UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says he is “disappointed” to see lawmakers quit his party at a time that the country needs to stay united as it gets prepared to leave the European Union (EU).

Seven members of Britain’s main opposition party resigned on Monday, citing Labour’s refusal to effectively confront Tory Prime Minister Theresa May’s push to break the country away from the European Union and its failure to address what they called concerns about anti-Semitism.

“I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945,” he wrote on twitter, referring to the party’s performance during last year’s snap General Election.

In June 2018, May felt confident that she could increase her party’s parliamentary majority in an early vote and ultimately minimize the risks of strong opposition against her Brexit deal with the EU.

But her plans missed the mark by a huge margin as Labour, under Corbyn’s leadership, won a considerable number of new seats and took away the Conservative Party’s majority, forcing May to forge an embarrassing alliance with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to stay in power.

May’s unfortunate gamble came back to haunt her in early January, when a vast majority of MPs, including some Tory and DUP lawmakers, voted down her controversial draft Brexit deal with the EU.

“Labour won people over on a program for the many not the few – redistributing wealth and power, taking vital resources into public ownership, investing in every region and nation, and tackling climate change,” Corbyn reminded the resigned members of his party.

“The Tories are bungling Brexit while Labour has set out a unifying and credible alternative plan. When millions face the misery of Universal Credit, rising crime, homelessness and poverty, now more than ever is the time to bring people together to build a better future for us all,” he added.

Seven members of Britain’s opposition Labour party leave its ranks, citing, what they call, the party’s weak approach towards Brexit and its “failure” to root out “anti-Semitism.”

MPs Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Ann Coffey, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker, and Mike Gapes announced their decision to split on Monday.

This was the biggest split from Labour since1981, when four senior members quit the party. “This has been a very difficult, painful but necessary decision,” Berger said at a press conference in London. Umunna has been promoting calls for a second referendum after one in 2016, which saw 52 percent of voters back leaving the EU.

Leslie claimed that evidence of Labour’s “betrayal” on Brexit was clear to see. MP John Healy warned that move only benefited May and took attention of her handling of Brexit. He told the quitting MPs that their decision weakened efforts to stop a no-deal Brexit, as May has often threatened to do.

Presstv

British Prime Minister Theresa May vows to “battle” in negotiations aimed at divorcing from the EU.

The premier made the comment in an op-ed for Telegraph published Saturday, days after her version of the Brexit dead gained support among in the British parliament.

“When I return to Brussels I will be battling for Britain and Northern Ireland, I will be armed with a fresh mandate, new ideas and a renewed determination to agree a pragmatic solution that delivers the Brexit the British people voted for,” May wrote.

She further hailed the MPs for finally backing her up in dealings with Brussels.

“Significantly, the amendment that MPs voted in favor of carried support from across the Conservative Party,” she added. “My colleagues — who had found themselves in different division lobbies in recent months — stood together, united in support of a single proposition.”

She failed to explain though what she means by the “alternative arrangements” that she would seek to the backstop provision on the Northern Ireland border.

According to Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, “This is not a new concept… The EU is committed to trying to agree alternative arrangements to replace the backstop. We want a comprehensive future relationship in place by the end of 2020 so the backstop is never used. We want to get on with that work once the withdrawal agreement is ratified. Yet there are no credible alternative arrangements, put forward by anyone, that achieve the shared goal of the UK and EU to avoid a hard border.”

Presstv

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the regional leader of Catalonia agreed Thursday to find a solution to the political crisis that has been festering since a failed secession attempt by the region last year.

The agreement was reached in a meeting in Barcelona between Catalan regional President Quim Torra and PM Sánchez, whose Socialist administration has taken a more conciliatory approach to the independence issue than its conservative predecessor.

Following the meeting, their governments issued a joint statement calling for a “commitment for effective dialogue that leads to a political proposal that has the backing of large part of Catalan society.” The statement, which The Associated Press has seen, was read out by the spokeswoman of the Catalan government, Elsa Artadi, after the meeting.

Artadi says that members of the two governments have agreed to meet again in January. The PM plans to hold a Cabinet meeting of his government on Friday in Barcelona, which radical separatist groups are expected to protest.

Sanchez, who also seeks to secure support for his minority government in the northeastern region, will gather his ministers in Barcelona in an attempt to help resolve a political conflict over Catalonia’s independence drive.

National police will be deployed in Barcelona to guard the cabinet meeting amid fears that extreme elements of the independence movement could stoke violence.

