The Ukrainian parliament has requested that Constantinople recognize the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s independence from Russia, the parliament website reported Thursday.
The appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople ”” the head of the Orthodox Church”” was supported by 245 deputies, with 20 deputies voting against. The move is hoped to speed up “changes that will grant the Ukrainian church independence from an aggressor state,” the Kommersant newspaper reported.
Last month in Minya, Egypt, a 70-year-old Christian woman was beaten and dragged through the streets naked by a mob because her son was suspected of having an affair with a Muslim woman. Horrors like these have renewed fears of religious discord in Egypt. President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi and his government regularly describe Egypt as unified and have worked hard””publicly””to reduce Muslim-Christian tension. But the Minya event has once again demonstrated the relative impunity of the Egyptian police, who failed to respond to earlier warnings of a violent, religiously-motivated attack and took hours to appear on the scene.
The status of Coptic Christians in Egypt has for the most part remained unchanged since Anwar Sadat came to power in 1970. Today, there is little Christian representation in government, and sectarian violence is all but commonplace. But many have suggested that President Sissi is more respectful of minority rights than his predecessors, and many Christians supported Sissi’s rise to power.
#Brexit pic.twitter.com/zihHuUhr1B
— hugleikur dagsson (@hugleikur) June 24, 2016
The outcome of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom is good news for Icelanders and presents an opportunity for Iceland and other countries in the North-Atlantic according to the country’s President Ólafur Ragnar GrÃmsson.
“First and foremost the outcome is the most serious setback the leadership of the European Union has seen for a very long time,” Mr. GrÃmsson said, “… and a verdict so grim that it is hard to find words to describe this historic event.”
“First of all, it is now obvious that here in the North Atlantic will be a triangle of nations that all stand outside of the European Union: Greenland, Iceland, Great Britain, Faroe Islands and Norway,” says President GrÃmsson. “This key area in the North will be outside of the influence of the European Union.”
Britain should look North
The decision reached by British voters means that the EEA Agreement that Iceland and Norway have with the EU will become more relevant according to Mr. GrÃmsson..
..It is important to understand what the Leavers were campaigning for. And what they were campaigning against. They were campaigning to end the EU idea of political integration across Europe, of the unification idea sometimes referred to as the United States of Europe. They were campaigning against a myriad of regulations and social policies and immigration policies. They were not campaigning against the trade and customs arrangements that were the original underpinning of the EU when Britain joined the EU in 1973.
For the UK, the alternative to the EU is not nothing. There are other arrangements, such as EFTA, which Leave campaigners have endorsed as a better alternative for the UK.
EFTA (the European Free Trade Area) is an association of EU-neighboring countries who operating a free trade area amongst themselves ”“ and have negotiated free trade agreements with the EU and several countries, including Canada. The EFTA members are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. EFTA operates in parallel with the EU and all four member states participate in the EU’s single market..
Britain’s high commissioner is open to signing a free trade deal with Canada now that the United Kingdom has opted out of the European Union.
Howard Drake said Britain will go it alone on trade agreements after the Brexit vote, adding the U.K. will not cease to be a trading nation after it pulls out of the EU.
“We’re an island. We’ll be strongly pro-free trade outside the European Union,” he said in an interview with Chris Hall on CBC Radio’s The House.
“We’ll be looking to make trade deals with other countries around the world, including Canada. Other countries that are currently outside the EU do have very good trading relationships and trade agreements with other countries, so we can be the same. We have a lot to bring to the party,” he said, noting Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Pierre Poilievre said Friday the Liberal government should “immediately conclude” a trade deal with Britain, but that would be a difficult task given the country remains a member of the EU for the foreseeable future ”” at least two years ”” as it hammers out an exit strategy.
Drake also signalled that the Commonwealth of Nations ”” the organization of 53 mostly former British colonies and territories ”” could play a more robust role in Britain’s foreign policy in a post-Brexit world.
“We have always believed that the Commonwealth has a significant role,” he said. “Canada, the relationship, as we all know, is extraordinarily close. We have a unique relationship between us, given our history.”
