Britain's unprecedented vote to leave the EU has caused a furor across the world, with stocks plunging amid financial and political uncertainty. Thousands have vowed to protest the results of the British referendum.
27 June 2016
There could be a real clash coming in Scotland. The devolved government there said it will seek the widest possible backing in the Scottish parliament to keep its ties with the European Union following last week's British vote to leave the EU.
Calls for a second Scottish independence referendum have grown since Britain as a whole voted to leave the EU last week, despite a large majority of Scots supporting staying in the EU.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon described that as "democratically unacceptable".
The SNP in Scotland has seen an opportunity in the aftermath of Brexit, and is already pushing for a second independence referendum north of the border. But it appears Downing Street is already looking to stamp on that idea.
Amid all the in-depth analysis going on across the world, is this perhaps the most concise illustration of the situation yet?
With all the resignations coming from Labour's shadow cabinet, it's perhaps no surprise that the Guardian newspaper is now quoting a source close to Jeremy Corbyn saying a leadership election is now pretty much inevitable.
And another ...
Close your eyes Mr Corbyn, another one's gone. Angela Eagle, one of the biggest names yet to resign yet, also reportedly asked Corbyn to resign too.
Those resignations keep on coming for Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. This time the shadow Energy Secretary, and the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary are gone.
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has reportedly piled the pressure on Jeremy Corbyn. While BBC reports that he had told Corbyn to resign have been denied, he did reportedly tell Corbyn he has "no authority" and is facing a leadership challenge.
Roberta Blackman-Woods becomes the latest Labour MP to resign from Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
The Polish Embassy in Britain says it's shocked and concerned over xenophobic attacks in the UK following the Brexit vote.
Britain needs to decide who represents it so that its EU exit talks can take shape, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Monday on his way to Prague for post-Brexit vote solidarity talks with eastern European member states.
In an interview with Reuters, Ayrault also said it was "not automatic" that Britain could get Swiss-style access to the European Union's single market without the free movement of capital, labour, goods and services elements that go with it.
"Absolutely Britain needs to sort out the problem of who represents it ... from there we can work on an agenda and a calendar," Ayrault said. (Reuters)
26 June 2016
There will be no fresh offers to the UK to stay in the European Union following the results of the referendum vote, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with Handelsblatt newspaper.
“The British have now decided to go. We will not hold talks about what the EU can still offer the Britons to keep them in,” Gabriel said, according to local media.
The European Union will not make Britain any fresh offers to keep it in the bloc, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told the Handelsblatt business daily newspaper.
"The British have now decided to go. We will not hold talks about what the EU can still offer the Britons to keep them in," Gabriel said in excerpts from an interview released on Sunday. (Reuters)
The £18-billion (more than $24 billion) Hinkley Point C nuclear power station project in Somerset, England, is in jeopardy. It has already been delayed on several occasions and could be dismissed by the French state giant EDF Energy, following the results of the referendum, a source told the Sunday Times.
“This [scheme] was already looking so challenged. The vote is the perfect excuse for the French to walk away,” the source noted.
However, Jean-Bernard Lévy, chairman of the EDF that has a final say in the matter, gave a reassurance on Friday that the outcome of the vote would have “no impact” on the project.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change echoed Lévy’s words, saying it was “fully confident” the Hinkley Point project would be approved.
The project of a third runway at Heathrow may face the same scenario, according to John Stewart, chairman of the anti-Heathrow expansion group HACAN.
“It’s now much less likely there will be a third runway than it would have been had we voted to remain in the EU,” he said.
The £17.6-billion (more than $23 billion) Heathrow expansion plan would have been approved by Prime Minister David Cameron on July 7 if Britain had voted to remain in the EU.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff has said politicians in London should be able to have the chance to think again about the consequences of leaving the European Union.
"Politicians in London should have the possibility to reconsider the consequences of an exit," the RND newspaper network on Sunday quoted Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, as saying.
If Britain really left, that would be "a difficult watershed with many consequences," RND quoted Altmaier as saying. Of course Britain could apply to rejoin the EU later, RND reported him as saying, "but that would take a long time." (Reuters)
Britain's cabinet will remain in place until a new prime minister is in office, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said. "Obviously a new prime minister will select his own cabinet and all of us will remain in office until that point and then the new prime minister will make his decision," Hammond told ITV in response to a question about whether Finance Minister George Osborne would remain in his post, Reuters reported.
