... The BJP is in an unprecedentedly strong political position to give effect to its longstanding demands on Kashmir. But the velocity with which rumours are currently circulating suggests that there may be a major backlash against a move to scrap Article 35A.

In this context, it is also worth pointing out that while Article 370 is designated as “temporary”, the BJP should consider carefully the temptation to abrogate it in order to “integrate” J&K with India. Article 370(1)(c) explicitly mentions that Article 1 of the Indian Constitution applies to Kashmir through Article 370. Article 1 lists the states of the Union. This means that it is Article 370 that binds the state of J&K to the Indian Union. Removing Article 370, which can be done by a Presidential Order, would render the state independent of India.

The article was framed in this fashion for good reason. In 1949, when these discussions took place, it was likely that a plebiscite would be held in the state. The framers of the Indian Constitution had to allow for the possibility that the Indian union may have to let go of J&K. Far from effecting a closer “integration” of J&K with India, removing Article 370 might open the proverbial Pandora’s box...

https://theprint.in/opinion/with-special-status-hollowed-out-jk-considers-article-35a-last-vestige-of-real-autonomy/269547/

... It may seem strange that Johnson’s very first executive decision on coming in to 10 Downing Street was to cancel the long delayed judicial inquiry into UK involvement in torture and extraordinary rendition. On the face of it, there were political attractions for Johnson in pursuing the issue. The policy of complicity in torture had been established by Tony Blair and Jack Straw, with as ever the active collaboration of Alastair Campbell. A judicial inquiry would hold them to account, and given they are not only New Labour but a leading Remainer posse, you would think Johnson would have pushed forward with the chance to expose them. Plus he likes to pose as something of a social liberal himself. So why was Johnson’s urgent priority to cancel the torture inquiry?

The answer is that scores of very senior civil servants were deeply implicated in British collusion in extraordinary rendition. Those directly guilty of complicity in torture include Sir Richard Dearlove, Sir John Scarlett, Sir William Ehrman, Lord Peter Ricketts and Sir Stephen Wright. It was Johnson’s fellow old Etonian, Sir William Ehrman, who chaired the series of meetings in the FCO on the implementation of the policy of getting intelligence through torture...

... It was not concern for Blair and Straw that led Johnson to cancel the judge led inquiry. It was the knowledge that Establishment insiders like Dearlove, Ehrman and Ricketts would be forced to give public evidence of their wrongdoing and could be liable to criminal proceedings. The judicial inquiry was promised by Cameron but both Cameron and May blenched at the shockwaves it would send through the ranks of the mandarins who run the country. Johnson has now used the opportunity of his advent, when nobody was paying much attention to anything but Brexit, to try to bury the subject completely and protect the Establishment...

... I got sacked for opposing torture and extraordinary rendition. Of those that supported it and abetted it, Lord Peter Ricketts is now Strategic Adviser to Lockheed Martin, so reaping the cash from his role in promoting wars that killed millions of innocents. Sir Stephen Wright is Senior Adviser to Mitsui & Co. Sir John Scarlett is a senior executive for Rupert Murdoch. Sir Richard Dearlove is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of London and a member of the far right Henry Jackson Society, among other things. The wages of sin appear not bad at all...

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/08/boris-johnsons-fake-radicalism/

... “The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger will grow the stain on our reputation as a country that believes in freedom, fairness and human rights,” said Britain’s then prime minister, David Cameron, when he announced a speedy, judge-led inquiry. Yet nine years on, we have only partial answers, and now the government has decided that we will not get any more.

The initial inquiry was cut short due to criminal investigations – though what it turned up, despite its limitations, was shameful enough. Instead of reopening it, the government punted the issue to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which it had previously deemed unsuited to the task. The ISC’s chair, Dominic Grieve, described “inexcusable” actions. The committee found UK intelligence agencies to be complicit in hundreds of incidents of torture and rendition, mainly in partnership with the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Britain planned, agreed or financed 31 rendition operations. British intelligence officers consented to or witnessed the use of torture on 15 occasions. On 232 occasions the intelligence agencies supplied questions to be put to detainees whom they knew or suspected were being mistreated.

