УКРОПИ

Report: May Partner Insists on Role in Post-Brexit Trade Talks

The Northern Irish party that props up British Prime Minister Theresa May’s minority government is demanding a seat at post-Brexit trade talks as its price for supporting her twice-defeated divorce deal, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

The Democratic Unionist Party also wants a guarantee that Northern Ireland will be treated no differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, the newspaper said.

“We are determined that Brexit should happen in accordance with the referendum result, but the only way it can happen which is acceptable to us is if the United Kingdom is treated as one,” DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds told The Sunday Telegraph. “The government is now focused on this key issue, but political statements or pledges are not enough.” 

Earlier, May warned lawmakers that unless they approved her twice-defeated Brexit divorce deal, Britain’s exit from the European Union could face a long delay and could involve taking part in European Parliament elections. 

After 2½ years of tortuous divorce negotiations with the EU, the final outcome is still uncertain with options including a long delay, exiting with May’s deal, a disorderly exit without a deal, or even another referendum. 

An ultimatum

May has issued Brexit supporters a clear ultimatum: Ratify her deal by a European Council summit March 21 or face a delay to Brexit way beyond June 30 that would open up the possibility that the entire divorce could be ultimately thwarted. 

Negotiation of a new deal “would mean a much longer extension — almost certainly requiring the United Kingdom to participate in the European Parliament elections in May,” she told The Sunday Telegraph.

“The idea of the British people going to the polls to elect MEPs three years after voting to leave the EU hardly bears thinking about. There could be no more potent symbol of Parliament’s collective political failure.”

EU leaders will consider pressing Britain to delay Brexit by at least a year to find a way out of the domestic maelstrom, though there is shock and growing impatience at the political chaos in London. 

Her deal, an attempt to keep close relations with the EU while leaving the bloc’s formal structures, was defeated by 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15 and by 149 votes on March 12. 

But May continues to fight to build support for her plan, which is expected to put before lawmakers for a third time next week, possibly on Tuesday.

To get it through Parliament, the prime minister must win over dozens of Brexit-supporting rebels in her own Conservative Party — and the Democratic Unionist Party. 

The DUP has voted against May’s plan because of concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop, which is an insurance policy aimed at maintaining an open border between the British province of Northern 

Ireland and EU member Ireland.
…

Thousands of Catalan Separatist Supporters Protest in Madrid

Thousands of supporters of Catalan independence marched through central Madrid on Saturday to protest the trial of 12 separatist leaders who face years in prison for their role in organizing a failed independence bid from Spain in 2017.

Demonstrators, many who made the journey from the northwestern Catalonia region for the protest, waved Catalan flags and carried signs reading “Self-determination is not a crime.”

Protest organizers put the turnout at 120,000 while police gave a figure of 18,000. 

Tensions between Madrid and Barcelona have thawed since the political crisis triggered by Catalonia’s independence declaration in late 2017, but the trial of 12 separatist leaders for their role in the secession bid and events leading up to it has been one of several sticking points to derail negotiations. 

The 12 are on trial in Madrid on charges ranging from rebellion to misuse of funds, which they deny. 

The Catalan crisis is set to play a major role in April 28 elections, with three right-leaning parties — the conservative People’s Party (PP), the center-right Ciudadanos and the relatively new far-right Vox party — calling for Spain to take a tougher position with separatists. 

Polls show the support of Catalan parties may prove decisive if Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is to form a government after the vote. Most polls indicate Sanchez’s Socialists winning the most seats but falling short of a parliamentary majority. 

Sanchez came to power by winning a confidence motion last year with the support of Catalan separatist parties but was unable to secure their backing for his budget, effectively dooming the project and leading him to call an early election. 
…

Serbian Protesters Enter State TV Headquarters in Belgrade

Protesters demonstrating against the autocratic rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic burst into state-run TV headquarters in Belgrade on Saturday to criticize a broadcaster whose reporting they consider highly biased. 