Asked about what would happen to Gibraltar, a British enclave in Spain, which Madrid said it would want to jointly govern with London after the Brexit vote, Hammond replied: "We will be less able to protect Gibraltar's interests, not to defend Gibraltar's territory, of course we can do that, but to protect Gibraltar's interests if we are not in the European Union. Gibraltar depends on thousands and thousands of Spanish workers crossing that border every day and any disruption to that flow will be extremely damaging to the Gibraltar economy."
Watch RT's latest wrap up on Brexit
Britain needs to decide its position, start talks and aim to leave the European Union at the beginning of 2019, leading Brexit campaigner and Conservative lawmaker Liam Fox said on Sunday.
"So for me what we want to be doing is seeing a process that means we can leave the European Union on the first of January, 2019. That seems to me like a reasonable timetable," Fox told BBC television. (Reuters)
Britain's Business Secretary Sajid Javid has said there was no immediate need to decide when to trigger Article 50, Reuters reported. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on European Union is the formal mechanism for withdrawing from the bloc.
The Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says there should not be a border in the future between Scotland and England, even if the Scots were to gain independence from the UK in a second referendum.
Loss of access to single market would be catastrophic - Hammond
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Sunday it would be "catastrophic" for Britain to lose access to the European single market after it voted to leave the European Union.
Hammond, who campaigned for Britain to remain in the bloc, said Britain would not be able to keep access to the single market while also asserting complete control over migration from EU member states.
He said candidates to succeed David Cameron as Conservative Party leader and therefore as prime minister would have to make clear where they stood on the trade-off between controlling migration and retaining single market access.
Hammond said he would not be a candidate to lead the party and the country. (Reuters)
US Secretary of State John Kerry is due to meet European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Brussels and British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond in London on Monday, a senior State Department official told Reuters. He said Kerry would highlight the importance of other members not following in Britain's footsteps. US President Barack Obama urged Britain to remain in the EU when he visited London in April, warning that a trade agreement between Washington and London would not take place in the near future if Britain left the bloc, the Telegraph reported. EU and UK officials are currently trying to assess the political and economic consequences of Thursday's British referendum vote in favor of exiting the 28-nation bloc.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the creation of a new EU treaty following the Brexit vote. France should take "a strong initiative… in order to lay a foundation for a new intergovernmental treaty for all the people in Europe," he said. He urged the international community to turn the current EU “historic crisis” into an “opportunity for a new start.”
The UN will continue working with both the UK and European Union, the UN Secretary General has said describing them as “two important partners.”
President Francois Hollande has acknowledged he “deeply regretted” the referendum result and called on the EU to respect all treaties when organizing Britain’s departure from the bloc.
“We must now organize this separation and we must do it in good order, with the rules provided by the treaties, which must be implemented,” the president said.
President Francois Hollande has firmly rejected calls for a referendum on leaving the EU, said French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen. “We have called for the implementation of a referendum to ask the French if they wish to remain in the European Union,” she said according to French media. “He responded ‘no’.” Commenting on the consequences of Brexit, Le Pen said the EU would try to make the whole process of the UK’s exit as “painful as possible,” so that other countries would not want to follow suit.
25 June 2016
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan has used an appearance at the London Pride 2016 march to reassure Europeans living in the British capital that they are still welcome in the city, despite the results of the Brexit vote.
“We have got to remember that there are Europeans in London. Our friends, our families and our neighbors, you are welcome here!” Khan told hundreds of people gathered in Trafalgar Square.
Belgian Didier Seeuws, who served as first chief of staff of the private office under former President of the EU Herman van Rompuy, has been appointed head of the Special Task Force that will negotiate with the UK on its exit from the bloc.
The situation on world markets caused by the UK's decision to leave the EU "should soon stabilize," Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak told RT.
While Brexit would not critically affect the markets, the situation has even less effect on Russia, which is not an EU member, Novak said.
