What is happening outside the US?
Hello all. I feel like our US election upset (or victory depending on viewpoint) has really run wild on Tildes. I appreciate all the solidarity and encouragement from the non-US folks. I know for better or worse it affects many of you as well.
While knowing these are special circumstances, I was thinking maybe folks feel a little left out or overshadowed by our drama.
Back before I had to go on a podcast diet, I really enjoyed the weekly updates from American Prestige because they would discuss important or interesting political/social developments and explain their implications.
So what's something happening where you are? How do you feel about it? What do you wish more people knew about it? It can be big or small. It does not have to be something political, just something important to you.
Every so often I get emergency alerts on my phone saying not to interact with mysterious bundles of garbage that fall from the sky. North Korea has been ballooning these over periodically, and in turn, the military here in the South blasts pro-democracy pamphlets across the border. Then the North will fire a random missile into the nearby ocean, we shake a fist, and the dick swinging just continues back and forth like this.
This made me laugh :) I mean, I know it's serious, but I was mentally picturing big confetti canons.
Your post put me in mind of this bit of Vonnegut:
That’s not too far from the reality. It is serious, but it is all so absurd that it feels surreal and comical to me more than anything. That Vonnegut quote is spot on. I can always rely on him for some anti-war, pacifist motivation.
Snap election was called for my (edit: Canadian) province. Nomination deadline was yesterday Nov 6, with the election happening on Nov 26. At least it'll be over quickly.
In non political news in my area, they're putting in a new kids playground! It took so long my kid's not the target age anymore but age won't stop the two of us from playing on it muahahahaha
I didn't know what a snap election was, so I went and read the Wikipedia entry about snap elections and the history of (federal) snap elections in Canada.
How do people generally feel about them? Are they really a surprise? It sounds chaotic to me, but I suppose when it's a normal part of government, speculation about whether it will happen becomes part of the normal political discourse.
We had a bit of a spate of them in the UK at one point. The Conservatives under David Cameron won a small majority of seats in the 2015 election which took place, as expected, 5 years after the previous election in 2010 where they won power from the incumbent Labour government led by Gordon Brown.
However, after the Brexit referendum in 2016 Cameron quit as PM and Theresa May took over. She decided to consolidate her position in 2017 and called a snap election (resulting in this viral exchange where poor old Brenda exclaims "You're joking, not another one!"). This election actually resulted in a hung parliament so she actually ended up with less seats than they had before and the Conservatives had to enter a confidence and supply agreement with the DUP, a unionist party from Northern Ireland, to give themselves the ability to pass legislation.
When May quit in 2019 we ended up with Boris Johnson as PM who called another snap election that year which resulted in a large 80-seat majority for the Conservatives until the election this year when the Conservatives lost and Labour got into power with a huge landslide victory gaining 211 seats in the process, with the Conservatives losing 251!
What a roller coaster!
I forget when Lettuce Lady was part of this saga / how that fit into this rollercoaster ride?
Jesus, yeah, I missed two other Conservative PMs in my recap haha.
So when Boris Johnson won his 80-seat majority, it was mere months before Covid-19 became a full blown epidemic.
The Conservatives instituted stringent lockdowns, which included not being able to leave your house, working from home where possible, wearing masks, not being able to see loved ones and family, and a lot of people were placed on furlough.
However, while a majority of the population were following these rules to the best of their abilities to protect their friends, and neighbours it turned out Johnson, his advisors, other Conservative MPs and Downing Street staff were flagrantly breaking these rules including having huge all-night parties in Downing Street.
This, amongst other controversies, including trying to bury stories about an MP who was sexually assaulting young male staffers finally sank Johnson.
After a leadership contest he was replaced by Liz Truss, a truly bonkers woman whose meme potential was incredible when she wasn't the most powerful politician in the UK, if not one of the most powerful in the world.
However, one of her first acts as PM was announcing a surprise budget, done without consulting pretty much anyone. Which resulted in complete and utter economic catastrophe, wiping billions off the UK economy already struggling post-Brexit and post-Covid, and almost causing the collapse of a number of UK pensions. Because of this she resigned after 50 days in office (after announcing the day before that she was "a fighter, not a quitter"), officially making her the shortest serving Prime Minister in UK history.
