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With the departure and replacement of Dan Cummings, the prime minister gets someone with extensive financial and other experience to replace his free wheeling adviser who lacked experience. Dan Rosenfield who worked at Treasury till 2016 under both Labor and Conservative party chancellors is the new choice for prime minister Boris Johnson's chief of staff at 10 Downing Street. Experts say less games, more interest in what matters in managing the costs of covid budgets. Here Mr. Rosenfield is described as the person at Treasury who put together the Olympics budget that came out at a little over 9 billion pounds after little preparation was done and Britain won the bid for the Olympics by bidding only 2.3 billion pounds. As Rosenfield puts it, there wasn't even a cats in hell chance of doing the Olympics at that cost, and the only option was to control costs as aggressively as we could. Britain now faces the task of keeping Covid budget costs manageable and getting a recovery in place in 2021-2022. ...

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This report in the DW on Brexit shows Britain deeply divided, with older voters supporting Leave and younger voters coming out for Remain. Most of northern England and Wales coming out for Leave, and London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds  with Scotland and Northern Ireland coming out for Remain. The failure of Labor Party to rally its supporters under Corbyn also rankles with some in the Remain campaign. Corbyn avoided joint appearances with the Remain campaign and said he was 7.5 out of ten in favor of remaining in the EU.

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Veteran reporter Mark Landler at NYT gives this exceptional report on Bolsover, a town in the Midlands in UK. Natalie Fleet, running for Labour for parliament, is a working class parent and a product of the UK Midlands region, a region around Coventry, Birmingham and Nottingham that was dotted with coal producing mines and industrial towns in the era before World War II. For most of the century till 2019 Labour held the parlamentary seats in this region and in the north of England around Sheffield. It was the loss of these seats that brought first Cameron and then Boris Johnson Tories to power, and where the immigration issue resonated for Nigel Farage's UK Reform movement that led to Britain having a referendum and leaving the European Union.  Today locals think it was all a big mistake, most Britons want to rejoin the EU, and they back Starmer's Labour party by huge margins after Jeremy Corbyn left the leadership position at Labour. Money that was allocated for reviving the town was never spent and the years passed with little change. Labour's Natalie Fleet attends D-Day ceremonies in the region and the one thing that is arousing Britons today is that PM Rishi Sunak chose to leav D-Day ceremonies the same day, ignoring the sacrifices of so many Britons and the need to keep alive the memory of a Europe united against the horrors of the war period- the need to work together make the world a better place. ...

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Ms. Esken the new leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) party in Germany says SPD will withdraw from the coalition government of chancellor Merkel as its demands for more spending on education and transport were not met. Ms. Esken says the coalition "is crap for democracy." Both the partners in this coalition the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, parties that ruled in the post war years, have seen their support drop to the low twenties and thirties percent in recent elections with votes shifting to the Greens and the far right the AfD, and other parties. The disenchantment among voters with Merkel's immigration policies grows and the SPD is seen as failing to stand up for workers rights against decade long austerity policies of Merkel. Labour party in Britain faced a similar situation as it lost its focus on workers and ordinary people and is only now shifting its stand under Corbyn to workers rights and spending for education, infrastructure and health. ...

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After the loss of a crucial UK byelection by Labour under Keir Starmer (May 2021 Hartlepool) Shabana Mahmood says she brought out her inner-Kashmiri and steadied the party with wins in other byelections over the Tories. Shabana is the daughter of a teenager from Kashmir who came to Britain in the sixties, studied to be an engineer and settled in Birmingham. She is the Shadow Secretary of Justice and as a Oxford trained barrister she wants to put Britain's justice system on a good footing by remaking prisons and making the system work.  Shabana is a special kind of person simply because she has kept her values and religious beliefs and still taken the best of British thought and culture and the scieintific mind even as Britain faces real challenges. One is struck by the sheer broadness of her mind-  “I don’t like anything that smells of fundamentalism in any way, religious or political or ideological, it doesn’t really matter what it is, in the end. “It’s quite authoritarian in nature, and in my own life experience of people that are most intransigent and the most prescriptive about what everyone else can say and think and do tend not to be the best of people themselves.” ...

