British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday faced her first nationwide electoral test as she toughens her Brexit position weeks before a crucial general election.
Britain yesterday was to choose thousands of new local councilors in a vote linked to the strength of May’s Conservatives, which opinion polls suggest are on course for a thumping victory in the June 8 parliamentary elections.
Nearly 5,000 local seats were being contested in England, Scotland and Wales, along with eight metropolitan mayoralties.
Experts say that the results should not be used to predict the outcome of next month’s vote, as such elections are normally fought on local issues and are often used to punish the sitting government.
However, the proximity of the general election and the political upheaval caused by last year’s Brexit referendum has created a unique context.
May on March 29 invoked Britain’s formal notice of its intention to part ways with the EU.
Two weeks ago she called the surprise general election to strengthen her mandate as she heads into EU negotiations, and she is well aware that Brexit will be on many voters’ minds.
Polling stations opened at 7am and were to close at 10pm, with results due today.
Speaking outside her Downing Street office on Wednesday, May took aim at Brussels for making “threats against Britain” over the divorce proceedings.
The two sides have clashed over the costs of the exit, prompting May to accuse the EU of toughening its stance in statements “deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election” next month.
Opposition leaders have claimed that the prime minister is using the EU talks as a distraction from other issues, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accusing May of “playing party games with Brexit.”
Labour is polling more than 20 points behind the Conservatives, with the local elections expected to indicate the challenge facing Corbyn’s party ahead of the general election.
“They will provide some vital information about the pattern of support and where parties are performing particularly strongly or weakly,” said Anthony Wells of polling company YouGov.
“The Conservatives are doing very well and that is almost certainly likely to have some spillover into the local elections,” University of Cardiff political science professor Roger Scully said.
However, drawing a national picture from yesterday’s vote will be made harder by the absence of council elections in England’s biggest cities, where Labour is traditionally strong.
“Let’s see what happens. That might be an interesting measure of how things are going more generally, and how accurate the polling is,” a senior Labour source said.
The smaller, pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who were almost wiped out in the 2015 general election after entering a coalition government with the Conservatives, are hoping to pick up some momentum for next month’s vote.
By contrast the UK Independence Party is predicted to lose most of its council seats as it struggles to define itself now that its principal goal — Brexit — is on its way to being achieved.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the local elections will indicate the strength of the ruling Scottish National Party, which has used the Brexit vote to call for a new referendum on independence.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS