Hi!

In this article I will continue to talk about geopolitics as I did in my previous article. In this new one we will talk about the regional geopolitical political context in Lancashire (county where is located Lancaster) and the external regional conflicts or tensions in which the United Kingdom is involved.

Regional geopolitical political context in Lancashire

Lancashire County is located in northwest England. Its main town is Lancaster and its administrative center is Preston. Lancashire during the industrial revolution was a major commercial and industrial region of England. The largest manufacture of the County was that of cotton, Lancashire produced 85% of global manufactured cotton. Its biggest cities Manchester and Liverpool were dominating world trade in the nineteenth century. Blackpool was in turn a major tourist cities. A reform in 1974 removed the cities of Manchester and Liverpool of the County to insert them into new counties: Greater Manchester and Merseyside. The County lost two fifth of its original size. It is now surrounded by Cumbria, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire Counties. 

General elections in the United Kingdom were held on May 7th, 2015. They were won by the Conservative Party of David Cameron with 36.8% of votes, the Labour Party of Ed Miliband came second with 30.4% of votes. In Lancashire the results were pretty tight with 236,434 votes for the Labour Party and 236,020 votes for the Conservative party.

The county council of Lancashire, is based in Preston in the county hall since 1882. He is currently no overall control since 2013, meaning that no political party has a majority of seats in the council. The last local elections were held in 2013, they are held every four years.

Finally, Lancashire contains the Duchy of Lancaster which is one of the two last Royal Duchies that remains in England.

External conflicts or tensions in which the United Kingdom is involved

The main conflict in which the United Kingdom is involved is the international intervention against ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) since 2014. These actions occur through interventions of member countries in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Nigeria. The goal is to stop the advance of ISIL and the human rights abuses they do. In Iraq, the British contribution are airstrikes since September 2014. The first one was conducted by the Royal Air Force in September 30th, 2014. In Syria, the role of the royal air force is a surveillance role done since October 2014. The UK is the only country with the United States to intervene simultaneously in Syria and Iraq. In January 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the UK was the second country to contribute as much to the coalition against the ISIL with more than 100 air strikes already undertaken. You can find more about his statements in this press conference held in January 16th of 2015 by Barack Obama and David Cameron at the White House.

Internal conflicts or tensions

I will present two of them.

The first one is its Eurosceptic position within the European Union. Indeed, the UK is one of them but without ratify all its laws and standards. So he did for example not adopted the Euro (the currency is the pound sterling) and is not part of the Schengen area. The country also has its own immigration policy and border controls. The question now is whether or not the United Kingdom will remain in the European Union. Indeed, David Cameron wants a referendum on membership the United Kingdom to the European Union. It would be held before the end of 2017. Here is an article from the Guardian of today, which gives some interesting information about this future referendum. One of the tensions of the moment is that the citizens of the European Union based in the United Kingdom and the British who had lived more than fifteen years in a European country, will not be able to vote in this referendum. This is a sensitive subject because they have the right to vote for all the other important elections taking place in the country (such as local governments or those of the European Parliament).  

The second one is the will of independence of Scotland. A referendum to know the Scottish position on the matter was held on October 18th, 2014 in Scotland. The question was: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" and they had to answer "yes" or "no." The "no" won with 55.3% against 44.7% of "yes". Scotland will remain for now in the United Kingdom. However, the question remains and the Scottish require a new referendum to be done after that the vote for or against the release of the UK from the European Union will be done. You can find in this article, from the BBC Scotland, why Scottish wanted their first referendum, and what a "no" answer could have meant for them and the United Kingdom.

We have now made the rounds of geopolitics in the United Kingdom. I hope these two articles I wrote have helped you to better understand the country. I hope also that you liked the fact I inserted some articles from BBC, The Guardian or White House to develop further this topic!

Thank you for reading me and see you soon!

Emilie

Pictures sources:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/Lancs-C-C-Logo-2009.jpg
Google maps

Articles sources:
http://www.lancashirebusinessview.co.uk/lancashire-general-election-results-2015-55481/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/18/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-cameron-united-kingdom-joint-
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/26/british-eu-referendum-when-what-who-answers-to-key-questions-brexit
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26550736