Finally, the Demise of Zombie May

Wonderful news to begin the holiday weekend: Two Fridays from now, June 7, Theresa May will resign her role as leader of the Conservative Party. The following week the process to select her replacement will begin formally, with her successor in place before parliament's recess at the end of July.

In all the sententious write-ups of May's departure there's precious little about what actually triggered it. A pre-resignation story from yesterday by Benjamin Mueller (see "Britons Pause to Vote in an Election Many Did Not Want") leads one to believe that Tory backbenchers had marshaled the votes to rewrite the 1922 Committee rules, paving the way to topple the zombie prime minister with a new no-confidence vote:

But Mrs. May’s undoing seemed more a matter of timing and choreography than anything else. She will meet on Friday with Graham Brady, who leads the committee of Mrs. May’s Conservative backbench lawmakers. He is holding onto secret ballots from some of those lawmakers that could allow the party to change its rules and try to unseat Mrs. May almost immediately.

The event that put some pep in the 1922 Committee step is yesterday's election to the European Parliament. The Tories are predicted to be headed for another catastrophic rout; this coming on the heels of the disastrous local elections of May 2. Apparently the foul odor of the zombie prime minister finally proved to be too much.

In fact, the zombie May is a perfect personification of the reigning, tottering neoliberal world order. Caught between rising demands for a return to social democracy on one side and an establishment drift to neo-fascism and ultra-nationalism on the other, mainstream leadership chooses to fudge, dither and run out the clock, hoping that the dialectic of history somehow reverses course. That's why Theresa May's predicament has been worthy of attention, particularly since her shockingly poor showing in the June 2017 general election: how long can leadership deny the obvious? In May's case, the answer is two years. Her minority government was a joke to begin with.

Boris Johnson will be no improvement, assuming he will be the new prime minister. Nothing will have changed, other than support for crash-out will have gained momentum. So we're right back to crash-out or a snap general election. Since all Brexit decisions are guided by the Tory avoidance of a general election, odds at this point are on a crash-out.

Tonight's the Night

UPDATE II: May wins a vote of confidence 200 to 117. The zombie plods on. What now? Hopefully markets will pitch a fit because a crash-out seems more probable now than if May had lost. Corbyn is going to have to make a move. Talk is of a nuclear option: a non-binding motion of no confidence  with hard-line Tory Brexiteers joining with Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens. Corbyn has been resisting this. He can no longer.

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UPDATE: Touts are picking May to hold on. (See "Betting odds indicate 89 percent chance UK's May wins confidence vote" by Andrew MacAskill.) If you look to money flows, people unloading pounds prior to the Brexit vote proved to be a more accurate predictor of the outcome than the opinion polls. So maybe May survives. Heaven help us.

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Finally. Tonight's the night. The necessary 48 letters have been received by the chairman of the appropriate committee. The Conservative Party will hold a confidence vote on prime minister Theresa May. The New York Times is reporting that May needs a bare majority of Tory MPs to survive. That magic number is 158. But Yves Smith points out that this is not true:

ConservativeHome debunks some earlier misreporting about the process. For May to win just over half of the 315 votes of MPs won’t be enough to save her:

It is being claimed that “158 is the magic number” – since 157.7 is what one is left with if one divides the 315 MPs in receipt of the Conservative whip in half.

But imagine for a moment that 159 MPs express confidence in her leadership, if a ballot takes place, and 156 do not. Could she then carry on as Party leader? We don’t think so. The ballot would not have found sufficient consensus for her leadership. We cite a precedent. 204 votes were cast for Margaret Thatcher during the 1990 Conservative leadership contest, and 168 were not – 152 Tory MPs opted for Michael Heseltine and 16 abstained. She won a clear majority of those voting. But she was forced out none the less.