Jailed Catalan independence leaders however have called on protesters to demonstrate peacefully. Nine Catalan separatists, who have been jailed and await trial for rebellion, call for a “peaceful protest” during an upcoming cabinet meeting.

A lawyer representing former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and five other Catalan politicians who have been charged in Spain for violent rebellion has appealed to the UN’s Human Rights Committee to help defend their democratic rights.

Nico Krisch denounced a “grave interference in the democratic order” linked to the charges against Puigdemont, who lives in exile in Belgium, as well as Oriol Junqueras, Raul Romeva, Josep Rull, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Turull. The five are being held in pre-trial detention in Spain.

The Catalan politicians have been charged and suspended from office by Spain’s Supreme Court for their roles in organizing an independence referendum in Catalonia 14 months ago. The Spanish and Catalan governments have been at odds since the Catalan Parliament issued an illegal and ineffective declaration of independence last year.

In October 2017, Catalonia unilaterally declared independence, prompting Madrid to take control of the region – which has 7.5 million people and accounts for about a fifth of Spain’s economy – and arrested secessionist leaders.

Source: Presstv

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has said it will do its best to force Prime Minister Theresa May to bring her European Union withdrawal deal to Parliament for a final vote before Christmas.  

“We will be using whatever mechanisms we have at our disposal next week to try and force the government to bring forward that deal for a vote before Christmas,” Labour election coordinator Andrew Gwynne said on Sunday in an interview with the BBC television.

The comments come nearly a week after May decided to put off a planned vote in the House of Commons on her Brexit deal, saying she would try to gain more assurances from the EU about a controversial clause in the deal on the border with Ireland so that it could go through the chamber.

The move met with huge ire from the Labour and other parties in the Commons. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly criticized the postponement while calling May, who went to several trips around Europe, a “runaway prime minister” who wanted to ignore parliament in the Brexit process.

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Gwynne, who is Labour’s policy chief for communities and local government, did not elaborate how his party would force May to come to the chamber with her Brexit deal earlier than she is willing to.

May’s office said on Saturday, after the premier returned from a summit of EU leaders, that a vote on Brexit deal would certainly come before the January-21 deadline imposed by the parliament.

That announcement sparked fears that May was trying to delay the vote until the last moments so that the parliament would have no option other than approving the deal so that Britain could avoid a disorderly exit from the EU on March 29, 2019.

Source: Presstv

A knife-edge vote Friday will determine Angela Merkel’s successor as head of her party after 18 years at the helm, with the German chancellor’s own political fate and legacy on the line. Merkel, the European Union’s most powerful leader, stunned observers in October with the announcement following a state election setback that she would not stand again as chairwoman of her centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU).

After years of turmoil within the party and the electorate over her disputed decision to keep the border open to more than one million asylum seekers, Merkel has said she will leave politics when her term ends in 2021.

Whether she can hold on to power until then will depend in large part on who the CDU elects to replace her at a party conference in Hamburg, with a Merkel loyalist and a longtime nemesis running neck-and-neck. “Sooner or later, whoever becomes the leader of Germany’s biggest party will probably become chancellor,” political scientist Eckhard Jesse of the University of Chemnitz told AFP.

Widely seen as Merkel’s anointed crown princess is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, 56. Known as AKK for short, she is the CDU’s centrist general secretary and former premier of tiny Saarland state. While polls indicate that she is also the favoured choice among German voters and the CDU’s rank-and-file, there are indications she has failed to electrify the 1,001 delegates who will cast ballots in the race against her charismatic main rival, Friedrich Merz.

Merz, 63, a hard-charging corporate lawyer, lost a power struggle to Merkel in 2002 and insiders say he has never forgiven her. He is also viewed as embodying the party’s desire for change in both style and substance after 13 years with Merkel in the chancellery, despite her enduring popularity.

The wild card in the race is Jens Spahn, a 38-year-old openly gay minister in Merkel’s cabinet who long railed against her refugee policy.

Analysts say that a win for either Merz or Spahn would likely bring a swift end to Merkel’s chancellorship, possibly triggering new elections next year.

– ‘Slap in the face’ –

How the delegates will vote is anyone’s guess, with most keeping their cards close to their vests. Nearly all hold political office or party posts. One-third are women.