..Despite our distance, the UK is Australia’s seventh largest trading partner and second largest source of foreign direct investment.
But in joining the EU, the UK gave up control over its trade policy. As a result, Australia and the UK have no bilateral free trade agreement. Negotiations towards an EU-Australia free trade agreement, which would include the UK, are scheduled to begin soon. Their successful conclusion would be very welcome and beneficial.
But an EU-Australia free trade agreement and a UK-Australia free trade agreement are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it is likely that an agreement with the UK, once outside the EU, would be quicker and easier to negotiate, at the very least because Australia would be negotiating with one partner, rather than 28. If Britain were to leave the EU, it should go straight to the front of the queue for a free trade agreement with Australia..
..Economically, we hear again the fears of financial turmoil, and there will inevitably be financial disruptions, almost certainly manageable. Politically, there is already upheaval in Britain, with Cameron resigning as prime minister, and the Labour Party convulsed in its own leadership struggle. All of this is to be expected. It’s what happens when political revolutions occur.
Immediately, the United States should do everything we can, politically and economically, to come to the side of our strongest ally in the world. Contrary to President Obama’s threat during his recent visit to London, Washington should put a bilateral US-UK free trade agreement at the very front of our diplomatic agenda. The Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, should offer necessary liquidity to see Britain through the near-term financial turbulence.
But most of all, we should welcome Britain’s departure from the EU. Happy Independence Day!
John R. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the US ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006
For American bankers living in London, the Brexit signals uncertainty about the capital’s status as the world’s largest foreign exchange market.
US banks will have to decide on moving thousands of jobs to other major European cities such as Dublin, Frankfurt or Paris depending on whether the UK is able to negotiate new trade deals to retain access to the world’s largest single market, the EU.
In a memo to staff on Friday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon indicated that though the company planned to maintain a large presence in Britain, it would face significant hurdles.
It is time for Project Grit. We warned over the final weeks of the campaign that a vote to leave the EU would be traumatic, and that is what the country now faces as markets shudder and Westminster is thrown into turmoil.
The stunning upset last night marks a point of rupture for the post-war European order. It will be a Herculean task to extract Britain from the EU after 43 years enmeshed in a far-reaching legal and constitutional structure. Scotland and Northern Ireland will now be ejected from the EU against their will, a ghastly state of affairs that could all too easily lead to the internal fragmentation of the Kingdom unless handled with extreme care.
The rating agencies are already pricing in a different British destiny. Standard & Poor’s declared that Brexit “spells the end” of the UK’s AAA status. The only question is whether the downgrade is one notch or two, and that hangs on Holyrood. Moody’s has cocked the trigger too.
Just how traumatic Brexit will be depends on whether Parliament can rise to the challenge and fashion a credible trade policy…
Read it all from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
One who is asked is Rowan Williams, who responds in part as follows:
A campaign fought on both sides without a clear vision of either national or international identity, reverting again and again to manipulative, irrelevant anecdotal appeals to self-interest, is a poor advertisement for the democratic process as currently operating.
The challenge is how to restore the possibility of genuinely educated debate; which is a substantial challenge given the overwhelming dominance of populist rhetoric in most of the British press, whose effect on the debate has for the most part been corrosive. Grass roots political literacy has to be built; the voices of properly independent civil society (frequently silenced by warnings from regulators and the like in this debate) – from churches to local citizens’ groups, from NGO’s to universities (if they can ever free themselves from their present servitude to functionalist ideology) – have to be liberated. Above all, class and regional divisions have to be addressed without colluding with reactive, anxiety-driven populism.
Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, about two million Poles have left in search of higher paid jobs, many of them heading to the UK, where they can earn up to four times as much doing the same job here.
It is estimated 850,000 Poles now live in the UK, making them the largest non-British nationality. Poland’s National Bank reckons Poles send home more than $1bn (£728m) a year, driving consumption in many parts of the country.
For Poles in the UK, especially those who have not lived there for the five years needed to apply for permanent residency, the future is uncertain.
