In most of the European Union, when the authorities hold a plebiscite and don’t get the result they want, they hold another, and another, until the voters see it their way. The English tradition holds democracy in greater esteem than that. Or at least it used to, before the Brexit mess.
Theresa May retains office but hemorrhages power.
Theresa May’s Brexit deal means the end of sovereignty and democracy.
One is hard put to see how a government commissioned to negotiate in good faith for independence could have come up with a deal quite this bad.
An unlikely outcry over a U.K. government architecture committee.
An all-time classic puts the future of the NFL on display. Plus: The NYT advocates for price controls, but not on newspapers; and how Donald Trump is like a cornerback.
An all-time classic puts the future of the NFL on display. Plus: The NYT advocates for price controls, but not on newspapers; and how Donald Trump is like a cornerback.
More ministers resign as May faces the axe.
Will a road to nowhere in London lead back to Brussels?
What started as a rebellion in rural England over agricultural regulations has become a continent-wide quarrel about who governs whom.
Britain’s Conservative party comes together—and soon it will be coming apart
A fight delayed.
He turns right for Downing Street.
I wish I’d bothered to learn more poetry when I was younger so that I could think beyond Yeats’s done-to-death “Second Coming” when musing about British politics right now. Perhaps in 2018 it is better explained in meme form, as the dog in the burning house muttering “This is fine,” or the sweating…
“Brexit means Brexit.” That’s Theresa May’s most famous slogan. The problem is, it doesn’t really mean anything because the British vote to leave the European Union provided no indication of what leaving would actually entail. And it’s not clear that the people who supported it really agreed on a…
Just like the balloon designed to mock him.
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
Whether the end of (Theresa) May comes in July or September, Jacob Rees-Mogg will be Tory executioner and Tory kingmaker.
When Theresa May goes down, Jacob Rees-Mogg will be Tory executioner and Tory kingmaker.
Britain’s prime minister rocked by resignations related to Brexit.
The Eurozone had a slow recovery from the Great Recession, and now that recovery is slowing down.
There are two ways of looking at Brexit. One is confusing, the other is clear, and both are true. Many people in Britain would prefer not to look at all at Brexit. They would prefer to undo it by calling a second referendum, or contriving a slow legislative throttling that, like the assassination…
London.
In July 2016, Theresa May won the Tory party leadership contest, and thus became the U.K.’s prime minister, for one simple reason. There was no one else. It was less than a month after the Brexit referendum had upended Britain’s political order. The only thing her predecessor, David Cameron, was…
Second Thoughts: London’s Metropolitan Police Service, aka Scotland Yard because its original entrance was located on Great Scotland Yard, is re-considering two rules that seem to have had consequences that could easily have been foreseen.
If Americans think our nation is painfully divided, two statistics from across the Atlantic might put their minds at ease. The first is the percentage of British voters who chose, in a binding referendum last year, to abandon the European Union: just slightly under 52 percent. The other is the…
This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol talks with host Eric Felten about the unfortunate parallels between Britain's Tories and the GOP.
As Oscar Wilde might have said, to lose one minister is unfortunate. To lose a second minister in the space of two weeks looks like carelessness, especially when the minister appears to have pursued secret diplomacy at odds with the positions of the Foreign Office,. To place a third minister under…
All politics aspires to the condition of entertainment. At least it does so these days, whether in London or in Washington. The British derive enjoyment from their national dramas, even when things go wrong—Dunkirk was the film of the summer. But that multi-series extravaganza known as Brexit makes…
Manchester, England
Theresa May’s speech at this week’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, England, was meant to be the high point of the three-day event. Instead, her speech Wednesday morning became an extended and excruciating fiasco. None of this was May’s fault. It was just her bad luck. But luck is the…
A week is a long time in politics, and the days grow short as you reach September. Teresa May began last week with a victory, the passage of the EU withdrawal bill, previously known as the “Great Repeal Bill,” through the House of Commons. But her week ended with a harbinger of defeat. On Friday,…
Recently the New York Times ran an op-ed from a columnist for the Times of London lamenting the timing of the release of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.
Will post-Brexit Britain pry itself away from the hyper-regulated habits of the European Union? The American Enterprise Institute's resident scholar Claude Barfield comes by to talk with host Eric Felten about how a controversy over so-called chlorinated chickens may indicate complications to come.
As Theresa May went to Brussels Thursday for the opening of the two-day European Council summit, a European Union official warned that she was in for a “humiliating” experience. If so, May will feel at home on foreign soil.
York, England
In this episode of the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with Eric Felten about why the GOP should focus, not on broad tax reform, but on tax cutting. And literary editor Philip Terzian talks British politics in the wake of Theresa May's disastrous snap-election.
York, England
London
British voters have just shocked Europe—and perhaps themselves—by repudiating their conservative prime minister Theresa May. May called a snap election because it seemed an easy way to bolster her slender parliamentary majority as she began negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union. That…
The May 27 headline in the London Spectator couldn't be more direct. "This is the worst Tory election campaign ever," proclaims author Rod Liddle. He just might be right.
The U.S. dollar is strong and the British pound is weak these days, meaning that now is an advantageous time for Americans to visit the United Kingdom—rarely has the country been cheaper for us Yanks.
The U.S. dollar is strong and the British pound is weak these days, meaning that now is an advantageous time for Americans to visit the United Kingdom—rarely has the country been cheaper for us Yanks.
