Conservative Members of the British Parliament gave outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron a standing ovation Wednesday as he completed his final session of Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. Even some of the Opposition relented with applause.

Cameron has, by and large, enjoyed a positive relationship with Israel and with top Israeli government officials.

“I was the future once,” he told them — a reference to a remark he once made when addressing then-Prime Minister Tony Blair (“He was the future once”) in his first PMQ session as head of the Tory party.

Cameron was photographed with his wife and three young children outside the famous “black door” of Number 10 Downing Street after the session. He said he believed his six-year tenure had left England “much stronger” with an “immeasurably stronger” economy, a reduced deficit, increased international aid spending and reduced National Health Service waiting lists. He spoke with pride about having introduced gay marriage and paid tribute to his wife, who he said “kept [him] vaguely sane.”

Cameron’s successor, former Interior Minister Theresa May, vowed to “build a better Britain, not just for the privileged few,” upon taking office Wednesday afternoon. She kissed the hand of Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace soon after a similar ceremony had taken place with the now-former prime minister.

May spoke of her determination to cement the bond between Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and promised to “rise to the challenge” of forging a “bold new positive role” for the UK in the world after negotiating the exit of the UK from the European Union.

The new prime minister emphasized her intention to serve as a “One Nation” leader, representing all voters and not just the elite and the business world.

May is the country’s second female prime minister, and the first woman to serve in the post since Margaret Thatcher.

British citizens are done with being one of many — 28, to be precise — and they made their views clear in a referendum Thursday with a vote to leave the European Union.

They wanted their borders back, their own British Pound Sterling, thank you, and the safety of being able to make their own security decisions.

The vote was called late Thursday night at 52 percent in favor of ‘Brexit’ as the leaving was called, and 48 percent against, according to ITV and the BBC.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who said his position would be ‘untenable’ if the country chose not to remain within the EU, now finds himself having to decide his next move. Cameron had warned there would be “no turning back” if the UK were to separate itself from the European body, looking at the impact on banks and other financial institutions as well as other issues.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage described a poster showing a line of asylum seekers as “a statement about the whole of the European Union,” according to CNN. Farage delivered a victory speech to supporters upon hearing the news of the final results at a polling station in Birmingham.

The ‘victory’ may be a bit premature, however: Scotland warned from the outset that should England decide to leave the EU, the decision would launch a discussion about whether or not to hold another referendum on whether or not to secede from the United Kingdom.

Should Scotland vote for independence, the UK decision to leave the European Union — which may ultimately lead to the disintegration of the EU — will have led to its own dissolution as well.

Analysts around the world are now weighing the effect of the British decision on the world economy and it impacts individual nations along with their currencies, pension funds and banking systems. It is also not clear what effect this will have on the British Jewish community both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

In trading Thursday night, the British pound Sterling fell against the U.S. dollar and against the euro; however, the euro fell against the Japanese yen as well. All three stock markets dropped, and were set to open lower on Friday.

Political leaders in Europe are now deeply concerned that the split that exists in England may continue to divide other member states in the EU, prompting them to leave as well and perhaps lead to the dissolution of the entire European body.

The only Scottish-born rabbi north of the border, a Chabad emissary, has created an official kosher tartan after 300 years of Jewish history in the country.

Rabbi Mendel Jacobs, who ministers to an independent Orthodox congregation in Glasgow, said he worked together with Mike Wilson, a registry official, to design the new tartan. It is officially registered with the Scottish National Register of Tartan in the name of the Jewish Community of Scotland.

Better, it’s already available in a variety of prayer shawls, kipas and other items. An invitation has been extended to the Israeli Ambassador to the UK for a fitting with a kilt in the new kosher tartan.

Official kosher Jewish tartan registered to the Scottish National Register of Tartan in the name of the Jewish Community of Scotland.

The new tartan is a kosher non-wool/linen mix that meets the requirements of shatnez: the Torah law that prohibits Jews from wearing any mixture of wool and linen in garments.

“Jews have always had a positive relationship with Scotland,” Jacobs said. “Scotland is one of the few countries where there is no history of persecutions. There are also a lot of Jewish ex-pats around the world with links to Scotland.”

The design incorporates blue and white, the colors of both the Israeli and the Scottish flags. The central gold line represents the gold from the Ark in the Biblical Tabernacle and the ceremonial vessels. “The silver is to represent the silver that adorns the Scroll of the Law and the color red is for the traditional Kiddush wine.” There are seven lines in the central motif and three in the flag representations – both numbers of great significance in Judaism.

International attention has been drawn to the new tartan, Jacobs said, and to the design which has managed to weave together both Jewish and Scottish culture.

The idea for creating an official Jewish tartan dated back to 2008 with a Glaswegian dentist, Dr. Clive Schmulian, who discussed the possibility with Jewish Telegraph editor Paul Harris at a charity dinner in Glasgow. Schmulian was wearing a Flower of Scotland tartan kilt at the time, and was asked if there had ever been a Jewish kilt or tartan. Eventually one was produced but is no longer made.

The Jewish presence in Scotland dates back to the late 17th century, although the current population is comprised mostly of descendants of immigrants who arrived in the 1800s. Most Jews live in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

A sanitation truck in Glasgow appeared Monday night to careen out of control in a popular shopping area in the city center.

The truck slammed into a crowd of holiday shoppers, killing at least six and injuring seven people seriously, possibly more.

Police did not release details about the driver, nor have they yet determined the cause of the tragedy. In a similar incident in France, the driver shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before plowing into a crowd of shoppers also Monday night.

A spokesperson for Scotland’s police service told Sky News the incident occurred in the city’s shopping center, but was unable to say how many people were hurt.