The polls put the PP in first place, but again, without enough seats to form an absolute majority.
Left-wing newcomers Podemos are vying with the established traditional opposition, the Socialists (PSOE) for second place.
Podemos, who were allied with Greece’s Syriza, have campaigned for change. But they are, in many respects, an unknown on which – after Friday’s Brexit vote – many Spaniards may be unwilling to gamble.
The vote to leave the EU began as a cry for liberty and ended as a rebuke to the establishment
The world is looking at Britain and asking: What on Earth just happened? Those who run Britain are asking the same question.
Never has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook.
And none of it worked. The opinion polls barely moved over the course of the campaign, and 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU. That slender majority was probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.
Mr. Cameron announced that he would resign because he felt the country has taken a new direction””one that he disagrees with. If everyone else did the same, the House of Commons would be almost empty. Britain’s exit from the EU, or Brexit, was backed by barely a quarter of his government members and by not even a tenth of Labour politicians. It was a very British revolution.
Donald Trump’s arrival in Scotland on Friday to visit one of his golf courses was precisely the metaphor that the Brexiteers didn’t want. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee cheerily declared that the British had just “taken back their country” in the same way that he’s inviting Americans to do””underscoring one of the biggest misconceptions about the EU referendum campaign. Britain isn’t having a Trump moment, turning in on itself in a fit of protectionist and nativist pique. Rather, the vote for Brexit was about liberty and free trade””and about trying to manage globalization better than the EU has been doing from Brussels.
The Brexit campaign started as a cry for liberty, perhaps articulated most clearly by Michael Gove, the British justice secretary (and, on this issue, the most prominent dissenter in Mr. Cameron’s cabinet). Mr. Gove offered practical examples of the problems of EU membership. As a minister, he said, he deals constantly with edicts and regulations framed at the European level””rules that he doesn’t want and can’t change. These were rules that no one in Britain asked for, rules promulgated by officials whose names Brits don’t know, people whom they never elected and cannot remove from office. Yet they become the law of the land. Much of what we think of as British democracy, Mr. Gove argued, is now no such thing.
Instead of grumbling about the things we can’t change, Mr. Gove said, it was time to follow “the Americans who declared their independence and never looked back” and “become an exemplar of what an inclusive, open and innovative democracy can achieve.” Many of the Brexiteers think that Britain voted this week to follow a template set in 1776 on the other side of the Atlantic.
Mr. Gove was mocked for such analogies. Surely, some in the Remain camp argued, the people who were voting for Leave””the pensioners in the seaside towns, the plumbers and chip-shop owners””weren’t wondering how they could reboot the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment for the 21st century. Perhaps not, but the sentiment holds: Liberty and democracy matter. As a recent editorial in Der Spiegel put it, Brits “have an inner independence that we Germans lack, in addition to myriad anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies.”
Mr. Cameron has been trying to explain this to Angela Merkel for some time..
He once regaled the German chancellor with a pre-dinner PowerPoint presentation to explain his whole referendum idea. Public support for keeping Britain within the EU was collapsing, he warned, but a renegotiation of its terms would save Britain’s membership. Ms. Merkel was never quite persuaded, and Mr. Cameron was sent away with a renegotiation barely worthy of the name. It was a fatal mistake””not nearly enough to help Mr. Cameron shift the terms of a debate he was already well on the way to losing.
The EU took a gamble: that the Brits were bluffing and would never vote to leave. A more generous deal””perhaps aimed at allowing the U.K. more control over immigration, the top public concern in Britain””would probably have (just) stopped Brexit. But the absence of a deal sent a clear and crushing message: The EU isn’t interested in reforming, so it is past time to stop pretending otherwise.
With no deal, all Mr. Cameron could do was warn about the risks of leaving the EU. If Brits try to escape, he said, they’d face the razor wire of a recession or the dogs of World War III. He rather overdid it. Instead of fear, he seemed to have stoked a mood of mass defiance.
