Boris the Primer

That creepy-crawly guy in Britain with the messy Beatle haircut just became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson assumed the top job in the mother county yesterday, and his pugnacious, uncultured approach to politics may be the only British thing that's more difficult to swallow than mutton.  Johnson has long been compared to Trump for his hair and his attitude, and some of his beliefs are in line with the Trumpster as well.  He wants to make the United Kingdom great again, which means withdrawing from the European Union and making his country a force to be reckoned with once agin, even though he's getting off to a shaky start as he's having the same pesky trouble with Khamenei and Rouhani in Iran over harassed British oil tankers that Anthony Eden had with Nasser in Egypt over control of the Suez Canal.  He has to deal with Iran while honoring the nuclear deal brokered primarily by the United States, which has since withdrawn from said deal, but he needs to repair cracks in the 150-year special relationship with the U.S. brought about by differences between Trump and Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.

And then there's Brexit.  May couldn't get approval for a deal that allows Britain to withdraw from the European Union that maintains Britain's obligation to abide by trade and border-crossing rules set by the EU that Britain cannot change, nor could she secure a deal that allows Britain to get out without having to adhere to EU riles at all - a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit.  Johnson has vowed to get the U.K. out of the EU even of it means no deal at all - something May was skittish about.  He's ready to plunge right ahead (or "straightaway," as the Brits like to say) like a bull in a china shop - he's fired half of the Tory Cabinet - and the next couple of months and years are going to mean anarchy in the U.K. like the Sex Pistols couldn't imagine.

Good luck, Brits, you're going to need it.  Now you'll know what it's like to live in a country run by a lunatic like we Yanks already do.

Anarchy In the U.K. (Again)

Brexit is coming.  An the United Kingdom is completely unprepared for it.

The British Parliament has been trying to find a deal that would allow the U.K. to leave the European Union with some sort of financial or economic ties with that bloc, and every effort to come up with a deal that would spare the British people an abrupt transition to being left on its own has failed. The U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union this coming Friday (April 12) and Tory Prime Minister Theresa May is scrambling to get a deal working with . . . the Labour opposition. Led by a guy some of called a Marxist.  Yeah, that'll work out fine.

Many of the British people who support Brexit pine for an imperial past, a strain that has persisted  long after the Empire was dismantled.  People saw that strain fifty years ago when the British sent troops to put down a pro-independence faction in one of their remaining colonies . . . the West Indian island of Anguilla.  It was obvious when Margaret Thatcher allied herself so closely to Ronald Reagan and dragged her heels negotiating the fate of Hong Kong with China.  And of course, there was the Falklands War.  Britain is still a global power in terms of its influence and multilateral activity, but it's going to end up being a global pretender, the way things are going with a backward scheme like Brexit.

The only consolation I get from watching the Brexit controversy is that there's at least one national government out in the world as screwed up as the American government.    

Well, THAT Was Weird . . .

Former FBI director James Comey's testimony about Donald Trump in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee this past Thursday was pretty damning, showing how the Trump White House is more off base than we thought and leaving a lot of people to think that Trump's days in the Presidency are numbered.  Especially after Comey told of Trump having him alone in the White House to tell him to go easy on then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.  But while partisan attitudes on the Senate Intelligence Committee may be softening, partisanship outside the committee may be hardening. Trump supporters found Comey to be lacking in credibility, and while he suggested the possibility of obstruction of justice involving the investigation into collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, CNN's Chris Cillizza has noted that Trump's "hope" that the  investigation would get dropped, isn't the same as Trump flat-out telling Comey to drop it.  But Trump's pressure on Comey and Comey's recounting of the incidents of pressure don't look good for Trump.  Nor does it look good for Trump when he suggests that Comey is lying.

And why is John McCain still in the Senate?  He turns 81 this year, and he would be enjoying retirement right now if he and not Barack Obama had been elected to the first of two terms as President in 2008, and so he should just go back to Arizona and put his feet up and toss a cold one while looking back on a distinguished career in public service.  Instead he's still in the Senate, and he was so off his game he suggested at one point that the FBI should investigate whether Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians.  How did she collude with Vladimir Putin?  To have Trump win so she could blame her loss on Jill Stein?

McCain also referred to the fired FBI director as "President Comey," which may have given the old G-man ideas.

McCain sought to clarify his line of questioning after the fact.  "What I was trying to get at," he said, "was whether Mr. Comey believes that any of his interactions with the President rise to the level of obstruction of justice.  In the case of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails, Mr. Comey was willing to step beyond his role as an investigator and state his belief about what ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would conclude about the evidence. I wanted Mr. Comey to apply the same approach to the key question surrounding his interactions with President Trump - whether or not the President’s conduct constitutes obstruction of justice. While I missed an opportunity in today’s hearing, I still believe this question is important, and I intend to submit it in writing to Mr. Comey for the record."

I may intend to submit in writing a request for Comey to run for office - any office.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Theresa May appears to have lost her Tory majority in Parliament, she may lose her office, and by calling a snap election in Britain, she may have lost her mind.  This may put an end to Brexit. But Britain will still be in the Paris Agreement.

Oh yeah, record heat is on tap for my area this week . . . 

London Calling

Twenty seventeen won't be remembered as a year of love, what with the terror attacks in London and the growing bitterness in the campaigns for the parliamentary election in the United Kingdom this Thursday.  Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives, incidentally,  have slipped to a one-point lead in the polls over Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. 

May had been Home Secretary in the Cameron Cabinet, which put her in charge of counter-terrorism.  Now, after three terror attacks in Britain on her watch as Prime Minister, she's declared that enough is enough.  It doesn't look good for someone who should have dealt this problem long ago, and Labourites know it.

A Labour win on Thursday would be a huge upset.  It would not only be a rejection of Tory values and a loss of confidence in the Conservatives' ability to handle internal security, it would put in power a more progressive government that would work more in concert with continental Europe even as Brexit proceeds - and form a new paradigm of resistance against the United States.  

We all just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which kicked of the Summer of Love in 1967, but there's no love to go around fifty years later.  Islamic extremists hate the West, there's bad blood between Labour and the Tories in Britain (as well as between the Democrats and the Republicans in America), Europeans have learned to distrust the United States, and Trump has learned to hate them back - especially the Muslim mayor of London for how he's handled terrorism.  "Love trumps hate?"  Boy, was that slogan wrong.  But then, the Summer of Love itself wasn't so much a love fest, what with young soldiers dying in Vietnam and racial resentment exploding in American cities in the form of riots.

Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust? :-O           

May In June

After denying that she would seek an early election in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May is now doing just that, calling Parliament to stand for a vote in June in an effort to shore up public support for her Conservative (Tory) Party.

May wants a larger majority in the House of Commons for the Tories to strengthen Britain's position going into negotiations with the European Union over British withdrawal from that body.   She doesn't have a solid mandate with the current Tory caucus, and she hopes that she can put Labour aside for awhile, as that party is spectacularly weak despite - or even because of - underfunded social programs and the socialistic Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.

Right now, the only thing that's stopping May from getting that solid Conservative majority she wants is the party of the Liberal Democrats, a left-of-center group that opposes a hard, clean break from the European Union and demanding a "Brexit" strategy that will produce "a Britain that is open, tolerant and united."  They can do it, too; they forced the formation of a coalition government in 2010 after the Conservatives failed to gain a majority in Parliament, which involved a lot of compromising to get anything done.

As for May, the shock was not that she broke her promise to avoid another election until 2020 but that she broke it so soon.

European politics are about to get even more interesting.