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Britain's Labor Party leader makes a speech favoring strong Britain- EU relations in an effort to attract support from pro-EU Conservatives in parliament and bring about early elections. Corbyn says he favors Britain's membership in the EU customs union putting pressure on prime minister Theresa May who favors Britain leaving the EU customs union so it can strike free trade deals on its own. A thin majority in parliament for Theresa May means this issue could lead to a parliamentary defeat and early elections.  The other facet of this is that the delicate peace process in Northern Ireland could be upset by having a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland which is part of the European Union. Irish peace process and the views of the Republic of Ireland and of Scotland would be respected with the Corbyn approach. Other benefits are keeping good trade relations with the EU intact because 44% of Britain's exports go to the EU and 50% of Britain's imports are from the EU. ...

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The $2.3 billion pounds (2.6 billion euros) the UK paid to the EU for not collecting legitimate customs duties for imports from China, could finance a UK travel pass like the popular 9 euro travel pass in Germany. That 9 euro pass was a sixth of the cost to travel in Berlin, one way the German government helped people face the cost of living crisis. It cost the German government 2.5 billion euros. One more missed opportunity in Britain by the Tory government to help people with the cost of living crisis. The UK gets hit first with a loss of the customs duties revenue that would have been collected as well as any penalties for fraud from importers. Add to this the $2.3 billion pounds in settlement with the European Union for not collecting legitimate customs duties from imported textiles and shoes into Britain from China. Blunders and missed opportunities to help people  with cost of living crisis is a mark of the Conservative government in Britain. The Guardian reports that the case goes back to 2017 when the EU anti-fraud office said British authorites had allowed criminals to evade customs duties by making false claims about imports of clothes and shoes from China. It says that the EU found over half of all textiles and footwear imported from China were below the lowest acceptable prices.  ...

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This report in the Economist after the Chequers meeting and the resignation of Boris Johnson and David Davis says this has improved May's position, yet there are dangers with the hardline Brexiters likely to continue their efforts to take Britain out of the EU. It says the Labor Party is hardly interested in what happens with the infighting in the Conservative Party, and the Labor Party would like to see the collapse of the May government with fresh elections later in 2018.

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Sabrina Tavernise writes about vaccine skeptics in the US. She sees it as a problem about gut beliefs. It is prevalent among people of different political views, not just conservatives. The misinformation on vaccines has made people who normally would be open to getting vaccinated a bit leery. Because of the flood of information spread in today's hyper sensitive news environment, including misinformation. Tavernise describes how different people in the US tackle the decision to get vaccinated or not and how this leads some to simply postpone getting vaccinated. Britain tackled this problem of spreading misinformation on vaccine effectiveness or risks early. It also helped that in Britain there is a very high regard for the National Health Service, the NHS. In Germany and also in France there was increasing skepticism in the beginning, yet this is reversible as there is growing recognition of the benefit of taking the vaccine in Germany and France. Much can and needs to be done to create public confidence and limit the spread of misinformation that leads to postponement of vaccination at a time when variants are becoming more contagious. ...

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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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King Charles of Britain is a strong supporter of action against climate change from a young age. Here NYT comments on the odd situation of the Queen's Speech in 2023 in which the King announces the legislative priorities of the government in a speech to parliament. In this case he announced the expansion of oil drilling in the North Sea under the Tory government of Rishi Sunak. Mr Starmer leader of the Labor Party says the Tories under Sunak are doing this because -"they see our country's problems as something to be exploited, not solved." Trailing Labour badly the Conservatives and Sunak are trying to win support by weakening environmental measures by delaying a ban on gasoline cars and lowering targets for replacing gas boilers.

