Britain’s opposition Conservatives started their party conference believing they were odds-on to form the next government but ended it on Wednesday with their lead in the polls shrinking.
Many Tories will have gone home fearing that the economic crisis that dominated the four-day annual gathering may have given fresh impetus to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour government.
At times, the center-right Conservatives looked as if they were running to keep up with events.
Leader David Cameron was forced to rip up the agenda in response to the fast-changing financial picture, making two unscheduled speeches on the economy and dedicating a chunk of his keynote speech to it as well.
Difficult times lay ahead, he admitted, and he was “a man with a plan, not a miracle cure.”
As Cameron’s party has looked united, Brown has faced a bid by a group of Labour lawmakers to force him into a leadership election, but the prime minister bounced back with a speech underlining his experience last week.
As a result, after leading Labour by more than 20 points a few weeks ago, the Conservatives’ lead has been cut to 12 points, a ComRes poll for the Independent newspaper showed on Tuesday, with an election due by 2010.
“You can’t prove you’re ready to be prime minister — and it would be arrogant to pretend you can,” Cameron said. “The best you can do is tell people who you are and the way you work; how you make decisions and then live with them.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
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