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Post by Admin on Mar 27, 2019 17:22:33 GMT
JACOB Rees-Mogg today suggested he will back the PM's Brexit deal, admitting: "The choice seems to be Mrs May’s deal or no Brexit." The leading Brexiteer warned that if the existing deal is killed off, Britain will end up staying in the EU for good. The move comes as a boost for Theresa May's chances of winning a third "meaningful vote" on the withdrawal agreement - which could come this week. But it's not clear how many more hardliners will follow Mr Rees-Mogg and switch sides. Mr Rees-Mogg today insisted that No Deal is still better than Mrs May's deal - but warned that Remainer MPs would block Britain quitting without any deal at all.
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2019 17:28:54 GMT
Brexit: Theresa May makes statement following cabinet meeting
Theresa May will ask the EU for an extension to the Brexit deadline to "break the log jam" in Parliament.
The PM says she wants to meet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to agree a plan on the future relationship with the EU.
But she insisted her withdrawal agreement - which was voted down last week - would remain part of the deal.
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Post by Admin on Jun 8, 2019 18:12:20 GMT
President Donald Trump set the stage for his upcoming visit to the United Kingdom, Ireland and France next week during a wide-ranging interview with the British newspaper The Sun, weighing in on everything from outgoing UK Prime Minister Theresa May's handling of Brexit to the contenders vying to replace her to Meghan Markle's dislike of his politics. May will formally step down as Conservative Party leader after Trump visits on June 7. Trump, during his Oval Office interview with the Sun published Friday, criticized May's efforts on Brexit, saying he thinks "the UK allowed the European Union to have all the cards." "I had mentioned to Theresa that you have got to build up your ammunition. ... I am sure that you could have built up a big advantage for your side and negotiated from strength," he said. "And it is very hard to play well when one side has all the advantage," he continued. "They had nothing to lose. They didn't give the European Union anything to lose."
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Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2019 17:48:33 GMT
The theme of Polish migration in the UK has been widely covered in the media and political discourse, affecting not only the way Polish migrants are viewed by the British public but also influencing everyday encounters between Poles and Brits. Migrants from Eastern Europe were initially seen as unproblematic as they posed ‘few questions of cultural and racial difference from their host societies’ (Favell and Nebe 2009 Favell, A., and T. M. Nebe. 2009. “Internal and External Movers: East-West Migration and the Impact of EU Enlargement.” In Pioneers of European Integration: Citizenship and Mobility in the EU, edited by E. Recchi and A. Favell, 205–223.) It is argued that, by favouring migrants from the EU, the UK has been implicitly favouring white migrants (Favell 2008 Favell, A. 2008. “The New Face of East-West Migration in Europe.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (5): 701–716.) Nevertheless, as a result of British anxieties over uncontrolled European immigration, the political and media rhetoric has changed. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) controversial poster used during the 2014 campaign read: ‘26 million people in Europe are looking for work, and whose jobs are they after?’. In April 2015 during the BBC One leader interview on April 22, 2015, Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP, said he would prefer immigrants from India and Australia to East Europeans, even though he previously claimed his party would not want to discriminate against new arrivals by nationality. UKIP’s popularity, based on anti-immigration and anti-European policies, is a possible reason for pushing immigration to the top of the political agenda. Speaking on the BBC One ‘Andrew Marr Show’ on January 5, 2014, the former Prime Minister David Cameron singled out Polish migrants in the discourse about welfare benefits abuse. EU migration into the UK was a key issue in the EU referendum debates in 2016. The Leave campaign used the anti-immigration discourse claiming that the main cause of all the UK’s issues, including housing shortages or the strained National Health Service (NHS), is ‘uncontrolled mass immigration’ caused by the right to freedom of movement within EU member states. The Leave campaign argued that exiting the EU would allow Britain to ‘take back control of its borders’ – the slogan previously used by UKIP. Amber Rudd in her speech at the Conservative Party conference in October 2017 said that foreign workers should not be ‘taking jobs that British people could do’ (The Guardian 12 January 2017), echoing Gordon Brown’s ‘British jobs for British workers’ remark in 2007. Even though it seems like the responses of some politicians to EU migration have not been racially motivated but rather economically, they produce racialised effects (Fox, Moroşanu, and Szilassy 2012 Fox, J., L. Moroşanu, and E. Szilassy. 2012. “The Racialization of the New European Migration to the UK.” Sociology 46 (4): 680–695) points out that an examination of over one hundred cases of racist violence after the EU referendum ‘shows a link between the language and behaviour of perpetrators and the rhetoric and policy pronouncement of politicians’. Fekete (as quoted in Komaromi and Singh 2016 Komaromi, P., and K. Singh. 2016. Post-Referendum Racism and Xenophobia: The Role of Social Media Activism in Challenging the Normalisation of Xeno-Racist Narratives.) stressed the link between racism and politics in the light of Brexit: one of the things that has become clear is that the hostile environment that has been an official aim of policy for the last few years is ‘coming home’. If a ‘hostile environment’ is embedded politically, it can’t be a surprise that it takes root culturally. Furthermore, Haque (2017 Haque, Z. 2017. “Racism and Inequality: The Truth about Brexit.”) argues that the Brexit toxic campaign has normalised hatred towards immigrants, turning communities against each other. Similarly, there has been some ambivalence in the portrayal of Polish migrants, particularly in the tabloid media. Initially, some media focused on the positive work ethics of Polish migrants by emphasising hard-working-ness, value for money and diligence. They were constructed as a ‘desirable’ migrant group and seen as ‘invisible’ due to their whiteness. With the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, there was a rhetorical shift. Polish migrants increasingly started to be perceived as an economic threat responsible for society’s malaise: job shortages, unemployment and the strain on social services. In the run up to the EU referendum in 2016, the reporting of immigration more than tripled over the course of the EU Referendum campaign, and the coverage of the effects of immigration was overwhelmingly negative, particularly in the Express, the Daily Mail and The Sun (Moore and Ramsay 2017 Moore, M., and G. Ramsay. 