Riot police arrived at the scene in the Serbian capital and were trying to evict dozens of people, including some opposition leaders, who had entered the downtown building. Some protest leaders said they wouldn’t leave the building until they were given time on the main evening news broadcast.

This was the first major incident after months of peaceful protests against populist leader Vucic. The demonstrators are demanding his resignation, free elections and media, and more democracy.

The protests began after thugs beat up an opposition politician in November. A former extreme nationalist, Vucic has said he wants to lead Serbia into the European Union. 

Some 10,000 others also demonstrated Saturday against long-serving Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica.

Djukanovic and his party have ruled Montenegro virtually unchallenged for three decades. He led the country to independence from much larger Serbia in 2006 and defied Russia to join NATO in 2017. 

Both Vucic and Djukanovic have rejected calls to resign.
…

Report: North Korea Dissidents Behind Embassy Raid in Spain

A dissident organization committed to overthrowing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was behind a raid on the North Korean embassy in Spain last month, The Washington Post reported Friday, quoting people familiar with the planning and execution of the mission.

The newspaper, which did not further identify its sources, identified the group as Cheollima Civil Defense, which also goes by the name Free Joseon. It said the group came to prominence in 2017 after evacuating a nephew of Kim from Macau when potential threats to his life surfaced.

The Post’s sources said the group did not act in coordination with any governments and U.S. intelligence agencies would have been especially reluctant to be involved given the sensitive timing of the mission ahead of a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi from Feb. 27-28.

According to Spanish media accounts, broadly confirmed by a Spanish Foreign Ministry source, a group of unidentified men entered North Korea’s embassy in Madrid on Feb. 22, bound and gagged staff, and drove off four hours later with computers.

There has been no claim of responsibility.

The dissident group identified by The Washington Post could not be reached for comment and its purported website has made no mention of any involvement in the raid.

On Feb. 25 the website posted a statement saying the group had “received a request for help from comrades in a certain Western country” and that “it was a highly dangerous situation but (we) responded.” The group said an important announcement would be coming that week, but no details of any operation have been released.

The Madrid embassy is where North Korea’s chief working-level negotiator in talks with the United States, Kim Hyok Chol, was ambassador until 2017.

Intelligence experts said computers and phones reportedly seized in the raid would be eagerly sought by foreign intelligence agencies given the information they might contain on Kim Hyok Chol and others.

Asked about The Washington Post report, the U.S. State Department referred queries to the Spanish authorities. The CIA declined to comment.
…

Trans Debate Rages Around World, Pitting LGBT+ Community Against Itself

As British politicians wrestle with Brexit, Britain’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community — like others around the world — is grappling with a potential split of its own.

Can the coalition of allies, which traces its roots back to the early days of gay liberation in the 1960s, survive in its current form?

Caught in the crossfire between trans activists and feminists over the nature of what it is to be a woman, calls for a break-up of the longstanding LGBT+ alliance back to its constituent elements are starting to emerge.

At the heart of the increasingly toxic debate is whether trans rights are compatible with those of other women, particularly in terms of access to single-sex spaces, such as rape crisis centers or women’s refuges.

On one side, trans campaigners say that transgender women are women and deserve equal access. On the other, some feminists and lesbians disagree, making the distinction between natal and trans women.

The result has been a progressively poisonous row that threatens to tear the LGBT+ community apart.

Last year, a group called Get the L Out staged a protest against what they saw as “lesbian erasure” — or lesbians being written out of history — at the beginning of London’s annual Pride march.

“The only way to fight lesbian erasure within ‘LGBT+’ groups is to … create an autonomous and strong lesbian community and build alliances with all feminists willing to fight against male domination,” a spokeswoman said in an email.

Yet, while the debate has raged with particular ferocity in Britain, other countries have also seen tempers flare.

In New Zealand, a lesbian group said on Wednesday that it had been banned from Wellington Pride on Saturday for “not being inclusive enough” of trans people.

On Twitter, Charlie Montague, spokeswoman for the Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa, said the group would now organize “a lesbian-only event of our own.”

Wellington Pride has not replied to a request for comment.