"As for our cooperation in the energy sector with both EU and non-EU countries, we have a similar approach to both of them, and are open for cooperation," he said.
Britain’s decision to leave the EU has brought to life “the catastrophic scenario that many feared…, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible.” The consequences of the referendum vote are likely to backfire at the UK, billionaire George Soros said on Saturday.
“Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short to medium term,” he commented on the website Project Syndicate.
A statement defining Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on the mechanics of leaving the EU has been issued by the European Council and states the following:
“The notification of Article 50 is a formal act and has to be done by the British government to the European Council. It has to be done in an unequivocal manner with the explicit intent to trigger Article 50.
“It could either be a letter to the President of the European Council or an official statement at a meeting of the European Council duly noted in the official records of the meeting. Negotiations of leaving and the future relationship can only begin after such a formal notification.
“If it is indeed the intention of the British government to leave the EU, it is therefore in its interest to notify as soon as possible.”
Jeremy Corbyn should not be blamed for Brexit, former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said at the Glastonbury festival on Saturday.
"I don’t think we should blame Jeremy Corbyn for the seismic earthquake,” Miliband said, adding that the outcome of the referendum merely reflected the UK governmen’s failure to address to problems of unemployment, housing and immigration, the Guardian reported.
“This is a moment when many people are feeling fear but, in my view, we have got to accept the vote and then shape it [the future] around progressive causes,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to smooth things over following Britain’s decision to leave the EU. She called on Paris, Brussels and her own government not to put pressure on the UK by insisting on its immediate departure from the bloc.
"Quite honestly, it should not take ages, that is true, but I would not fight now for a short timeframe," Merkel told a news conference, according to Reuters.
Britain’s member of the EU executive, Financial Services Commissioner Jonathan Hill, announced his resignation on Saturday following the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
“I don't believe it is right that I should carry on as the British commissioner as though nothing had happened,” Hill, who campaigned against Brexit, said in a statement.
Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan says that a united Ireland in the future would be in the best interests of its citizens, but it would be wrong to hold a referendum while the UK is negotiating its exit from the EU as this could only cause division.
"I share the view that at some stage in the future that the unification would be in the best interests of the people, but only when there is a majority consent of the people in Northern Ireland," he told the state broadcaster RTE, as cited by Reuters.
"We now have a situation following the referendum, where the UK is leaving the European Union. Any further referendums in Northern Ireland would cause a greater level of division than we have now and is therefore in my view particularly unhelpful."
Senior UK scientists predict hard times for the country’s scientific research sphere. They claim that parting from the European Union means losing some £1 billion (US$1.37 billion) a year for research, which the bloc grants them, as well as no longer having the opportunity to hire talented scientists from the Union to work in British labs.
Vice-Chancellor of Leicester University Paul Boyle called the “shocking result” of the British referendum on leaving the EU a “dark day for UK science,” the Guardian reports. He also called on the science community to start campaigning to protect the science budget and make an effort to show international researchers they are just as welcome in the UK outside the EU, as when it was in it.
Several hundred people have gathered in front of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in London to protest the Brexit vote result.
The value of having a once coveted fetish – the British passport – has plunged in the wake of the Brexit vote, the Independent reported, saying UK citizens’ right to travel worldwide is in jeopardy. The newspaper said Britain was once had the top-ranked passports in the Quality of Nationality Index, which estimates how valuable it is to be from this or that country. Following the Brexit vote, it will plunge from 11th place to 30th, the newspaper said.
Some 30,000 people are expected to take part in a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square on Tuesday, to show solidarity with EU nations following the Brexit vote.
“'London Stays' is our mark of showing that, regardless of the EU Referendum result, we stand alongside the people of Europe to show we are inclusive, open and patient to understanding how we can make the Leave decision into a positive one for all. We stay with Europe!” a statement on the event's page on Facebook reads.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has blamed the Brexit outcome on the "chronic deficiencies" of European leaders, and their penchant for austerity policies, which has fueled nationalism.
"As much as the decision of the British people saddens us, it is a decision to be respected,” Tsipras told his leftist Syriza Party's central committee. "We must not put the blame on the British people ... when the borders remain open on austerity policies, but stay closed for people," he added, as cited by Reuters.