My guess is that May is done. If she survives, by rule, the Tories are stuck with her for another year. There is no path forward with her leadership. She was rebuffed yesterday by all the European leaders with whom she met. If May survives it's a one-way ticket to crash-out. And while there are plenty of Tories for whom crash-out is the desired outcome, if May remains the chances of a general election in the near term are much more likely. So she has to go. That's how it looks to me.

May's people are showing their desperation. They are scaremongering, saying to remove the prime minister at this late stage invites a crash-out because her replacement cannot assume the position until late January or February, at the same time they are providing gumdrops, saying May will stand aside before the next general election if she wins the confidence vote.

If the Brexit politics of the Tories are wicked and opaque, the same goes for Labour. The Trotskyites have been good at sketching this out. Blairites are angling for another Brexit plebiscite, what's being touted as The People's Vote. The Trots have been critical of Corbyn's lack of leadership in bringing a vote of confidence on May to parliament (Yves Smith too, for that matter). But Corbyn's diffidence on Brexit has served him and Labour well. I would argue that it has been masterly, which is some kind of achievement because diffidence is not usually an attribute ascribed to a master.

Brexit is a manifestation of a paradigm that no longer has any credibility. Societies are in upheaval. Too much is happening too fast. The U.S. appears to be on the verge of war with China. Turkey has declared it will invade Syria to rid it of U.S. Kurdish proxies. Let's hope with tonight's vote there is a first step in the UK towards some sort of sanity.

May and Macron

Macron addressed the French nation yesterday without mentioning the Yellow Vests by name, though it is the protests of the Gilets Juanes that brought "Jupiter" before the television cameras. Macron offered a ceremonial display of contrition coupled with several modest legislative fixes: an increase in the minimum wage and a scrap on the overtime tax as well as the social security tax on pensioners earning less than 2,000 euros a month.

Macron is trying to change the topic. The topic has become Macron's resignation. The protests continue.

In London prime minister Theresa May faced parliament after her ignominious about-face on bringing her Brexit plan to a vote. The Trotskyites are upset with Jeremy Corbyn for not promptly demanding a confidence vote. Corbyn wants to allow May one last tour of the continent, which is where May is presently trying to rallying support.

The story goes that May is trying to secure concessions from EU leadership on the Irish backstop. As The New York Times editorial page summarizes:

By delaying Tuesday’s vote by Parliament, Mrs. May bought some time. But not much, and at high cost. She evidently hopes she can squeeze some concessions out of a European Union summit meeting scheduled for Thursday and Friday that could placate some members of Parliament on the most contentious issue, the open border between Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland. Both sides are committed to keeping the border open. But since that would mean keeping part of Britain in the union’s single market, the British and union negotiators agreed that as a “backstop,” Britain would remain bound by some rules of the European Union if another solution was not found by the end of a transition period in December 2020. To some supporters of Brexit this is anathema. But as an exasperated member of the European Union Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted, “Just keep in mind that we will never let the Irish down. This delay will further aggravate the uncertainty for people & businesses.”

It is all a kabuki. May will return to face the inevitable next week.

Yves Smith is good this morning on the mechanics of bringing about a vote of no confidence within the Conservative Party. Hard-line Brexiteers are apparently only five letters shy of bringing this about. The risk for the hardliners is that if May survives by winning a majority of Tory MPs, she can't be challenged for another year.

There is a possibility that if May loses the confidence vote and Boris Johnson wins the race to succeed her, the coalition government could fall because BoJo is radioactive.

Smith concludes:

May’s plan, to the extent she has one, is disturbingly reminiscent of the strategy of the Greek government in the 2015 bailout negotiations: playing chicken. May is determined to produce a Brexit, and she is confident that it would wind up being hers rather than a no deal. She is running out the clock on the hope that fear of a crash out will lead the EU to relent on the backstop or Parliament to approve her pact. She’s not entertaining a second referendum or Article 50 revocation or any path to Remain. Recall the Telegraph revealed what her possible fallback is: a referendum that does not have Remain as a choice.