Mr. Obama also overdid it when he notoriously told the British that, if they opted for Brexit, they would find themselves “in the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the U.S. That overlooked a basic point: The U.K. doesn’t currently have a trade deal with the U.S., despite being its largest foreign investor. Moreover, no deal seems forthcoming: The negotiations between the U.S. and the EU over the trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are going slowly, and the Brits involved in the talks are in despair.
Deals negotiated through the EU always move at the pace dictated by the most reluctant country. Italy has threatened to derail a trade deal with Australia over a spat about exports of canned tomatoes; a trade deal with Canada was held up after a row about Romanian visas. Brexit wasn’t a call for a Little England. It was an attempt to escape from a Little Europe.
Many British voters felt a similar frustration on security issues, where the EU’s leaders have for decades now displayed a toxic combination of hunger for power and incompetence at wielding it. When war broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, the then-chair of the European Community’s Council of Ministers declared that this was “the hour of Europe, not the hour of the Americans””if one problem can be solved by the Europeans, it is the Yugoslav problem.” It was not to be.
Nor did the EU acquit itself much better in more recent crises in Ukraine and Libya. Field Marshal Lord Charles Guthrie, a former chief of the British military, put it bluntly last week: “I feel more European than I do American, but it’s absolutely unrealistic to think we are all going to work together. When things get really serious, we need the Americans. That’s where the power is.” Brits feel comfortable with this; the French less so.
Throughout the campaign, the Brexit side was attacked for being inward-looking, nostalgic, dreaming of the days of empire or refusing to acknowledge that modern nations need to work with allies. But it was the Brexiteers who were doing the hardest thinking about this, worrying about the implications of a dysfunctional EU trying to undermine or supplant NATO, which remains the true guarantor of European security.
In the turbulent weeks and months ahead, we can expect a loud message from the Brexiteers in the British government: The question is not whether to work with Europe but how to work with Europe. Alliances work best when they are coalitions of the willing. The EU has become a coalition of the unwilling, the place where the finest multilateral ambitions go to die. Britain’s network of embassies will now go into overdrive, offering olive branches in capital after capital. Britain wants to deal, nation to nation, and is looking for partners.
Even the debate about immigration had an internationalist flavor to it. Any member of any EU state has had the right to live and work in Britain; any American, Indian or Australian needs to apply through a painstaking process. Mr. Cameron’s goal is to bring net immigration to below 100,000 a year (it was a little over three times that at last count). So the more who arrive from the EU, the more we need to crack down on those from outside the EU. The U.K. government now requires any non-European who wants to settle here to earn an annual salary of at least £35,000 (or about $52,000)””so we would deport, say, a young American flutist but couldn’t exclude a Bulgarian convict who could claim (under EU human-rights rules) that he has family ties in the U.K.
To most Brits, this makes no sense. In a television debate last week, Mr. Cameron was asked if there was “anything fair about an immigration system that prioritizes unskilled workers from within the EU over skilled workers who are coming from outside the EU?” He had no convincing answer.
The sense of a lack of control over immigration to Britain has been vividly reinforced by the scenes on the continent. In theory, the EU is supposed to protect its external borders by insisting that refugees claim asylum in the first country they enter. In practice, this agreement””the so-called Dublin Convention””was torn up by Ms. Merkel when she recklessly offered to settle any fleeing Syrians who managed to make it over the German border. The blame here lies not with the tens of thousands of desperate people who subsequently set out; the blame lies with an EU system that has proven itself hopelessly unequal to such a complex and intensifying challenge. The EU’s failure has been a boon for the people-trafficking industry, a global evil that has led to almost 3,000 deaths in the Mediterranean so far this year.
Britain has been shielded from the worst of this. Being an island helps, as does our rejection of the ill-advised Schengen border-free travel agreement that connects 26 European countries. But the scenes on the continent of thousands of young men on the march (one of which made it onto a particularly tasteless pro-Brexit poster unveiled by Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party) give the sense of complete political dysfunction. To many voters in Britain, this referendum was about whether they want to be linked to such tragic incompetence.
