Pressure mounts on PM to resign in two polls

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 12 January 2022

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LONDON - The proportion of voters who think Boris Johnson should resign has risen by 12 points since details of the Downing Street “bring your own booze” party emerged, according to polling.

A snap poll from Savanta ComRes found 66% of UK adults thought the Prime Minister should step down.

In Conservative voters, this figure was 42%.

While 62% of those polled felt the party in the No 10 garden in May 2020 was a worse breach of trust than the initial Christmas party revelations.

The survey of 1,040 UK adults on January 11 found the proportion of those who felt Mr Johnson should resign had risen by 12 points since December. Among Tory voters this was a nine-point rise.

And 65% thought Martin Reynolds, the PM’s principal private secretary who organised the garden party, should leave his role.

Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta ComRes, said: “That rope for Boris Johnson just got shorter as the latest allegations of further lockdown breaches in No.10 emerge and, crucially, this time Boris Johnson may lack plausible deniability due to the rumours circling that he and his wife attended the drinks event on 20 May while the rest of the country were restricted to meeting just one other person socially outdoors.

“A 12-point increase in those saying he should resign compared to Christmas Partygate is significant, but ultimately it’s not the court of public opinion that Johnson will be tried in; it’s his own party.”

A second poll from YouGov/Sky News found 56% of people thought the PM should resign, while 27% said he should stay in his role and 17% did not know.

When a similar question about whether Mr Johnson should remain as leader of the Conservative Party was posed by YouGov on November 22, 48% said he should stand down, 31% that he should stay, while 22% answered that they did not know.

Mr Hopkins said: “If, as in December, this scandal leads to the Conservative vote share collapsing in the opinion polls, the doubts among those who used to see Johnson’s electoral successes as his saving grace will no doubt increase, and the major difference between now and early December is that the Tories do not have a poll lead to act as a cushion to break the PM’s fall.

“Increased Labour leads that point to Keir Starmer in No.10 really could see Tory backbenchers get tetchy, and they may start the wheels in motion to replace Johnson as Prime Minister.”

Former UK defence secretary told to 'burn' memo that said Iraq invasion could be illegal

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 06 January 2022

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LONDON - Former UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon claimed he was told by Downing Street to "burn" a secret memo stating that the 2003 invasion of Iraq could be illegal.

Hoon alleged that his principal private secretary was told "in no uncertain terms" to destroy the document written by then-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, ahead of the US-led invasion which resulted in at least tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq.

The order came from former Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell, Hoon claimed, despite the former Labour leader dismissing the allegations as "nonsense" when they first emerged in 2015.

This is "further confirmation of what has long been known - ministers, parliament and the public were misled by Mr Blair into supporting a war that was seen by many as unlawful and a crime", said human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, who revealed the existence of Lord Goldsmith's advice in his 2005 book, "Lawless World". Powell has denied the allegation.

Lord Goldsmith is thought to have written the memo in 2003, warning that the war could be challenged under international law.

Hoon’s account is featured in his recently published memoir "See How They Run".

It is widely believed that the resurfacing of these allegations will bolster the campaign to have Blair stripped of his knighthood, awarded by the Queen of England in her New Year’s Honours list this year.

More than 700,000 people have signed a petition to have Blair's knighthood removed as of 5 January.

The charge.org page accused the former Labour leader and British prime minister from 1997 to 2007 of being "personally responsible for causing the death of countless, civilian lives", in reference to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Blair's government, alongside the US, decided to invade Iraq in 2003. This decision has since been slammed by the 2016 Chilcot Inquiry for having a "far from satisfactory" legal basis.

The war in Iraq killed hundreds of thousands, created millions of refugees, and has left Iraq fractured until today.

Julian Assange’s 1000th day in London prison

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 05 January 2022

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LONDON - Today Wednesday, January 5th 2022, marks 1000 days that Julian Assange has been inside of Belmarsh maximum security prison in London United Kingdom (UK).

Assange is a remand prisoner, meaning he is not currently serving any sentence, but is merely behind bars at the request of the United States.

Stella Moris, a lawyer, has said that Julian's health continues to deteriorate as he recently had suffered a mini-stroke: 'Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on.'

She said he was kept in his cell for long periods and was 'short of fresh air and sunlight, an adequate diet and the stimulus he needs'.

Assange faced a major legal setback on Friday when the High Court overturned a judgment made this year preventing extradition to the US to face charges under the US Espionage Act.

The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage.

His lawyers successfully argued he would be kept in conditions in the US that could lead to a serious risk of suicide. The High Court reversed the earlier ruling after the US government offered assurances about his potential imprisonment.

Ms Moris and Assange have two sons, Gabriel, four, and Max, two, and have been engaged for five years. She said he had 'more or less' recovered – but she fears the attack shows his health is failing.

The US wants Assange to face allegations of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information after Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.