In an odd reversal, President Obama went all out to welcome Britain’s newly elected conservative Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday at the White House—this, after getting off to a terrible start last year with Cameron’s Labor Party predecessor Gordon Brown. Whereas Brown was humiliated by the extremely low-key reception accorded him by the new Obama Administration in March of 2009—a reception which did not even include a proper press conference—Prime Minister Cameron got the full court press, as well as superlative praise for the “Special Relationship” from President Obama. Maybe …
Following Thursday’s indecisive election, events in London are moving at a furious pace. In just the past few hours, Gordon Brown – still Prime Minister – has offered to resign to facilitate the creation of a ‘progressive’ coalition government composed of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and a variety of smaller parties. Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. There is even the possibility that the economic crisis now gripping Greece, and threatening to engulf Europe, will lead to a ‘Government of All Talents,’ like the …
Gordon Brown continues to cling desperately to power, in a shameless display of contempt for public opinion, but his days as prime minister are surely numbered. A poll on Sunday showed 68 percent of Britons opposed to Brown remaining in office, and calling on him to resign. The PM held desperate talks over the weekend with Nick Clegg in the vain hope of forming a coalition, but so far the Liberal leader has failed to respond to his advances, preferring to look for a deal with Conservative party leader David …
With about 90 percent of votes counted in the U.K. general election, the Conservative Party has emerged as the biggest party, with over 300 seats projected, but short of an overall majority. The ruling Labour Party has suffered its biggest defeat in decades, and the Liberals have failed to benefit from “Cleggmania.” However, the early indications are that Gordon Brown is still determined to cling to power in a hung parliament, and will try to form a coalition government with the Liberals. This would be disastrous for Britain, and would …
British voters go to the polls on Thursday in the tightest political race in the UK in a generation. Several opinion polls have indicated the strong possibility of a hung parliament, with a Conservative minority government led by David Cameron as prime minister. In order to guarantee passage of legislation under this scenario, the Conservatives would be forced to negotiate with other political parties, significantly weakening the government’s power. Other polls, concentrating on key marginal seats, have pointed to a small Conservative majority, which would give Cameron, if elected, a …
Although the feckless spending of successive Labour Governments has resulted in massive decline for Britain, there is one thing that Gordon Brown got right on the economics front: he denied Tony Blair’s plans to take Britain into the single European currency. Launched in 1999, the Euro has been the bedrock of European elites’ dream for a United States of Europe. And there’s the rub: founding a major economic program on the basis of a supranational political dream meant there was surely trouble ahead. Nowhere is this more visible than in …
The Wall Street Journal reports: President Sarkozy in particular pushed hard [to reveal Tehran's secret facility Thursday]. He had been “frustrated” for months about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to confront Iran, a senior French government official told us, and saw an opportunity to change momentum. But the Administration told the French that it didn’t want to “spoil the image of success” for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde. So the Iran bombshell was pushed …
The polls said it would be bad for Labour. But no one expected it to be this bad. On Thursday, Britons voted in local county elections and elections for the European Parliament. The result was a devastating repudiation of Gordon Brown’s tottering government, and of the cause of European integration. First, the local numbers. England’s divided up into 34 counties. After the elections, the Conservatives control 30 of them. The Liberal Democrats run one county council. The remaining three are not controlled by any one party. There are 2,362 council …
Last week, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling presented the budget for 2009-10. The news for Britain’s hard-pressed armed forces was grim. Labour’s record is already a terrible one. Under the guidance of Gordon Brown, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and now as Prime Minister, the forces have been consistently starved of money and manpower. The most recent budget ensures that this lamentable failure will only become more glaring in the years to come. For 2009-10, the budget of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) will rise by 850 …
As you are aware, the President took quite a bit of heat last month from British and U.S. media outlets, when it was reported that he gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVD, as the official gift of his state visit. It turned out that the DVDs were not compatible with British DVD players, and worse, that the Prime Minister had a vision problem that would make the gifts even more distasteful. Gordon Brown gave President Obama a pen holder carved from the timbers of …
