British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday (May 05, 2023) said that Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is a great inspiration to him. “My wife and two daughters are your fans,” he was quoted as saying during a bilateral meeting with his Bangladeshi counterpart at the Marlborough House of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. This was the first meeting between the two prime ministers after Sunak took over as the Prime Minister of Britain. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is in London to attend the coronation of King Charles III. Also read: PM Hasina holds bilateral meeting with Rishi Sunak Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem briefed reporters after the meeting. PM’s Speech Writer M Nazrul Islam was also present during the briefing. PM Hasina congratulated Sunak at the beginning of the meeting. She congratulated him on becoming the first British prime minister of Asian heritage at a young age. “You are a great example of what the youth can do,” she was quoted as saying. Praising Bangladesh's economic growth and Sheikh Hasina's leadership, Sunak wanted to know the secret behind success in maintaining high economic growth before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, the High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Britain said. Read More: UK’s Sunak set to say security guarantees need for Ukraine She also said the British PM considers Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a role model. Highlighting UK's relationship with Bangladesh, the High Commissioner said, “Rishi Sunak said that our relationship is very good. We have a wonderful relationship of 50 years. (In the future) it will be even better.” She said that there was a discussion on business relations between the two PMs. “As you know our relationship with Britain earlier was an aid-based relationship. But now, even 1 percent of our GDP is not from aid,” the Bangladesh High Commissioner said. Read More: Sunak marks 100 days as UK prime minister as problems mount “The British PM wanted to increase the trade and investment between Bangladesh and Britain,” she said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that British companies should invest more in Bangladesh. High Commissioner Saida Muna also said that Britain attaches great importance to Bangladesh. Heads of states and governments from 130 countries have come to the UK to attend the King's coronation. “Among them, Rishi Sunak has held bilateral meetings with the heads of states and governments of only 7 countries. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was among them.” Read More: Dhaka, Beijing should "deepen strategic partnership" to explore new growth points: Ambassador Yao During the bilateral meeting that went on for about 35 minutes, various bilateral and regional issues were discussed as well as Rohingyas who were forcibly displaced from their homeland in Myanmar. Saida Muna said, "Rishi Sunak mentioned that Bangladesh is carrying this huge burden, and Britain understands that it is a big problem." Sheikh Hasina thanked the British Prime Minister and people for their support to the Rohingya issue. She also said that the burden of Rohingyas has become a big security threat. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina invited Rishi Sunak to visit Bangladesh to see the conditions of Rohingyas firsthand. Read More: UK private sector to remain invested in BD's aviation sector Sunak praised Prime Minister Hasina's leadership on the issue of climate change as well. While talking about the Ashrayan Project, the Bangladeshi Prime Minister said that so far some seven lakh homeless families have been given houses under the project. British PM Rishi Sunak highly praised the Ashrayan project, the Bangladesh High Commissioner said.

A defiant British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted Wednesday that he is getting on with his job, as he faced Parliament for the first time since 41% of his own party’s lawmakers called for him to quit. Johnson has been left teetering after surviving a no-confidence vote by Conservative Party legislators by a narrower-than-expected margin. A total of 148 of the 359 Tory lawmakers voted against him in Monday’s ballot. Johnson says he plans to move on and focus on bread-and-butter issues such as clearing national health care backlogs, tackling crime, easing a cost-of-living crisis and creating high-skilled jobs in a country that has left the European Union. “As for jobs, I’m going to get on with mine,” he told lawmakers during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons. But Johnson’s party opponents say they have not given up on pushing him out. They fear that Johnson, his reputation tarnished by revelations of boozy government parties that breached COVID-19 regulations, will doom the party to defeat in the next national election, which is due to be held by 2024. Still, Conservative lawmakers dutifully cheered Johnson during a noisy Prime Minister’s Questions, while opponents relished the prime minister’s problems. Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said any Conservatives inclined to give Johnson another chance would be disappointed. “They want him to change — but he can’t,” Starmer said. Scottish National Party leader Ian Blackford called Johnson “a lame duck prime minister presiding over a divided party in a disunited kingdom.” Also Read: Boris Johnson says sorry after ‘partygate’ report released Blackford compared Johnson to comedy troupe Monty Python’s character the Black Knight, who has his limbs lopped off in battle, all the while proclaiming “It’s only a flesh wound!” And Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle asked: “If 148 of his own backbenchers don’t trust him, why on Earth should the country?” Johnson replied that “in a long political career so far, I have of course picked up political opponents all over the place.” But he said “absolutely nothing and no one … is going to stop us getting on and delivering for the British people.” While Conservative Party rules bar another no-confidence vote for 12 months, those rules can be changed by a handful of lawmakers who run a key Conservative committee. Johnson also faces a parliamentary ethics probe that could conclude he deliberately misled Parliament over “partygate” — which is traditionally a resigning offense. With opinion polls giving Labour a lead nationally, Johnson will face more pressure if the Conservatives lose special elections later this month for two parliamentary districts where incumbent Tory lawmakers were forced out by sex scandals. END/AP/UNB