Bloomberg confirms this take:

Faced with a Brexit vote she can’t win, Theresa May appears to be gambling that running down the clock to a no-deal departure might change the arithmetic in Parliament. 

A Cabinet ally of May’s, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the prime minister’s strategy more charitably, saying that if the deal can’t go through then the only option is to keep talking — to EU leaders, in the hope they might offer something more, and to lawmakers, in the hope they might ask a little less.

In other words, May will continue to resist bringing her Brexit plan to vote. Corbyn is going to have to request a vote of confidence. The Tories might beat him to it though.

May's Government Falls Next Week

The big Brexit story today is that May will not delay next Tuesday's vote in parliament. Ministers in May's government are panicked that the withdrawal agreement will be defeated by a 100-vote margin. They were lobbying for a delay because that significant a defeat would almost certainly lead to the collapse of the government.

Yves Smith is starting to row back the "likely scenario"of May losing next week's vote by a margin small enough to allow the prime minister one more trip to Brussels for more ceremonial haggling. Now Smith is almost at the point of adopting May's talking points: It's crash-out or the Brexit withdrawal agreement on the table. Take your pick.

My sense is that the publication of the government's legal advice -- that Northern Ireland would be, for all intents and purposes, separated from the United Kingdom in perpetuity -- means the DUP can longer support May. The government should fall next week. That's the obvious conclusion. If this does not happen it means that British democracy is even more dysfunctional than democracy in the United States. And that is not the case. So mark your calendar. Finally, May's coalition government, after a year-and-a-half in power, comes down.

War Drums in Lebanon & Ukraine + INF Treaty + Zombie May + "Smoking Saw"

There are warnings of an Israeli attack on Lebanon, as well as a Ukrainian attack on Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in Donbass.

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Colonel Cassad assesses the U.S. ultimatum to Russia on the INF treaty. Not good.

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The first test of strength for May's Brexit plan got off to a shaky start in parliament yesterday. Yves Smith jousts against the conventional and opines that May actually fared pretty well:

May may survive next week. Even though her bill will be shellacked, the margin of loss on the contempt vote is a reminder that the Tories will be loath to oppose her if there isn’t a viable leader in the wings. And the reason May is still standing is that there hasn’t been one since she became PM. The Tories do not want Corbyn in, and the DUP does not want to sacrifice its temporary power player role. So the DUP and Tories will vote against May only if they are pretty certain they can quickly install a new PM and avoid a general election.

The scenario that appears to be coming together is that May loses next week but not by an enormous margin. She survives to trudge off to Brussels one more time to try renegotiate the Irish backstop with the EU. The Orangemen of the DUP don't want a perpetual border-free customs union that will bind Northern Ireland to the south. Nothing will come of May's efforts other than allowing her government to live into the New Year.

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After what looked like a triumph for crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) at the G-20 in Argentina (a high five from Putin!) the Khashoggi affair is back top of the fold. Reuters reports:

ANKARA (Reuters) - Istanbul’s chief prosecutor has filed warrants for the arrest of a top aide to Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and the deputy head of its foreign intelligence on suspicion of planning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, two Turkish officials said on Wednesday.

The prosecutor’s office has concluded there is “strong suspicion” that Saud al-Qahtani and General Ahmed al-Asiri, both removed from their positions in October, were among the planners of Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the officials said.

The move comes a day after senior U.S. senators said they were more certain than ever that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the killing, citing a CIA briefing. The United Nations human rights chief on Wednesday called for an international investigation.

Lindsey Graham had a good line yesterday rebutting Pompeo's claim that there was "no smoking gun" linking MbS to Khashoggi's murder. Graham quipped, “There is not a smoking gun, there’s a smoking saw. You have to be willfully blind not to see it."

