Commentary: The Surprising Origins of the ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ Slogan

Ask most Americans where the slogan “No taxation without representation!” came from and the likely response will be “American colonists protesting against Britain in the 1760s.” But the spirit, if not the precise letter of the phrase, originated more than a century before. Moreover, we can thank the Brits themselves for it. It started with something called the “ship tax.”

Since the early Middle Ages, English custom allowed the monarch to impose a special levy in times of war upon citizens who lived in coastal settlements. They could meet the requirement by providing ships, shipbuilding materials, or money for the Crown to build ships (hence the name, “ship tax”). Kings and Queens levied the “tax” as a royal prerogative, meaning they skipped the annoyance of securing the consent of Parliament as required in the Magna Carta of 1215.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Faith of Nations

In the faith of nations is their life and their undoing, much as it is with individuals. We may survive on the faith of others, but we cannot flourish any more than a child would when attempting to live out the dreams of his parents without making them his own. Faith is an intangible. The artificial intelligence of a computer might precisely calculate the chance of a success but it has no clue as to the value of failure. Faith can absorb both and then some. 

Read the full story

Tennessee Congressman Mark Green Travels Overseas to Repair U.S.-British Alliance After Joe Biden’s Afghanistan Exit

U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) said Saturday that he is in Oxford, England to meet with members of the United Kingdom Parliament to address lingering “raw emotions” over President Joe Biden’s exit from Afghanistan. Green livestreamed himself from Britain on Facebook. He said Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was shameful and hurt America’s longstanding political alliance with Britain. Green also scolded Biden for his “refusal to take [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson’s phone call for 48 hours.”

Read the full story

Commentary: America Gone Mad

After three weeks in Europe and extensive discussions with dozens of well-informed and highly placed individuals from most of the principal Western European countries, including leading members of the British government, I have the unpleasant duty of reporting complete incomprehension and incredulity at what Joe Biden and his collaborators encapsulate in the peppy but misleading phrase, “We’re back.”

As one eminent elected British government official put it, “They are not back in any conventional sense of that word. We have worked closely with the Americans for many decades and we have never seen such a shambles of incompetent administration, diplomatic incoherence, and complete military ineptitude as we have seen in these nine months. We were startled by Trump, but he clearly knew what he was doing, whatever we or anyone else thought about it. This is just a disintegration of the authority of a great nation for no apparent reason.”

Read the full story

First Person Receives Pfizer’s Vaccine as Britain Begins Mass Coronavirus Vaccination Effort

Britain’s National Health Service administered its first doses of a coronavirus vaccine Tuesday, becoming the first country to begin its mass vaccination effort.

Just after 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first person to receive a fully authorized vaccine outside of a clinical trial, marking the beginning of a global campaign to end a pandemic that has infected over 65 million people and killed over 1.5 million across the globe.

Read the full story

UK Backtracks on Giving Huawei Role in High-Speed Network

Britain on Tuesday backtracked on plans to give Chinese telecommunications company Huawei a role in the U.K.’s new high-speed mobile phone network amid security concerns fueled by rising tensions between Beijing and Western powers.

Britain said it decided to prohibit Huawei from working on the so-called 5G system after U.S. sanctions made it impossible to ensure the security of equipment made by the Chinese company.

Read the full story

Trump Commits to ‘Phenomenal’ Deal with Britain

  President Donald Trump deployed a mix of diplomacy and barbs in his joint news conference with British Prime Minister Teresa May in London Tuesday. Trump said the U.S. is committed to a “phenomenal trade deal” with Britain as the country prepares to leave the European Union, he saw “no limitations” on future intelligence sharing despite disagreements over the threat posed by China tech giant Huawei, and he praised outgoing British leader May saying she has “done a very good job.” Thousands of demonstrators have thronged central London to protest the American leaders’ visit. But when asked Tuesday about his reaction to the demonstrations, the U.S. president said he saw only a single small protest and media reports of much larger crowds are “fake news.” Prime Minister May praised the relationship between the two countries but acknowledged some differences over climate change and Iran. Britain still supports the Paris Climate accord, which Trump has rejected, and supports the Iran nuclear agreement that the U.S. has withdrawn from. May spoke days before she is scheduled to resign after failing to secure a deal to complete Britain’s exit from the EU. That process will be inherited by her successor, with no clear…

