Great Britain

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares42 Views

    Humza Yousaf Resigns as Scotland’s First Minister

    by

    Mr. Yousaf, the leader of the Scottish National Party, announced that he was stepping down, days after the collapse of his coalition government.Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, resigned on Monday in the latest setback for his Scottish National Party, which has been engulfed in a slow-burn crisis over a funding scandal that erupted after its popular leader Nicola Sturgeon stepped down last year.Mr. Yousaf’s departure had looked increasingly inevitable after he gambled last week by ending a power sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party, angering its leaders and leaving him at the head of a minority government without obvious allies. His opponents then pressed for two motions of no confidence, which were expected to take place later this week.Having explored his options over several fraught days, Mr. Yousaf, who was Scotland’s first Muslim leader, said that he would quit in a speech on Monday at Bute House in Edinburgh, the official residence of the Scottish first minister.“After spending the weekend reflecting on what is best for my party, for the government and for the country I lead, I have concluded that repairing our relationship across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm,” Mr. Yousaf said in a short and at times emotional statement.He added, “It is my intention to continue as first minister until my successor is elected.”His resignation came after little more than a year as leader of the S.N.P., which has dominated the country’s politics for more than a decade and which campaigns for Scottish independence.Mr. Yousaf took over after the surprise resignation of Ms. Sturgeon, a prominent figure in Britain’s politics, who announced her departure in February last year. At the time Mr. Yousaf was seen as the continuity candidate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 63 Shares132 Views

      in Elections

      The Question of Transgender Care

      by

      Hilary Cass is the kind of hero the world needs today. She has entered one of the most toxic debates in our culture: how the medical community should respond to the growing numbers of young people who seek gender transition through medical treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies. This month, after more than three years of research, Cass, a pediatrician, produced a report, commissioned by the National Health Service in England, that is remarkable for its empathy for people on all sides of this issue, for its humility in the face of complex social trends we don’t understand and for its intellectual integrity as we try to figure out which treatments actually work to serve those patients who are in distress. With incredible courage, she shows that careful scholarship can cut through debates that have been marked by vituperation and intimidation and possibly reset them on more rational grounds.Cass, a past president of Britain’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, is clear about the mission of her report: “This review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves or rolling back on people’s rights to health care. It is about what the health care approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the N.H.S. in relation to their gender identity.”This issue begins with a mystery. For reasons that are not clear, the number of adolescents who have sought to medically change their sex has been skyrocketing in recent years, though the overall number remains very small. For reasons that are also not clear, adolescents who were assigned female at birth are driving this trend, whereas before the late 2000s, it was mostly adolescents who were assigned male at birth who sought these treatments.Doctors and researchers have proposed various theories to try to explain these trends. One is that greater social acceptance of trans people has enabled people to seek these therapies. Another is that teenagers are being influenced by the popularity of searching and experimenting around identity. A third is that the rise of teen mental health issues may be contributing to gender dysphoria. In her report, Cass is skeptical of broad generalizations in the absence of clear evidence; these are individual children and adolescents who take their own routes to who they are.Some activists and medical practitioners on the left have come to see the surge in requests for medical transitioning as a piece of the new civil rights issue of our time — offering recognition to people of all gender identities. Transition through medical interventions was embraced by providers in the United States and Europe after a pair of small Dutch studies showed that such treatment improved patients’ well-being. But a 2022 Reuters investigation found that some American clinics were quite aggressive with treatment: None of the 18 U.S. clinics that Reuters looked at performed long assessments on their patients, and some prescribed puberty blockers on the first visit.Unfortunately, some researchers who questioned the Dutch approach were viciously attacked. This year, Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College London, published a review of studies looking at the impact of puberty blockers on brain development and concluded that “critical questions” about the therapy remain unanswered. She was immediately attacked. She recently told The Guardian, “I’ve been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares132 Views

      in Elections

      Prince Harry Now Officially Resident in U.S., Documents Show

      by

      For years, Harry and his wife, Meghan, have considered California home. This week, he updated his residency in a corporate filing.The document filed on Wednesday at Britain’s corporate registrar, Companies House, was just a few lines long. But its purpose was to formally update the country of residency for one “Prince Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex” — otherwise known as Prince Harry.For years, Harry and his American wife, Meghan, have considered California home. The document updated the residency of the British royal to the United States for official paperwork for his business Travalyst Limited, a nonprofit sustainable travel initiative.The paperwork was just a bureaucratic formality. But it underscores just how far Harry, 39, has come from his days as a central member of the royal family in the country of his birth, to a very different life with his wife and children in California. It also comes at a time of turmoil for the House of Windsor.Harry and Meghan moved to Montecito, Calif., after stepping back from royal duties in 2020, amid a rift with the royal family.Prince Harry said in February that he had considered becoming a U.S. citizen, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “It’s a thought that has crossed my mind but it’s not a high priority for me right now.”But there had been little in the way of official confirmation of Harry’s residency status until this week. The filing indicates the change of residency dates to June 29, 2023, the day that Buckingham Palace confirmed the couple had vacated Frogmore Cottage, their British home. Queen Elizabeth II had offered the home to the couple when they were married in 2018.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      King Charles III Attends Easter Service

