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British minister denies treachery as he pitches to be next PM (Reuters) - Justice Secretary Michael Gove pitched yesterday to be the prime minister to take Britain out of the EU, a day after he destroyed the chances of another frontrunner in what some colleagues called an act of treachery. Gove’s decision on Thursday to throw his hat in the ring to replace David Cameron, who is standing down after Britons voted to leave the European Union last week, upturned British politics after he had previously said he would back Boris Johnson. His comment that Johnson, with whom he had campaigned across the country to secure the vote for Brexit, was not fit to lead effectively ended the popular former London mayor’s hopes. Five candidates are now hoping to replace Cameron, with interior minister Theresa May the favourite with bookmakers. Ruling Conservative Party lawmakers will whittle the field down to two, before a final decision is made by party members with the new leader in place in early September. The decision to quit the EU has cost Britain its top credit rating, pushed the pound to its lowest level against the dollar since the mid-1980s and wiped a record $3 trillion off global shares. EU leaders are scrambling to prevent further unraveling of a bloc that helped guarantee peace in post-war Europe. “I have to say I never thought I’d ever be in this position. I did not want it, indeed I did almost everything not to be a candidate for the leadership of this party,” Gove said in a speech in central London as he launched his campaign. Colleagues in the ruling Conservative Party who backed Johnson have poured oppobrium on Gove. Johnson himself hinted he saw it as treason, hiding a quote from Shakespeare’s play about political murder, “Julius Caesar”, in his speech announcing his decision not
Saturday July 02, 2016
Kaieteur News
Britain’s Justice Secretary Michael Gove to stand on Thursday. Britain’s biggest-selling tabloid the Sun said Johnson had been “Brexecuted”. “There is a very deep pit reserved in Hell for such as he. #Gove”, Conservative lawmaker Jake Berry wrote on Twitter in a message he later deleted. Attempting to reach out to his party, Gove said he was driven by conviction and not ambition, and he had concluded Johnson was not the right man for the top job. “NO CHARISMA” “I was so very reluctant because I know my limitations. Whatever charisma is I don’t have it,” he said. “Whatever glamor may be, I don’t think anyone could ever associate me with it.” As one of the leading Leave campaigners, Gove said the next prime minister should be someone who supported exiting the EU, a swipe at May who, like Cameron, was in the Remain camp. May now says she will implement the voters’ will and negotiate to leave: “Brexit means Brexit,” she said at the launch of her own bid on Thursday. A party stalwart whose six years in charge of the lawand-order portfolio is the longest tenure for a century in what is often described as the trickiest cabinet job, May has swiftly emerged as the favorite in a field without Johnson. Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, a strong voice for
Brexit, backed her on Friday as the only one out of five candidates for Conservative Party leader who was up to the job. The other three are the pensions secretary, a rightwing former defense secretary and a junior minister in the energy department. Gove said if he were leader, he wanted extensive preliminary talks before Britain invoked article 50, the formal process for leaving the EU, and did not expect this to occur before the end of the year. He also promised to cut immigration with the introduction of a points system and to end free movement of people from EU countries. European leaders say Britain must retain free movement if it wants access to the EU single market. Alongside the battle to lead the Conservative Party, the main opposition Labour Party has also turned on itself, with most of its lawmakers in parliament having voted to withdraw support for party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a leftwinger. Party opponents accuse him of leading a half-hearted campaign to stay in the EU, and say he is too weak to win a general election if the new Conservative leader’s government falls. He says he draws his mandate from grassroots activists and will not step aside. The political vacuum in both major parties has added to the chaos at a time when Britain is facing its biggest constitutional change since its empire dissolved in the decades after World War Two. Labour politicians had been expected to mount a challenge to Corbyn’s party leadership this week, but the announcement appears to have been postponed until next week, with some hoping he can be persuaded to step aside.
Putin hints Russia will react if Finland joins NATO (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin suggested yesterday Russia could move its troops closer to the Finnish-Russian border if Finland joins NATO and called for measures to improve conflict prevention over the Baltic. Finnish armed forces “would become part of NATO’s military infrastructure, which overnight would be at the borders of the Russian Federation”, Putin said after meeting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. “Do you think we will keep it as it is: our troops at 1,500 (kilometers, 900 miles) away?” Putin’s first visit to Finland since the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014 comes amid increased Russian and NATO activity in the Baltic region, and with the militarily neutral Finland and neighboring Sweden increasing their co-operation with NATO. It also comes a week before a NATO summit in Warsaw. “NATO perhaps would gladly fight with Russia until the last Finnish soldier,” Putin said. “Do you guys need it? We don’t. We don’t want it.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin gestures during his joint press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto yesterday in Naantali, Finland. (Reuters) But it is your call.” Airspace over the Baltic has been the arena for a rash of close e n c o u n t e r s b e tween Russian and Western aircraft in recent months, and the former Soviet Baltic states have called on NATO to step up air defences in the region. Putin and Niinisto called for measures to improve security, with the Finnish president urging that no military planes should fly over the Baltic with identification devices switched off.
“We all know the risk with these flights and I have suggested that we should agree that transponders are used on all flights in the Baltic Sea region,” Niinisto said. Putin said Russian planes flew at times with identifying transponders off, but NATO planes did it much more often. He said Russia would talk to NATO about increasing mutual trust and improving conflict prevention at the Russia-NATO council meeting that will take place after the NATO summit.
Australia votes in dead-heat polls as PM seeks mandate for reform Australia votes in a deadheat general election today, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull warning of economic chaos if his gamble on an early poll backfires and leaves him without the outright majority he needs to enact major reforms. The leader of Australia’s conservative Liberal Party-led coalition prompted the election by dissolving both houses of parliament in May, blaming intransigent independents in the upper house Senate for blocking his agenda. Turnbull, acknowledging that the contest was “really close”, on Friday urged voters not to make a protest vote. “This is a time to treat your vote as though that is the single vote that will determine the next government,” he told reporters in Sydney. Turnbull argued that minor parties, possibly in a coalition with center-left Labour, could not be trusted to manage an economy hampered by the first mining downturn in a century and balance public finances after years of deficits. Turnbull’s coalition is facing a strong challenge from Labour, as well as from inde-
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pendents and minor parties like the Greens which could win enough seats to hold the balance of power in the Senate or force a minority government in the lower house. A Fairfax/Ipsos poll published yesterday showed Labour and the coalition locked in a dead heat at 5050, well within the 2.6 percent margin of error for the survey of 1,377 respondents taken between June 26-29. The Murdoch-owned Galaxy polling agency showed a similar outcome, with the government faring slightly better on 51-49 on a first party-preferred basis after the
distribution of preference votes from minor parties to the two main contenders. Turnbull’s own grip on power appeared tenuous, with the Fairfax poll showing 27 percent of voters intended to vote for a party other than the coalition or Labor. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon, whose party is fielding almost 50 candidates, could also emerge with influence. So, too, could far-right parties, including Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which have campaigned on anti-immigration, anti-Muslim agendas.