U.K. NEWS IS EERILY FAMILIAR
There have long been similarities between politics in the United States and politics in the United Kingdom. For example, one could argue that Ronald Reagan = Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush = John Major, and Bernie Sanders = Jeremy Corbyn. Recently, though, the parallels have been rather uncanny.
Here in the U.S., Democrats have refused to accept the results of the November 2016 election. They view President Trump as illegitimate and believe they may be able to drive him out of Washington before he is able to staff an administration. Similarly, in the U.K. liberals–as we use that term–don’t accept the 52% majority that voted in favor of “Brexit.” Thus, London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, says that Brexit is not a done deal:
London mayor Sadiq Khan claims Brexit can still be stopped by holding ANOTHER general election to “trump the referendum”.He argues that the Labour party could overturn the 52 per cent majority who voted to leave the EU if a fresh vote is called.
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His comments come as Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat called on politicians on Britain to call for a second referendum to overturn last year’s result.Despite the clear vote from 17.4 million Brits to leave the European Union last year, the Liberal Democrats have promised such a referendum on the final Brexit deal.New leader Sir Vince Cable has promised to give voters an “exit from Brexit” and even said Brexit “might not happen” because the parties are so divided.
At the moment, I would say that President Trump has a better chance of serving his four-year term than the U.K. has of leaving the European Union in keeping with the Brexit vote. In each case, the political establishment is nakedly at war with the general population.
Then we have Black Lives Matter, which started in the U.S. after a 6′ 4″, 290-pound African American assaulted a white police officer, tried to take away his gun, and then charged him after the officer emerged from his squad car. Amazingly, the officer’s shooting of the rampaging Michael Brown in self-defense touched off a “movement” that has now become international.
In the U.K., the trigger has been the death of Rashan Jermaine Charles. It is weirdly difficult to find a coherent account of Charles’s encounter with the police; maybe relentless Googlers among our readers can piece it together. As best I can deduce from news accounts, Charles was stopped by police officers, and left his vehicle and ran into a store. He was tackled by a policeman, and apparently put something into his mouth. He died soon after. The most obvious interpretation is that he was stopped for a drugs violation, swallowed drugs to escape detection, and the drugs killed him, or perhaps he choked on them. But I haven’t seen this story told in any intelligible way.
This is, I believe, the famous video:
Demonstrations resulted in Hackney Borough, under the Black Lives Matter banner that originated in the U.S.:
The demonstrations rapidly turned into riots, as has happened in the U.S. Fires were lit, windows were smashed, and several police officers were injured:
The head of the Black and Minority Ethnic Society at Cambridge University tweeted:
ALL white people are racist. White middle class, white working class, white men, white women, white gays, white children they can ALL geddit
Right. And, as we have seen so often here, public officials have been conciliatory and even apologetic.
We hear a lot about globalism these days; this is another example of the phenomenon. Bad ideas rapidly leap from one continent to another. Or, perhaps, the globe is so truly unified that bad ideas spring up, more or less simultaneously, thousands of miles and continents apart.
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