      by

      The family has been thrown off balance by health crises, including cancer diagnoses for the king and Catherine, Princess of Wales. She and her husband, Prince William, did not appear.King Charles III attended the Easter church service on Sunday at Windsor Castle with Queen Camilla, later greeting well-wishers who had turned out to see his first significant public appearance since disclosing last month that he has cancer.Charles, 75, has continued to work while undergoing treatment, greeting visitors and holding his weekly meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak. But he has suspended public engagements on the advice of his doctors.Strolling out of the church after the service ended, Charles shook hands and chatted with the people who had gathered outside, telling one, “You’re very brave to stand out here in the cold.”His appearance in a familiar setting, St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle, was calculated to restore a semblance of normalcy to a royal family that has been thrown badly off balance by multiple health crises this year. Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced just over a week ago that she, too, had been diagnosed with cancer.As planned, neither Catherine nor her husband, Prince William, appeared with the family at the service. She has not made an official public appearance since Christmas Day, before she entered a hospital for abdominal surgery in January. In a video, Catherine said that tests conducted after the operation found evidence of cancer.Charles has been a much more visible presence since becoming ill. He is photographed regularly speaking with dignitaries like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. On Tuesday, the king, who has embraced religious pluralism, met with leaders from multiple faiths at Buckingham Palace.But he has stayed away from larger gatherings. On Holy Thursday, known in Britain as Maundy Thursday, Charles skipped a service at which the monarch traditionally hands out gifts of special “Maundy Money” coins to people involved in community service. Camilla carried out the ritual, in one of her most conspicuous appearances as a stand-in.In a video recorded for the service, Charles said, “We need and benefit greatly from those who extend the hand of friendship to us, especially in a time of need.” That was widely interpreted as an acknowledgment of the flood of well-wishes that have poured in since he and Catherine announced their illnesses.Buckingham Palace has suggested that Charles is impatient and wants to get back to a regular schedule. But it has never specified what type of cancer he has, his prognosis or his treatment.Two weeks ago, social media channels in Russia were flooded with spurious rumors that Charles had died. After the reports were picked up by several Russian news agencies, the British embassies in Moscow and Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, felt obliged to debunk them, calling it “fake news.” More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Has the Luxury E-Commerce Bubble Burst?

      by

      After implosions by Farfetch and MatchesFashion — and with other blowouts possible — the future for online fashion retailers looks uncertain.Rosh Mahtani, the founder of the jewelry brand Alighieri, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her company this year. Her handmade gold-plated pieces, inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” made her a winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design and a mainstay of luxury e-commerce vendors.During Paris Fashion Week last month, buyers came to her showroom to select stock for the upcoming season, including MatchesFashion, a leading multibrand fashion retailer that is responsible for about half a million pounds, or $630,000, of Alighieri’s projected revenues. But there was a problem.“They had owed me 70,000 pounds [about $88,000] in unpaid invoices since October and had been asking for discounts on those bills,” Ms. Mahtani said last week. It made her uneasy, even if such bargaining was increasingly commonplace for independent brands like hers. Still, she said, she wasn’t quaking in her boots.“The team made a selection, and we talked about a capsule collection for the summer,” she said. “I don’t think any of us had a sense of what would come next.”Days later, MatchesFashion was put into administration (the British term for bankruptcy). Its owner, Frasers Group, which bought the company in December for about 52 million pounds, or $66 million, now said the operation was not commercially viable. Overnight, almost half of the staff was fired from a company that had been valued at $1 billion when it was sold to Apax Partners in 2017. Today, 200 brands are owed money and cannot access unsold inventory, and a furious customer base rages online about accessing orders or making returns.Rosh Mahtani, founder of cult jewelry label Alighieri, was owed substantial sums by MatchesFashion when the retailer was put into administration earlier this month.via Alighieri JewelryWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      U.K. to Accuse China of Cyberattacks Targeting Voter Data and Lawmakers

      by

      The British government believes China has overseen two separate hacking campaigns, including one that yielded information from 40 million voters.The British government is expected to publicly link China to cyberattacks that compromised the voting records of tens of millions of people, another notable hardening of Britain’s stance toward China since its leaders heralded a “golden era” in British-Chinese relations nearly a decade ago.The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, will make a statement about the matter in Parliament on Monday afternoon, and is expected to announce sanctions against state-affiliated individuals and entities implicated in the attacks.The government disclosed the attack on the Electoral Commission last year but did not identify those behind it. It is believed to have begun in 2021 and lasted several months, with the personal details of 40 million voters being hacked.The Electoral Commission, which oversees elections in the United Kingdom, said that the names and addresses of anyone registered to vote in Britain and Northern Ireland between 2014 and 2022 had been accessed, as well as those of overseas voters.The commission previously said that the data contained in the electoral registers was limited and noted that much of it was already in the public domain. However, it added that it was possible the data “could be combined with other data in the public domain, such as that which individuals choose to share themselves, to infer patterns of behavior or to identify and profile individuals.”In addition to the infiltration of the Electoral Commission, Mr. Dowden is expected to confirm that the Chinese targeted several members of Parliament with a record of hawkish statements about China. They include Iain Duncan-Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party; Tim Loughton, a former Conservative education minister; and Stewart McDonald, a member of the Scottish National Party.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Camilla Takes Center Stage With King Charles and Catherine Ill