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A humorous story on how Lady Hale delivered the unanimous decision of the UK Supreme Court against the prorogation of parliament by prime minister Boris Johnson, with a pun on the word pro-rogue-ation. And some ideas on how this was received by all sides. The decision was not popular in Britain and was seen by the royals and people around Queen Elizabeth as bad advice given to the Queen by the prime minister. Much of the behaviour of Boris Johnson and adviser Dominic Cummings is based on polls showing them winning over Labour seats in northern England that voted for Brexit in a general election to give the Conservatives a majority. Labour leader McDonnell has said that they have miscalculated. Labour party continues to emphasize that the real issue before the country is failing infrastructure, inequalities, lack of opportunity, jobs and the economy, not leaving the European Union. Labour's strategy is to wait out the general election for a couple of months so that voters can judge from the actions the competence of the Boris Johnson government to run the country for 5 years. ...

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Some Republicans are saying that it is time to give up the conceit that increasing the incomes of the upper classes will bring benefits to all Americans, and whether making individual tax cuts the priority is a policy that no longer works and can even bring disaster as it did for British prime minister Liz Truss recently. In this camp are Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and think tank American Compass. Others including Marc Rubio no longer favor globalization and see it important for the US to bring back American manufacturing at every opportunity with incentives and government action as the Biden administration is currently doing. This is creating new faultlines in the Republican party between the people who support the party of Reagan and its priorities and others who are questioning whether Reagan is relevant anymore. The fight that delayed the election of Speaker McCarthy also brought out some of these fissures as a subsection of the party felt strongly that it was important to go after entitlement programs and other social spending by the Biden administration. This is creating a new situation in American politics and in world trade and economics as the Biden Administration is not meekly accepting the detours of so called Third Way Democratic and Labour politicians of the US and Britain such as Tony Blair, Clinton and Obama who let the traditional backing of the Democratic Party in the working class wither with ties to Big Tech and acceptance of Reagan type free trade policies for manufacturing that ignored American working class communities. Biden's recent success in fighting for railway trade unions in restoring fairness in vacation and sick leave is only one of the battles that Biden has shown he can fight for American workers. Republicans now face the prospect of appearing divided and ambiguous in their support of working class, and overdependent on cultural issues for working class support. A recent British study on Labour's prospects showed that a slight shift on cultural issues can create a strong shift and have a large impact in Labour forming a new government with a secure majority in parliament.   ...

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Prime minister Theresa May of Britain announces her plan to spend an additional 20 billion pounds a year on the National Health Service. Over five years the commitment is for an additional 70 billion pounds. By 2023 this will bring the UK to the point where it is spending the same proportion on health care as France. This also fulfills a promise made by the pro Brexit campaign. May says some of this would come from higher taxes, and 9 billion pounds that the UK contributes to the European Union each year would go to pay for the additional funds to the NHS. The 2017 British election with Labor winning 40% of the vote has affirmed the shift in public sentiment to greater commitment of funds for health and education. Poorer communities in Britain that were left behind tended to vote for Brexit, with a large gap widening between London and the rest of the country. Higher commitment to NHS is part of the shift in perception that the needs of health, education and underserved communities are the new priorities. ...

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Bernie Sanders launches his 2020 presidential campaign at Brooklyn College by sharing his personal story of parents who were immigrants from Germany during the Nazi period. His father made a living selling paint to hardware stores and the family struggled in the early years.  He tells students he lived only a short distance away growing up "in a three and half room rent controlled apartment, and going to quality public schools." Mr. Sanders is the top choice in the early primaries including New Hampshire, competing with former vice president Mr. Biden. His campaign raised $10 million in just two weeks at the beginning of the campaign. He is campaigning for Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage, tution free public college. With Mr. Corbyn leading the Labor party in Britain in a new direction, Mr. Sanders is leading the Democratic Party in a new direction, both supporting the pro-working class traditional policies of their parties for most of the twentieth century. ...