And in the United States, lesbian activist Julia Beck was last year voted off the Baltimore city LGBTQ commission after clashes with fellow commissioners over trans issues.

Community must remain together

At an event organized by campaign group LBQWomen in the Victorian Gothic splendor of one of the British parliament’s grand state rooms, Baroness Barker, LGBT spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrat party in the House of Lords, is adamant.

The community must remain together, she told Reuters.

“It matters, because we [LGBT+ people] are all outsiders and [on our own] we can be picked off by the forces that are against us,” Barker said.

However, she added a caveat.

“I stand alongside my gay brothers, as I always have done, but there comes a time when lesbians and bisexual women have to be able to come to the fore,” she said, referring to one of the aims of the LBQWomen event.

But for many, the trans debate is at the heart of the matter.

The tension partly stems from ignorance on the part of the LGB community about the issues faced by trans people, said Michelle Ross, founder of cliniQ, which provides sexual health services to the trans community and others.

“There’s a lack of awareness and there always has been in the LGB community,” she said. “Things have changed for the better … but there is some kickback around not seeing trans people as part of the LGBTQI community.”

National debate

In recent months, the debate has spilled out of social media and onto the letters pages of Britain’s national newspapers, drawing in characters as disparate as Star Trek actor George Takei and former British cabinet minister Lord Mandelson.

In October, a group of high-powered campaigners took aim at Britain’s leading LGBT+ charity, Stonewall, which they saw as stifling debate over the issue.

Last month, chief executive Ruth Hunt said she would step down in August after a tenure marked by debates that she said have “not always been a comfortable conversation” as transgender rights took greater prominence.

“We will only make progress if we stand together,” said Paul Twocock, Stonewall’s executive director of campaigns and strategy.

“We are a diverse community made up of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, who come from different faiths, who live in different neighborhoods and do different jobs.

“But we are united in our desire to create a world where we can be free to be ourselves.”

The debate has polarized society at large, and pitted former allies within the LGBT+ movement against one another, said singer and actor Mzz Kimberley.

“Unfortunately, some parts of the LGBT+ community are not coming together,” she told Reuters.

“There are many different communities under the LGBT+ umbrella, but you also have [the] radical feminist community who are very against the trans community. You even have parts of the gay community who are against the trans community.

“It’s quite sad as we fought so hard to establish where we are at the moment and there are many who are starting to fight with each other.”

Gay men support trans colleagues

On Thursday, more than 70 prominent gay men, including YouTube star Riyadh Khalaf and Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, backed an open letter from Britain’s equalities tsar Anthony Watson to rally together and support the trans community.

“One of the things I find flabbergasting is that we wouldn’t enjoy the rights we have today without trans activists,” Watson told Reuters, citing the involvement of campaigners at the start of gay liberation in the late 1960s.

“For gay men to sit silent on the sidelines and say it is not our battle is tremendously arrogant.

“And guess what?” Watson added. “[The bigots] are coming for our rights next.”

Tensions at play

Sport has become the latest frontline.

Tennis star Martina Navratilova and British Olympic medalist swimmer Sharron Davies both spoke out recently in support of more research into what they saw as competitive advantages for trans women.

Others have countered that the testosterone-blocking effects of hormone therapy undergone during transition would negate any advantage.

For many, the debate is reminiscent of how gay men and lesbians were portrayed by the media in the 1970s and ’80s when headlines warned of a “gay plague” at the advent of HIV/AIDS and similar concerns were raised about bathrooms and changing rooms.

“Rights can easily slip backwards,” said Watson.

But the question many are now asking is what is next for the LGBT+ community? Calls for a break-up may remain on the fringes, but concerns for its future are growing.

For the Lib Dems’ Barker, the current tensions are signs that the 50-year-old gay and trans community needs to address concerns from both sides.

“We should start to create spaces in which — safely — the LGBT+ community can have arguments and differences,” she said.

“And we need to do it so we’re not giving ground to those who are doing us down.