Yet the inquiry was conducted under such tight restrictions, including the inability to call key witnesses from MI5 and MI6, that the committee itself stressed that its report was not a full account. The government promised to consider a judge-led inquiry and respond within two months. Now, a full year on, it has said no...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/28/the-guardian-view-on-rendition-and-torture-a-shame-that-britain-cannot-erase

... That relations between London and Dublin are now strained is beyond dispute, though officials in Dublin insist that much of the noise is to be expected and aimed at a domestic UK audience rather than Ireland or the EU.

Still, following his appointment, it took almost a week for Johnson to place a phone call with Varadkar, who leads a confidence-and-supply coalition that – while shaky on a series of domestic issues – serves as a national government in all but name for the purposes of Brexit. When the phone call did proceed, both men adopted an uncompromising stance: Johnson insisting the removal of the backstop is a precondition for any deal, Varadkar adamant that the EU will not relent on the withdrawal agreement.

Varadkar rightly reminded Johnson of the British government’s obligation – as a co-signatory of the Good Friday agreement – to exercise its power in respect of Northern Ireland with rigorous impartiality. Johnson’s government relies, for the time being, on the support in the Commons of the Democratic Unionist party to prop up its narrow majority. The difficult parliamentary arithmetic, combined with Johnson’s inflammatory rhetoric, represents a serious challenge to the UK’s obligation to act as an honest broker in respect of Northern Ireland – the majority of whose citizens voted, like their Scottish brethren, to stay in the EU.

And although unionists are being comforted, for now, by Johnson, their confidence that a hard Brexit will not give birth to a united Ireland must also be fraying at the seams. This is not least because nearly two-thirds of the Tory party indicate in polling that they would rather sacrifice the union – and see Northern Ireland and Scotland leave it – than abandon Brexit...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/02/british-no-deal-brexit-irish-peace-unity

... Why is the salience of the environment soaring? Historically, some academics have played down the effects of “real-world” events or citizens’ abilities to deduce which issues matter, instead emphasising strategic manipulation of the agenda by the media and politicians. While these certainly count, the salience of the environment, like that of most other issues, ultimately does reflect real events. Evidence of soaring temperatures is becoming the lived reality of citizens, making scientific findings on the resultant collapse of ecosystems increasingly difficult to ignore.

However, there is more to the current Green success than greater environmental concern. The geographical disparities can still be partially explained by the long-term emergence of “post-material values” in affluent western European societies in the 1970s. These saw individuals move beyond materialist, redistributive concerns to quality-of-life matters, including care for the environment.

Moreover, the breakdown of postwar western European party systems and the accompanying decline in class voting mean that we are increasingly inclined to vote according to psychological predispositions and less because of social group. Without these social anchors in place, mainstream parties have become more vulnerable to “anti-incumbency” voting and single-issue voting, primarily to new parties. Centre-right parties have had to deal with challenger, anti-immigration parties, while the centre-left has suffered at the hands of, first, anti-austerity parties and, increasingly, environmentalist parties...

... All of these challenger parties, including the Greens, have displayed a remarkably more professional appearance to voters, mirrored by far more effective internal machinery, all of which has been aided by the arrival of the internet and social media...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/28/europe-greens-on-fire-and-not-just-because-of-sweltering-heat

... Lord Howell, a former Conservative cabinet minister and chairman of the Lords international relations committee, asked his government on Thursday whether it “was such a good idea to raid the Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar in the first place”. He said: “Obviously we want to stop oil getting to President Assad, although probably he can get all the oil he wants from Russia. Are we not supposed to be on the same side as the Iranians on the question of nuclear proliferation and control? Can we have a firm assurance that we did this not just at the say-so of the US?” Lady Goldie, for the government, insisted the request to intercept the ship came from the government of Gibraltar, but Foreign Office officials in the past have indicated the biggest factor in play was pressure from the US.

Speaking on the BBC, Nathalie Tocci, the special adviser to the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, put the UK decision in a wider political context. “The UK is feeling its own fragility and a fear of isolation as it tries to cut off its membership from the EU. There’s a line connecting the Iran story and the UK ambassador to the US.”