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The concerns over far right parties expelling immigrants in states such as Thuringia has caused a wave of protests across Germany including Berlin and other cities in January 2024. It is also impacting the East where anti immigrant sentiment is based. Germany has a shortage of workers in parts of Germany that formed the Federal Republic before reunification- immigrants fill these gaps. The East has not been the success story it was supposed to be because reunification of the Federal Republic and the GDR (Communist East Germany around Leipzig and East Berlin) led to a flight of young people to the western parts for jobs and opportunities. Leading to a mostly older and retired population in the east -leaving it struggling and feeling unwanted. This is the background of the anti immigrant sentiment in the east where there are far fewer immigrants than in the western and central regions. Resentment about being ignored as settled around the immigrant issue in the east even as Germany has benefitted through some of the middle class educated immigrants from Turkey and from Ukraine, and Syria. Similar resentment has taken place in parts of England in the north which led to fear of immigrants being used by Tories party leading to Brexit. In a similar way in France in the north, and in the US with neglect of rural areas and factory communities in the east and midwest. The communities that were left out that have made choices with far right as in Britain have ended up with leaders from immigrant families that have accomplished little or much in the reverse direction for the English people in the north. The leaders of Germany, Britain, the US, the Nordic countries such as Denmark, and gradually in France have learned that it is right to go back to their roots, that they had forgotten where they came from and are now fighting for the dignity of workers (Schulz), standing in picket lines for the autoworkers (Biden), and following the Biden example in the UK (Starmer). With it comes the realization that this started with the Thatcher and Reagan era that created the conditions and culture that were repeatedly embraced by Democrats in the US, Labor in Britain and Social Democrats in Germany alike leading to financial crises and levels of inequality and lack of educational opportunity not seen since the Great Depression. With it by 2024 comes the unwinding of the economics and culture of the Reagan era. Even in China and India the shift is away from that culture as the economies of these countries with half of humanity are shifted to serve a broad base and to include rural, agricultural and other parts of the population. It shows that the educated parts of the population in these countries have the ability to create the conditions that in Lincoln's words are for the people, by the people, of the people, for a brighter future, if only they will try hard enough for their children's and grand children's sake.  ...

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About a third of Conservative party members of the 10,000 who will be voting soon for a new leader still like Mr. Boris Johnson. Some say he has his faults, but who doesn't. Mr. Johnson has a flamboyant carefree bouncy style that has endeared him to supporters, and had he taken the public more seriously to be consistent and steady he may well have remained a prime minister. He is the only leader of the Tories who could convince traditional Labor voters to vote Tory. Ms. Truss, who has unstinting support of Mr. Johnson will continue to see Mr. Johnson as a respected leader if she is elected. Truss sees Johnson getting a well earned break, as she put it in a debate, like his hero Churchill who lost elections in 1945 only to come back in 1951 with more experience, restraint and wisdom. In a recent debate she stood by Mr. Johnson saying he did not need to resign. Today's Tories are leaderless and not recognizable as a single entity without the prime minister. With a little restraint, awareness of his inexperience, openness and respect for the British public, Mr. Johnson may well have remained prime minister. He now appears to be seeking a second opportunity, says this report in WSJ. It is hard to imagine Brexit without Boris Johnson. He defied the established reasoning through common sense observation. He once said that the only thing Britain would lose from Brexit is that there would be a shortage of Mars bars. Ms. Truss is somewhere between Labor and the Conservative in her life long convictions, yet has taken the Brexit cause to heart. Sir Keir Starmer Labor leader says he too will be trying to make Brexit work. ...