Read the full story

Commentary: Nigel Farage is Britain’s Prime Minister-in-Waiting

by Nicolas L. Waddy   Since at least 2014, the most powerful man in the United Kingdom has been someone who holds no noble or royal title, and has never occupied a domestic political office. He is a former commodities broker who took up the cause of reasserting British sovereignty and terminating the country’s membership in the elitist, internationalist, and vaguely socialist European Union. He has earned the unremitting scorn of Britain’s political, cultural, and economic elite in return—and a place in history as the man who upended the two-party system and breathed new life into the world’s oldest and most venerable democracy. Nigel Farage is the man of the hour in Britain and Europe. Three years ago, he led the successful campaign to convince British voters to embrace “Brexit”: Britain’s departure from the European Union. Believing his work largely done, he retired from political life, only to watch with horror as the British parliamentary elite obfuscated and delayed in the implementation of the people’s will. Two postponements of Brexit later, Farage took himself out of mothballs and launched the Brexit Party in order to contest the EU parliamentary elections. That was just six weeks ago. And now after last…

Read the full story

Commentary: The Road to Serfdom at 75 Years Young

by  Peter Boettke   When F.A. Hayek moved to Britain in the early 1930s from his native Austria, he was struck by what he saw as the same attitude among British intellectuals as he experienced among German thinkers during the 1920s. There was an extreme skepticism toward the market economy and capitalism, coupled with great optimism for planning and the promise of socialism. Advance the calendar almost a century, and Hayek might hear the chorus of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders humming the same reprise. His ears may even perk up a bit when harmonies emanate from right-leaning folks like President Trump, who dabble in central planning. British intellectuals in the ’30s such as Harold Laski and William Beveridge were dedicated social reformers. They despaired over the social costs they identified with unbridled capitalism resulting from monopoly power, externalities, macroeconomic volatility, mass unemployment, and income inequality. E.F.M. Durbin’s 1934 Labor Party Policy Committee “Memorandum on the Principles of Socialist Planning” promised that a planning system could eradicate the social ills emerging from the market’s inherent weaknesses. But a critically important point to understand is that from the perspective of these intellectuals, they were socialists in their economics precisely because…

Read the full story

Brexit: What Now?

Veteran Conservative lawmaker Nigel Evans has been in Britain’s House of Commons for more than a quarter-of-a-century and, like most of his parliamentary colleagues, is stunned at the turn of Brexit events. “I got elected in 1992 and I don’t know if I have known any time more uncertain than now,” he told VOA. He’s flummoxed at what the next move should be for a Conservative government that has lost control of the Brexit process. As a committed Brexiter, he fears Britain will end up staying in the European Union because of an impasse in the Commons that has seen the ruling Conservative government repeatedly rebuffed by lawmakers, including by a third of its own MPs, in a series of historic votes without precedent for the storied House of Commons. Parliament is not alone in being hopelessly divided: Theresa May’s Cabinet is, too, with the British prime minister lurching between pro-EU rebel ministers and their pro-Brexit counterparts, trying to resuscitate a government that appears to be in terminal decline. Divorce delayed More than 20 ministers have resigned in the past two years — and at least another half-dozen are on the cusp of quitting. Midweek another minister resigned and four…

Read the full story

Britain’s May Postpones Crucial Brexit Vote

Britain’s already disorderly departure from the European Union turned even more chaotic Monday when Prime Minister Theresa May postponed a House of Commons vote on her Brexit withdrawal deal, an agreement that took months of tortuous negotiations with Brussels to conclude. After four days of debate in the House of Commons and a panicky effort by the prime minister to sell the deal to an increasingly disapproving British public, lawmakers were set to rebuff May’s withdrawal agreement. Defeat would force May out of Downing Street and possibly trigger the fall of the Conservative government. While May Monday insisted publicly the vote on the withdrawal agreement, which she has staked her credibility on, would go ahead, aides said that behind-the-scenes, Cabinet ministers implored her not to move ahead. They urged her to return to Brussels instead to try to secure more concessions before the House of Commons has the final say. They argued May was facing a parliamentary defeat of historic proportions and needed to roll the dice. But Plan B— returning to Brussels to reopen negotiations on the 585-page deal— looks doomed. On news of the postponement, the already anemic pound crashed to its lowest level against the dollar in…

Read the full story

Conservatives Likely to Maintain Power in UK But Theresa May Could Be Out as Prime Minister; Boris Johnson or David Davis Possible Replacements

Pressure is growing on Prime Minister Theresa May to announce her intention to resign in the next few months. Senior Conservatives told VOA it is only a matter of time before May, who’s scrambling to hang on to power, has to go. They say she faces the choice between either agreeing to go quietly or facing…

Read the full story