      by

      The woman whose very existence once seemed to threaten the royal family’s stability has emerged as a stabilizing force during a major health crisis.In the last few weeks, as illness has sidelined two of Britain’s most visible royal figures, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and King Charles III, one member of the family’s frontbench has stepped into the vacuum: Queen Camilla.Last week, she traveled to the Isle of Man to deliver a speech on Charles’s behalf and met with public officials and community groups. She then flew to Northern Ireland, where she visited a bakery and butcher shop, attended a literary event and accepted salutes at a military parade.Camilla, 76, smiled for the photographers, joking on Thursday that a camera-friendly toddler who upstaged her visit to the butcher shop was a “natural.” She betrayed neither the strain of taking care of a cancer-stricken husband, nor that a day later Catherine would announce that she, too, had been diagnosed with cancer.It is the kind of twist of fate that royal watchers savor: Camilla, the woman whose very existence once seemed to threaten the stability of the royal family, has emerged as a stabilizing force during a major royal health crisis. At times recently, it has felt as though she was carrying the entire House of Windsor on her shoulders.“This is a vulnerable time for the royal family, where their human frailties are fully on display,” said Arianne J. Chernock, an associate professor of history at Boston University and an expert on the modern British monarchy. “Camilla’s own background and training can help her in these circumstances.”Crowds awaited Queen Camilla’s arrival in Douglas, Isle of Man, last week, where she filled in for Charles.Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson Collection, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Catherine’s Cancer Disclosure Shows Her Lessons From Previous Media Ordeals

      by

      “They know they can’t control the online world,” one expert on the royal family said about the recent spate of revelations about the health of Catherine and King Charles III.For more than two months, Catherine, Princess of Wales, had lost control of her story to a spiral of wild, baseless online rumors. On Friday evening, with a stark two-minute, 13-second video, she set out to reclaim it.To do so, the princess had to deliver the wrenching news that she was battling a life-threatening cancer, the kind of deeply personal disclosure that she and her husband, Prince William, have long resisted.Catherine, 42, made the decision to record the video herself, two people familiar with the planning process said on Saturday. Earlier, she had decided to post an apology for digitally altering a photograph of herself with her three children, which set off a new round of conspiracy theories after it was released on Mother’s Day in Britain.“This was pitch perfect from her perspective,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent at the BBC. “The fact that it was a video was a rebuke to all those questions about her whereabouts.”In opting to go public this way, Catherine has etched a place for herself in the annals of the British royal family and among the women of the House of Windsor. The video, in its frankness and barely concealed emotion, recalled Queen Elizabeth II’s televised message days after the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.Catherine seemed to be modeling herself on Elizabeth, whose video was intended to douse another media firestorm, over whether she and the royal family had not displayed appropriate grief after Diana’s death. It also set her apart from Diana, who was ultimately a victim of the media currents that swirled around her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Princess Kate’s Cancer Diagnosis Plunges Royal Family Into Uncertainty

      by

      First King Charles and now Catherine, Princess of Wales, are facing grave health concerns, stretching an already slimmed-down monarchy.In a video statement, Catherine, Princess of Wales, said that she had been diagnosed with cancer and started chemotherapy.BBC StudiosCatherine, Princess of Wales, has been diagnosed with cancer and has begun chemotherapy, she announced on Friday, putting a grim coda on months of rumors about her condition and plunging Britain’s royal family into deep uncertainty as two of its most senior figures grapple with grave health concerns.Her diagnosis follows that of King Charles III, who announced his own cancer diagnosis and treatment in early February. Like the king, Catherine, 42, did not specify what type of cancer she had, nor what her prognosis was.Speaking in a prerecorded video released on Friday evening, Catherine said, “It has been an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family” as she described having major abdominal surgery in January and then learning through subsequent tests that she had a form of cancer.Looking fatigued but determined to express hope about her recovery, Catherine said she and her husband, Prince William, were helping their three children, George, Charlotte, and Louis, cope with having a sick mother.“This of course came as a huge shock,” Catherine said, “and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family. As you can imagine, this has taken time.”“We hope that you will understand that, as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment,” said Catherine, who wore a simple striped sweater and sat on a bench, against a backdrop of early spring flowers, in the video, which was recorded by BBC Studios on Wednesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More