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WSJ analysis of NatCen data from whatukthinks.org show much has changed since the last general election in Britain. Boris Johnson's popularity is at a negative 20% and Theresa May's at negative 35% in July 2019. By the time of the general election May's popularity was at negative 1%.  Another major change is that the popularity of Leave has dropped.  By July 2019 the situation is reversed Remain now has 52% support and Leave is at 48% support. During the referendum it was just the reverse.  Also significant is that some of the claims of Leave's Mr. Cummings that were used in the campaign such as $436 million going to the EU in Brussels that would be diverted to National Health Service are now not credible. The migration issue has also become less important as migration into the EU is now down to a trickle and Germany has reversed its policies to trying to keep migrants at home in Africa through aid and other means. The migration issue was played up in the campaign. Germany was seen as pursuing the austerity policies that hurt the working class as these policies made headlines daily for Greece and other countries during the period of Britain's referendum. In 2019 Germany is taking a less active role in the European Union and the leader of the CDU Kamprauer has openly called for Britain to remain in the EU alongside other Germans from all walks of life. In short the mood is now different in Europe as there is disillusionment with leaders from the far right or the far left and the centrists on the right (Merkel)and the left (Blair) who had used politics to stay in power instead of tackling the tough problems of wages, middle class decline, infrastructure and family friendly policies. The Irish backstop is now in the picture when Brexit comes up as Mr. Johnson wants to drop it. The Irish backstop is the term for the agreement reached with the EU so that Ireland's return to peace with open borders ending Catholic vs Protestant conflict would not be disturbed by Britain's leaving the EU. This could also swing voters who are undecided to maintain what has been achieved so far. The Labour party leaders who were fed up with the austerity policies of the European Union driven by Ms. Merkel and the CDU now have a situation where the issue of Brexit can be seen not in terms of the past- austerity, dependence on Brussels for Britain's economic future and working class decline. Other issues such as unity of the UK, the end to austerity policies in the EU and in the U,S. with the Trump economic policy of dropping deficit targets in budgetary outlays, also signal a different climate for the Labour party in which to campaign for remaining within the EU and continue Britain's policy of working to improve conditions for the working class and middle class after the Blair/Clinton/Merkel years.    ...

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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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Sir Keir Starmer is elected leader of the Labour Party in Britain with 56% of the vote. Starmer 57 years old, is a human rights lawyer who was director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013, and elected Labour leader just 5 years after being elected to parliament. Angela Rayner, shadow education secretary won the deputy leadership race with 52% of the vote. 

The new shadow chancellor is the MP for Oxford East since 2017 Ms. Anneliese Dodds. She is a former academic and member of the European parliament. Jo Stevens the MP from Cardiff East is the new shadow foreign secretary. He resigned from the Corbyn team in 2017 to oppose Brexit.

Corbyn sceptics swept the elections to the National Executive Committee. Starmer supports EU freedom of movement to continue, public ownership of services such as post, rail and energy, and raising income tax on the top 5% of earners.

 

 

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A Conservative MP crosses over to the Opposition in parliament causing Mr. Johnson's government to lose its one vote majority in Britain's parliament. As a minority government its future is uncertain. Johnson called for a snap election which will require a two thirds majority in parliament and is unlikely if called by the minority  government. With 31 Conservative rebel MP's led by Mr. Hammond former finance minister, and Labour MP's, Scottish National Party MP's, the Opposition is planning legislation to delay Brexit till January 2020. This is likely to happen now that it has a majority. The next step- the Opposition unites behind Mr. Corbyn to form a government or in the event of that not happening a general election is called.  Even though there is support for Brexit in the country it is not known whether the mood of the country has changed in the years since the referendum with the debacle in the Conservative Party. The Conservatives are badly divided, and the entry of  Mr. Cummings running Mr. Boris Johnson's government  election campaign has distanced the party from Mr. Farage's UK Independence Party, Conservative moderates. All these factors could lead to a change in government. The general election is also likely to be fought on terms other than just Brexit- with the future of the country, and a change of direction, becoming the challenge facing Britain, as the damage done by divisive politics and the precarious economy, living standards, begins to be better understood. ...

