RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-retreat-opens-door-for-bojo/90492/

Prime Minister Theresa May’s retreat on Brexit is best seen as an opening for her former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who is the last contender for prime minister to have seen the European Union question clearly from the start. What Mrs. May is doing, after all, is what Mr. Johnson proposed, once it became so clear to so many that she had been snookered in Brussels.

What Mrs. May did in the Commons this afternoon was to announce that she was postponing Tuesday’s vote on the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement bill with the European Union. “While there is broad support for many of the key aspects of the deal,” Mrs. May confessed, “there remains widespread and deep concern.”

The Prime Minister made it clear she comprehends that had she proceeded, “the deal would be rejected by a significant margin.” In the context, it is a breath-taking admission by a leader who’d seemed almost willfully blind on the point. Now, she said, the Government “will therefore defer the vote scheduled for tomorrow and not proceed to divide the House at this time.”

It is easy to see why Mrs. May is vote-shy. Just last week, after all, the government lost three votes. Two were in relation to the legal advice the government had received on the agreement. Parliament had asked for the advice in November but, when only a summary was provided, the Commons demanded the full report.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/theresa-may-brexit-plan-haphazard-provisional/

May’s Brexit is becoming increasingly haphazard and provisional.

Shakespeare famously wrote of the “sceptered isle” of Britain acting as a moat “against the envy of less happier lands.”

Lately, the less happier lands are winning in a rout.

Britain is suffering a political meltdown as it struggles to make good on a historic vote in 2016 to leave the European Union. The decision for a so-called Brexit was a stirring statement of independence and self-government by a people who have defined themselves down the centuries by their stiff-necked resistance to anyone — whether overweening monarchs or continental tyrants — who would threaten either.

That was before London ran up against the bureaucracy of the would-be European super state based in Brussels, and before it was led, if that’s the right word, by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May.

Presiding over a divided party, facing a pro-Remain British establishment and negotiating with a hostile EU, May never had an easy task. She has nonetheless not only failed to rise to the occasion but been crushed by it.

May has just pulled her Brexit deal from a parliamentary vote that she was going to lose in an embarrassing drubbing that might have loosed her increasingly precarious grip on power.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-rebel-in-europes-big-three-1544486166

The past week has seen the leaders of the three most important European states fighting for their political lives. In London, Prime Minister Theresa May struggles to hold power as opinion in Parliament moves against her Brexit agreement. In Paris, a firestorm of public rage has humbled President Emmanuel Macron and forced him into an undignified retreat before street protests he previously vowed to ignore. Even Berlin experienced its share of political drama as Chancellor Angela Merkel officially stepped down under pressure as leader of the Christian Democratic Union. Her preferred successor was able to eke out only a narrow win over anti-Merkel challengers.

The turbulence in these countries, pillars of European and indeed world order, isn’t just about particular leaders. Their entire political systems have come under strain. In the U.K., even before the Brexit referendum, the rise of the Scottish National Party and Jeremy Corbyn’s victory over the moderate wing of the Labour Party had already transformed the political system. In France, Mr. Macron came to power as the existing party system imploded. In Germany, the antiestablishment Left and Alternative for Germany parties have been steadily gaining strength as centrist parties falter in the polls.

It’s one thing for political systems to face populist revolts when times are bad. President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil came on the heels of a deep recession and a massive corruption scandal. Voters turned against a political establishment that was corrupt and economically inept. Italy’s populists came to power in a country where, a decade after the financial crisis, gross domestic product has not yet returned to 2008 levels. Persistent crime and poverty helped elevate a left-wing populist to the presidency in Mexico.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13377/european-court-human-rights-blasphemy-laws

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that criticism of Muhammad constitutes incitement to hatred — meaning that in Europe, criticizing Muhammad is no longer protected free speech.

What the court has actually done, however, is rule out the possibility of any debate in which a range of various experts and members of the public could take part. Now, it seems, the only views that will be respected in the public forum are those of devout Muslims.

Underage marriages are considered by some countries child abuse or statutory rape, but are acceptable under shari’a law; they also take place in Muslim communities in Western countries such as the UK. This alone is a major reason why platforms must be found to debate the issue instead of sweeping it, as something offensive, under the carpet. Ignoring it is offensive.

Moreover, as some Muslims are often offended by even small matters regarding their faith, such as a toy teddy bear named Mohammad or a prisoner on death row declared innocent — so that mobs take to the streets to condemn, or even kill, those individuals — what now will not be censored in the West?

There are, of course, social settings where it pays to watch your words. Saying you fancy the looks of a mafioso’s new girlfriend could well prove fatal. Spending time with a bunch of Hamas terrorists while expressing your love for Israel might not lead to your premature demise. In London today, young men who make remarks or play music to other youths on the street can wind up stabbed to death. A recent comment on The Independent website claims, “In this country [the UK], some views, regardless of how valid and logical, can result in anything from public rebuke to loss of a job to violence.”