New UK government may threaten London’s Iran policy

Significance The aim is to maintain some political distance from the US policy towards Iran. The United Kingdom will be hoping for support from France, Germany and Spain, among others. Impacts European powers will be more inclined to support Hunt’s plans as they avoid direct alignment with the United States. Washington could put pressure on the Europeans to toughen their position on Iran in return for shipping security support. Iran will continue to apply pressure on the international community through additional threatening actions in the Gulf.

Significance Trump first snubbed the EU on April 30 with a mere postponement of possible tariffs and then humiliated the E3 (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) on May 8 with his decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal. This sends a highly symbolic message from the US president to his European allies: buckle or face penalties. Impacts Trump’s decisions reinforce a growing realisation in the EU that he will interpret their search for compromise as weakness. The EU faces a difficult road ahead with multiple pressures increasing, both within and outside the bloc. The growing divide between the EU and the United States will please Russia.


2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Muirhead

Abstract The articulated foreign economic policy of the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker following its election in June 1957 was to redirect trade away from the United States and toward the United Kingdom. This policy reflected Diefenbaker's almost religious attachment to the Commonwealth and to Britain, as well as his abiding suspicion of continentalism. However, from these brave beginnings, Conservative trade policy ended up pretty much where the Liberals had been before their 1957 defeat-increasingly reliant on the US market for Canada's domestic prosperity. This was a result partly of the normal development of trade between the two North American countries, but it also reflected Diefenbaker's growing realisation of the market differences between Canada and the United Kingdom, and the impossibility of enhancing the flow of Canadian exports to Britain.


Author(s):  
David Cannadine

Sir John Plumb was a commanding figure, both within academe and also far beyond. He was as much read in the United States as in the United Kingdom; he was a great enabler, patron, fixer and entrepreneur; he belonged to the smart social set both in Mayfair and Manhattan; a race horse was named after him in England and the stars and the stripes were once flown above the US Capitol in his honour; and he appeared, thinly disguised but inadequately depicted, in the fiction of Angus Wilson, William Cooper and C. P. Snow. Yet one important aspect of Plumb's career has been repeatedly ignored and overlooked: for while his life was an unusually long one, his productive period as a significant historian was surprisingly, almost indecently, brief.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-245
Author(s):  
Yasmine Dominguez-Whitehead ◽  
Felix Maringe

PurposeThis paper provides a cross-national analysis of PhD supervision models, milestones and examination procedures in order to compare PhD programs and their practices.Design/methodology/approachA comparative approach is employed, which systematically interrogates PhD supervision models, milestones and examination procedures in the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States via a comprehensive review of the practices and literature.FindingsThe findings indicate the ramifications of the different approaches and highlight the benefits and drawbacks associated with the different models.Originality/valueBy making explicit the dominant supervision models, milestones and examination procedures that exist in the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States, the authors shed light on the somewhat obscure path to earning a PhD degree.


Significance The government is aligning itself with the emerging international strategy against ISG in Syria. Its push to participate in airstrikes in part reflects a wish to reassert the United Kingdom's role as an international security partner, especially to the United States and France. Impacts The government envisages airstrikes as being needed for at least 12-18 months. The United Kingdom will be important but secondary in the anti-ISG coalition, with the United States continuing to conduct most operations. In the interests of its anti-ISG strategy, the government will temper its insistence on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stepping down. The risk of an Islamist terrorist attack in the United Kingdom will increase. If Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn comes to be seen as correct in his anti-airstrikes stance, it will further envenom relations on the left.


Subject MiFID II implementation and compliance Significance The EU’s flagship investor protection reform -- the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) -- will come into force on January 3, 2018, Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU Commissioner responsible for financial stability, confirmed on October 17, saying that there would not be a further delay. Despite already having been given an extra year's extension, banks are struggling to comply in time because of the directive's complexity. Regulators, too, are behind in expanding their capacity to enforce it. Impacts Firms across the world that do any of their business within the EU will have to comply, not just those registered in the EU. All firms trading in financial instruments must comply but those where this is a small part of their business may be caught unawares. MiFID II will come into effect before the United Kingdom leaves the EU and is likely to be written into UK law post-Brexit. The United States is keen to deregulate, but US firms whose EU activity is not compliant will be punished, possibly harming US-EU relations.


Subject Outlook for the Five Eyes alliance. Significance The stability of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States is under stress over Chinese participation in the members’ 5G telecommunications networks. Impacts Possible US concessions on the supply chains of Chinese firms would ease strain within the Five Eyes alliance. European corporates will redouble efforts to burnish their security credentials to capture 5G market share. London’s eventual decision on Huawei will influence the EU and Asian democracies.


Significance The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China are the body’s five permanent members. India wants to join that group. Impacts India-China border tensions could surge in early 2021, worsening bilateral relations. Delhi will deepen security ties with Washington and its other partners in the ‘Quad’ grouping, Tokyo and Canberra. India will push for more stringent selection of UN peacekeepers.


2020 ◽  
pp. 136754942093588
Author(s):  
Stephanie Schulte

This comparative transnational history informed by discourse analysis examines the US and UK news coverage of two new ‘federal startups’ created in the early 2010s: The United States Digital Service and Government Digital Service. These agencies were designed to renovate federal infrastructures and institutions by integrating technologies and technologists into the federal government. Early coverage of these agencies in both countries focused on the integration of casual dress norms common in technology industries into federal offices dominated by suits. In the United States, those norms were embraced, often with amusement. But in the United Kingdom, they were met with hostility. This article explains why dress code was a focus in both countries and why it was covered differently in each. Ultimately, this study argues workplace attire is emblematic of the differing ways in which industry and government partnerships function in these countries. Dress code norm differences offer a window into how nationally specific cultural values remained about technology and government in each country. Ultimately, these findings suggest the extent to which values prioritized by technology industries became those prioritized by the US government, and the extent to which the United Kingdom retained separation between those arenas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M McCourt

Abstract Optimism about China's rise has in recent years given way to deep concern in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on an original set of interviews with China experts from each country, and an array of primary and secondary sources, I show that shifting framings of China's rise reflect the dynamics of the US, Australian and UK national security fields. The article highlights three features specifically: first, the US field features a belief that China's rise can be arrested or prevented, absent in Australia and the UK. I root this dynamic in the system of professional appointments and the intense US ‘marketplace of ideas’, which gives rise to intense framing contestation and occasional sharp frame change. I then identify the key positions produced by each field, from which key actors have shaped the differing interpretations of China and its meaning. The election of Donald Trump, a strong China-critic, to the US presidency empowered key individuals across government who shifted the predominant framing of China from potential challenger to current threat. The smaller and more centralized fields in Australia and Britain feature fewer and less intense China-sceptical voices; responses have thereby remained largely pragmatic, despite worsening diplomatic relations in each case.


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