The economists who warned about the perils of Brexit also assure voters that immigration is a net benefit, its advantages outweighing its losses. Perhaps so, but this overlooks the human factor. Who loses, and who gains? Immigration is great if you’re in the market for a nanny, a plumber or a table at a new restaurant. But to those competing with immigrants for jobs, houses or seats at schools, it looks rather different. And this, perhaps, explains the stark social divide exposed in the Brexit campaign.
Seldom has the United Kingdom looked less united: London and Scotland voted to stay in the EU, Wales and the English shires voted to get out. (Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has already called a fresh vote on secession “highly likely.”) Some 70% of university graduates were in favor of the EU; an equally disproportionate 68% of those who hadn’t finished high school were against it. Londoners and those under age 30 were strongly for Remain; the northern English and those over 60 were strongly for Leave. An astonishing 70% of the skilled working class supported Brexit.
Here, the Brexit battle lines ought to be familiar: They are similar to the socioeconomic battles being fought throughout so many Western democracies. It is the jet-set graduates versus the working class, the metropolitans versus the bumpkins””and, above all, the winners of globalization against its losers. Politicians, ever obsessed about the future, can tend to regard those left unprotected in our increasingly interconnected age as artifacts of the past. In fact, the losers of globalization are, by definition, as new as globalization itself.
To see such worries as resurgent nationalism is to oversimplify. The nation-state is a social construct: Done properly, it is the glue that binds society together. In Europe, the losers of globalization are seeking the protection of their nation-states, not a remote and unresponsive European superstate. They see the economy developing in ways that aren’t to their advantage and look to their governments to lend a helping hand””or at least attempt to control immigration. No EU country can honestly claim to control European immigration, and there is no prospect of this changing: These are the facts that led to Brexit.
The pound took a pounding on the currency markets Friday, but it wasn’t alone. The Swedish krona and the Polish zloty were down by about 5% against the dollar; the euro was down 3%. The markets are wondering who might be next. In April, the polling firm Ipsos MORI asked voters in nine EU countries if they would like a referendum on their countries’ memberships: 45% said yes, and 33% said they’d vote to get out. A Pew poll recently found that the Greeks and the French are the most hostile to the EU in the continent””and that the British were no more annoyed with the EU than the Swedes, the Dutch and the Germans.
The Brexit campaign was led by Europhiles. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor turned pro-Brexit firebrand who now seems likely to succeed Mr. Cameron, used to live in Brussels and can give interviews in French. Mr. Gove’s idea of perfect happiness is sitting on a wooden bench listening to Wagner in an airless concert hall in Bavaria. Both stressed that they love Europe but also love democracy””and want to keep the two compatible. The Brexit revolution is intended to make that point.
Mr. Gove has taken to borrowing the 18th-century politician William Pitt’s dictum about how England can “save herself by her exertions and Europe by her example.” After Mr. Cameron departs and new British leadership arrives, it will be keen to strike new alliances based on the principles of democracy, sovereignty and freedom. You never know: That might just catch on.
Mr. Nelson is the editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph.
Merciful Lord, the Comforter and Teacher of Thy faithful people, increase in Thy Church the desires which Thou hast given, and confirm the hearts of those who hope in Thee by enabling them to understand the depth of Thy promises, that all Thine adopted sons may even now behold, with the eyes of faith, and patiently wait for, the light which as yet Thou dost not openly manifest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
–James Manning,ed., Prayers of the Early Church (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1953)
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
–Romans 6:1-11
It is the fissure of the state. The people have met the people: they looked and evaluated, and the greater soul has chosen to be more free, noble, ingenious and generous. The majority apprehends the future of British civilisation in terms of its own manners and morals; in its native religious and political institutions. The whole entrenched elite Establishment ”“ Monarchy, Parliament, Government and Church ”“ has been confronted by an epoch-making movement of ordinary people, including humble, devout and sincere Christians who have been tarnished with the whiff of sin and smeared with racism, all because they believe in democracy, national self-determination, and the ability to sack those who make their laws.