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The Labour party's support for not withdrawing from the European Medicines Agency is the subject of an argument after Prime Minister's Questions in the British parliament. Labour leader Keir Starmer confronts prime minister Boris Johnson in parliament after Johnson reminds Labour that it had on repeated occasions called for the UK not to withdraw from the European Medicines Agency.  The UK vaccination drive is far ahead of the vaccination drive in European Union countries including France and Germany, because of British initiative in boldly betting money on vaccine supplies with pharmaceutical companies, and earlier approval by the UK health regulatory authority. Here is the comment in the House of Commons by Boris Johnson- "If we had listened to (Starmer), we would still be at the starting blocks because he wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency and said so four times from that dispatch box." Starmer disputes the statement. The Times cites Hansard, the official record of the House of Commons. It records that Starmer questioned why Britain would want to withdraw from the Medicines Agency in Jan. 2017. In 2018 Labour party supported an Amendment to the Trade Bill that called for the UK to seek participation in the European Medicines Agency. Germany, Spain and France are hit hard by the second wave of the coronavirus and the lack of adequate vaccine supplies is causing grief in European Union. The EU president Von der Leyen, another European Union style bureaucrat, seen as having bungled the handling of vaccine supply. ...

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Dan Balz says former prime minister Blair's policies in Britain (1997-2007) closely followed the policies of moving to centrist positions of U.S. president Clinton, with Blair's election in 1997 following Clinton's wins in 1992 and 1996. Clinton followed the Reagan years and Blair the Thatcher years in government, in modifying the early postwar ideas about the economy. The election of Corbyn by 59.5% of the vote of Labor party members, exceeds the 57% achieved by Blair in 1994. The opposing candidates did very poorly. Yvette Cooper, who most resembled Blair's positions was seen as waffling on issues by not taking clear positions. She lost badly with 4.5% of the vote, showing that something significantly has changed with the the deep recession following the 2008 financial crisis, and the recovery through years of austerity policies under Cameron's Conservative government. Balz's view is that this is likely to bring up the same debate in the Democratic party- Corbyn proposes a national investment bank for large investments in education, health services and infrastructure, and a reversal of Labor policies introducing fees for college education to increase opportunity. Sanders has not proposed a national investment bank, but says he would invest in education ( including reversing the spiralling education costs), health services, infrastructure, and other areas. Hillary Clinton has made the issue of upward mobility for the middle and working class a central issue in her campaign, but lacks the authenticity claimed by Sanders, who has tapped into anti-establishment feeling following the lack of recovery in wages under 7 years of the Democratic party government in the U.S. In this context Jeb Bush has also stated at the 2013 CPAC conference that social and economic mobility is the central issue of our times, only he would approach it by giving business incentives to increase business investment to create jobs and increase wages; and by adopting a tax code that would be also fair to the middle and working class....

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Jennifer Hassan reminds readers of the significance of the date June 8, election day in Britain. On this day 104 years earlier Emily Wilding Davison lost her life running in front of the king's horse in the Epsom Derby, a desperate act to gain support for women's right to vote. In response women voted in large numbers leading to a turnout above 69%. 200 women were elected to parliament. Preet Kaur Gill, a Sikh woman became the first Sikh woman in parliament, representing the Labor Party in parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston.

