July 15th: A wild week of a White Paper, Walkouts and a World Cup Final...

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As I predicted, the last edition of my Weekly Review became rapidly obsolete.

United Kingdom

On Monday afternoon, Boris Johnson decided to follow in the footsteps of David Davis and resign over Theresa May’s Chequers white paper.

The white paper seems to be an almost unworkable document that has managed to disappoint those on both the leave and remain sides of the Conservative Party.

Since Boris resigned, there have been several other resignations from junior ministers and others with appointed positions within the party.

The pressure has steadily grown on Theresa May since Friday last and with only two weeks to go before the summer recess, there is a palpable sense that the coming week will be extremely dramatic and dangerous for her.

From a polling perspective, Labour got their biggest lead since the 2017 election on Saturday when they were ahead by 4%. Ominously for May, Labour then went and exceeded that on Sunday with a 5% lead.

It didn’t help that last week was also when Donald Trump visited the United Kingdom for the first time as American president. He brought plenty of drama and memorable soundbites, including criticizing Theresa May’s Brexit negotiating strategy.

Again, next week will be dominated by Donald Trump’s visit to Helsinki to meet with Vladimir Putin and Theresa May’s struggles with the Customs and Trade Bills, as well as any potential leadership challenges….

Ireland

Sinn Fein captured the headlines last week by announcing they will be fielding a candidate for the Irish Presidential election later in the year. They will be up against a very popular incumbent in Michael D Higgins. Personally, I don’t think Sinn Fein believe they have much chance of winning but they must assume it will give them a lot of publicity and media coverage ahead of the probable 2019 General Election.

World Cup
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A fantastic world cup was capped by France beating Croatia 4-2. The whole month has been enjoyable, with brilliant games and very little of the anticipated off the field drama. From a political perspective, there were some nice pictured captures over the month. Macron celebrating Pogba stands out in two ways; 1) he helps with his campaign policy “France is back” and 2) he is working on fixing frayed relations between the government and the greater society as a whole…