Fun pub quiz question though, if the question is, who was PM when Queen Elizabeth II died, the answer is Liz Truss. Even the Queen had enough of her bullshit.
She was then replaced by Rishi Sunak, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer during the Johnson government and oversaw furlough, Covid support, and the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme. This scheme offered 50% discounts in restaurants across the UK, with the government subsidising the other 50%, to try get people eating out after Covid, so he was actually fairly popular. However, as PM, he was viewed as a bit of a milquetoast technocrat, who was regularly pushed about by the quite powerful backbench right-wing nutjob ERG wing of the Conservative party. He also oversaw the continued downfall of the Conservative party in public opinion polls, with a few polls suggesting that at one point, the Conservatives could be left with as little as 8 or 9 seats!
Eventually, the calls for an election, opinion polls, party strife, defections, and more controversies, Rishi Sunak in the rain outside of Downing Street (without an umbrella or using the nice room inside Downing Street specifically built for pressers) announced that an election would be held, knowing almost fine well that his party would be destroyed at the polls, which they were.
Funny thing is, I encountered the Tea sock/Taoiseach thing when reading about Irish parliament in @Fiachra 's thread about the general election in Ireland. (Sings "it's a small world")
I know so little about UK politics that I only know Lizz Truss because of Trombone Champ song of her resignation speech, and Rishi from watching Clarkson's Farm when Jacob called him "President Ricky".
What possessed President Ricky to do his press in the rain?! Was he hoping people would talk about that and be distracted from actual criticisms?
Honestly, I'm not sure. Looking it up, he seems to say he did it to maintain tradition. It is generally traditional that big announcements by the PM are made at the lectern outside Downing Street but I don't think anyone would've minded him doing it in the briefing room, especially since it was absolutely bucketing it down.
It did provide everyone with the funny soundbite of Sunak announcing the election while protesters less than 100ft away blasted "Things Can Only Get Better" by D:Ream over loudspeakers.
British politics is something to behold, genuinely incredibly entertaining at times, especially when parties have been in power for a bit and they get the knives out if a Prime Minister is doing a shit job. It can be frustrating to live through at the time but at least it's never boring.
They are pretty normal here in NL for our national government, not provinces though.
Here it's just seen as a normal part of politics. It can be more chaotic I suppose. But that usually has to do with the political landscape more than the snap elections. If a government doesn't last long that snap elections become quick, it looks bad to the governing parties. After all, why vote for them when they can't agree on how to execute this?
I love the potential for chaos and I wouldn't want to live in a place without them. Think of it as being able to fire the president at any point in time even if he/she wasn't a criminal.
So the snap I mentioned was provincial (state) level, but we're also expecting a federal (country) level one at any time now really.
Super simplistic brief: the party that forms the current government didn't have enough seats, so they needed to work with a third party to stay in power. The third party said cool in that case we want a bunch of social programs, or else.
But the Liberals have been stalling:
The last straw was then the Liberals stepped in to screw our rail unions. Deal's off, jerkwad, see you at the polls. (CBC September 2024)
Now....the NDP is a third/fourth party and I hate that we're always waffling between putting the conservatives in power (gag) or equally money-friendly Liberals. But this is a pretty smart way of getting things done for Canadians even if they can't form government on their own.
Not quite sure how to word this, but someone being able to move forward on progressive issues makes me feel better even if I am dreading the bad time we're having here in the US.
More hopeful news: for my local provincial, at least one of the major parties have pledged for proportional representation!!! Another "less major" one has been pushing since 2019 so....decent chance, as long as we can kick this stupid con man to the curb.
The neighbour province just had their election and the winning party also previously agreed to back proportional representation
So now that the NB provincial liberals are in power, it really is in their intest to follow through.
I'm not an idiot though, our Federal Liberal MP ran on the promise of reform as well and then after he won he said nah. A hope is a hope nevertheless.
While I kind of wish my province would have an election, current polls suggest it wouldn't change a thing. I can't believe how consistently I'm disappointed in the actions of my current provincial gov.
An interesting stat from https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893:
There's a chart with the last 80 years of global elections, and most years have a roughly even mix of incumbents winning and losing. The general theory of this article is that the entire world is unhappy because of inflation and immigration and conflict, and when people are unhappy they vote out whoever is in power.