Britain’s governing Conservatives will hold a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday that could oust him as Britain’s leader. Party official Graham Brady says he has received enough letters from lawmakers demanding a vote on Johnson’s leadership to trigger one. That happens if 54 Tory lawmakers — 15% of the party’s group in the House of Commons — write to Brady. “The threshold of 15% has been passed,” Brady said. He said the vote would take place in person in the House of Commons on Monday evening. If Johnson loses the vote among the 359 Conservative lawmakers, he will be replaced as Conservative leader and prime minister. If he wins, he can’t face another challenge for a year. Johnson has been struggling to turn a page on months of ethics scandals, most notably over rule-breaking parties in government buildings during COVID-19 lockdowns. Late last month an investigator’s report on what has become known as “partygate” slammed a culture of rule-breaking inside the prime minister’s No. 10 Downing St. office. Civil service investigator Sue Gray described alcohol-fueled bashes held by Downing Street staff members in 2020 and 2021, when pandemic restrictions prevented U.K. residents from socializing or even visiting dying relatives. Gray said the “senior leadership team” must bear responsibility for “failures of leadership and judgment.” Read: American spy agencies review their misses on Ukraine, Russia The prime minister said he was “humbled” and took “full responsibility” — but insisted it was now time to “move on” and focus on Britain’s battered economy and the war in Ukraine. But a growing number of Conservatives feel that Johnson, the charismatic leader who won them a huge parliamentary majority in 2019, is now a liability. If Johnson is ousted it would spark a Conservative leadership contest, in which several prominent government ministers are likely to run. Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale, a Johnson critic, said “we have some very good alternatives to the prime minister so we’re not short of choice. “Any single one of those people in my view would make a better prime minister than the one that we’ve got at the moment,” he told the BBC. Discontent seems to have come to a head over a parliamentary break that coincided with celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. For many, the four-day long weekend was a chance to relax — but there was no respite for Johnson, who was booed by some onlookers as he arrived for a service in the queen’s honor at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday. Read: Russian missiles strike Kyiv, shattering sense of calm Cabinet minister Steve Barclay, a Johnson ally, said toppling the leader now would be “indefensible.” “The problems we face aren’t easy to solve,” he wrote on the Conservative Home website. “Democracies around the world are all currently facing similar challenges. But under Boris Johnson’s leadership, our plan for jobs shows how we are navigating through these global challenges. “To disrupt that progress now would be inexcusable to many who lent their vote to us for the first time at the last general election, and who want to see our Prime Minister deliver the changes promised for their communities.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday held a bilateral meeting with her British counterpart Boris Johnson on the sidelines of COP26. The Prime Ministers discussed various issues of bilateral and multilateral import. The meeting was held at the designated UK Meeting Room of the Scottish Exhibition Centre in Glasgow, where the UN-led COP26 climate conference is being held. Earlier, the Prime Minister called on Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.

Scotland’s leader told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Sunday that a second Scottish independence referendum is “a matter of when, not if,” after her party won its fourth straight parliamentary election. Johnson has invited the leaders of the U.K.’s devolved nations for crisis talks on the union after the regional election results rolled in, saying the U.K. was “best served when we work together” and that the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should cooperate on plans to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. But Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, told Johnson in a call that while her immediate focus was on steering Scotland to recovery, a new referendum on Scotland’s breakup from the rest of the U.K. is inevitable. Sturgeon reiterated “her intention to ensure that the people of Scotland can choose our own future when the crisis is over, and made clear that the question of a referendum is now a matter of when — not if,” her office said. Also Read:EU says US stand on patent virus waiver is no ‘magic bullet’ Earlier, she said she wouldn’t rule out legislation paving the way for a vote at the start of next year. Final results of Thursday’s local elections showed that the SNP won 64 of the 129 seats in the Edinburgh-based Scottish Parliament. Although it fell one seat short of securing an overall majority, the parliament still had a pro-independence majority with the help of eight members of the Scottish Greens. Sturgeon said the election results proved that a second independence vote for Scotland was “the will of the country” and that any London politician who stood in the way would be “picking a fight with the democratic wishes of the Scottish people.” Johnson has the ultimate authority whether or not to permit another referendum on Scotland gaining independence. He wrote in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph that another referendum on Scotland would be “irresponsible and reckless” as Britain emerges from the pandemic. He has consistently argued that the issue was settled in a 2014 referendum where 55% of Scottish voters favored remaining part of the U.K. But proponents of another vote say the situation has changed fundamentally because of the U.K’s Brexit divorce from the European Union. They charge that Scotland was taken out of the EU against its will. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 52% of U.K. voters backed leaving the EU, but 62% of Scots voted to remain. Also Read: UK’s Johnson faces criticism over Scotland trip in lockdown When asked about the prospect of Johnson agreeing to a second Scottish referendum, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said Sunday “it’s not an issue for the moment” and stressed that the national priority is on recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Gove argued that the SNP’s failure to secure a majority in the Scottish Parliament was in marked contrast to the party’s heights of power in 2011, when it won a 69-seat majority. “It is not the case now — as we see — that the people of Scotland are agitating for a referendum,” he told the BBC. The Scotland results have been the main focus of Thursday’s local elections across Britain. In Wales, the opposition Labour Party did better than expected, extending its 22 years at the helm of the Welsh government despite falling one seat short of a majority. Labour’s support also held up in some big cities. In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan handily won a second term. Other winning Labour mayoral candidates included Steve Rotherham in the Liverpool City Region, Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and Dan Norris in the West of England region, which includes Bristol.

More than two months after calling off his visit to India for Republic Day celebrations, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering a spring trip to New Delhi in April. This was announced by his office on Tuesday.

Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem has expressed the hope that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit Bangladesh soon on the occasion of 50 years of Bangladesh-UK diplomatic relations.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced accusations Thursday that he is not abiding by the country’s lockdown rules as he visited Scotland to laud the rapid rollout of coronavirus vaccines across the United Kingdom.

For the first time in over five decades, India will not have a foreign leader as the chief guest at its Republic Day parade.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday cancelled his visit to India slated for this month-end, amid a surge in Covid cases at home. He had last month accepted New Delhi's invite to be the chief guest at this year's Republic Day parade.