Crash-Out Brexit on the Way

Theresa May's "Chequers plan" for Brexit was rejected yesterday at a European Council meeting in Salzburg. As Yves Smith explains in "Crash Out Brexit Virtually Guaranteed as EU Leaders Talk Tough to Theresa May, Reject Chequers Plan, and Give Her October Deadline":

The EU has been clear from the get-go: no four freedoms (and that includes the free movement of people), no Single Market. And asking the EU to set up a whole new bureaucracy and legal arrangements to let the UK have its cake and eat it to was an obviously ludicrous demand, save to those inside the UK’s bubble.

Tusk told May she needs to deliver a new plan by October 18, and that also includes a “breakthrough” for the Irish border, and that the emergency EU summit set for November was on only if the European Council deemed there to be a realistic possibility of getting a deal done in its October meeting.

[snip]

[T]he EU leaders may have come, either intellectually or on gut instinct, to our conclusion that a crash out is close to inevitable. UK punters were putting the odds at 62% this week. We had them at 80% before today and we thought that was being too optimistic. With May digging in on Checkers even after the stern EU messages, there’s not even a credible path for the UK to escape a crash out. So if a disorderly Brexit is inevitable, better to make that clear as soon as possible to give businesses some chance to plan.

Sadly, but not surprisingly given the press spin, the public reaction seems to be to pump for a hard Brexit. One Financial Times reader says the “most recommended” comments in the BBC were of the “just leave” variety.

As for the deus ex machina of a second referendum, fuggedaboutit. May has ruled it out. If the Ultras oust her, they certainly won’t initiate one. The Tories will not vote themselves out of office and DUP is unlikely to play spoiler (they have power now as essential to the Tories majority that they stand to lose in a new General Election). It’s not even clear a new referendum would produce a different outcome. And in any event, it’s too late. A referendum that followed the procedures takes a minimum of eight months (the LibDem’s campaign site set forth the timetable) and the Ultras would be guaranteed to challenge any process that cut corners.

So if you are in the UK, start stockpiling. Or find a way to be out of the UK for at least six months starting shortly before the Brexit date. It won’t be pretty.

As I often mention, Smith's dour assessments of current affairs, which tack to the neoliberal center, are usually on the money. So if she says a crash-out Brexit is coming, that is the safe bet.

While Smith dismisses another referendum as unfeasible, she does not give enough attention to the possibility of snap elections. If a crash out comes, I don't see how May can just ignore the resulting hue and cry. Tories might leave her as a PM burning in effigy, but the demand for new elections will be unavoidable.

That inevitability, along with the likely triumph of a Momentum-led Labour, is what all the "Corbyn is an anti-Semite" stories have been about.

Corbyn on the Skripal Affair

In The Guardian yesterday Jeremy Corbyn penned a defense of his stance regarding the Skripal affair, "The Salisbury attack was appalling. But we must avoid a drift to conflict." His position is more hawkish than is being presented in the mainstream media. For instance, he applauds prime minister Theresa May's expulsion of Russian diplomats, and he calls for cracking down on the many Russian oligarchs who shelter on Britain's shores:

We agree with the government’s action in relation to Russian diplomats, but measures to tackle the oligarchs and their loot would have a far greater impact on Russia’s elite than limited tit-for-tat expulsions. We are willing to back further sanctions as and when the investigation into the Salisbury attack produces results.

The Tory government seems willing to take up Corbyn's idea of seizing Russian tycoon assets, but limiting the seizure to Putin's allies.

What set off the attacks on Corbyn was his statement of the obvious: We don't know who poisoned Skripal and his daughter, and trusting the government in these matters has gone very badly of late:

[T]hat does not mean we resign ourselves to a “new cold war” of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent. Instead, Britain needs to uphold its laws and its values without reservation. And those should be allied to a foreign policy that uses every opportunity to reduce tensions and conflict wherever possible.

This government’s diplomacy is failing the country. Unqualified support for Donald Trump and rolling out the red carpet for a Saudi despot not only betrays our values, it makes us less safe.