“We’re a community that is 50 years old and we are maturing. We should be big enough to do this.”
…

UN Honors 21 Staff Killed in Ethiopia Jet Crash

The United Nations held a memorial ceremony honoring the lives of 21 U.N. staff members who died Sunday when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after leaving Addis Ababa.

Michael Moller, the director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva, spoke with sadness and pride Friday about the passion, dedication and expertise of the young professionals and seasoned officials who were among the 157 victims of the crash.

The U.N. staff members aboard the plane were headed to a major U.N. environment conference in Nairobi. 

“They were people like Michael Ryan from the World Food Program, who fought the Ebola outbreak, helped Rohingya refugees, helped in countless other places,” Moller said. “I was touched by what his mother said on Irish television about him: ‘He tried to do the best for others. He was,’ she said, ‘our hero.’ And that is, I believe, true for every one of our colleagues. They are all our heroes.” 

Prisca Chaoui, who spoke on behalf of the U.N. staff, called the tragedy one of the most serious to have befallen the United Nations.

“The 21 staff members who were taken away from us without the time to bid farewell to their loved ones or to their colleagues belonged to 12 specialized agencies and to one peacekeeping mission.  Every day, we learn a little more about them and discover what extraordinary women and men they were,” Chaoui said through an interpreter.

Previous tragedies

Tragedy has struck the U.N. family before. In 2003, a terrorist attack on the U.N. office in Baghdad killed 22 staff members. In 2007, 17 staff members died in an attack in Algiers. In 2011, an air crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo killed 33 people, many of them from the U.N. staff. 

Chaoui said it was important to celebrate the lives of these colleagues and to recognize the heavy price some people pay to serve the United Nations and its ideals.
…

Trump Wades Into Brexit Debate Again

On the day of a critical vote by British lawmakers to delay departure from the European Union, U.S. President Donald Trump again waded into the contentious debate on Brexit. He promised a “very large trade deal” with the UK- and threatened the European Union on trade. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
…

Human Rights Agency Rejects Assange Complaint Against Ecuador

An international human rights organization has turned down a request by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that Ecuador, which has sheltered him for more than six years at its embassy in London, ease the conditions it has imposed on his residence there.

A spokeswoman for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is linked to the Organization of American States, said the group rejected Assange’s complaint.

Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson had no immediate comment.

Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation. That probe was later dropped, but Assange fears he could be extradited to face charges in the United States, where federal prosecutors are investigating WikiLeaks.

He says Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and has put pressure on him to leave by requiring him to pay for his medical bills and phone calls, as well as clean up after his pet cat.

He had sought the support of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in his case against Ecuador. While the commission did not back Assange, it said it reminded Ecuador of international law that no state should deport, return or extradite someone to another country where that person might face human rights abuses.

A friend who regularly visits Assange says he privately complains that Ecuador’s government recently replaced Embassy diplomats sympathetic to Assange with officials who are much less friendly.

Last year, U.S. federal prosecutors in the state of Virginia mistakenly made public a document saying that Assange had been secretly indicted. Officials have since declined to confirm or deny he has been charged.

U.S. federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have maintained a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks. One source said it includes a probe into leaks of Central Intelligence Agency documents to the WikiLeaks website.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Alexandria ordered former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to be jailed for contempt after she refused to testify about WikiLeaks before the grand jury.
…

Poland’s Catholic Church: 382 Priests Abused 625 Minors

Poland’s Catholic Church authorities revealed Thursday they have recorded cases of 382 clergymen who have abused 625 victims under the age of 18 since 1990.

The figure includes 198 priests and friars who abused minors under 15 years old and 184 clergy who abused victims between 15 and 18, according to Wojciech Sadlon, head of the church’s Institute of Statistics.

In both confirmed and unconfirmed cases, there were 345 victims under age 15 and 280 victims between 15 to 18. The crimes occurred from 1990 through June of last year, Sadlon told a news conference. More than 58 percent of the victims were male.

Archbishop Wojciech Polak, the primate of Poland, expressed “pain, shame and the sense of guilt that such situations took place.”