The truck appeared to have driven along a sidewalk for about 70 yards, according to an eyewitness who spoke with Reuters. The area was especially crowded due to the nearby fairground attractions and an ice-skating rink that was placed there for the holiday.

Following a nationalistic campaign to gain independence and break away as an independent nation, Scotland fails to muster the necessary votes in a national referendum, according to the BBD. Scotland will remain, along with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom.

Scotland has been a part of the UK for more than 300 years.

The campaign to gain independence did not succeed, but it did leverage promises for substantial new power to Scotland’s parliament from the main political parties in England.

Had Scotland voted for independence, it would have struck a deep blow to England’s Prime Minister David Cameron prestige and diminished his ability to maneuver on the world stage.

A 20-year-old Muslim woman from Glasgow, Scotland left her parents weeping after she called from the Turkish-Syria border to tell them she is serving the ISIS machine of evil and “wants to become a martyr.”

Aqsa Mahmood, a radiography student, left home in November and has posted messages on Twitter urging western women to carry out terrorist attacks and “follow the examples of your brothers from Woolwich, Texas and Boston.”

At least 20 British women have joined ISIS thanks to social media, Melanie Smith, of King’s College International Center for the Study of Radicalization told the Guardian. Other reports put the number of British women in the ISIS at 60.

She estimates that approximately 200 western women have joined ISIS, which has popularized beheading and has taken brutal gang rapes to a new extreme.

The 20-year-old Mahmood presumably is not in charge of lining up rape victims for ISIS murderers, who do very well by themselves.

Her job as president of the jihadist version of the Sisterhood is to supervise the women’s police force in Rakka, where a British-accented ISIS killer beheaded journalists James Foley and Steve Sotloff. The force of approximately 20 women keep a watch and punish women if they do not behave as good Muslims, fully covered and accompanied by a man when in public lest they fall into the clutches of an intelligent human being.

As for the “Brotherhood” side of the ISIS, their code of good behavior is a bit different. One woman captive of ISIS told an Italian reporter of brutal sexual harassment. She said a 17-year-old was one of 40 women, some of them still in captivity and as young as 13, who were sex slaves for the ISIS.

One of the most important functions of the women is to bear as many children as possible to ensure the growth of the ISIS and help it fulfill its devotion to Allah and destroy Western civilization.

Asqa Mahmood’s parents told CNN they pleaded with her daughter to come home “in the name of Allah.” Of course, she has decided that she is acting in the name of Allah and has married one of the ISIS terrorists, so there really is not much to talk about. They said that their daughter was “brainwashed.”

Two of the British girls have been identified as 16-year-old twin sisters, Zahra and Salma Halane, who followed their brother’s move to Syria, left their Manchester home in June and are believed to have married ISIS members.

Not all of the British women are Muslims from birth. The London Independent identified one of them as Sally Jones, a convert from Kent, who apparently turned her life around after meeting on social media a computer hacker who was attracted to jihad.

Another woman tweeted, “I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!”

We tend to think of the European Union as a kind of continental USA, America with a better cuisine: a loosely united group of individual states who continue to run their internal business, but collaborate on issues concerning their neighbors.

But the last few years in which the EU’s less robust economies, such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, to name a few, have experienced a terrifying upheaval whose end is not yet in sight, taught all of us a lesson in freedom of choice a la Union Européenne. Those economies have had to tow the line and impose austerity on their own people, or risk the economic wrath of the big states, most notably Germany.

Over in Israel we’ve observed the bullying methods being employed as we speak by the EU, to produce an outcome palatable to them in a dispute between Jews and Arabs. The kind of relentless, aggressive pressure these Europeans have been using, threatening an academic boycott, a scientific boycott, boycotts on goods, boycotts on tourism – that we know these are not nice people.

But did you know whose neck really gets to be directly under the European Union’s boot, which presses down metaphorically with the same zeal and determination as those great soldiers of the Fatherland used to do? The Europeans themselves. Or rather, the Europeans who wish to change the status quo.

Scotland is about to vote, this coming September 18, on a referendum on whether it should become an independent country. As a result of an agreement between the Scottish Government and the UK, the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill, was passed by the Scottish Parliament on November 14, 2013, and received Royal Assent in December (the equivalent of the president signing a new law). The Scottish parliament wants the referendum question to be: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

The main issues Scotland would have to deal with should it become independent are the economy, defense, relations with the rest of the UK, and membership of supranational organizations, especially the EU and NATO.

I would think that this would be viewed by any democratically minded person with admiration: a substantial sector within a democratic state wishes to disengage and the process is being handled without bloodshed, through legal channels, with everyone’s rights (well, most everyone) being observed.

Over in Brussels they’re not nearly as excited about the whole thing.

An independent Scotland would find it “difficult, if not impossible” to gain EU membership and obtain the acceptance of other EU member states, declared European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Barroso said, “In case there is a new country, a new state, coming out of a current member state, it will have to apply and… the application and the accession to the European Union will have to be approved by all the other member states of the European Union.”

Seriously? It’s not majority rule, but unanimous now? Is he going royal all of a sudden?

Imagine, a people have decided to change their political direction, and they’ve gone about doing it in the most civilized manner – and this Portuguese bureaucrat says they’ll be boycotted, unless every last member approves their acceptance into the EU. And we know how he’s going to vote.

There’s a good reason why the oligarchs in Brussels don’t want to let Scotland be free, even if the UK accepts it. It’s called Catalonia, an autonomous community at the north-eastern corner of Spain, designated a “nationality” by its own Statute of Autonomy. Catalonia is by far the most economically dynamic region of Spain, and, listen to this: the Catalan government has announced its intention to hold a referendum on possible independence from Spain this year.