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Boris Johnson was never for austerity and says this in his new book, yet he failed to make the major investments in the British economy in the way Biden has done in the US, and in some ways has left Labor's Starmer with difficult decisions with the strained budget finances of Britain. Of the investments he protected from John Osborne and his austerity plans as chancellor under Cameron Boris Johnson says- “Those big investments – Crossrail, the Olympic site, the Westfield Centre at Shepherd’s Bush – were fortuitously timed for London: vast counter-cyclical programmes that kept the spades going into the ground and people in work.” This was as Mayor of London in 2016. Of Osborne and Cameron so little is left, and so little came out of the period of austerity other than the failed investments Britain failed to make, simply a lost decade for Britain. And the diversion of Brexit under Johnson not taking Britain to a good place for the standard of living of the British people. Of the intraparty conflicts in the Tories he says Sunak's resignation as chancellor should never have happened calling it "worse than a crime," and a mistake for Sunak, the party, and the country. Johnson says that many days as PM he would come back to No.10 flat, exhausted and working into the evening when he should have been talking to colleagues, MP's to keep them all together. After Sunak's resignation from Boris Johnson's cabinet the Tory Conservatives split further apart, this time in the Boris Johnson faction of the party. Sunak's elevation to prime minister was short lived ending up with the Tories going downhill from there.  On the singular goal that led to the splits- that of Brexit- Johnson has little more to say than that in his travels he had found people wanted more Britain. ...

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See these really remarkable black and white pictures of what happens in a period of decay for industrialized economies as old industries die out- as happened in the UK,  in the US with communities left without hope. Only now with Biden and Starmer a new sense of purpose for the US and UK to correct what went woefully wrong- no plans for transition to new industries and outshoring of the nation's industrial base. This exhibition of 20/20 of photos taken by Kilip and Smith in black and white is at the Parr Gallery in Bristol, UK- you can see it here by clicking on original article right now. It is the failure to plan for the transition that has led the Conservatives from Thatcher onwards to the situation today, and a similar situation in the US from Reagan onwards. The haphazard transition has let China take the lead in new industries with government support. Only now is America under Biden making a real transition and backing up new industries for factory jobs with government support and planning for the next 10 years. Britain with the Conservatives in charge is without a clue and financially strapped- the mood in Birtiain is now for Labour under Starmer to right things the way Biden is doing in the US.  ...

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Britain's prime minister Johnson has gained approval for 16 billion military buildup for naval and other buildup for the next 4 years. It was apparent for some time during the administrations from Blair through the financial crisis driven by banks under Cameron, that Britain had lost its resolve to have a strong military capability. This was evident in its handling of Hong Kong, from the transfer to its weak response to the situation in Hong Kong as participatory democracy failed in Hong Kong. During the period after the second world war Britain failed to bring participatory democracy in Hong Kong under its rule. Labour and Conservative administrations made no effort even as participatory democracy was brought to large parts of Asia and Africa through independence, following democratic elected legislatures in the period between two wars in India and Ceylon. No such effort was made in Hong Kong leading to questions about its own commitment to the principles when China introduced its own government in Hong Kong by changing legal structures.  Britain lacked the military capability and its partnership with France and the U.S. was also weaker because of other distractions from middle east conflicts and internal problems. This is now changing with the military capability buildup for the next 4 years. This is happening as France under Macron takes a new posture in its battle to defend the ideals of its Republic, and rebuild its manufacturing capabilities. ...

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Quentin Letts writes this exceptional and humorous account in the Daily Mail of the events that unfolded in the weeks after the Darling-Salmond debate on the Scottish referendum for independence, and after the first polls showed Alex Salmond's Scotland Independence Party ahead in the vote. Here he describes in good humored as well as insightful detail -the moves, maneouvring and efforts of London politicians, the media, and the elites, during the days leading to the referendum as alarm grows about a breakup of Britain. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, 100 Labor MPs rushing to Edinburgh to plead with the Scots, and the clever Alex Salmond who had a flair for old style political haranguing, all figure in what Letts says was a worthwhile topic for a Shakespearean tragedy, showing Britons in uncharacteristic passionate terms. Lets does not mince words about the motivations of the actors- Labor Party seeing damage to its own prospects in the next elections by losing its Scottish base will do everything to avoid the prospect of dissolution. Cameron of the Conservatives looking to energize the English vote with a promise of devolution for all including Englishmen to improve his own prospects, when the UK Independence Party and Nigel Farage were threatening the Conservatives from the right. One actor Letts does not mention is Britain's former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown, who is from Scotland. Brown may have saved the day by his passionate plea to fellow Scottish voters to stay with Britain, the only truly credible voice from London in Edinburgh and the countryside. As it turned out Glasgow went to the Independence Party, but Edinburgh went to the "Stay Together" alliance with over 60% of the vote, and prevented any last minute surge for the independence vote. Brown pointed out in an oped in the WSJ that Scotland had gained on almost equal terms with England and the rest of Britain in terms of average incomes as a result of efforts in recent decades, truly important bedrock considerations....

