Theresa May heckled by her own party members after local election shellacking thanks to Brexit impasse - Fox News

Embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May was heckled by her own party Friday, the morning after a shellacking in local elections that saw her Conservative Party suffer heavy losses amid an ongoing impasse over Britain's departure from the European Union.

“Why don’t you resign,” a man in the audience of the Welsh Conservative Party’s Spring Conference yelled as May took the stage. “We don’t want you.”

THERESA MAY SACKS BRITISH DEFENSE SECRETARY GAVIN WILLIAMSON OVER LEAK OF HUAWAI 5G DISCUSSIONS

A handful of other members yelled “get out, sir” but that didn't gather too much momentum from those gathered to hear the prime minister.

As ballots were still being counted Friday afternoon, the Tories had lost more than 900 seats, according to a live BBC count. While they may still remain the biggest party in local government overall, with more than 2,000 seats, it would be a significant gutting of their majority and end their control of a significant number of local councils.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at the Welsh Conservative party conference at Llangollen Pavilion, Llangollen, Wales, Friday May 3, 2019. Britain's main Conservative and Labour parties took a hammering in local elections as Brexit-weary voters expressed frustration over the country's stalled departure from the European Union (Aaron Chown/PA via AP)

The opposition Labour Party had lost more than 100, while the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats had so far gained more than 500 seats. Other smaller parties and independent candidates picked up more than 400 seats

While local elections are supposed to be fought on local issues, they are often a referendum on the performance of the sitting government in Westminster. Brexit is currently looming over everything, and the result is likely to be seen as a damning indictment on lawmakers’ inability to get Britain out of the E.U. nearly two years after Brits voted to leave in 2016.

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May has tried repeatedly to get her withdrawal agreement, negotiated with the E.U. last year, through Parliament. But it has been overwhelmingly voted down three times, leaving May to negotiate a delay until October 31 as she reached out to opposition parties to come to a compromise and muster support for some form of agreement.

Labour Party Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell indicated Friday that the elections may give those talks more impetus, saying that message from the elections was: “Brexit - sort it.”

“Message received,” he tweeted.

The result bodes particularly poorly for May’s party ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections later this month, that the U.K. was not due to participate in until the government agreed to a delay.

Polls for the European elections suggest that the newly formed Brexit Party, led by former U.K. Independence Party leader and Fox News contributor Nigel Farage, is set to make significant gains at the Tories’ expense and could even emerge as the biggest party overall.

Additionally, polls for any general election called this year suggest that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn could end up replacing May as Prime Minister -- who was once written off by many commentators as unelectable due to his extreme left-wing positions, until his party significantly cut the Tory majority in Parliament in the 2017 general election.

Under that cloud of gloom, the calls for May to resign have been increasing. May survived a vote of confidence from her own party in December -- meaning she is safe from another such vote until December this year. She also stared down a vote of confidence in Parliament in January.

Daniel Hannan, a pro-Brexit Conservative MEP, wrote this week that May must stand down before the European elections to avoid the party taking a “hell of a beating.”

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“Staying on would be a tragedy for her, ensuring that her premiership ended in bitterness and recriminations. It would be a tragedy for the Conservative Party, which could very well cease to be viable as a party of government,” he said. “And, because it would hand power to Corbyn, [Shadow Home Secretary] Diane Abbott and John McDonnell (who on Monday was delightedly promising a socialist revolution), it would be a tragedy for Britain.”

The result comes amid a rough week for May, in which she sacked Gavin Williamson, the defense secretary for allegedly leaking details about a possible arrangement with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to the media.

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2019-05-03 15:33:23Z
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Cyclone Fani lashes eastern India, killing at least 3 and displacing millions - Fox News

Three people have died and more than a million people have been displaced after Cyclone Fani tore through India’s eastern coast on Friday, lashing beaches with rain and winds gusting up to 127 miles per hour.

The tropical storm, a grade 5 storm, made landfall early Friday in the coastal state of Odisha and brought down trees and power lines. The “extremely severe” cyclone impacted the weather across the Asian subcontinent with its effects felt as far away as Mount Everest, officials said.

Around 1.2 million people were evacuated from low-lying areas of Odisha and moved to nearly 4,000 shelters, according to India’s National Disaster Response Force. Meanwhile, the airport in Kolkata was closed until at least Saturday and rail lines were closed.

An abandoned house and trees bend with gusty winds ahead of the landfall of cyclone Fani on the outskirts of Puri, in the Indian state of Odisha. (AP Photo)

Some 200 trains were canceled across India.

