Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza
World Politics and Elections 2024
dubsartur:
When the party-of-capital BC Liberals rebranded as BC United to avoid associations with centrist party-of-power federal Liberals in April 2023, something predictable happened: their support in the polls collapsed in favour of the BC Conservatives. This put the leader of BC United in the situation of having to say on the record that voters are confusing the provincial and federal conservatives, which is plausible but not very respectful to low-information voters. Canadian parties have very small advertising and PR budgets so a rebranded party does not have many chances to communicate the new name between elections.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/12/27/Kevin-Falcon-BC-United-Not-Doomed/
Unfortunately BC United has gone full 'how can we reduce our emissions when China exists?' One factor which the Tyee interview leaves out is that most of the CO2 added to the atmosphere from the year 1 to 2000 was added by Europe and the North Atlantic plus Japan. So we got the benefits, and telling India and China that they have to stay poor because we used up the global carbon budget is not likely to be convincing.
Jubal:
Well today it looks like the secularist opposition in Turkey are having a good evening and that the AKP has failed in its aim to recapture the country's major cities in local elections. Erdogan was really gunning to take back Istanbul but according to this ticker, as of now (84% reporting) seems to be a full ten points behind there, with the CHP a point ahead of his AKP in the nationwide vote. For comparison, in 2019 the AKP were over ten points ahead of the CHP nationally, 41 to 29. Erdogan was looking pretty strong after last year's national elections but the economy has by all accounts been doing poorly.
The Slovak presidential election has gone to a second round: Pellegrini (parliament speaker, nationalist) versus Korcok (the internationalist candidate). Korcok unexpectedly beat Pellegrini in the first round, but Pellegrini can probably scoop up more far-right votes and I think he'll win round 2, solidifying the authoritarian nationalists' control in Slovakia.
A recent poll showed the ANC below 40% in South African polls, with the general election in May: their majority could be under threat if that plays out, though they'll probably hang onto it with a split opposition on those numbers.
In the Netherlands they're still trying to form a government, this time without Geert Wilders leading it but with the same set of parties, who still don't agree on the budget so that's all going to go swimmingly for them.
dubsartur:
Pretty good long-form essay on why the Trudeau government in Canada is so unpopular https://thewalrus.ca/justin-trudeaus-last-stand/ Skips pipelines, the Tories' threats to end the carbon tax and defund the CBC, and the full scale of Canada's foreign policy problems in India, China, the USA (they have an election coming up and their own populists), and the Arab world (Canadian troops are in Syria and Iraq and the Canadian government has a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)
Canada Post is in a rough financial situation and is another traditional target for right-wing governments.
Three Indian citizens have been arrested in Canada and charged with the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar; police are investigating whether three other murders by gunfire were related https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nijjar-killing-arrests-made-1.7192807
Edit: fourth arrest in Burnaby https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-police-announce-arrest-of-fourth-suspect-in-hardeep-singh-nijjar/
Jubal:
Mm, that is interesting. It seems a common malaise for many government leaders that they end up keeping too tight a surrounding circle which insulates them from critique. I'm not sure how one solves that problem: maybe it's just a good reason for changing leaders more often before they develop to that point. I was talking to a French-Canadian at a conference recently who was opining that it was as much long-running malaise as anything with the Trudeau government. Of course, they may end up ruing bitterly their failure to pass any sort of electoral reform: preference voting or PR would give them a fighting chance of staying leading a coalition even with the Tories on forty percent of the vote, but Canada seems to have inherited Britain's allergy to formal coalitions.
dubsartur:
This blog is mostly thoughts on US politics, but it has a post on the Negev Bedouin, one of the groups in the former Mandate of Palestine which people outside the region rarely think about https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-invisible-occupation
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