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Mr. McDonnell, says to loud applause at the annual Britain's Labor Party conference in Liverpool- "the greater the mess we inherit, the more radical we have to be." Mr. McDonnell told the Labor Party that the power balance had shifted against labor and workers in the last decade. The Brexit Secretary of the Labor Party left the option open for a second referendum on Brexit with the option "remain." Serious divisions have emerged within the ruling Conservative Party in Britain on the issue of withdrawal from the European Union. For the first time the Labor party conference endorsed the idea of nationalizing utilities, postal and rail companies and setting up a fund that would finance a $650 annual dividend for workers, with 10% of stock reserved for workers in companies with more than 250 employees. About a third of the seats will also be reserved for labor on company Board of Directors so that worker interests are better represented. Stagnating wages and low productivity is a major issue for the Labor Party in Britain. Mr. John McDonnell, as economic leader of the Labor Party, cited the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, critical of the current situation with stagnation and low wages, lack of upward mobility. ...

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The vote on the A.V. or Alternative Voting system based on proportional representation is causing a split in the Liberal Democrat- Conservative coaltiion government. Liberal Democrats favor the A.V. because it estimates that under that system it would have won 30 more seats in addition to the 57 it won in the last election. This was also a key condition of the Liberal Democrats to join the government. Now Liberal Democrat Vince Cable and others are saying they see a Labor- Liberal Democrat coalition as a "progressive majority" preferable to an alliance with the Conservatives, which only gives power to " a right wing clique that wants to keep things as they are." This is happening as Britain faces local elections, and the Liberal Democrat participation in the government is becoming deeply unpopular with the rank and file party members.

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The national picture for Labor would include Scotland which is where Labor has roots. John Smith of Argyll and Butte in Scotland was elected Labor leader in 1992 and Leader of the Opposition in the British parliament. His untimely death in 1994 from an heart attack deprived Britain of a Labor prime minister from Scotland. Smith was able to get enthusiastic support of Scottish voters. It is this Smith period that Labor aspires to as it seeks to widen its lead of nine points over the Conservative party to be confident of getting an overall majority in parliament.

In 1997 a young Tony Blair of Labor who succeeded Smith won the general election. Blair setup the Scottish parliament not convened since 1707, starting a new chapter in Scottish history. In 2007 the Scottish National Party with Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon formed a new government which is losing the confidence of Scottish voters with the cost of living crisis.

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Only 1 year after getting 412 seats in parliament Labor party under Keir Starmer a public defender, and Angela Rayner is seen as having lost much of it's support in Britain. So have the Conservatives who fare even worse. Only the Liberal Democrats and SNP in Scotland hang on. Outlandish You.gov poll June 26 2025 shows Reform UK with 271 seats in British parliament, Labor at 178 seats, Conservatives 46 seats in hung parliament. Nigel Farage led the fight for Brexit, and voters are having second thoughts about the value of Brexit. On immigration Nigel Farage led the fight, both parties have failed to stop migration. On welfare cuts by Labor this could lead to it doing better than Conservatives, yet Farage taking a position to avoid harsh cuts gets him Labor support. Britain sees the two main parties ineffective in meeting cost of living goals for the British people. But does Reform UK have the answers, and has it been getting the scrutiny it should be getting? Is Kemi Badenoch the right leader for the Conservatives, and how popular is Keir Starmer, how good is his stewardship of the economy?  ...

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The full report on the BBC's future funding by a committee of the UK parliament on the 100th birthday of the BBC in November 2022. The universal license fee is being abolished in many European countries. It generates 5 billion pounds that meet 75% of the cost of the BBC. Giving open access to all as done by BBC and Manchester Guardian is still a viable and necessary model in a democracy such as ours. Yet the increasing costs for poorer households can be offset with other ways of limiting the cost for the households at lower incomes. The other hurdle for BBC is to increase its viewers beyond the 60 plus years older viewers as the choice is now wide and prolific in channels and apps. Under Conservatives BBC was getting less support. With Labour the BBC gets a new opportunity to revive its programming and fulfilling its vital function of serving the people of Britain and English speaking countries around the world.