The opinion pollsters got it wrong (again), and the markets backed the wrong horse. They have been humbled in their vanity. We now face a myriad of questions and fractured horizons. Our European ”˜relationship’ has changed: we have not ceased to love; we simply wish to live apart. We are no less important, and they no less appreciated: we are simply better equipped for self-exploration and destined for global commitment. It is our vocation; our national fulfilment.
23rd June will hereafter be known as Independence Day UK. It marks the resurgence of our democracy, and the restoration of the people’s sovereignty. Many have longed for it, hoped for it, prayed for it and worked for it. We now need different priorities and a new orientation. This is our opportunity for autonomy, transformation, a higher reality and universal benevolence.
This was always about how and by whom we are governed; not immigration and not GDP. We can muse tomorrow about how we heal such profound division in society, but today is our Independence Day. Rejoice! Praise the Lord! God Save the Queen!
Radio 3’s Birdsong Mixtape brings together the best of British birdsong with music inspired by the natural world in a seamless, relaxing mix.
As you listen, you’ll hear the calls of birds who start singing before sunrise (in particular the blackbird and redstart) before bursting into the dawn chorus with chaffinch and goldfinch in starring roles. As the day progresses, we hear from the skylark, willow warbler, song thrush and robin. Then, as dusk descends, we eavesdrop on the peerless song of the nightingale.
Inspired by the Birdsong on Breakfast feature (Sundays around 8.10am), some of the music in our Birdsong music was selected for its connection with birds; others for the time of day they evoke. Some tracks have been chosen simply for their beauty.
Read it all from the Onion LOL.
Ugandan Anglican Archbishop Stanley Ntagali is raising concerns over the practice of witchcraft in his country amid reports of Christian politicians and citizens visiting witch doctors and shrines to their ancestors.
The archbishop first expressed worry in May, after the recently re-elected parliamentary speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, visited her ancestral shrine in eastern Uganda to allegedly thank her ancestors for her good luck.
Since then, several politicians have been sighted at shrines, according to news reports.
The life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, rather than economic prosperity, political sovereignty or national greatness, are the condition and possibility of movement into new kinds of relationship with God and neighbour. Yet this conversion demands that as humans we orientate ourselves in a particular way to living in time and the experience of flux and transition that is constitutive of being temporal creatures. Such an orientation rules out a nostalgic division that poses the past as good and the present as intrinsically bad, as well as making judgments about who is and who is not on the “right side of history.”
Rather, ways must be found to identify with Christ and thereby dis-identify with the historical idols and cultural systems of domination within which human life is always and already entangled. Politics, understood as action in time through which forms of peaceable common life are cultivated, is a necessary part of any such process of discovery. However, the tragic dimensions of social and political life cannot be avoided and failure is often the result. Yet faith, hope and love demands the risk still be taken.
Some will judge what I am saying as merely swapping one kind of dangerous sentimentalism for another. Nevertheless, I beg those who consider themselves Christians to take up forms of politics orientated to faith, hope and love, yet alive to the fragility of ourselves, others and the world around us and to ignore the siren calls of the politics of nostalgia.
In a hard-fought and at times bruising campaign, it has been clear that debate about Europe has allowed a number of difficult issues to come to the surface. The debate and the patterns of voting suggest that our politicians in recent years may not have paid sufficient attention to some of the deeper issues which are present in our life. The inevitable and necessary period of reflection which must now follow will allow space for questions of poverty and immigration to be explored.
Those of us who live in Scotland are aware that the outcome of the Referendum is potentially of great significance. We hope that our politicians on all sides will take time for careful reflection and consultation.
The natural inclination of the Church has been internationalist, because our Christian faith does not recognise borders but sees the world and all its people as one. We are part of a world-wide community with a responsibility to one another and the whole of creation. Over recent years, the urgency of taking that international responsibility seriously has become more clear as global poverty, environmental degradation, and the refugee catastrophe call us to find co-operative and international responses.