And our capacity to deal with outrages from Russia is compromised by the tidal wave of ill-gotten cash that Russian oligarchs – both allied with and opposed to the Russian government – have laundered through London over the past two decades. We must stop servicing Russian crony capitalism in Britain, and the corrupt billionaires who use London to protect their wealth.

[snip]

But if we are to unite our allies behind action that needs taking, we must make full use of existing international treaties and procedures for dealing with chemical weapons. That means working through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to reduce the threat from these horrific weapons, including if necessary an investigation by chemical weapons inspectors into the distribution of Soviet-era weapons.

There can and should be the basis for a common political response to this crime. But in my years in parliament I have seen clear thinking in an international crisis overwhelmed by emotion and hasty judgments too many times. Flawed intelligence and dodgy dossiers led to the calamity of the Iraq invasion. There was overwhelming bipartisan support for attacking Libya, but it proved to be wrong. A universal repugnance at the 9/11 attacks led to a war on Afghanistan that continues to this day, while terrorism has spread across the globe.

Can't really dispute that. And I think that's what's behind the howls of derision in the tabloids. When you are actively engaged in a "big lie" you can't have someone of prominence stand and state the obvious.

The New York Times, always on the lookout to skewer Corbyn, hopped on the bandwagon with Stephen Castle's "U.K. Labour Leader’s Stance on Russian Ex-Spy’s Poisoning Splits Party." Fortunately Castle lets the sunshine in at the end of his article. The Blairites within Labour can't touch Corbyn:

But one commentator, John Rentoul, suspects that there is more support for Mr. Corbyn’s position outside Parliament where, he wrote, the Labour leader’s “idealistic opposition to warlike words goes down well with much of the general public.” And it remains true that despite the strong circumstantial evidence of Russian involvement, the British police have neither identified any direct link to the Kremlin nor named any suspects.

Whether Mr. Corbyn pays a political price for his stance may depend on how the Anglo-Russian rift develops. His supporters are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, and most of his internal critics are already well-known opponents. While his comments gave plenty of ammunition to the right-wing press, many analysts, pointing to last year’s elections when the tabloids vilified the Labour leader, concluded that he might wear their criticism as a badge of honor.

The Italian elections, May's shuckin' and jivin' on Brexit, Trump's apparent longevity all point to the neoliberal center Washington Consensus in serious trouble. For those in power the solution is to lock in a New Cold War. Stifle dissent. Cement in narrow boundaries for political discourse.

It's a long shot. It will buy the discredited neoliberal center some more time. How much more is the question. But inevitably there will be a correction.

"No" is Enough for the Democratic Party

Tory doyen Theresa May has been pronounced dead. Jeremy Corbyn's rejuvenated Labour Party will likely lead the United Kingdom in the not too distant future. Whether a real social democrat can turn the battleship around, at least when it comes to its militaristic foreign policy, is subject to debate.

At least the UK has arrived at a point where the neoliberals have been routed from a mainstream stronghold, the Labour Party. That's not the case in the United States. The neoliberals remain deeply entrenched and in control of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday prominently featured throughout the day in NYT's online edition was Kenneth Vogel's story, "The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics." Vogel describes less a sea change and more an exercise in hedging by wealthy Democratic donors as they distribute money to big post-Trumpocalypse groups like Indivisible:

Perhaps no group epitomizes the differences between the legacy left and the grass-roots resistance like Indivisible. Started as a Google document detailing techniques for opposing the Republican agenda under Mr. Trump, the group now has a mostly Washington-based staff of about 40 people, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country. The national Indivisible hub, which consists of a pair of nonprofit groups, has raised nearly $6 million since its start, primarily through small-dollar donations made through its website.

Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.

And an advocacy group funded by the billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, a founding member of the Democracy Alliance and one of the most influential donors on the left, is considering a donation in the low six figures to Indivisible. Mr. Soros has already donated to a host of nonprofit groups playing key roles in the anti-Trump movement, including the Center for Community Change, Color of Change and Local Progress.