If Britain winds up leaving the European Union, it will be the doing of a woman who was not even publicly identified with the cause when voters approved the referendum for “Brexit" 10 months ago. This week Conservative prime minister Theresa May called a general election for June 8. It will…
This morning’s calling of a snap election in Britain on June 8 strengthens Prime Minister Theresa May's position as Brexit negotiator—and not only in her negotiations with Brussels. "At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity here in Westminster," she announced on the…
Speaker Paul Ryan will take advantage of the House recess to lead a bipartisan delegation to the United Kingdom and three other European countries next week to discuss economic and security matters facing NATO member countries, his office announced Wednesday.
London
"Brexit means Brexit," Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…
"Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…
British prime minister Theresa May has been in office for just five months. It hasn't been smooth sailing. Grappling with the aftermath of Brexit, May has faced anti-Brexit legal challenges, tough negotiations with disaffected European Union leaders, and a parliamentary revolt over plans to expand…
The insertion of Nigel Farage into the dealings between President-elect Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has yet to make the U.S.-U.K. Special Relationship more special, but it has already made it more complex and unpredictable. Is this Twitter-begot triangle a preview of…
Birmingham, England
Voters have a pretty low opinion of the media. Only 19 percent of Americans have a favorable view of them, according to one recent NBC News poll. There are a lot of reasons for why that is the case, but one that shouldn't be overlooked is that the media don't hide their contempt for voters. Take…
Donald Trump unleashed a new populist messenger on Wednesday night who declared Americans can defeat the establishment and the media just as the British people did in voting to leave the European Union.
After the breakup, who gets to keep the gold medals? That's the question some sports fans are asking themselves after a European Union website included British medals in a table that boasted of the EU besting both the United States and China in the Olympics medal count.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Michael Warren chats about the establishment striking back in Kansas, and then Andrew Stuttaford discusses the various establishments in post-Brexit disarray.
The French have a clear vision of how want Britain's decision to leave the EU should play out: British businesses out of the EU, French businesses into the U.K.
With the United Kingdom thrown into chaos after last month's Brexit vote—the pound plunged, Scotland suggested secession, the elites lost it—it's reassuring to learn there's one thing you can count on: Eddy and Patsy are still showing us that "politically correct" can be not just a way of speaking…
It was the mayhem that made Theresa May. Britain’s unexpected vote to leave the EU crushed financial markets and plunged some Remainers into angry, unhinged, and tellingly snobbish mourning: It was, one author explained, "the revenge of the Brownshirts, a dictatorship of the illiterate and the…
Last month, when voters in the U.K. decided to exit the European Union, the pound plummeted and market chaos ensued. The media speculated as to which companies might pull out of the country. And everyone wondered how the referendum would impact the flow of immigration. But there's an even graver…
Why did Brexit win? Well, first bear in mind it's not unusual for the EU to lose referenda. Before the end of the Cold War, the only votes it lost were in Norway (1972) and Greenland (1973). But in 1992, the Maastricht Treaty almost lost in France (51.1 percent in favor) and did lose in Denmark…
When historians seek to explain an event, they often divide their explanation into three parts. In the long run—what the French Annales School called the longue durée—there are deep historical structures, mental frameworks or other slow-to-change systems. In the intermediate term, there are…
President Obama thinks Britain made a mistake by voting to leave the European Union. So does Secretary of State John Kerry. So do most on the left of American politics. Most on the right see Britain’s so-called Independence Day as a sensible democratic decision to shed the protectionist and…
It didn't take Brexit to make forecasters take a dim view of the future of the U.S. economy. A cloud considerably larger than a man's hand hovered over the computers of most forecasters before Brexit shocked markets into a deep but transient swoon. The Federal Reserve Board said it dare not raise…
In a clip posted earlier today by member of European Parliament and leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage, the architecht of Brexit had his day in the sun before his fellow MEPs.
Paris
It is fashionable these days, and not only in America, to blame the woes of the electorate, and the consequent rise of politicians playing on those woes, on "the Establishment." It is the fault of this never-really-defined group that Britain is leaving the European Union, with consequences only now…
Great Britain has voted to leave the EU and that may, or may not, be a good thing. Too soon to tell, as they say. Unless, that is, you are part of the elite media or the establishment left in which case, you know exactly. And these people, of course, are always right about these things.
At times it is better to be lucky than good. And yesterday Donald Trump was lucky indeed to find himself in the UK for the re-opening of one of his hotel/golf courses, on what the tabloid Sun calls Britain's "Independence Day". Trump is not alone in believing that Britain's decision to leave the…
Reporters around the world were left terrified, heartbroken and angry over the vote in the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.
The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with literary editor Philip Terzian on the books you should read to better understand the British view of the world in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union Thursday, spurring the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and a drop in markets, as well as praise—or resigned acceptance—from major American political figures.
Following the "Brexit" versus "Bremain" debate from afar (and by the way, now that the referendum is finally over, can we please retire those hideous portmanteaus?), one got the sense that the two opposing camps were arguing on entirely different grounds. They weren't so much debating as making two…
London
London
British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his plans for resignation after consultation with the Queen.
London
London
President Obama loves the European Union. He believes the British people should too. And to anyone who might dissent from his view when the question of the U.K.’s EU membership is put to a national referendum on June 23, he has a threat: Vote to leave and he'll upend the "special relationship" by…
London