No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.
The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully in continuing to sell F-35 parts and components to a global pool, even though some of those components might be used by Israel in Gaza in a way that the government regards as a breach of international law.
Much of the case will turn on the extent to which international law places obligations in domestic law.
Ever since Brexit I think it’d a little late for that.
Brexit was bad, but hopefully we can still work closely together. UK is still finding their footing after Brexit.
USA is a different more fundamental break of trust, which I would hate to see repeated with UK.
In most EU countries USA is now more unpopular than China!
UK is on a route where they are balancing EU and USA against each other, while completely forgetting that it was not EU that wanted the break, and EU is still their friend, and USA is not. just look how USA is treating Canada! It’s insane that UK is looking towards USA considering how unfriendly USA has become even to their closest ally!
The Leave Tory government pretty much aped the first Trump presidency in terms of policies, only as public school educated scions of the moneyed elites they were posh(ish) rather than loud and brash like Trump.
The New Labour government is currently aping the Democrat Party after Trump, only they’re possibly even more rightwing than the Democrats were in that period.
(And overlaying all this there are things like Britain having a far more extreme civil society surveillance system than the US and which, unlike in the US, was not walked back after the Snowden revelations but instaed was rectroactivelly made legal, plus Britain does not have a written Constitution so a simple Parliamentary majority gives close to absolute power).
If the trend continues the next UK Government will be led by Farage or an even more radicalized Boris Johnson trying to tear down whatever little Democracy the UK still has.
The core difference to the US is that Britain is and has been for long far more culturally heavy in “know your place” than the US (it now seems the post-War period of worker rights and a more egalitarian society was the exception, not the rule) and the British moneyed elites are far more dynastic in nature than the ones in the US (we’re talking centuries of upper class status being inherited, not a mere 2 or 3 generations).
What? Really? That guy is so stupid and disgusting I can’t fathom how he has even a single follower.
Shit, I hope you are wrong, because that’s one of the things I was counting on to prevent UK from falling too deep.
I went to the UK in the 00s were I rode the boom, then the 2008 Crash, then Austerity and all the way to Brexit, leaving just before it came into effect.
My opinion of Britain when I moved there was very good, my opinion when I left was the the country had entered the final stage of post-Imperial decay and was fucked. If you look around at nations who were once heading empires (Italy, Egypt, Greece, even Spain and Portugal), IMHO you can get a pretty good idea of were ex-Empires end up in and how long the decay can last.
Corbyn elected leader of the Labour Party was my last hope for that country and the massive campaign to oust him involving pretty much the entire Press and most of the Parliamentary Group of his Party (who were all from the New Labour faction of the party) for me pretty much proved that the entire system is completelly rigged an unable to move anywhere but further rightwards. The behaviour of the New Labour faction after they stole power back from the leftwing of the party - mainly the purges - and subsequently in Government - more rightwing than ever, in some way straying into the far-right - just confirmed that impression.
Frankly given the highly propagandistic Press environment in the UK and what was already a deeply flawed partial implementation of Democracy to begin with, I really can’t see any path were the UK would become merely more like Scandinavia (i.e. more Social Democrat) rather than more Fascist - the tendency of the elites in Britain was always towards Fascism (just look at how much the loved the Nazi ideas back in the 1920s before Germany started invading neighbouring countries, with there even being a picture of the previous queen as a child being taught to do a Nazi salute by her uncle, the then King) and the “know your place” mindset never left the society, and to me all that has been happening since Thatcher - from the destruction of Unions to the capture and consolidation of the Press, down to the capture of the Labour party by the moneyed elites, consolidated by the anti-Corbyn coup and subsequent internal purges - has been the elites in Britain wresting back control by subverting the few working mechanisms of Democracy in Britain.
So far what I’ve expected when I left Britain in disgust after the Leave vote has been happening (though Corby was unexpected and a bit of hope, but the methods used to crush him just confirmed my impression of how thoroughly captured and subverted the system is in Britain), just slower than I expected.
I’m sorry for anybody who is a Leftwinger in the UK and doesn’t even have another nationality to be able to move to a place with an actual Future for themselves and their children.
You make a lot of good points, and I’m reminded that I learned in school that they consider there are 4 classes. UK Royalty, UK upper class and UK lower class and last is all foreigners. This was always a very strange concept to me, and I admit I didn’t really believe it. I thought it was some sort of tongue in cheek saying. This seems to be a lot like American exceptionalism.