Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - A former Russian arms tycoon who had connections at the highest levels of the Kremlin is a major donor to Britain's ruling Conservative Party and counts himself a friend of the man expected to be the country's next prime minister. Alexander Temerko, who forged close ties with the Russian defence ministry and security services in the 1990s, has gifted over £1 million to the Conservatives over the past eight years.

I have been following British politics since I started buying the London papers at the Harvard Square out-of-town newsstands in the run-up to the October 1964 British election -- and, on my first trip to London, queued up to sit in the gallery and watch the House of Commons and House of Lords debate British entry into the Common Market in October 1971. So perhaps I might be indulged in a making some reflections and observations on the British election just past. American political junkies love to watch question time in the House of Commons, with all its insulting questions...

Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation....

NEW YORK — New York City police were questioning people and studying video surveillance tapes Thursday to determine who may be responsible for detonating two makeshift grenades outside the building that houses the British Consulate (search) earlier in the morning. The explosions, which occurred on Britain's Election Day, caused the glass panels at the building's entrance in midtown Manhattan to shatter but no one was injured, officials said. A one-foot chunk from the planter was also torn off. The department's bomb squad was at the scene and streets were closed in the area. The blasts happened at 3:50 a.m. EDT....

Conservative challenger Michael Howard is trailing Prime Minister Tony Blair in the British polls, and Margaret Thatcher has had enough. Facing the possibility of her cherished Tory Party losing to Blair again, and upset at the possibility that Labour will be leading England's government again, Thatcher skipped town for a little holiday - just days before the election. She is not campaigning for Howard, and British papers quote a close friend of the baroness as saying, "She wants to see a Conservative government again. She is frustrated that is not going to happen, despite the Labour Government's serious shortcomings and...

Tony Blair will this week launch his attempt to win a historic third term after calling a brief halt to political hostilities as a mark of respect to Pope John Paul II. The prime minister is expected to ask the Queen on Tuesday to dissolve parliament for a May 5 general election. He scrapped his plan to go to Buckingham Palace on Monday out of deference to the world's 1bn Catholics mourning their spiritual leader. All parties have called a truce in their pre-election phoney war, and Mr Blair plans a low-key launch to a campaign that will last about...