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Pro-independence parties won a majority in Scotland’s parliament on Saturday, paving the way to a high-stakes political, legal and constitutional battle with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the future of the United Kingdom. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the result meant she would push ahead with plans for a second independence referendum once the COVID-19 pandemic was over, adding that it would be absurd and outrageous if Johnson were to try to ignore the democratic will of the people. "There is simply no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson, or indeed for anyone else, seeking to block the...

Boris Johnson’s announcement of new deals with India worth some £1 billion, with more than £500 million of new investment from India in the UK expected to create some 6,000 jobs, is good news. However, it is also decidedly underwhelming when measured against the promises made about a golden future for the UK outside the EU once we had the ability to “make our own trade deals”, as if somehow British negotiators would be able to extract better terms than their counterparts from Brussels. ..UK-India trade is currently worth a total of about £23 billion a year and the government...

The UK government has agreed to give the European Union ambassador in London full diplomatic status. The Foreign Office had resisted the idea, arguing the EU should not be treated like an independent nation. But in a joint statement, the UK and EU announced ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida, would get "a status consistent with heads of missions of states". He will now be immune from detention, prosecution or taxation during his time in London. These are among the privileges given to diplomats in the states where they are stationed, as sanctioned by the Vienna Convention. In more than 100...

Failed U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has claimed that Russian interference in the U.S. election in 2016 is now “beyond a doubt” and that the country was likely involved in the Brexit vote, too. Mrs Clinton, who was First Lady during Bill Clinton’s presidency and U.S. Secretary of State for part of Barack Obama’s presidency, made the allegations during a Chatham House conversation with former Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and Tory leader William Hague, chaired by fellow ex-foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt MP.

Post-Brexit trade between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland boomed in February, although imports from Great Britain were hit hard. Goods imports from Britain were down by more than half (-53%) in February this year compared to last year, the Republic's Central Statistics Office (CSO) said yesterday. But imports from Northern Ireland almost doubled (+95%) in the same period. Exports to England, Scotland and Wales held up better, falling by just 11% in February 2021 compared to last year. But exports to Northern Ireland were up by 38%. The CSO said Irish goods imports from Britain fell by 53%, or...

LONDON (Reuters) - The ruling Scottish National Party pledged on Thursday to hold an independence referendum by the end of 2023, a step that could fracture the United Kingdom by ripping apart the 314-year union between England and Scotland. If there was another referendum and the Scots voted out, it would mark the biggest shock to the United Kingdom since Irish independence a century ago - just as London grapples with the impact of both Brexit and the COVID-19 crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) - Over 400 financial firms in Britain have shifted activities, staff and a combined trillion pounds ($1.4 trillion) in assets to hubs in the European Union due to Brexit, with more pain to come, a study from New Financial think tank said on Friday. “We think it is an underestimate and we expect the numbers to increase over time: we are only at the end of the beginning of Brexit,” the study said. The EU has offered Britain little in the way of direct market access for financial services, which were not included in the bloc’s trade deal...

Northern Ireland police faced a barrage of petrol bombs and rocks on Thursday, an AFP journalist said, as violence once again flared in Belfast despite pleas for calm. Riot police on the republican side of the divided city were pelted with projectiles as they tried to prevent a crowd moving towards pro-UK unionists. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Irish counterpart Micheal Martin had earlier called for “calm” following days of violence that included a petrol-bomb attack on a moving bus. Martin and Johnson held telephone talks in which they stressed that “violence is unacceptable” and “called for calm”, the...

Masked loyalists are seen after hijacking and setting a car on fire at the Cloughfern roundabout in Newtownabbey, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Saturday, April 3, 2021. Masked men threw petrol bombs and hijacked cars in the Loyalist area North of Belfast. Loyalists and unionists are angry about post-Brexit trading arrangements which they claim have created barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. (Peter Morrison/PA via AP) The disturbances followed unrest Friday and Saturday in unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, that saw cars set on fire and projectiles and gasoline bombs hurled...

It might have already happened if it wasn't for Brexit.Talks of a Tesla Gigafactory U.K. are back. The location would be in Somerset, England at a 635-acre smart campus called Gravity that’s currently under development.Minister of State for Business, Energy, and Clean Growth Kwasi Kwarteng said the government is considering the site for a Tesla Gigafactory. The minister believes the Somerset location will be able to sustain a Tesla Gigafactory. Gravity is a good candidate because it’s one of the few locations in England large enough to house a factory of that size. Not only that, it’s located near the...