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An elderly man died of a heart attack in a storm shelter and a teenager was killed by a falling tree, Sky News reported, citing local reports.

A third person – a woman – was killed by flying debris.

In Bhubaneswar, a city in Odisha famous for an 11th-century Hindu temple, palm trees whipped back and forth like mops across skies made opaque by gusts of rain.

Videos shared on social media showed the impact of the storm, with one showing a bus being turned to its side by strong winds.

It is a "very, very scary feeling," said Tanmay Das, a 40-year-old resident, who described "the sound of wind as if it will blow you away."

30 MILLION UNDER FLASH FLOOD WATCHES FROM TEXAS TO ILLINOIS, AFTER SEVERE STORMS KILL 2 IN OKLAHOMA

The national highway to Puri, a popular tourist beach city with other significant Hindu antiquities, was littered with fallen trees and electricity poles, making it impassable.

Street shops are seen collapsed due to gusty winds preceding the landfall of cyclone Fani on the outskirts of Puri, in the Indian state of Odisha. (AP Photo)

At least 10 villages had been inundated with water in coastal Patuakhali district in southern Bangladesh after flood embankments were breached by the force of the cyclone, according to local reports.

By Friday afternoon, Fani had weakened to a “very severe” storm as it hovered over Odisha. It is expected to move north-northeast toward the Indian state of West Bengal by Friday evening, the India Meteorological Department said.

The National Disaster Response Force dispatched 54 rescue and relief teams of doctors, engineers and deep-sea divers to flood-prone areas along the coast and as far afield as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a group of islands that comprise a union territory about 840 miles east of mainland India in the Bay of Bengal.

Damaged structures and uprooted trees lie along a road in Puri district after Cyclone Fani hit the coastal eastern state of Odisha. (AP Photo)

Up to four inches of rain were expected in much of Sri Lanka, the island nation off the eastern tip of India.

'EXTREMELY SEVERE' CYCLONE TARGETS INDIA, SPARKING EVACUATION OF OVER 800,000 PEOPLE

More than 1,430 miles away on Mount Everest, some mountaineers and Sherpa guides were descending to lower camps as the weather worsened at higher elevations. The government issued a warning that heavy snowfall was expected in the higher mountain areas with rain and storms lower down, and asked trekking agencies to take tourists to safety.

On India's cyclone scale, Fani is the second-most severe, equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.

According to from the Meteorology Department, the storm’s timing is unusual as most extremely severe cyclones tend to hit India’s east coast in the post-monsoon season of October through December.

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Some of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record have occurred in the Bay of Bengal. A 1999 "super" cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha. Due to improved forecasts and better-coordinated disaster management, the death toll from Cyclone Phailin, an equally intense storm that hit in 2013, was less than 50, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-05-03 14:53:30Z
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British voters with Brexit on their minds punish main parties in local elections - The Washington Post

LONDON — British voters punished the country’s two main political parties in local elections, according to partial results on Friday, with anger over Brexit cited as the most likely reason. 

The governing Conservative Party looked set to lose the largest number of seats, with growing calls on the embattled prime minister, Theresa May, to resign. 

Speaking at the Welsh Conservative conference on Friday, May said that the results were “very difficult for our party,” and that they showed that voters wanted both main parties to “just get on and deliver Brexit.”

She was heckled by a Conservative activist who stood up and shouted, “Why don’t you resign?” adding, “We don’t want you.” He was booed out of the hall, and May replied to the crowd in Welsh with “Good afternoon.”

Three years after Britons voted to leave the European Union, the vexing issue of Brexit seemed to still be a dominant force at the ballot box. 

Local elections are usually contests over who can better organize the recycling bins and help out the shops on Main Street or sometimes even a protest vote against the governing party. But like all elections since the Brexit vote, these ones seemed to be something of a proxy vote on the 2016 E.U. referendum. 

An even bigger test looms with Britain’s European elections on May 23, where Britain faces the awkward prospect of electing politicians to institutions it’s trying to leave. 

Those results could be even more fragmented as two new political parties will be fielding candidates: Nigel Farage’s newly launched Brexit Party and a pro-E.U. party called Change UK.

The elections were held in many parts of England and Northern Ireland on Thursday, with results rolling in throughout the day on Friday. Not all councilors or districts are up for election every year. 

Politicians in both of the main parties were quick to point the finger at Brexit for their poor performance. Over 8,000 seats were up for grabs in the elections; the Conservative Party had held over 60 percent of them going into the elections. At the time of writing, the Conservative Party had lost over 700 seats and the opposition Labour Party had lost more than 80 with two-thirds of the results in.

