Britain’s newly minted Prime Minister Liz Truss is now officially considering moving the location of the UK’s Israeli embassy in a move mirroring a similar decision made by President Donald Trump.
Newly appointed UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has confirmed that she is now considering moving the location of Britain’s Israeli embassy.
It comes after Truss promised to “review” the location of the embassy during the Tory leadership race earlier this year, with both of the final candidates vying to become Prime Minister at the time suggesting that such a move could be on the cards.
While a propensity to flip-flop on promises and policy appears to be part of the job description for modern so-called “Conservative” Party politicians, it appears that this is one of the campaign promises Truss has not forgotten, with the British premier reportedly telling Israeli PM Yair Lapid that the process was ongoing in a bilateral meeting at the United Nations.
“The Prime Minister informed Prime Minister Lapid about her review of the current location of the British Embassy in Israel,” a statement published by Downing Street on the meeting reads.
Truss is also said to have affirmed the “close ties” of the British and Israeli peoples, while also thanking Lapid for his “kind condolences” over the death of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
While the announcement seems to indicate Truss may indeed move the UK’s embassy to Jerusalem, there yet remains a number of factors that suggest such a relocation may not actually end up materialising.
For a start, while Truss has promised that she would “review” the embassy’s location, she has seemingly never confirmed exactly where she was considering as an alternative location, with there being no mention of the word “Jerusalem” anywhere in the Downing Street statement published on Wednesday.
Also, the Prime Minister has only ever promised a “review” of the matter, making no public commitments to actually pushing for the switch to happen in the short, medium or long term.
Even if she had made such a promise however, Liz Truss is no stranger to the signature Tory party U-turn, with it looks like the newly minted Prime Minister may yet perform yet another one in relation to Northern Ireland.
While having initially promised to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland protocol agreement with the EU preventing the six-county region from easily trading with the rest of the UK, it appears that the Tory premier may have softened her stance, with UK and U.S. authorities reportedly agreeing on Wednesday to try and come to a solution on the impasse within the next six months.
Should this process involve stepping back on the unilateral scrapping on parts of the protocol — which has left the North largely within the EU’s single market — it is likely that many pro-British Unionists in the region will be deeply upset and angry, with politicians from the loyalist side of the sectarian divide warning that the current situation risks undermining political stability in the region that has historically been plagued by violence.
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