World Politics Digest thread

Headshot wrote: »

Yes great to see

Hopefully they impeach him, nasty piece of work too

Germany is next week, isn't it, September 26. May well be first election where climate is at the forefront of the campaign which is somewhat encouraging. Though the green candidate, initially touted as a strong candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor, seems to be having a bit of a mare.

Yes, quite likely you'll get a bit of stirring up along those lines in some quarters. But can't see there could possibly be any substance behind it as all the main parties, excepting AfD, are quite firmly pro EU and AfD, while maintaining a steady 10-11%, don't look like gaining any ground. Even should Scholz, the centre left SPD candidate, take over, he doesn't come across all that fundamentally different from Merkel to me. It all suggests continuity either way, just with a 3 party rainbow coalition instead of 2. Adam Boulton signed off his show this morning saying he'd be presenting from Berlin next Monday, so they'll definitely be giving it some welly anyway!

Anyone who wants to watch the election coverage of the Canadian election results can so from midnight Irish time.

Canadian election being called as a Liberal minority. Same as before, basically. Looking like very little change.

That's it in a nutshell. I'm no expert on Canadian political history, but I live here now, so take a general interest.

There's also PPC (People Party of Canada) who are comparable to UKIP. They won a huge number of votes, but got no seats. It seems these votes have cost the conservatives a number of seats.

This episode of this podcast gives a good overview of the outcomes of this election and where each party will go form now:

I'd be a bit unclear as to what is specifically inefficient about it tbh? Is it that no one party is likely to achieve a majority? No single party has done so in German post war history, so there's nothing new there, coalitions are the lifeblood of their political representative system. Not unusual to have 3 or even 4 parties making up the government, plus with their federal system, local representation is accorded considerable weight. Scotland and I think New Zealand use a similar system now, I'm sure others too.

Fair point, that does seem to be an obvious glitch alright. It also would seem eminently solvable by reducing the number of electoral districts or some other alternative means of capping the numbers. That would require multi party consensus, though, and we know how tricky that can be when competing interests are at play! I'm sure i read somewhere that broad agreement was reached on dealing with it for subsequent elections, but not 100% on the details tbh.

Bad start to polling day for the gaffe prone Laschet. Not being able to cast your vote properly not exactly the choice look for a wannabe leader of the EUs foremost economy.

...cause folding your ballot paper the wrong way is an astonishing failure in life, and clearly shows the lack of leadership skills in a person! serious?