[Brits pretend they’re sick of Brexit. But truth is they’re obsessed.]

The Liberal Democrats, a pro-E.U. centrist party, and other smaller and independent parties, looked set to be the big winners of the day. 

But as ever with Brexit, the vote was split, with some voters wanting it to hurry up and be over, while others didn’t want it to go ahead at all. 

John McDonnell, a senior figure in the Labour Party, tweeted on Friday morning: “We’ll see what final results of local elections look like by end of day as they are pretty mixed geographically up to now but so far message from local elections — ‘Brexit — sort it’. Message received.” 

Labour chairman Ian Lavery told the BBC that Brexit was “trumping” his party’s arguments against austerity. “People want to see Brexit over and done with,” he said. 

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland and from the Scottish National Party, tweeted: “If the message Labour takes from English local elections is that they should now be the facilitator of a Tory Brexit, I suspect their troubles will just be beginning.”

May and the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are holding cross-party talks in hopes of finding a way through the Brexit impasse. 

Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, said that the election results as of Friday morning appeared to be showing “disenchantment with Conservatives and Labour because of the broader of mess of Brexit.” 

Read more:

Britain will not leave the E.U. next week after European leaders allow a short Brexit reprieve

Brexit: Parliament rejects soft Brexit, second referendum

Dump May? Approve her plan? Some scenarios for what might be next for Brexit Britain.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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2019-05-03 12:28:44Z
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In photos: Tropical Cyclone Fani makes landfall - CNN

Gusty winds lead to street shops collapsing ahead of Tropical Cyclone Fani's landfall on the outskirts of Puri in the Indian state of Odisha on Friday, May 3.

AP

Updated 1108 GMT (1908 HKT) May 3, 2019

Gusty winds lead to street shops collapsing ahead of Tropical Cyclone Fani's landfall on the outskirts of Puri in the Indian state of Odisha on Friday, May 3.

AP

Tropical Cyclone Fani made landfall Friday, May 3, near Puri, India, in Odisha state. The storm is the strongest tropical cyclone to hit India in 20 years.

Packing sustained winds of 240 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour), the storm was the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

More than 1 million people were evacuated ahead of Fani, Odisha's chief minister said. About 10,000 villages and 52 towns in nine districts in the state were in the storm's path, forecasters said.

The storm is expected to weaken as it moves north-northeast toward Kolkata, one of India's most populous cities, and Bangladesh.

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2019-05-03 11:08:32Z
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Live updates: Cyclone Fani makes landfall in Odisha - CNN

Disaster relief plans have been made for Rohingya refugee camps along the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar in case Tropical Cyclone Fani hits the vulnerable, low-lying areas, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

In a tweet, the UNHCR said it had almost 150 emergency response containers at refugee camps in the east of the country: "They hold family tents, sleeping mats, blankets, buckets, aqua tabs, plastic sheets, rope, and will ensure quicker response to save lives, if needed."

Key among the items are the emergency tents which can be "rapidly deployed" should families' makeshift shelters collapse in the strong winds.

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https://www.cnn.com/india/live-news/cyclone-fani-live-updates-wxc-intl/index.html

2019-05-03 09:53:00Z
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Live updates: Cyclone Fani makes landfall in Odisha - CNN

Disaster relief plans have been made for Rohingya refugee camps along the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar in case Tropical Cyclone Fani hits the vulnerable, low-lying areas, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

In a tweet, the UNHCR said it had almost 150 emergency response containers at refugee camps in the east of the country: "They hold family tents, sleeping mats, blankets, buckets, aqua tabs, plastic sheets, rope, and will ensure quicker response to save lives, if needed."

Key among the items are the emergency tents which can be "rapidly deployed" should families' makeshift shelters collapse in the strong winds.

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https://www.cnn.com/india/live-news/cyclone-fani-live-updates-wxc-intl/index.html

2019-05-03 09:11:00Z
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Live updates: Cyclone Fani makes landfall in Odisha - CNN

Disaster relief plans have been made for Rohingya refugee camps along the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar in case Tropical Cyclone Fani hits the vulnerable, low-lying areas, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

In a tweet, the UNHCR said it had almost 150 emergency response containers at refugee camps in the east of the country: "They hold family tents, sleeping mats, blankets, buckets, aqua tabs, plastic sheets, rope, and will ensure quicker response to save lives, if needed."

Key among the items are the emergency tents which can be "rapidly deployed" should families' makeshift shelters collapse in the strong winds.

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https://www.cnn.com/india/live-news/cyclone-fani-live-updates-wxc-intl/index.html

2019-05-03 08:21:00Z
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