It feels as though this vote is a vote against that spirit of international co-operation and those who have campaigned to leave have rarely addressed some of the issues that we in the Church of Scotland feel are crucial. Least of all,this vote hardly seems to be an act of solidarity even with our friends in places like Greece, which is going through so much turmoil at the moment both economically and in bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis.
Today, it is important to recognise that those who were our neighbours yesterday are still our neighbours today.
Read it all and there is more here including:
People in Britain have expressed their discontent with the structures of the EU. Actually, these discontents are widely shared by other Europeans. I hope that EU leaders and officials are able to bring about the reform to European political structures that is needed for these structures to endure. And I pray that they do endure. Because they were constructed to serve the cause of peace and reconciliation after the two terrible world wars. The task of reconciliation is never done, and I want my children and grandchildren to enjoy the kind of European peace which my generation has known.
In the meantime, I continue my own work of pastoring our European diocese, sharing the good news of Jesus and encouraging people in their faith. I pray for the future of the United Kingdom and of our European continent. I long for our continent to be a place of faith, of hope and of neighbourly care, with political institutions that serve the cause of justice, peace and prosperity.
The country has just taken part in a giant democratic exercise ”“ perhaps the biggest in our history. Over 33 million people ”“ from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar ”“ have all had their say.
We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people with these big decisions.
We not only have a parliamentary democracy, but on questions about the arrangements for how we are governed, there are times when it is right to ask the people themselves, and that is what we have done.
The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected.
I want to thank everyone who took part in the campaign on my side of the argument, including all those who put aside party differences to speak in what they believed was the national interest.
And let me congratulate all those who took part in the Leave campaign ”“ for the spirited and passionate case that they made.
The will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered. It was not a decision that was taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so many different organisations about the significance of this decision.
So there can be no doubt about the result.
Across the world people have been watching the choice that Britain has made. I would reassure those markets and investors that Britain’s economy is fundamentally strong.
And I would also reassure Brits living in European countries, and European citizens living here, that there will be no immediate changes in your circumstances. There will be no initial change in the way our people can travel, in the way our goods can move or the way our services can be sold.
We must now prepare for a negotiation with the European Union. This will need to involve the full engagement of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments to ensure that the interests of all parts of our United Kingdom are protected and advanced.
But above all this will require strong, determined and committed leadership.
I am very proud and very honoured to have been Prime Minister of this country for 6 years.
I believe we have made great steps, with more people in work than ever before in our history, with reforms to welfare and education, increasing people’s life chances, building a bigger and stronger society, keeping our promises to the poorest people in the world, and enabling those who love each other to get married whatever their sexuality.
But above all restoring Britain’s economic strength, and I am grateful to everyone who has helped to make that happen.
I have also always believed that we have to confront big decisions ”“ not duck them.
That’s why we delivered the first coalition government in 70 years to bring our economy back from the brink. It’s why we delivered a fair, legal and decisive referendum in Scotland. And why I made the pledge to renegotiate Britain’s position in the European Union and hold a referendum on our membership, and have carried those things out.
I fought this campaign in the only way I know how ”“ which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel ”“ head, heart and soul.
I held nothing back.
I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union, and I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone ”“ not the future of any single politician, including myself.
But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path, and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.
I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.
This is not a decision I have taken lightly, but I do believe it is in the national interest to have a period of stability and then the new leadership required.
There is no need for a precise timetable today, but in my view we should aim to have a new Prime Minister in place by the start of the Conservative party conference in October.
Delivering stability will be important and I will continue in post as Prime Minister with my Cabinet for the next 3 months. The Cabinet will meet on Monday.
The Governor of the Bank of England is making a statement about the steps that the Bank and the Treasury are taking to reassure financial markets. We will also continue taking forward the important legislation that we set before Parliament in the Queen’s Speech. And I have spoken to Her Majesty the Queen this morning to advise her of the steps that I am taking.
A negotiation with the European Union will need to begin under a new Prime Minister, and I think it is right that this new Prime Minister takes the decision about when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU.
I will attend the European Council next week to explain the decision the British people have taken and my own decision.