Authorities said in 25 percent of the cases before church courts, the clergymen were defrocked and in 52 percent of the cases they had their duties limited and were banned from working with children. Acquittals amounted to 10 percent of the cases and 13 percent of the cases were discontinued.

Church leaders said the cases call for a change in the way that vocational seminaries educate clergymen.  

The figures were released following a three-day session of Poland’s Episcopate in Warsaw that discussed abuse and ways of protecting children. The news came just weeks after Pope Francis convened church leaders from around the world to the Vatican, where they discussed how to stop sex abuse by clergy. 

Church leaders in predominantly Catholic Poland have previously admitted they knew that some priests had abused minors in Poland but did not reveal how many.

Compensation for victims

A private foundation supporting victims of abuse has given Francis a list of more than 90 court verdicts concerning priests in Poland and over 300 cases of alleged abuse. The “Have No Fear” foundation on Thursday criticized the Episcopate’s revelation, saying it lacked words of apology or any mention about compensation for victims.

Despite the millions in compensation paid out to victims by Catholic authorities in other countries, Polish church leaders argue that the church as an institution has no obligation to compensate victims because the crimes were committed by individual persons.

Last month, a statue of a prominent Solidarity-era priest was torn down at night in the northern city of Gdansk amid allegations that the late Rev. Henryk Jankowski, respected for his pro-democracy activity in the 1980s, abused minors. It was later officially removed from the Rev. Jankowski Square, which was also renamed.

Poland’s Catholic church has the support of the country’s conservative government and enjoys special respect in the nation due to its role in preserving Poland’s national identity during World War II and under decades of communist rule.
…

British MPs Overwhelmingly Back Brexit Delay

British lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Thursday to seek a delay in Britain’s exit from the European Union, setting the stage for Prime Minister Theresa May to renew efforts to get her divorce deal approved by parliament next week.

Lawmakers approved by 412 votes to 202 a statement setting out the option to request a short delay if a Brexit deal can be agreed by March 20 — or a longer delay if no deal can be agreed in time.

Just 15 days before Britain is due to leave the European Union, May is using the threat of a long delay to push Brexit supporters in her Conservative Party to finally back her deal.

A new vote on her deal is likely next week, when those lawmakers will have to decide whether to back a deal they feel does not offer a clean break from the EU, or accept that Brexit could be watered down or even thwarted by a lengthy delay.

Earlier, lawmakers voted by 334 to 85 against a second referendum on EU membership. Most opposition Labour lawmakers did not back the measure, and even campaigners for a so-called People’s Vote said the time was not yet right for parliament to vote on the matter.

The government narrowly survived an attempt to give lawmakers control of the parliamentary agenda on March 20 with the aim of forcing a discussion of alternative Brexit options at a later date.

May’s authority hit an all-time low this week after a series of humiliating parliamentary defeats and rebellions. But she has made clear her plan is still on the agenda, despite twice being rejected by an overwhelming majority in parliament, in January and again Tuesday.

May’s spokesman said earlier Thursday that she would put her Brexit deal, struck after two-and-a-half years of negotiations with the EU, to another vote “if it was felt that it were worthwhile.”

Seeking to win over dissenters, she has given rebellious Conservative lawmakers a thinly-veiled warning that a failure to back her plan could mean no Brexit at all.

Britons voted by 52-to-48 percent in a 2016 referendum to leave the EU, a decision that has not only divided the main political parties but also exposed deep rifts in British society.

Sterling has swung more wildly this week than at any point since 2017, rising from below $1.30 to a nine-month high of almost $1.34 as investors bet Britain would avoid a no-deal Brexit.
…

Trump Jumps Into Brexit Debate — Again

After telling reporters he would stay in his lane and avoid commenting on the contentious British exit from the European Union, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday immediately did just the opposite.

Alongside Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office, Trump declared that Brexit is “actually tearing a lot of countries apart.”

Trump also lamented he was “surprised at how badly it has all gone from the standpoint of negotiating.”