Indivisible would “gladly” accept a check from Mr. Soros or his foundation, said an official with the group, Sarah Dohl. But, she added, the group is committed to ensuring that money from major donors does not become a majority of the group’s revenue “because we want to maintain our independence both from the funders and from the party.”

I'm sure Soros et al. want to fund Indivisible to get at its list of activists. There was a political awakening after the Trumpocalypse that didn't always reach establishment groups like the Clintonista Center for American Progress (CAP). Also, it is not clear how committed to "No Is Not Enough" that Indivisible is. At the end of the day -- the end of Tuesday, November 3, 2020 -- "No Trump" might be enough.

At the moment it is this calculation -- that a neoliberal Democratic establishment can harness enough of the disenchantment with Trump without having to yield to social democratic demands (Medicare for all, free college tuition) to win in 2020 -- which is preventing the kind of overhaul of the party which Corbyn and Momentum have achieved in the UK.

Tories and Saudis in Trouble

Tory prime minister Theresa May is in trouble, and it is has nothing to do with Brexit negotiations or Grenfell Tower; it has to do with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. May is sitting on a report that purportedly links the Saudis to the funding of jihadist terrorism. Now, as David Kirkpatrick reports, a London think tank, named after Washington State's historic "senator from Boeing," has published a report of its own accusing the House of Saud of not only funding jihadists but actually training the preachers who preach violence in Britain:

The government of Prime Minister Theresa May has acknowledged in recent days that it is withholding a study on the Saudi role in fostering extremism in Britain, and opponents have accused her of pandering to the Saudi royals to protect British trade deals.

On Wednesday, a report from a hawkish think tank in London called new attention to the debate by arguing that Saudi Arabia had, in fact, played a singularly important role in promoting extremist strains of Islam in British mosques and religious schools — including the training of British preachers who have advocated jihadist violence.

Over the last 30 years, “Saudi Arabia has spent at least £67 billion,” or about $87 billion, on this endeavor around the world, said the think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, named for a United States senator from the Cold War era.

[snip]

The attention to Saudi Arabia also comes at a time when Ms. May’s political opponents are ratcheting up their denunciations of her Conservative government’s support for the two-year Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has plunged that impoverished country into a humanitarian catastrophe of disease and famine with no end in sight. (Saudi Arabia says the campaign there is essential to keep power away from the Houthis, a Yemeni faction aligned with Iran.)

The study of Saudi extremism was initiated more than a year ago by Ms. May’s predecessor, Prime Minister David Cameron, also a Conservative. He agreed to it partly to win the support of another party, the Liberal Democrats, for airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, and on Wednesday the Liberal Democrats accused Ms. May of putting Saudi business deals ahead of public safety by declining to disclose the study’s findings.

“We hear regularly about the Saudi arms deals or ministers going to Riyadh to kowtow before their royal family, but yet our government won’t release a report that will clearly criticize Saudi Arabia,” Timothy Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said in a statement.

Britain is “cozying up to one of the most extreme, nasty and oppressive regimes in the world,” he said. “You would think our security would be more important, but it appears not.”

The Home Office, which conducted the study, denied that the government had withheld it to avoid offending or embarrassing the Saudis. But a spokesman declined to comment on whether the findings of the study had highlighted a Saudi role in spreading extremism. “Ministers are considering advice on what is able to be published in the report and will update Parliament in due course,” the office said in a statement.

The Saudi Embassy in London did not respond to telephone calls.

Something Western voters understand and understand viscerally is that the Saudis have rigged the system. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an absolutist monarchy that exports a puritanical interpretation of Islam by means of a global network of madrassas, yet it depends upon the "great" democracies Britain, France and the United States, for its defense.

An example of al-Saud's reach was on display yesterday when new French president Emmanuel Macron had to walk back an earlier proclamation that there was no legitimate successor to Assad. According to Reuters, "After criticism, France's Macron seeks to reassure Syria opposition":

Macron on Wednesday appeared to try to refine his comments after speaking to Riad Hijab, head of the Riyadh-based High Negotiations Committee, which represents a group of military and political opponents at U.N.-mediated talks between Syria's warring parties in Geneva.

