https://uk.yahoo.com/news/note-men-just-started-doubting-184010670.html
..... The defence rolled out by the [UK] government is that the Americans make political appointments to public service jobs. That is to show extraordinary ignorance about the chronic problems in the American system.
The whole top layer of the public service, thousands of jobs – including ambassadors – change every time the president changes. It means there is no continuity in government, many jobs not being filled at all during a Presidency, and that pretty much all administrative decisions are politicised. Consider for example the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump.
It was in this way the populist wars against the constitutional system began in Hungary and the Czech Republic. They had elections, but they gradually began to undermine the judiciary and the public service until there was no check on the leader’s decisions.
Of course that is how Trump has behaved in sacking any public servant he felt was disloyal by whistleblowing or who he – often mistakenly – thought was opposed to him and using the government for his personal advantage. Read John Bolton’s book.
People will say this is overstated. This is Britain, we are a democracy and we will muddle through somehow. But that’s what people said in Poland and Hungary and that’s what people said as Trump took over. It didn’t prevent the alarming degradation of their political systems. Unless a few individuals had been brave enough to stand up to the populists we wouldn’t now see the possibility of reversing their rise in all of these countries.
The corruption of constitutional order can happen very quickly and reversing it can take a very long time and at huge cost. Of course it is an election that allows us to change governments who behave in such a way. But our election is four years off and so we have to rely on Conservative MPs, who keep Johnson-Cummings in office, to have the courage to stop this drift or replace them and the pressure of the opposition to hold the government to account.
They will only fulfil their roles if people realise what is happening and begin to resist.
Jonathan Powell was Downing Street chief of staff from 1997 to 2007
Read more
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/trump-bullied-humiliated-theresa-may-000519225.html :
While the insults were "water off a duck's back" for Mrs Merkel, Mrs May, in contrast, became "flustered and nervous" on the calls. "He clearly intimidated her and meant to," the source said.
Mr Trump was also said to have resisted asking Mrs Merkel - at the UK's urging - to publicly hold Mr Putin accountable for the Salisbury poisonings of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
.... The US president reportedly attacked the then British prime minister [Theresa May] for her stance on the European Union, Nato, immigration, and other issues the pair disagreed on.
The details of the conversations have been published by Carl Bernstein, one of two reporters who broke the Watergate Scandal, quoting White House and intelligence officials who are aware of the contents of Mr Trump’s calls with world leaders.
"He'd get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he'd get nasty with her on the phone call," Mr Bernstein wrote for CNN, quoting an official who described the verbal assaults as “near-sadistic”. "It's the same interaction in every setting with just no filter applied," one of the sources said.
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