2017. UK Media Coverage of the EU Referendum Campaign. London: Kings College Centre for the Study of Media Communication and Power.) Migrants were blamed for many of Britain’s economic and social problems. Amongst those singled out for particularly negative coverage were Poles. For instance, The Daily Mail article on May 6, 2016, titled ‘A rapist protected by the police and the mining town that turned into little Poland’ makes a clear reference to the visual and audible difference of Polish presence with several images of Polish stores, bakeries and beauty salons. It uses a phrase ‘Polish invasion’ and comments on lack of integration of Poles within the community with attention to Polish language seen ‘as a barrier to stay separate’. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)(2016 ECRI [European Commission against Racism and Intolerance]. 2016. ECRI Report on the United Kingdom) criticised British tabloid newspapers, for ‘offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology’. Both tabloid media and some political discourses have played an important part in constructing the narrative about the apparent impact of EU migrants on the ‘left behind’ British white working class (Haque 2017 Haque, Z. 2017. “Racism and Inequality: The Truth about Brexit.”). Recent Runnymede report (Khan and Shaheen 2017 Khan, O., and F. Shaheen. 2017. Minority Report: Race & Class in Post-Brexit Britain. Runnymede.) discusses how working class communities are exploited by dishonest politicians telling them that the newcomers are to be blamed for their problems, encouraging the white working class to resent migrants. However, this is nothing new. The interests of the white working class have often been pitched by the media and politicians against those of ethnic minorities and migrants (Skeggs 2009 Skeggs, B. 2009. “Haunted by the Spectre of Judgement: Respectability, Value and Affect in Class Relations.” In Who Cares about the White Working Class, edited by K. P. Sveinsson, 36–44. London: Runnymede Trust.) The widespread negative political and media discourse about Polish migration further contributes to tensions by ‘constructing such new minorities as the main agents of the decline of established white British working class communities’ (Garner 2009 Garner, S., J. Cowles, B. Lung, and S. Stott. 2009. Sources of Resentment and Perceptions of Ethnic Minorities among Poor White People in England. London: Department for Communities and Local Government.), while the wider socio-economic inequalities in British society are overlooked. Thus, anti-immigrant sentiment in the light of Brexit is often associated with the British white working class, even though there was a large middle class ‘Leave’ vote (Dorling 2016 Dorling, D. 2016. “Brexit: The Decision of a Divided Country.” British Medical Journal 354: 1–3.) These issues have been previously explored by Garner et al. (2009 Garner, S. 2009. “Home Truths: The White Working Class and the Racialization of Social Housing.” In Who Cares about the White Working Class, edited by K. P. Sveinsson, 45–50. London: Runnymede Trust.) and Hudson et al. (2007 Hudson, M., J. Phillips, K. Ray, and H. Barnes. 2007. Social Cohesion in Diverse Communities: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.) revealing that deprivation and disadvantage played a vital role in neighbourhood relations and that racial tensions were often driven by struggles for employment, housing and welfare benefits. They also highlight the influence of the media in fuelling negative attitudes. The discourses about the British white working class and immigration often homogenise this group and contribute to the assumption that white working class people are inherently racist. Haylett (2001 Haylett, C. 2001. “Illegitimate Subjects?: Abject Whites, Neoliberal Modernisation, and Middle-Class Multiculturalism.”) points out that even though multiculturalism is predominantly lived in working-class areas, white working class is often portrayed as racist. This paper not only explores Polish migrants’ under-research experiences concerning racism, xenophobia and fear, and how they interpret these experiences with reference to the media and political discourses, but also to class discourses mentioned above. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Volume 45, 2019 - Issue 1, Pages 61-77.
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Post by Admin on Jul 13, 2019 6:20:17 GMT
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU. Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenet of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom. Conservative members are not just ideologically committed to Brexit – they also genuinely believe that the failure to deliver on the result of the 2016 referendum will bring about the destruction of the party’s electoral chances. Indeed, half (51%) of members believe that Britain ending up staying in the EU after all would damage the party to the extent that it will never lead a government again, and another 29% think it would put the party out of power for multiple elections to come. By contrast, most members believe that successfully bringing about Brexit will win the Tories at least the next election. Should the next leader manage to bring Britain out of the EU with a deal, 52% of party members believe this will hand the Conservatives a victory at the next election and a further 10% think it will deliver a domino run of election victories. Just as Brexit has exposed new fault lines across British society the same is true of the Conservative membership. As many as half (51%) of Conservative members say they have more in common with supporters from other parties that share their Brexit stance than they do with fellow Conservatives who voted the other way in 2016. Only three in ten (30%) feel a keener sense of fraternity with other Conservatives who voted the opposite way in 2016 over their Brexit brethren who support other parties. And so it is that the seismic upheaval that Brexit has had on British politics has brought about a situation that would have been unthinkable in years gone by. Approaching half (46%) of Conservative members would be happy to see Nigel Farage, a man who would otherwise be considered their most dangerous political foe, take over the reins of their party. This includes a majority (56%) of those members who voted to leave the EU in 2016.
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