In a statement the presidency said Macron had confirmed to Hijab that France supported the HNC in the Syrian peace talks being held under UN auspices.

The High Negotiations Committee is a Saudi creation.

May's Tories are not the only ones in trouble. It is a perilous time for the Saudi royal family. Their blockade of Qatar is close to collapse; so too is Yemen. Palace intrigue, already intense with reports of the deposed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef under house arrest, is likely spiraling out of control.

ISIS and Saudi Arabia: "They are One and the Same"

The truth of Saudi support for jihadist terror is front and center in the British parliamentary election campaign. George Monbiot had a superb piece in The Guardian yesterday:

[May] is even more sycophantic towards this revolting man [Trump] than Tony Blair was to George W Bush. She won’t confront Saudi Arabia over terrorism or Yemen or anything else. Far from it: both as home secretary and as prime minister she appears to have suppressed a report into the foreign funding of jihadi groups in the UK that is said to focus on the role of the Saudi kingdom. When there is a conflict between our security and selling weapons to a despotic regime, brutality wins.

The hyperlink is to another Guardian story, "Theresa May urged not to suppress report into funding of jihadi groups," which says that

Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron have challenged Theresa May over a long-delayed inquiry into foreign funding and support of jihadi groups in the UK, after the Home Office suggested the investigation may not be published.

The inquiry into revenue streams for extremist groups was commissioned by David Cameron when he was prime minister and is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia.

[snip]

The Conservatives were criticised last year for selling billions of pounds of arms to the Saudis. 

Cameron ordered the investigation as part of a deal with the Lib Dems in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Islamic State into Syria in December 2015.

The Home Office’s extremism analysis unit was directed by Downing Street in January 2016 to investigate overseas funding of extremist groups in the UK, with findings to be shown to the then home secretary May and Cameron.

Eighteen months on, the Home Office said the report, originally due to be published in spring 2016, had not yet been completed and publication was not guaranteed, given the sensitive nature of the content.

A decision about the future of the investigation would be taken “after the election by the next government”, a Home Office spokesman said. 

Another reason to vote Labour tomorrow.

The feeling inside Iran is that ISIS terror definitely is Saudi directed. This from Thomas Erdbrink's story, "Islamic State Claims Deadly Iran Attacks on Parliament and Khomeini Tomb":

At least 12 people were killed and 42 others wounded Wednesday morning in a pair of devastating attacks on two of Iran’s most potent symbols: the national Parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Islamic State immediately claimed responsibility; if that is found to be true, the attacks would be the terrorist group’s first major assault within Iran’s borders. Suspicions in Tehran were also directed at Saudi Arabia, Iran’s nemesis in the region, which has been newly emboldened by a supportive visit from President Trump last month.

In the view of many in Iran, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is inextricably linked to Saudi Arabia. Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “ISIS ideologically, financially and logistically is fully supported and sponsored by Saudi Arabia.”

“They are one and the same,” he added.

At this point I think this is a pretty safe bet, and no doubt the reason the Tories are keeping their report hidden.

Given this then we have to accept what follows: Western governments in their fulsome support of the Saudis are complicit, even if only tacitly, in attacks on their own citizens.

The political equation is that terrorizing one's own population keeps the status quo -- the deep national security state, the rancid mainstream political parties, the inequality -- safe and secure.

Trump, thoroughly and unimaginatively corrupt, has "poured gasoline on the fire." As The Independent reported yesterday, "Trump's Washington DC hotel received $270,000 from Saudi Arabia":

Donald Trump’s flagship hotel in the nation’s capital has received more than $270,000 in payments from a lobbying firm tried to Saudi Arabia, as the country seeks to overturn a US anti-terrorism law.

