World Politics and Elections 2025

[dubsartur]

British Columbia now has three populist right-wing parties in the legislature after MLAs pushed out of the official opposition formed their own parties (John Rustad's Conservatives, One BC, and Centre BC) and five parties in the legislature in all (with the NDP and the Greens).

Two MLAs in Alberta are trying to reestablish the Progressive Conservative Party because the governing United Conservative Party has a leader with a brain fried on right-wing podcasts.

I find it deeply shameful how Americans look at the corruption and downright evil of their two established parties, and the fecklessness and folly of the two minor parties, and say "welp, I guess there is nothing we can do" and not create a new party like adults. There are structural obstacles, but the USA went from about 30% of the adult population allowed to vote to 90% in 50 years (numbers are wild-ass guesses but see eg. Wikipedia). Women and Black Americans and Asian-Amercans and Native Americans all had to overcome massive obstacles to get the vote.

The new Liberal PM of Canada is a gullible authoritarian who says whatever he thinks will get him elected but people who read his book saw signs of the former.

[dubsartur]

BC Conservative leader John Rustad has accused some of the breakaway MLAs of trying to blackmail their former colleagues https://vancouversun.com/news/john-rusted-bc-conservative-mla-blackmail-accusations  He then walked back the exact accusation https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rustad-blackmail-claim-opposition-caucus-1.7571750

[Jubal]

It probably says something about my circles that most Canadians I know are quite sour about Carney's government already, but it's actually if anything slightly increased its advantage over the Conservatives since the election. Are the Conservatives just in a horrible mess federally or something?


A bit of European poll watching lately:

• In the Netherlands, the likely centre coalition after the elections later this year remains VVD-PvdA/GL-D66-CDA, but the balance is shifting: the VVD have been dropping sharply in the polls and the CDA gaining, though it's unlikely to yield enough of a boost for the CDA to allow them to make a VVD-less government (and the CDA probably wouldn't want that anyway). A government of the right, however, now becomes further out of reach because the CDA and PVV won't work together.
• The Czech election looks like it'll result in an authoritarian coalition based around ANO, the big-tent populist party that left the liberal for the far-right block in the European parliament in the last few years. The post-communist-Eurosceptic Stacilo are possible coalition partners for them, as are the SPD, a more extreme far right Eurosceptic nationalist party. Between those three they will almost certainly have the 101 seats for the majority line, and it's very hard to see any of the other options working with any of them (the other three blocs likely to enter parliament being Europhile-conservative Stacilo, the localist Mayors & Independents bloc, and a Pirate/Green list.)
• Portugal now has a minority centre-right government, and seems to have avoided the Bulgaria problem by just having everyone agree to let them get on with it for now.
• Speaking of Bulgaria, the split in the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) has been the main set of shifts: the APS (Alliance for Rights and Freedoms) which split in a dispute over who led the DPS now seem to be kind of collapsing, after leaving the government over it having to negotiate for votes with their erstwhile colleagues and their reportedly very corrupt leader Peevski. Peevski has now replaced the APS in supporting the government.
• In Poland, the Third Way electoral alliance collapsed in June, which means there's now two small centre and two small left parties all of which might struggle to hit electoral thresholds, which is all quite bad news for the future.

[dubsartur]

It probably says something about my circles that most Canadians I know are quite sour about Carney's government already, but it's actually if anything slightly increased its advantage over the Conservatives since the election. Are the Conservatives just in a horrible mess federally or something?

I don't think anyone really likes Mark Carney.  He is a centrist neoliberal with a PhD in economics and a background in central banking.  But Pierre Polievre is a MAGA nutcase and the NDP have no leader at all (and said a lot of economically illiterate things during the last election: centrist economists have a lot of problems, but they are going to spend the next 50 years pointing to the second Trump administration to illustrate their lessons on the importance of free trade, an independent central bank, comparative advantage, etc etc etc.).  And Canada has no good options today and Carney is competent and can form and follow a strategy even if its a centrist neoliberal strategy.  We could do worse!

Trying to break a strike after 12 hours because people who can afford to take vacations by air are facing unexpected expenses is very neoliberal, but its not the worst thing a PM of Canada could do.

For my entire lifetime, Canadian elites were rewarded for integrating more closely with the USA and centralizing power within Canada eg. the dictatorship of the Prime Minister's Office and all the cozy little monopolies and oligopolies in different industries.  That path now leads to becoming something like the elite of Puerto Rico, but they don't know what else to do.  Just the fact that Canada may finally get free trade between provinces like is normal between countries tells you something.  Flailing like Carney embracing chatbots (but they are provided by US or Chinese companies, run on US cloud services, and embody the values of the US elite) or promising 5% defense spending (but will that include a stronger electrical grid and emergency response services; and wait, if climate change is a major security threat, why try to shove pipeline projects where people don't want them at RCMP gunpoint) show the extent of the confusion.