United Kingdom
93 pieces tagged “United Kingdom”, newest first.
U.S. and UK Politics Are Mirror Images
It's remarkable how often British and American politics resemble each other; often only the accents differ. Following a disastrous defeat at the hands of Prime Minister David Cameron's Tories, the Labour Party appears ready to elect as its next leader one Jeremy Corbyn, a hardcore leftist, self-described socialist and member of Parliament, who recently compared ISIS to the U.S. military and has called the terrorist group Hamas a "friend." Corbyn also wants to renationalize some British industries and increase taxes on "the rich," who are already paying more than half their earnings in income taxes, as well as a nationwide Value Added Tax of 20 percent.
Boot Camp Not Benefits
Since his party's impressive election victory in May, Prime Minister David Cameron is moving quickly to fulfill his campaign promise to ensure welfare benefits are no longer a way of life for many of his fellow citizens. Instead of open-ended benefits for the unemployed, the government, beginning in April 2017, will require young people between 18 and 21 who don't have jobs, but are collecting welfare, to attend three-week "boot camps" to prepare them for work in a rapidly improving economy. If they refuse, they will be denied benefits if they are unemployed for six months.
The Strange Death of the Center-Left
In 1935 George Dangerfield published "The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914," a vivid account of how Britain's center-left Liberal Party, dominant for a century, collapsed amid conflicts it could not resolve. The Liberal Party had appeared impregnable. Its cabinet in 1910 included Herbert Asquith (in the midst of the longest consecutive prime ministership since the Duke of Liverpool's and until Margaret Thatcher's), and the future wartime leaders David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. But after 1910 the party never won an election again.
Another British Invasion
When music fans think of "the British Invasion" they are referring to '60s bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Britain today, however, faces a different type of invasion. Thousands of migrants, most from North Africa and the Middle East, are storming an ineffective "barricade" in Calais, France, as they attempt to enter England via the Chunnel, a 30-mile rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent, with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. Some of these migrants hide on top of or inside of trucks or cling to the trains that travel beneath the English Channel. Some have died on the journey.