Pressing need for World Government and Global Parliament [Caption] A World Government can be established and its Parliament could be elected directly by proportional representation based on population of each member nation Amid ever-increasing threats facing humanity, https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/india/india-serving-humanity-by-providing-covid-vax--modi.html it's high time to initiate steps at the governance level to make the world a safer place for mankind. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided impetus to the idea of a global democratic government and underlined the necessity of a world organisation to tackle the dangers facing mankind in a more effective manner. These include --- pandemics, stockpiles of nuclear weapons, deadly biological...

Like a spider eating her mate, we are now watching His Royal Redback get gobbled up alive... Tell us about Megxit!’ It’s the question I am most asked when I open the floor for questions after giving a speech about Brexit and the state of Britain. And my answer is a straight one: Meghan Markle has been an absolute disaster for the British monarchy. Like some gangster, she has committed a smash-and-grab on the Palace, snatching what can be easily sold, trashing anything of sentimental value. Her latest stunt – pocketing an alleged $500K for ratting out her husband’s mental...

LONDON (Reuters) - Securities settlement for Irish assets worth more than 100 billion euros ($119 billion) has left London for the European Union in the latest adjustment in markets to Brexit. Pan-European exchange Euronext, which runs the Irish stock exchange, said on Thursday it had completed the migration of securities settlement for 50 Irish companies from Crest in London to Euroclear Bank in Brussels from March 15.

Loyalist paramilitary groups have told the British and Irish governments they are withdrawing support for the Good Friday agreement in protest at Northern Ireland’s Irish Sea trade border with the rest of the UK. The Loyalist Communities Council, an umbrella group that represents the views of the UVF, UDA and Red Hand Commando, wrote a letter to Boris Johnson and Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheál Martin, warning of “permanent destruction” of the 1998 peace agreement without changes to post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland. The letter said unionist opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol – the part of the Brexit deal that keeps...

THE EU’S catastrophic failure over its vaccine rollout will push more nations to leave the ailing bloc and trigger a fresh wave Euroscepticism, experts have said. France and Germany face another lockdown after they played politics and attempted to shun the Oxford AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine as the killer virus looks set to surge again across Europe... ...Robert Oulds, director of think tank The Bruges Group, told The Sun Online the vaccine crisis could be the start of the “unraveling” of the EU. ... ...EU vaccine figures are vastly behind Britain - with the UK having 27 per cent of citizens...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that “America is unreservedly back” with the election of Joe Biden as President, while seemingly deriding the leadership of former President Trump at a virtual summit of the Munich Security Conference. Speaking with the leaders of the G7 nations, Prime Minister Johnson said of the Biden administration: “America is unreservedly back as the leader of the free world and that is a fantastic thing.” In an apparent jab at Donald Trump, Johnson added: “The gloom has been overdone. And we’re turning a corner and the countries we call the West are drawing together and combining...

As Robert Mueller was ramping up his Russia collusion probe in spring 2017, then-acting Director Andrew McCabe was summoned to the Justice Department for a high-level Sunday morning meeting led by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. McCabe showed up thinking it was a "coordination and logistics issues" meeting for the new special counsel probe, but soon he found he himself was to be the subject of discussion, according to newly declassified notes that McCabe recorded of the gathering. Rosenstein wanted McCabe to recuse himself as FBI director from the Russia probe because McCabe's wife had run for office in 2015...

21 Jan 2021 The United Kingdom is resisting a demand from the European Union that it grant full diplomatic status to the bloc’s ambassador in London, causing a row between the recently divorced parties that spilled out into the open on Thursday. The UK, an EU member for 47 years, voted to quit in 2016 and completed its tortuous journey out of the bloc on December 31, when Brexit fully took effect. The BBC reported that the Foreign Office was refusing to grant the same diplomatic status and privileges to EU ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida and his team as...

CALAIS, France (Reuters) - Moments after Britain completed its divorce with the European Union, the first trucks hauling goods across the new customs border presented their clearance documents to French agents before loading onto a train to pass through the Eurotunnel. A barcode on Romanian driver Toma Moise’s paperwork was scanned and approved in seconds. “The future, I don’t think it will be difficult,” he said in broken English before continuing his journey towards Britain. Cast as the dawn of a newly independent “global Britain”, its exit from the world’s biggest trading block means the return of customs formalities on...

Boris Johnson looks to have won his battle to persuade hardline Brexiteers in his party to back his EU trade deal in the Commons this week. The Prime Minister and top adviser Oliver Lewis have been ringing senior members of the pro-Brexit European Research Group to argue that the agreement meets their demands on the return of sovereignty. The ERG has convened a self-styled 'star chamber' legal team, with veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash as chairman, to go through the 1,200-page document line by line. Andrew Bridgen, Conservative MP (pictured) and a member of the ERG, said: 'If you had...