British PM May fights for survival

Election shock complicates ‘Brexit’ talks

LONDON, June 10, (Agencies): British Prime Minister Theresa May was fighting for survival on Saturday after a failed election gamble undermined her authority and plunged the country into a major political crisis, days before the start of talks to leave the European Union.

May’s bet that she could strengthen her hand by crushing what she believed to be a weak opposition Labour Party backfired spectacularly on Thursday as voters stripped her Conservative Party of a parliamentary majority.

The stunning outcome leaves May battling to unite different factions in her party and reliant on a handful of Northern Irish parliamentarians just nine days before Britain starts the tortuous process of negotiating its departure from the EU.

May’s two top aides, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, announced they had quit on Saturday, following sustained criticism of the campaign within the party.

Britain’s typically pro-Conservative press savaged May on Saturday and questioned whether she could remain in power, only two months after she started the clock ticking on the two-year EU divorce process.

The best-selling Sun newspaper said senior members of the party had vowed to get rid of May, but would wait at least six months because they feared a leadership contest could propel Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn into power.

“She’s staying, for now,” one Conservative Party source told Reuters.

The outcome risks upsetting the political balance in Northern Ireland by aligning London more closely with the pro-British side in the divided province, and increases the chance that Britain will fall out of the EU in 2019 without a deal.

May called the snap election to win a clear mandate for her plan to take Britain out of the EU’s single market and customs union, so she could slash immigration.

But her party is deeply divided over what it wants from Brexit and the result means British businesses still have no idea what trading rules they can expect in the coming years.

Tumbled

The British pound tumbled against the US dollar and the euro after the election result.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she assumed Britain still wanted to leave the European Union and that talks must start quickly.

But Elmar Brok, a German conservative and the European Parliament’s top Brexit expert, told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper the talks would now be more complicated.

“May won’t be able to make any compromises because she lacks a broad parliamentary majority,” he said.

If she is to succeed in delivering the wishes of 52 percent of the public and take Britain out of the EU, she must find a way to secure the full support of her party to pass legislation preparing for and enacting the departure.

Anand Menon, professor of politics at King’s College London, said her lack of a majority made it far more likely that Britain would leave the EU without a deal.

“Imagine she survives until autumn of next year,” he told Reuters.

ers, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jebril was first identified on Sunday as a possible inspiration for the London attacks when the British Broadcasting Corporation ran an interview by its Asian Network with a former friend of one of the attackers, whom he said

listened to Jebril’s sermons posted on the internet.

anti-terrorism hotline to report what he had heard and seen.

Several attempts by Reuters to find Jebril to obtain comment were unsuccessful. Jebril is a US citizen of Palestinian descent.

Nobody answered several “You will have a very fractious parliament. It is far from guaranteed to vote the deal through.”

A failure to get legislation through parliament could eventually result in the need for another election.

Party insiders are placing bets on how long May will last, less than a year after Britain’s surprise referendum decision propelled her into Downing Street.

“Theresa May is certainly the strongest leader that we have at the moment,” lawmaker David Jones told the BBC.

When asked about her future, senior Conservative lawmaker Owen Paterson said “Let’s see how it pans out”.

The Times newspaper’s front page declared “May stares into the abyss”. It said Britain was “effectively leaderless” and the “country all but ungovernable”. Its cartoon depicted May in a coffin with her feet sticking out and a speech bubble saying “Nothing has changed”, a line she repeated several times as she reversed a key policy on social care during the campaign.

System

“The Conservatives have not yet broken the British system of democracy, but through their hubris and incompetence they have managed to make a mockery of it,” it said in an editorial. “The task of restoring orderly government in order to make sense of Brexit is now a national emergency, and it falls to them.”

The Telegraph newspaper said senior Conservatives including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, interior minister Amber Rudd and Brexit minister David Davis were taking soundings over whether to replace May.

After confirming on Friday that her top five ministers, including finance minister Philip Hammond, would keep their jobs, May must name the rest of her team, who will take on one of the most demanding jobs in recent British history.

She said Brexit talks would begin on June 19 as scheduled, the same day as the formal reopening of parliament.

To govern, she will need the support of the socially conservative, pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which won 10 seats in Northern Ireland. A senior Conservative lawmaker, Gavin Williamson, was in Belfast for talks with the party on Saturday, a spokeswoman for May’s office said.

The two parties are broadly politically aligned, but it remains to be seen what price the DUP will demand for its support.

One DUP lawmaker suggested support for May could come vote by vote, making the job of governing fraught with risk.

The Conservatives won 318 seats in Thursday’s vote, down from 331 in 2015, falling short of an overall majority in the 650seat House of Commons after the opposition Labour Party, led by socialist stalwart Jeremy Corbyn, scored hefty gains.

The DUP, which won 10 seats, said it is ready to talk with May about supporting her government, although such an alliance would be far from straight forward.

London’s neutrality in Northern Ireland is key to the delicate balance of power in the province once plagued by decades of unrest.

But the Protestant DUP was founded to defend Northern Ireland’s place in Britain against demands by Catholic republicans for a united Ireland.

calls to a Dearborn, Michigan telephone number listed for Jebril and it did not accept voice mail messages. A lawyer who represented Jebril in an insurance fraud criminal case has retired and could not be reached for comment.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation

and the US Attorney’s office in Detroit had no comment on Jebril’s activity.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack by men who drove a truck into pedestrians on London Bridge and then stabbed revelers in nearby pubs, killing seven people and wounding dozens. Police shot dead three attackers. (RTRS)

Knifeman hold ‘hostages’:

A man armed with a knife is holding employees hostage at a job centre in Newcastle in northeast England, police said Friday.

“Specialist negotiators are at the scene,” Northumbria Police said in a statement, adding that there were no reports of injuries.

Police said student accommodation nearby had been evacuated and a metro station closed as a precaution.

“Officers have attended and found a man armed with a knife had entered the premises and it is believed that several members of staff are being held there. (AFP)

“It is believed the man responsible is known to the Job Centre and this is being treated as an isolated incident at this stage,” police said. (AFP)