The British people have made a choice. That not only needs to be respected ”“ but those on the losing side of the argument, myself included, should help to make it work.
Britain is a special country.
We have so many great advantages.
A parliamentary democracy where we resolve great issues about our future through peaceful debate.
A great trading nation, with our science and arts, our engineering and our creativity respected the world over.
And while we are not perfect, I do believe we can be a model of a multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, where people can come and make a contribution and rise to the very highest that their talent allows.
Although leaving Europe was not the path I recommended, I am the first to praise our incredible strengths. I have said before that Britain can survive outside the European Union, and indeed that we could find a way.
Now the decision has been made to leave, we need to find the best way, and I will do everything I can to help.
I love this country ”“ and I feel honoured to have served it.
And I will do everything I can in future to help this great country succeed.
From there
The outcome of the EU referendum is now clear.
Within our parishes and across our country, people will be reflecting on the result in different ways. Those who voted Leave will be happy that their voice was heard, and hopeful for our country’s future outside the EU. For those who voted Remain, this will be a day of profound regret and even sorrow. The close final result will only have strengthened these feelings all round.
There will also be those who have felt disengaged from the long political campaign, and who still feel dismayed at the bitterness with which it was often conducted. It will be vital for us all, as we accept the result and deal with what it means, to understand and respect those who take different views of the same event.
In the debates that will come, we will be most effective if we now seek to heal the divisions of the past campaign. However, those divisions were about such deep issues of national identity and indeed self-identity that doing so will be a difficult and costly task. In the Church, it will be achieved through a renewed focus on what is unchanged, and on what is unchangeable.
On Thursday, millions of people from across the United Kingdom voted in the Referendum, and a majority expressed a desire that Britain’s future is to be outside the European Union.
The outcome of this referendum has been determined by the people of this country. It is now the responsibility of the Government, with the support of Parliament, to take full account of the outcome of the referendum, and, in the light of this, decide upon the next steps. This morning, the Prime Minister has offered a framework for when this process might formally begin.
”The vote to withdraw from the European Union means that now we must all reimagine both what it means to be the United Kingdom in an interdependent world, and what values and virtues should shape and guide our relationships with others.
“As citizens of the United Kingdom, whatever our views during the referendum campaign, we must now unite in a common task to build a generous and forward-looking country, contributing to human flourishing around the world. We must remain hospitable and compassionate, builders of bridges and not barriers. Many of those living among us and alongside us as neighbours, friends and work colleagues come from overseas and some will feel a deep sense of insecurity. We must respond by offering reassurance, by cherishing our wonderfully diverse society, and by affirming the unique contribution of each and every one.
”The referendum campaign has been vigorous and, at times, has caused hurt to those on one side or the other. We must therefore act with humility and courage ”” being true to the principles that make the very best of our nation. Unity, hope, and generosity will enable us to overcome the period of transition that will now happen, and to emerge confident and successful. The opportunities and challenges that face us as a nation and as global citizens are too significant for us to settle for less.
”As those who hope and trust in the living God let us pray for all our leaders, especially for Prime Minster David Cameron in his remaining months in office. We also pray for leaders across Europe, and around the world, as they face this dramatic change. Let us pray especially that we may go forward to build a good United Kingdom that, though relating to the rest of Europe in a new way will play its part amongst the nations in the pursuit of the common good throughout the world.”
(Found in a number of places including there).
The goal is to unwind Britain’s 43-year membership of the bloc, disentangle and sever the legacy of shared sovereignty, and then reshape the biggest single market on earth.
Three fundamental issues arise.
On substance, what political and commercial arrangements will Brexit Britain demand and will the EU accept them?
In execution, will the exit deal ”” the divorce and breaking of old obligations ”” be struck at the same time as a trade agreement covering post-Brexit trade? And if no, is a transition possible to ensure a soft landing?
Almighty God, by whose providence thy servant John the Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our Savior by preaching repentance: Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist. He prepared the way of the Lord! https://t.co/gMdo7msiyW
— STMUP – IUP (@stmup) June 24, 2016