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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 leads a new British government that is composed mostly of ministers who want to see Brexit happen, and giving the positions of Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary to persons who do not care what happens as long as Britain leaves the European Union. Johnson's date is October 31st for leaving the EU. Sajid Javid, a former Deutsche Bank AG executive is the new chancellor of the exchequer. Priti Patel is new Home Secretary. Dominic Raab a former lawyer who has called for parliament to be suspended if need be so that Brexit can be pushed through is the new Foreign Secretary. Dominic Cummings who headed the Leave campaign for the Brexit referendum in 2016 is the new adviser at 10 Downing Street. Johnson's strategy is to pack the cabinet with people loyal to his vision of leaving the EU October 31st regardless of what the EU does.  The EU has not changed its position and is even less likely to consider any new Irish border proposals. Three top ministers are opposed to Mr. Johnson's views and resigned. Treasury chief Philip Hammond, Deputy primeminister David Lidington, Justice Secretary David Gauke, all resigned in opposition to Mr. Johnson simply pulling Britain out of the EU. Johnson once said all he feared from Britain abruptly leaving the EU was a shortage of Mars bars. During the election in the Conservative party Mr. Johnson was mostly quiet and avoided any gaffes to sound statesman like, yet as the process unfolds Mr. Johnson is likely to face the same problems faced by his predecessor Mrs. May. Added to this is the new opposition of moderates like Mr. Hammond and Gauke in the Conservative party that could topple the government and lead to a general election with just three vote swing in the other direction doing this. Mr. Johnson has prepared for this by having Mr. Cummings as a top adviser in the event he faces a general election. Meantime the Labour party initially not favoring a second referendum with Mr. Corbyn's ambiguous views on Brexit, as shifted gradually to the leadership and the rank and file all favoring a second referendum and for Remain. As Greg Ip has pointed out in the WSJ this week the conditions have changed with protectionism, nationalism and hostility to globalization, and president Trump not planning concessions of any sort even for the UK in trade negotiations. This means to low productivity of less than 1% to support stifled wages, one would have to add a 3.5% hit to GDP from a no deal Brexit such as Mr. Johnson approves according to the IMF. With the migration issue not what it was three years ago and reduced to a trickle this new situation must be on the minds of Mr. Corbyn, Labour and Conservative moderates. ...

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In commenting on Rishi Sunak, a former hedge fund manager's sudden rise from anonymity three years ago when Boris Johnson became prime minister to leadership of the Tory party and prime minister, The Hindu cautions that it is of limited symbolic value, this kind of connection between India and the UK. The Tories are a house divided against itself, with many factions. Truss was brought down by Gove and others on the backbench who were not included in the government. Other Conservatives on the backbenches today, and Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, represent factions that are not represented in this government as was evident in questioning by Opposition leader Starmer in QA in the House of Commons. Other problems remain also evident in Starmer's questioning for Labour in parliament, including questioning about non domicile status in the family for tax purposes. Privileged Tories with connections to free markets such as Jacob Rees Mogg or Sunak without an awareness of the pain of ordinary working families, are not what a country with a cost of living crisis sees as leaders who can point to the way forward for Britain. As The Hindu points out he faces the same difficulty that Johnson with his style and personality was able to sidestep, that Truss naively tackled with quick unraveling of tax cuts for the upper incomes, and which Sunak with his experience with financial hedge funds may appear to have grasped but find escaping his grasp. This is the difficulty of matching traditional Tory policy of tax cuts and austerity, at a time when all major countries of Europe and the US are providing significant cost of living assistance to working families. Even small bits of austerity policy, or lack of conviction to help working families may now be seen by the Opposition, Labour, and even within some part of the Tory party and the vast majority of working families as oppressive.  Starmer is keen to remind working people of where Sunak stands as he did with the question in parliament Q&A about the comments made by Sunak at a small gathering that he had transferred money from poor districts to more affluent Tory districts. Would Sunak correct these erroneous funding formulas, Starmer asked. The Hindu also mentions Suella Braverman's appointment as Home Secretary only weeks after her resignation. It was poor judgement shown by Johnson in an appointment that cost him Tory support a few weeks before his resignation. Starmer brought this up from the beginning of parliament Q&A- asking whether a deal was made for her appointment to get far right wing Tory support from Braverman's faction in the party. For India and the Indian people there are so many genuine connections with Britain and the British people, some set when Mohandas Gandhi won the hearts of English working families during his visit for negotiations with the British that are are a better basis  and that will be remembered forever in the hearts and minds of the British people. ...

