Samantha Hawley Samantha Hawley is the ABC’s London bureau chief. She was previously the bureau chief in Jakarta russian brides perth South East Asia correspondent in Bangkok. Samantha also spent a decade working as a political reporter in Canberra.

The actress who helped bring down movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and spark a global campaign against sexual assault by going public with rape allegations sits down with ABC’s London bureau chief Samantha Hawley on International Women’s Day. The French are turning their backs on the iconic bistros of Paris, with hundreds shutting their doors as tastes change and newcomers, like Australian barista Daniel Warburton, make their mark on the city’s coffee scene. Irish border backstop is unpalatable for the Parliament. With just 60 days until Brexit, the UK’s biggest and most powerful food retailers warn MPs that leaving the European Union without a deal on March 29 will threaten food security. Two years since the Calais ‘jungle’ was destroyed, hundreds of migrants are still sleeping rough. Now French authorities are determined to stop a new jungle emerging, ordering police to destroy migrants’ tents and move them on.

The no-confidence motion’s failure has handed a win to the Prime Minister the day after she lost a parliamentary vote by the biggest margin in British political history, writes Samantha Hawley. The defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal will go down as the biggest in the House of Commons in modern history — and with just over 70 days until the United Kingdom’s scheduled departure, there is still no clear path forward. Brexit is symbolic of a divided nation and so it’s hardly surprising that a group of MPs has now gone to police at Scotland Yard expressing concern over an increase of verbal and written abuse, writes Samantha Hawley. As the pause button is pressed on what was shaking up to be one of the most important weeks in Britain’s political history, competing rallies show that when a nation is divided on an issue as polarising as Brexit, the potential for civil unrest is very real. They insist they are not American-style preppers, but a number of British people are stockpiling supplies over fears for what a no-deal Brexit scenario could mean for the UK. For Brexiteers and others in the Parliament, this is a great betrayal of what the British people voted for in 2016 — a clear split from the European Union, writes Samantha Hawley.