40 MPs from May’s Conservative Party Sign Letter of No-Confidence in British PM

British Prime Minister Theresa May. (Getty Images)
British Prime Minister Theresa May. (Getty Images)
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40 MPs from May’s Conservative Party Sign Letter of No-Confidence in British PM

British Prime Minister Theresa May. (Getty Images)
British Prime Minister Theresa May. (Getty Images)

British Prime Minister Theresa May faced on Sunday mounting opposition as 40 lawmakers from her Conservative Party agreed to sign a letter of no-confidence in her.

The Times newspaper reported that the number is eight short of the figure needed to force a party leadership contest. If triggered, the mechanism would force May from office and replace her with another Conservative.

The victor would take over as Conservative leader and as prime minister. A national election is not necessary for that to happen.

May has been struggling to maintain her authority over her party since a snap election on June 8 which she called thinking she would win by a wide margin, but instead resulted in her losing her parliamentary majority.

Divided over how to extricate Britain from the European Union and hit by multiple scandals involving ministers, May’s government has failed to assert control over a chaotic political situation that is weakening London’s hand in Brexit talks.

An earlier attempt to unseat May in the wake of her disastrous speech at the annual party conference fizzled out, but many Conservatives remain unhappy with the prime minister’s performance and talk of a leadership contest has not gone away.

May has lost two cabinet ministers in as many weeks: Michael Fallon stepped down as defense secretary after becoming implicated in a wider scandal about sexual misconduct in parliament, while Priti Patel resigned as aid minister after she was found to have had secret meetings with top Israeli officials.

The PM is caught in a vise of pressure from both sides of the Brexit debate as she tries to get a key plank in the government's plans for leaving the EU through parliament.

The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill returns this week to the House of Commons, where it will face a flurry of amendments from lawmakers.

The bill is designed to prevent a legal vacuum by converting some 12,000 EU laws into British statute on the day the UK leaves the bloc in 2019. Legislators are scheduled to hold several days of debate and votes starting Tuesday.

But many lawmakers claim the bill gives the government too much power to amend legislation without parliamentary scrutiny. They will try to pass amendments to water down those powers.

And opponents of Brexit — both from the opposition and from May's Conservative Party — will seek to give parliament a binding vote on the final divorce deal between Britain and the EU.

In a column in Friday's Daily Telegraph, May warned pro-EU MPs that she "will not tolerate" efforts to block Brexit through parliamentary maneuvers,

As Brexit talks resumed in Brussels, she sought to reimpose her authority over potential rebels following the loss of the two ministers.

"The EU Withdrawal Bill is the single most significant piece of legislation in this parliament because it is fundamental to delivering a smooth and orderly Brexit," wrote May.

"Where MPs think they can improve the Bill, this government will listen to them.

"But we will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union," she added.

Meanwhile, the former British ambassador to the European Union who helped author Article 50, the EU's legal mechanism for withdrawal, insisted on Friday that the process can still be reversed.

"We can change our minds at any stage of the process," John Kerr said at a London event hosted by the pro-EU Open Britain.

"Actually, the country still has a free choice about whether to proceed. As new facts emerge, people are entitled to take a different view.

"And there's nothing in Article 50 to stop them."

May dismissed the claims, writing "it will be there in black and white on the front page of this historic piece of legislation: the United Kingdom will be leaving the EU on March 29, 2019 at 11pm GMT."



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."