After more than a decade in the private sector, Merz says his conservative credentials and business savvy make him best placed to win back disaffected voters. But he touched a nerve when he said the CDU, in his absence, had accepted the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during the refugee crisis “shrugging its shoulders”.

“I get icy chills down my spine when I see people running around in this country doing the Hitler salute,” he told one regional conference. Kramp-Karrenbauer, who has criticised some aspects of Merkel’s border policy, shot back that Merz’s accusation was a “slap in the face” for the party’s foot soldiers.

“Pretending you could just say or decide something and then the fight against the AfD would be won is naive,” she told the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

– ‘Like matricide’ –

The CDU remains Germany’s biggest party. But the 33 percent it scored in the September 2017 general election has sunk to around 28 percent in opinion polls as the party suffered losses in a string of regional votes.

While still seen as Europe’s go-to leader on crises from Brexit to Ukraine, Merkel has watched her standing diminish at the top of a loveless “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats (SPD).

They are faring even worse in the polls, as internal divisions over its former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s sweeping labour market reforms continue to fester. CDU stalwarts expect a Merkel nostalgia-fest in Hamburg as the faithful bid a gradual goodbye to the woman who won them four national elections.

But newsweekly Der Spiegel noted that the leadership struggle needed to produce some sort of consensus on Merkel’s legacy if the party wants to avoid the fate of the SPD. “Without a critical reckoning with her era, the CDU will be stuck in an interminable therapy session,” it said. “The CDU has to allow it, even if it seems to many like matricide.”

AFP

In Berlin, President Emmanuel Macron of France renews the call for Europe to do more for its own defense and security, saying the continent cannot “become of plaything of great powers,” days after he irked the US by urging the formation of an independent European army.

In an address on Sunday to the German parliament (Bundestang) in the capital, Berlin, Macron asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to support a range of reforms to strengthen the European Union (EU), saying it was up to France and Germany to help build a more sovereign and efficient Europe fit for the future.

The continent, he said, must not “become a plaything of great powers, must assume greater responsibility for its security and its defense, and must not accept a subordinate role in world politics.”

“Europe and, within it, the Franco-German couple have the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace,” Macron told the lawmakers. “That’s why Europe must be stronger… and win more sovereignty.”

Macron – who became the first French president to address Bundestag in 18 years – highlighted the challenges facing Europe ranging from climate change to migration, speaking of a “Franco-German responsibility” in setting the stage for the “re-founding of Europe.”

He also urged pro-EU forces in the continent to take concrete policy steps in a bid to fend off anti-immigrant, nationalist parties on the rise in several member states.

Macron – who was in Berlin to take part in Germany’s national Remembrance Day for the victims of war and dictatorship – also held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a range of issues, including migration, fixing the euro, Europe’s defense and taxing digital companies.

The two leaders also joined a press conference, during which Merkel agreed with Macron’s assessment that Europe stands “at a crossroads.”

“As those who were born after the [world] war, we are responsible for what we have truly learned,” she said. “As [Macron] said, we are finding our way on many new tasks, and we also want to do this together.”

Merkel also spoke of “how important the German-Franco friendship and co-operation is, and what role it plays in the European context.”

In an idea warmly supported by Merkel, Macron said last week that Europe needed a real army to reduce reliance on the United States for defense, drawing a fusillade of angry tweets by US President Donald Trump.

Trump described Macron’s idea as “very insulting,” saying, “Perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the US subsidizes greatly.”

Trump has long been complaining that his country carries too much of NATO’s defense funding, calling on other members to double the amount of their gross domestic product (GDP) that they contribute to the military alliance.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen insisted Sunday that a joint military force would need not just common equipment and training but also “the political will to resolutely defend European interests when a conflict breaks out.”

France’s Minister for European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau has also told the Journal du Dimanche that “it is not a question of being against the United States but of taking our destiny into our own hands to no longer count on others.”

The prospect of a European army independent of the United States had already been raised by EU President Donald Tusk in May, after Trump engaged in a series of trade disputes with Europe, withdrew from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.

Trump also sparked worries globally last month when he announced he would be pulling the US out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) – which had been signed towards the end of Cold War in 1987 — between the US and the then Soviet Union.

The controversial decision raised fears in Europe of a new arms race, which could put the security of the entire continent in danger.

Meanwhile, Germany and France have apparently struck a deal on a common budget for the EU countries that use the shared euro currency, something Macron pushed for.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the dpa news agency the proposal was to be presented to European finance ministers Monday.

Source: Presstv