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The worst fears of Brexit of young people, three quarters of whom in 18-24 year age group voted against Brexit, are being realized. There is less travel to Europe and it is harder to have cross border interaction between Britain and the European Union with additional documentation required. A cross party report by the House of Lords shows the impact on mobility for young people. The restrictions are seen in the report as "an unmitigated disaster" citing experts. The pathway to temporary professional employment was once a way to broaden experience and contacts in the early years of working life. This is now far more difficult to access says this report in The Guardian. The same is true for school trips- in 2022 the number of pupils on such trips from EU to UK dropped 83%. Conservatives have shown a complete indifference to this. 

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The former UK Home Secretary for Tories under Sunak and Truss, Suella Braverman, joins the Reform UK party and appears at Reform UK event with Nigel Farage. She says the Conservatives saying they would have UK withdraw from ECHR (European Convention for Human Rights), which makes it difficult to conduct a rational commonsense policy on migrants because it was poorly designed or ECHR writers lost their way on common sense, is a lie. For example there is no ECHR type rules for migrants entering China or India or any major country in the world, one that says nations have to take in migrants from anywhere in the world, and provide benefits costing billions of dollars that cannot go into services for the local population. And where migrants can pose a risk for women hesitant to go out in their own neighborhoods- something chancellor Merz of Germany has spoken about recently after incidents in Germany. ECHR has somehow got it wrong.  Labour and Conservatives have pondered this but not acted quickly enough in becoming trapped in a cultural guilt for the colonial era, when ordinary Britons simply want to get on with their lives in their neighborhoods as they did before migrants, and as did their parents and grandparents in Britain. For most of British history colonial policy was decided by a small upper class and the India Office, colonies policy by the Colonial Office, and the lives of working people in Manchester's cotton mills went on with no connection with the Empire. A fact even India's Mohandas Gandhiji quickly recognized and grasped, and whose support Gandhi sought against the India Office of the Empire. ...

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The more pro-European faction within prime minister Theresa May's Conservative Party is reluctant to push for a vote at this time to avoid what it sees as "political suicide"- a massively disruptive departure of Britain from the European Union without an agreement. This gives May another 2 weeks to come up with a solution. 

Most observers believe Theresa May is simply using a strategy of running down the clock to the March 29 deadline. By not extending the deadline she is seen as planning to hand out to the British Parliament two starkly different options- a massively disruptive no-deal Brexit causing Britain's departure from the European without any agreement and the option of accepting the agreement the prime minister has negotiated with the EU which protects Ireland and Northern Ireland peace and open border trade flows called the Irish backstop.

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This election is seen as a turning point for Britain. The Liberal-Conservative coalition has come up with a radical plan to cut spending and decentralize services in the areas of education, policing and health care. The plan is to cut the deficit quickly from 11% of GDP in 2009-10, to 2.1% in 2014-15. By comparison the outgoing Labor government's plan was to balance the budget by 2016-17. And the fiscal impact of Labor's budgets would have been 4% by 2014-15, compared to the Cameron government's looking at 6.3%, with larger and accelerated cuts in spending. It is something of a gamble by the Tory-Liberal government. If the severity of the cuts in spending stifle growth, then Plan B will be needed. The size of the cuts are not seen as feasible. With growing interest payments with the large borrowing by the government, and no real cuts in healthcare spending, departments delivering public services in Britain face cuts of 25% by 2014-15. With defense and schools limited to cuts of 10%- other departments would face cuts of 33%. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies one way to reduce the severity of these cuts in department budgets, would be to find additional savings in the welfare budget. In June, Mr Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced 11 billion pounds in savings in this area (with half coming from using a different measure for inflation in calculating benefits). Additional savings of 14 billion pounds in welfare budgets, can reduce the size of the cuts needed in departmental budgets to 20%. One example cited is means-testing payments that go to the affluent as well as to poor people, such as child benefits, and cutting winter-fuel payments. Tories and Liberals agree on the need to decentralize government and services in the areas of schools, policing and the NHS. In schooling the idea is to give more choices to parents and children. Current schools can apply for academy status and new "free schools" will be run be non-profits, charities, churches, and parents. These schools will have freedom to set pay, select curriculum, and still receive state funding. In policing, the idea is to have directly elected police and crime commissioners for every constabulary in England and Wales. The elected commissioners would appoint constables and determine budgets and priorities. For the National Health Service the move is to give groups of general practitioners a significant role in the delivery of health care. ...