Either way, once Grace 1 had been seized, UK shipping in the Gulf was in Iranian crosshairs. By the weekend, the British government was privately advising British flagged vessels not to carry oil through the Gulf, leading to an abrupt about-turn of a BP tanker, British Heritage, heading to collect oil in Basra. By Tuesday night the British government was lifting the code alert to level 3, the highest possible, and on Wednesday the giant British Heritage was interrupted by Iranian ships.

Curiously, media briefing about British Heritage, and the intervention by HMS Montrose, which warded off the Iranian boats by aiming its guns at them, came originally from the US, and not the Ministry of Defence...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/11/is-the-us-nudging-britain-into-dangerous-waters-with-iran

...Iran has rejected the claims. Foreign minister Javad Zarif called the British allegations “worthless” in remarks to the semi-official Fars news agency. “Apparently the British tanker has passed. What [the British] have said themselves and the claims that have been made are for creating tension and these claims have no value,” Zarif said...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/11/uk-ships-in-gulf-on-high-alert-after-royal-navy-trains-guns-on-iranian-ships

... Polls show repeatedly how strongly Conservative members and voters prefer achieving Brexit over supporting Scotland and Northern Ireland. That upends the renewed support for the union expressed by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt who compete to lead the party. Johnson especially alienates Scottish political activists of all hues based on his previous disregard for their interests and his evident English home counties appeal. Despite his pledges to union-proof policy for fair treatment, the deeper strain of English nationalism coming through the campaign and from future Conservative competition with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is likely to win out.

Labour members and voters are more unionist in their solidarities. But the growing fragmentation of English politics between the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Brexit party will dampen that effect. So would any Labour search for Scottish National Party support after a general election, since the SNP would demand a second independence referendum and/or a differentiated deal allowing Scotland to remain closer to the EU.

By the same token, it would be difficult for Labour to resist supporting a second EU referendum. Were it to be held and reverse Brexit, how much would it resolve these deepening fissures in the UK’s constitutional order?

There is little sign of a will or capacity to conduct the root-and-branch reform many legal and political analysts say is needed to avoid break-up – by reforming, differentiating or federalising the UK in a more codified way. Calls for a UK-wide constitutional convention, citizens’ assembly or new foundational Act of union lack cross-party support and citizen interest, and are rejected by the dominant SNP in Scotland. The ignorance and indifference about Brexit’s consequences for the UK’s peripheries among politicians and officials in London reinforces pessimism among these analysts as to whether such reform is possible...

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/world-view-brexit-is-about-disintegration-of-uk-not-irish-unity-1.3947714

... In the wake of US abrogation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, and its attempt to pressure the rest of the world to follow suit, Iran expected China and at least a few of their other oil customers to defy the US oil embargo. That has not happened so far. Rouhani met Xi Jinping in Kyrgyzstan on Friday to get a clear idea of Chinese intentions, but Xi seems to have remained non-committal.

Meanwhile, the European mechanism that was supposed to insulate the trade in basic humanitarian supplies from US sanctions has yet to get off the ground – and may never fly.

Faced with economic strangulation, Tehran has less and less to lose. Whether it was behind the tanker attacks or not, it had signalled its intention to make the rest of the world pay some of the price for US brinksmanship. The message from Iranian officials over the past two months has been that, if Iran could not export its oil through the Gulf, nor should other nations. Tehran has also slapped down a nuclear ultimatum. If sanctions pressures are not significantly eased by 8 July, it will throw off some of the shackles of the 2015 nuclear deal, most importantly by raising the level at which it enriches uranium. That will ring alarm bells around the world, by cutting the time Iran would need to make a bomb.

Trump now appears to realise that the train he boarded is not heading to a glorious summit, but a potentially devastating conflict in the Gulf, and that some of his own officials, notably the national security adviser, John Bolton, are quite content – enthusiastic, even – to keep driving in that direction...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/14/shinzo-abe-iran-ayatollah-talks-analysis-trump