a Conservative government that would not countenance this." See Starmer's big plans for renewable energy announced today, on this page.

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 Angela Rayner of Labour in the UK government made labour rights a core part of what she wants to see achieved. This was an idea conceived in 2021 when Labour was in the Opposition, the idea of setting down key labor rights that don't get watered down. This includes restrictions on zero-hours contracts, giving employees full rights from “day one” of their employment, and ending the way companies fired workers then rehired them on lower pay and benefits. Over the last 3 decades since Thatcher and Reagan worker rights have been watered down by employers and successive administrations of Conservatives as well as Labour in UK and Republicans as well as Democrats in US watched it happen doing nothing. As a result a culture of impunity with worker rights developed which have led to the shift of workers out of the Labour party in Britain and Democratic party in the US. This coincided with the neglect of rural areas and farmers by Labour and Democrats creating the unimaginable situation for a Wilson or a JFK in the 1960's where labor was no longer a core part of who Labour in UK or Democrats in US were about. ...

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British Labour party leader says any Brexit deal should be put to a referendum. Earlier many Labour party members supported a second referendum with Mr. Corbyn yet to make a clear stand. During the local elections and the elections to European parliament the Labour party had losses to parties that favored canceling Brexit, including the Liberal Democrats. Corbyn said: "Let the people decide the country's future, either in a general election or through a public vote on any Brexit deal agreed by Parliament." He made these remarks ahead of a meeting with the prime minister of Ireland.  A poll conducted by Panelbase shows  a second referendum on Brexit would get 52% for Remain in the EU and 45% for Leave the EU compared to 52% for Leave and 48% voting Remain in the 2016 referendum. Parliament has to vote for a second referendum for it to take place. The Liberal Democrats made large gains in the recent European elections on the mandate to hold a second referendum, including in Mr. Corbyn's North London area.  If Mr. Boris Johnson succeeds Theresa May as prime minister the Conservative Party faces even more hurdles. European Union is even less likely to negotiate a deal with Mr. Johnson. A withdrawal from the EU without a negotiated agreement favored by Mr. Johnson is unlikely to get support in parliament as it has repeatedly blocked such a move. The alternative is fresh elections not favored by Conservative Party as it is losing credibility, or a second referendum. Alternative also is fresh elections followed by a second referendum by the winning party.   ...

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Boris Johnson leads by a wide margin for election of a leader of the Conservative Party to succeed Theresa May as prime minister. Ms. May announced that she will set a date to resign from the leadership of the party after another Brexit vote in parliament. Mr. Johnson who has 39% support with Mr. Raab at 13%. Johnson favors a no-deal Brexit and no customs union arrangement with the European Union. His pro-Brexit wing lacks the support of other factions in his party and in parliament.

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The election of her close ally Kramp-Karrenbauer to head of the CDU party, protects Merkel's position as Chancellor till her retirement in 2020. Karrrenbauer is to the right of Merkel on social issues and to the left on economic matters. She is likely to take a different view on the migration policy that has let the CDU ratings drop and produced poor election results. The move stabilizes the CDU led government. Karrenbauer will try to rebuild relations with the party's conservative wing through her conservative views on social issues.

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UK Labor party leader is ahead by 20 percentage points over the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak. He meets France's Macron to discuss future British relations with EU and France. He had a similar meeting with Mr. Scholz before the election in which Social Democrats and the Greens became the leading parties in the government.