The president said he had advised British Prime Minister Theresa May how to negotiate her country’s divorce from the EU, but “she didn’t listen to that.”

Asked by a reporter if he believes there should be a second public referendum on Brexit in Britain, Trump replied he does not think that would be possible and it would be “unfair to the people who won.”

In 2016, Britons who desired to remain in the EU were narrowly outvoted by those choosing to depart the 28-member state, political and economic union.

The issue of the United Kingdom border with the Republic of Ireland is one of Brexit’s most complex points, noted Trump.

“I’d like to see that whole situation with Brexit work out,” Trump added.

After Brexit, “we can do a very big trade deal with the U.K.,” noted Trump.

He also warned of tariffs being applied on the EU if trade talks with the United States falter.

“If they don’t talk to us, we’re going to do something that’s very severe economically,” Trump again warned.

Trump, during the traditional St. Patrick’s Day seasonal meeting here between the leaders of the United States and Ireland, then turned to Varadkar, offering him an opportunity to speak about Brexit.

“We have a different opinion, president,” said the Irish prime minister. “I regret that Brexit’s happening and the U.K. was a really important part of the European Union.”

The most concerning element for Ireland, Varadkar said, is that Brexit should not cause any problems in Northern Ireland, which voted to stay in the EU.

“We shouldn’t have a hard border or anything to disrupt the peace process,” said Varadkar.

Until the 1998 Good Friday agreement, violence in the previous three decades in Northern Ireland killed more than 3,500 people. The conflict pitted loyalist Protestant paramilitary groups and the British army against the Irish Republican Army, a Catholic republican militia that was considered a terrorist organization by London.

“I think it’ll be a few years until the United Kingdom sorts itself out,” predicted Varadkar.

The British parliament votes Thursday on a last-minute delay for Brexit, which is scheduled for March 30.

It will be the third attempt by Prime Minister May to convince reluctant lawmakers to support her EU exit plan.
…

Brexit: What Now?

Veteran Conservative lawmaker Nigel Evans has been in Britain’s House of Commons for more than a quarter-of-a-century and, like most of his parliamentary colleagues, is stunned at the turn of Brexit events.

“I got elected in 1992 and I don’t know if I have known any time more uncertain than now,” he told VOA.

He’s flummoxed at what the next move should be for a Conservative government that has lost control of the Brexit process.

As a committed Brexiter, he fears Britain will end up staying in the European Union because of an impasse in the Commons that has seen the ruling Conservative government repeatedly rebuffed by lawmakers, including by a third of its own MPs, in a series of historic votes without precedent for the storied House of Commons.

Parliament is not alone in being hopelessly divided: Theresa May’s Cabinet is, too, with the British prime minister lurching between pro-EU rebel ministers and their pro-Brexit counterparts, trying to resuscitate a government that appears to be in terminal decline.

Divorce delayed

More than 20 ministers have resigned in the past two years — and at least another half-dozen are on the cusp of quitting. Midweek another minister resigned and four declined to vote with their own government — an unprecedented defiance left unpunished.

Britain’s newspaper headline writers are running out of superlatives and metaphors to describe the political havoc. “We’re becoming the laughing stock of the World,” fumes Andrew Pierce, the Daily Mail’s associate editor, in College Green, the patch of grass outside parliament which has become a media encampment of tents, wires and cameras besieged by chanting, dueling placard-waving protesters.

Britain was due to exit the EU in 16 days’ time, on March 29.

On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted against Britain exiting the EU without a deal — in effect delaying Brexit until further notice. That followed Tuesday’s crushing parliamentary defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement — the second time pro-EU and hardline pro-Brexit lawmakers have combined to reject it. Lawmakers Thursday are expected to pass a measure seeking formally to delay Brexit, at least to June 30. EU leaders are divided about accepting a request for delay.

Donald Tusk, the president of the EU Council, tweeted Thursday: “I will appeal to the EU27 to be open to a long extension if the UK finds it necessary to rethink its #Brexit strategy and build consensus around it.”