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Labour party in Britain is removing a never used anti-labour minimum services law that tended to worsen industrial relations and make it difficult to negotiate and resolve disputes over wages and conditions. The minimum services restricted the ability of 5.5 million workers to negotiate wage increases- it affected ambulance services, fire and rescue, teachers and rail services, border security to take industrial action, by requiring that a minimum level of service had to be provided. It was adversarial in nature and Angela Rayner call its effect as "poisoning industrial relations." We’re consigning it to history,” she said. “Scrapping this toxic legislation is our first step in ending the scorched-earth approach that has blocked negotiation and compromise to resolve disputes and prevent disruption." “This government’s new deal will create a new partnership between business, trade unions and working people and is fundamental to our growth mission.” A White Hall (British Civil Service) source says it was never used, Business did not want it, the legislation never worked, and Britain still lost more days to strike action than France or Spain. He says "it is the first major step in terms of resetting our relationship with the trade unions of this government." Jonathan Reynolds the Secretary for Business and Trade says- "The strikes act has not worked; it was a gimmick which inflamed tensions and only made serious negotiations harder, ultimately harming our public services and economy. It is telling that no single business ever used this pointless legislation. Putting an end to costly strikes that impact people’s day-to-day lives is key to getting our economy moving again and ending the chaos for our public finances.” ...

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The Indian federal elections started on April 19 and will take place in phases for 960 million voters the largest of any country in the world in mountains in Ladakh to desert around Jaisalmer to the seas around Vizag and Kotchikode. It will take about 6 weeks to complete by June 1 and final results to be announced June 4. The voting is done using portable electronic boxes. It is still one of the great wonders of the world that its crazy no one talks about it and is a demonstration that India has taken the best of its own democratic traditions dating back to the time of the Buddha 563-483 BC. "It may come as a surprise to many to know that in the assemblies of Buddhists in India two thousand and more years ago are to be found the rudiments of our own parliamentary practice of today." This is Rab Butler, who was born in Attock, India and the leading parliamentarian of Britain who set up the post war education system of the United Kingdom, the longest serving minister in Britain from 1941, Home Secretary under Churchill to Foreign Secretary during Suez Crisiz in 1956, under Macmillan as Home Secretary in 1964, the best parliamentarian Britain had to offer in the 20th century. Butler served under Viceroy of India in 1910, and worked hard as India Secretary to pass the India Act of 1935 that gave India its first parliamentary style assemblies and elections. His idea even in the 1920's was for India to gain Dominion dominion status similar to Canada and Australia with a democracy, and was opposed by Churchill. Churchill knew his own weakness and supported Rab Butler as the younger Conservative who would revive the Conservative Party- his 1977 book The Conservatives. Cooperation with Hugh Hugh Gaitskill of Labour Party right into the 1970's made Britain a stronger country, which is how the Education Act 1944 was passed to make free education to all children to age 16.  Much of it broken since 1980 in 50 years of failed Conservative policy leading to the chaos of the Conservatives today, and an effort to spread that chaos to the US. ...

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Gerlad Seib in the WSJ points out that other issues may be distractions, the no. 1 issue for Democrats in the U.S. is to get back the blue collar workers it has lost. One thing he says Democrats need to stop is to talk down to blue collar workers on cultural issues this can happen even without knowing it, as blue collar workers may sense it differently. He points out that the migration issue has divided the centrist parties as we point out in the insights provided by Jose de Cordoba in the article on Guatemalan migration in today's WSJ. This has happened in the U.S., Britain and in European Union countries such as Germany, France, Italy, and in Eastern Europe.  In the U.S. it is this drift to tech support, to pushing trade agreements such as TPP that hurt manufacturing,  and moving away from bread and butter issues of working families that have led to a drift away for Democrats from their usual base with working class people. The Labour Party in Britain has sensed this, and the CDU, the SDP in Germany are beginning to recognize that migration and austerity regimes for the economy need not be a distraction from basic issues with the end of the Merkel years, yet the Democratic Party is yet to find its footing in the U.S. ...