Wow, that's a crazy stat. I think this really highlights how hyper-reactive society is today. The parties in power are being blamed for rising costs across the board, even if they've handled it well, its not their fault, or opposition is going to make it worse
It is as I suspected, the world does suck! (jk) I mainly hope this means we are headed toward a new equilibrium, and not that we descend into chaos.
I just keep thinking about how it tracks with the 1919 pandemic and the rise of eugenics and populism afterwards. I need to read a book that looks more at the US then but it really just feels like we're repeating.
General election was just called in Ireland 😭
The idea of (an early) general election was just brought to the table in Germany. Our (non-right wing) coalition seems to have failed. Unfortunate.
Edit: Not sure how I saw this topic before the appropriate Tildes post.
I read this article for background – open to alternate suggestions if this is not a good source. Also spent some time with this description of parties.
If you are willing, can you explain why it is a 😭? If I understand what I read, this election likely means continued power for the current government (which is conservative) after the fall in popularity of the left wing party?
I'm jealous that you have a recognized leftist party (SPBP) at all even if its representation is small.
Two parties arguably missing from that chart.
The first is the social democrats who are basically labour splitters who quit over labour compromising too much when in government. They'll definitely come out of this election larger than Labour, and probably larger than the Greens too if the Greens get as much fallout from their time in government as Labour and the Greens did before, as a centre left party that got dominated by centre right partners. Currently they're tied with Labour (6 each) and 1 seat ahead of Solidarity-People Before Profit (which is an electoral alliance, not a single party).
The second are Aontu, who are a socially conservative economically left party. They were founded as basically SF-splitters who quit over the parties support of abortion, but they'll probably get a decent amount of votes as they've put an effort at being more respectable than the far right parties while still being more socially right wing that the mainstream parties. It's not clear that it will mean more seats, probably only their party founder will win their seat again, but they'll probably get more first preferences than prior elections.
Based on recent polls, the two centre-right parties are likely to increase their vote share, so will likely jettison the Greens from their coalition as they won't need them any more. The Greens haven't really succeeded in getting much left wing economic policy passed, so the people who voted for them for that are probably going to scatter amongst the other centre-left and left parties. They have actually done a decent job on environment and local transport though, so it may not be the total wipe out that e.g. Labour in 2016 or the Greens in 2011 had. The aforementioned Aontu and the far right parties are likely to get more votes than last time, but if the local elections are anything to go by, not the same increase that has happened in the rest of Europe. Sinn Fein, the largest left wing parties are likely to lose votes as they have had a bad year and their base is splintering between their left wing and nationalist factions.
So the most likely outcome is a Fine Gael and Fianna Fail centre-right coalition, with the opposition much more divided.
Thank you for the analysis! It's so interesting to see the ebb and flow of popularity.
I mostly just meant that I'm not feeling optimistic about elections this month. Though I will say there is some concern about Trumpy politics creeping in at the fringes.
VERY LATE UPDATE: we have unfortunately opted for the status quo as a country, but at the very least nobody truly insane grabbed any power. Closest was a literal mob boss who came within a few hundred votes of a parliamentary seat. Political mastermind he was not.
In Canada, our opposition (conservative) leader has been holding nonconfidence votes against the government (liberal).
Truthfully I've been limiting news exposure for a while, but there seems to be a decent chance of Canada having a federal election sometime in the next year.
Nothing to be honest, which is nice. I'm sure there are things of course but after 14 years of the Tories in the UK, I'm just glad for a bit of relative peace and quiet.
Even personally there's not much happening, quiet time of year just before Christmas, even work isn't too crazy at the moment.
That's so interesting. I feel like here we hit mid-November and everything is crazy busy until new years. Honestly, I wish for the quiet way.
It's the opposite for us, after Christmas and New Year it's absolutely relentless for birthdays, anniversaries, events etc from February until August then it chills out for a bit, it's crazy haha.
I'm definitely enjoying the quiet while I can!
At the risk of spouting out an entire different discussion that'll cause great shit...
In Amsterdam, pretty much where I lived a few years ago, Israelian football supporters have been attacked in what appears to be a series of hit and run attacks. Rather brutally.
It's just insane by this point, and I feel sick in my stomach. This is not about how I feel about the whole conflict - to be frank that shouldn't fucking matter here. These were people simply attacked due to who they are.