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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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Both the Remain and Leave campaigns for the EU referendum are suspended in Britain following the killing of Labor MP Jo Cox.  The killing was described by police as done by a man with links to right wing extremism and mental health services.  David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn, leaders of the Conservative and Labor parties, say this is an "attack on democracy."

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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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Mira Patel provides this report in great detail on how Indians living in the UK have grown from a tiny minority of 30,000 before independence in 1947 with little recognition in the UK to a population of 250,000 by 1961. In the years after 1945 many of the Sikhs and Punjabis in the British Army stayed in the UK. Two more waves of migration followed one with the East African Indians coming to the UK and one with Sikhs going to the UK. Race Relations Act of 1968 and a bill in 1961 changed the nature of immigrants to more professional people and students to maintain racial balance. By 1971 there were 483,000 Indians in the UK. Even today with 1.4 million Indians in the UK this forms only 2.5% of the UK population. Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel have important positions in the 2 year old Boris Johnson government yet too much can be read into this. Both are not deeply popular among the British public. Penny Mordaunt is the favorite at the grassroots of the Conservative Party. When one looks at the immigrant communities of Indians in the UK at one time in the 1880's only one MP Dadabhai Naoroji was in the British parliament. Today there are several ministers but mostly in a collapsing Conservative party administration of Boris Johnson. By comparison most of the Indian community migration in America has developed deeper roots and merged with the consciousness of the American society and public. Sunak and Patel are seen by most of the Labour grassroots as elitist, a kind of Macaulay class that Mira Patel describes. Macaulay a Britisher of the period of the British East India Company described the need in 1800's for a class of Indians "Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect." This Indian diaspora is a distinct Indian entity which is why it is a class of Indians that Macaulay coveted says Mira Patel, but one that she says forms leaders in Britain not leaders in India. In some ways the US is different with less of the class society that the Empire and the Tory party represent. And in this way formed under a country that fought this very same Empire the Indian community in the US seems to have integrated into the vision of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln in ways that cannot be imagined in Britain or in Europe. ...

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Who should lead the Conservative Party in 2016 till the next elections in 2020? The Economist magazine says strong negotiating skills and stamina are needed, and on this point it says Theresa May, Home Secretary, does better than former Energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, who has not done such tough negotiating and is not so well known as May. May had the support of 199 members of parliament to 84 for Leadsom, whose experience is less and was junior Treasury minister in prior position compared to May's 6 years in the position of Home Secretary handling immigration issues. Being an ardent Brexiter Leadsom has an advantage with Brexit supporters, though May handled her Brexit Remain position in a low key way and can appeal to both sides of the Conservative party. The result will come from a postal ballot to 150,000 members of the Conservative Party.

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Crowley home to Gatwick airport- situation of migrants in UK in one English town, shown in The Guardian. Migrants has become a divisive issue in Britain with Labour shifting to new policy on migrants, many Conservative party leaders joining Reform UK party. The situation is similar across the continent in Italy, Germany and France, Netherlands and Nordic countries. It is also a divisive issue in the US in January 2026, and has been since the Operation Wetback under President Eisenhower in 1954 as the US Border at the time was not secure following large migrant flows similar to the last decade. The issues of citizenship are still what they were in 1904 when US president Teddy Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress said- "The citizenship of our country should not be debased. It is vital that we keep high the standard of living of our wage workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living, customs and habits, are such that they tend to lower the level of the American wage worker, and above all we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man of whom we can say that he will himself be a bad citizen, or his children and grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of the country."    ...