The anti-sharia protesters this Saturday should park themselves on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Islamic State Intervenes in the British Parliamentary Elections

Prime Minister Theresa May has received what amounts to a non-stop, global campaign ad the last 24 hours thanks to terror attacks in London Saturday night that left at least seven dead and nearly 50 taken to local hospitals. Three jihadist attackers were killed by militarized police in a hail of bullets.

The headline repeated constantly Sunday was a variant of this morning's in The New York Times, "After London Attack, Prime Minister Says, ‘Enough Is Enough’." SitRep led its daily bulletin with the synopsis:

London. In the wake of Saturday’s terrorist attacks in London that killed seven people, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared, “enough is enough,” vowing to launch a sweeping review of Britain’s counterterrorism strategy after the third major terrorist attack in the country in three months. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had been carried out by “a detachment of Islamic State fighters.” The attack comes after the U.K. had already raised its terrorism alert level following a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, as well.

Campaigning for Thursday's election was temporarily suspended. So Theresa May largely had the airwaves to herself. (Corbyn did issue a statement.) I saw May's "enough is enough" statement after I turned on the television to see Novak Djokovic's round-of-16 match  at the French Open. I was not impressed. But then again I'm biased.

I think the benefit for May is not necessarily the quality of her statement, which was just boilerplate, but the fact that her name was invoked incessantly to the exclusion of anything else -- the victims, the Islamic State attackers -- other than maybe Ariana Grande and her return-to-Manchester concert.

But this morning there seems to be a counter-narrative developing to "enough is enough," and that is that May as home secretary backed cuts to the police force.

According to the NYT's Steven Erlanger, it is unclear how Saturday's attack will affect the election:

With the general election days away, several polls have shown Mrs. May’s lead over Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, to be narrowing.

Mr. Corbyn issued his own strong condemnation of the attacks. “We are all shocked and horrified by the brutal attacks in London,” he said in a statement. “My thoughts are with the families and friends of those who have died and the many who have been injured. Today, we will all grieve for their loss.”

Using different methods, pollsters are divided about the extent of the Conservative lead, but they all show the gap with Labour shrinking, making the landslide Mrs. May hoped for unlikely and even, for at least one polling company, raising the possibility of a hung Parliament.

It is too early to say how the attack will affect the vote, if at all. In general, crises tend to help the incumbent. However, Mrs. May did not seem to receive much of a polling bounce after the Manchester attack, partly because of some campaign mistakes. And as the former home secretary, she might receive some blame for perceived security failings.

Campaigning had already been suspended once, after the Manchester attack. That happened while Mrs. May was on the defensive, having had to change the position on home care policy announced just days earlier in her party’s manifesto.

One thing cannot be denied. The attack changed the direction of the campaign. All talk had been about the Tory collapse underway. Now the discussion shifts to different terrain, and it is not an easy read. Are voters sophisticated enough to know that May as home secretary and the Tories as the governing party are responsible for the status quo, and the status quo needs to change?

Change is Coming from Europe

If a blow is going to be dealt to American hegemony, we should look to Europe first. The U.S. is on a perpetual war footing. The Obama administration has picked fights with Russia, China; it is attempting to reassert control in South America, at the same time it is presiding over extensive military campaigns in the Greater Middle East (not to mention all its secret ops and special forces in Africa). The U.S. needs its enabling European sidekick in order to cope with its war mania.

But this war mania is what is splintering the electoral base of Europe's ruling parties. War mania creates refugees who attempt to immigrate to Europe. Merkel is losing consistently in Germany, and Le Pen is on her way this spring in France. Spring is also the time that Conservative Party leader Theresa May announced that Britain will trigger Article 50 and begin negotiating with the EU on an exit, which by statute must be concluded in two years. Spain might be headed for its third election in a year. Italy's Renzi is on the ropes.

At the very least, next year, when Europe is coming apart, it is going to be very hard for the U.S. to bluster and bully as it has for so long. Change is on the way, and it is coming from Europe.