The Remainers hope to either block Brexit altogether or at least steer it in a gentler direction with Britain still closely aligned although not a member of its political institutions. Hardline Brexiters want a no-nonsense sharp break with the EU, ready to accept the economic damage to Britain that will wreak, at least in the medium term.

That Evans feels unable to predict what happens next is instructive. He is no junior lawmaker, but a so-called “Tory grandee”, and he helps to direct the 1922 Committee, of which all backbench Conservative lawmakers are members.

When the bosses of the 1922 Committee tell a Conservative leader to quit, their word has the force of the Lord High Executioner. The last time the 22, as its nicknamed, deposed a party leader was in 2003, ousting one of Theresa May’s predecessors for losing a general election.

Are they close to giving May the push now? Evans is guarded but makes little secret he thinks the time is close at hand. “Her authority is greatly weakened,” he says grimly.

Replacing May

Pro-Brexit Conservative bloggers and columnists are in vituperative mood, blaming May for mishandling the negotiations with the EU and, from their viewpoint, giving too much ground to Brussels. Gridlock has been the result, they say.

“I can see no scenario where she is the answer for taking the country forward. She should by rights go now. At some point in the next two or three weeks it will even dawn on Mrs. May that it is time to go,” Conservative blogger Iain Dale tells VOA.

WATCH:  British Leadership Change Possible in Wake of Brexit Chaos

Then what?

The vultures are circling. Half-a-dozen would-be replacements from inside May’s Cabinet have in effect been auditioning already for the job, delivering speeches carving out their vision for the country. Some contenders have advanced plans, including printing up campaign material for what they expect is an inevitable leadership election.

A Conservative grassroots favorite, Boris Johnson, the former foreign minister, has had a modern makeover and dispensed with his trademark tousle-haired slapdash look and is now sporting a stylish boyband haircut.

But it is not clear that replacing Theresa May will solve anything or break the political impasse, which is why the 1922 Committee has stayed its hand.

There is no obvious unity candidate to succeed her. A new leader will face the same splits inside the Conservative party between Remainers, Brexiters and the those who favor a so-called soft Brexit modeled on Norway’s relationship with the EU, which would see Britain remain in the bloc’s single market and customs union as well as accept freedom of movement.

And the deadlocked parliamentary arithmetic will remain the same.

Another try

In a final throw of the dice, May is planning to bring her contentious deal back to the Commons for a third time, hoping that she will prevail by sheer persistence. It is the continuation of her strategy of brinkmanship — to run the clock down and force Conservative Brexiters and a handful of allied Northern Irish lawmakers to give in, prompted to do so by the fear that otherwise Britain might never leave the EU in any form.

It is not clear that the pro-EU Speaker of the House, John Bercow, will allow her to do so — under parliamentary rules a government is not meant to keep asking the House to vote repeatedly on the same measure. “If she can pull it off, it will be the political equivalent of Lazarus rising from the dead,” admits a Downing Street official.

Some believe she has a chance of succeeding in this high-stakes game of chicken. Evans does not think so. “For some of the rebels it would be better to stay in the EU than accept this deal, which would have us at the beck and call of Brussels without any power,” he says. Another key Brexiter, Steve Barclay, says he and many of his colleagues will keep voting the deal down “whatever the pressure we’re put under.”

Keeping calm and carrying on?

Beyond Westminster, there is fear, exasperation and anger. And clear Brexit fatigue. BBC Radio Five Live has seen the volume of Brexit-related call-ins tail off recently. There are signs, according to some opinion polls, that the mood of the country may have shifted slightly in favor of remaining in the EU, suggesting that a second referendum would deliver a narrow win for Remain.

As yet there is no majority in the House of Commons for holding a re-run referendum. Nor are lawmakers keen on holding a snap general election, for fear that might result in an equally deadlocked parliament afterwards.

Business leaders were already fuming at all the Brexit uncertainty before this week’s upheaval. “Enough is enough. A new approach is needed by all parties. Jobs and livelihoods depend on it,” said Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, a major business association.
…