There's a silver age comic I can't find where a man says to a woman "don't set yourself on fire" and she says "hey, that sounds like fun, I'm gonna set myself on fire", and she does so by holding her shirt sleeve over a candle, only then to realise "wait a minute, I'm on fire!"
Background:
After the latest election in 2018 there was a bit of a tricky situation and it took a few months for a coalition government to form. That government included the Social Democrats (S) the Green Party (MP) with support from The Center Party (C) and the Liberals (L). The latter two parties were previously part of the conservative superblock The Alliance, and The Alliance ceased to exist with this some-would-say backstabbing to support a Social Democrat government. The support from C and L towards the S/MP government may or may not have been passive, as in they would vote "abstain" rather than for or against. I honestly don't remember the details, but it did allow the coalition government to take power and pass budget. As part of that deal C & L got demands that were supposed to be implemented over this election period.
With the caveat that I might misremember, there's an agreement in the current government coalition that they would never cooperate with the Left Party (V). V grudgingly agreed to this, purely for the sake of stability and not having a conservative right-wing block in charge. However, they did issue two warnings right off the bat - messing with rent control or employment rights crosses the red line and they will push back.
C messed with rent control, V pushed back and declared they no longer had any confidence in the prime minister, and now S, C and L are all
It seems because V agreed to have no real power in the current government, they'd stay completely out of everything, and then everyone else just ignored V's warnings about rent control.
This was a new development because the Sweden Democrats being a xenophobic party (I would say wannabe nazis) have so far been sidestepped completely in parliament. The other parties have collaborated so that SD never got final say on anything.
Just for the international crowd, this was SD in the 90s:
How easy is it for Swedish politicians to switch parties post election?
At the very least they can go "I quit!" whenever they want. If they're in parliament they'll keep their seat for the remainder of the period. I can't recall a minister ever doing it, but they have that position at the mercy of the prime minister, and if a minister would quit the party (no matter which one in a coalition it is) I imagine they'd be out of the seat damn quick.
If they quit the party they can vote however they want without fear from party whips, because what are they gonna do, kick them out of the party?
This happens, but it's not super common.
fake edit: oh hey, Swedish wikipedia has a good table. In Swedish, mind you. Looks like we have two in the current parliament, one from the Liberals, one from the Left Party, neither joined another party yet. There tends to be a fair amount of bridge-burning across the board if you're in parliament and quit your party.
There were nine in the 2014 parliament. Seven of them from the Nazi-adjacent Sweden Democrats, which says a thing or two about how stable they are. Four of those joined "Alternative for Sweden", an even more openly xenophobic white supremacy party.
Speaking of bad alternatives and I hate to break the Swedish specific focus because this is breaking Swedish news. But how is alternative for Deutschland doing?
I worry about all these alternative nazis.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Speaking of bad alternatives and I hate to break the Swedish specific focus because this is breaking Swedish news. But how is alternative for Deutschland doing?
I worry about all these alternative nazis.
They lost to the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt, so I guess things could be worse.
We had a fun one here in Prague a few weeks ago. Babiš, the criminal oligarch PM of the country put out a tweet saying, "We don't want to share our cars. We don't want to share our apartments. We don't want to share our women."
The background on this not exactly subtle bit of racism is that we have elections in October and Babiš party, ANO, ain't doing so hot. Currently it's looking like they'll lose to a coalition of the Pirates (progressive, big on government transparency) and STAN (a bunch of mayors). Throw in that Babiš is under the gun of the EU for getting EU subsidies for companies he controlled (technically they were transferred to a trust... but we all know how that works), and he's got a real incentive to pull out all the stops in order to stay in power. Good times.
The Pirate party's growth has been rather impressive. 2010 was their first election, and they didn't even make the cutoff for representation. Now they have a good shot at forming the government and get the PM's seat. Not too shabby.
The Swedish debacle is just... what did the Center party think was going to happen? Idiotic.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
It's either the Center Party leader sincerely believes the free market is best for housing, or there's some sort of incentive for them to get it done. Given the measure was withdrawn after the no confidence vote that makes the first option less likely.
TLDR just did a video on this and from that at least it sounds like it's possible for the government to basically just renegotiate and form a new government.
The whole situation seems to me like someone called someone's bluff and woops they weren't bluffing.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
Worth necro-posting this to share that the nine Catalan politicians were pardoned this past week by PM Sanchez's (Socialist-Podemos) coalition govt.
This has been a flashpoint that Sanchez has tried to thread delicately the past couple years; this situation was inherited from the previous conservative PM Rajoy, whose heavy-handed response to the Catalan referendum stunt led to the arrests & sentencing of the people concerned.
The pardons are an attempt for the national govt to be more conciliatory towards Catalonia without allowing them to just up and secede to independence, while at the same time not adding fire to the flames as the right wing would prefer; a right wing with a resurgent fascist movement in the form of "vox" (not to be confused with the American new media outlet).
Right wingers, fascists, and Spaniards otherwise ignorant of the fact that their country suffered under a decades-long military dictatorship, are upset about this gesture, but assuming Sanchez's government helps Spain continue treading water in the "post-covid" era this event may turn out to be a relative blip in their culture wars. The concern is voters will use this to mobilize in the next general elections for the benefit of the trad-con and fascist parties.
Sanchez oversaw the exhumation of Franco's remains from his own state-sponsored masoleum to fascism, so I'm pretty OK with Sanchez continuing to anger the right wing in the... right ways!
In a more general-EU-politics development, the fragmenting of Spanish parliament (from two parties to four and then five with vox's ascent) appears to be gradually "snapping back" to two parties if polls and Madrid's regional elections are any indication. This is happening concurrently with French regional elections which have seen historically low turnout (how much of that a product of the pandemic TBD) albeit to the benefit of the once-pronounced-dead trad-centre-left-and-right parties.
Macron's LREM project will basically have no presence at the local level, and Le Pen's far right movement hasn't seen any further significant gains either. At the same time, they're still predicted (for now) to be the final choice for the next French presidential elections. This could be less a "return to incumbents" trend like we're seeing in Spain and more that the older French parties retain structural advantages in local politics esp with covid still around.
Meanwhile Germany's Green Party may or may not have exhausted their "Baerbock-mania" after the announcement of their youngish, charismatic, female(!) candidate for chancellor led them to briefly topping Merkel's CDU in the polls. The CDU have gone back to pole position after some PR flub-ups on the part of the Greens, but I'm hoping voters are willing to show the door to the CDU when the general elections happen in the fall; they're now running entirely on inertia from the Merkel years, and not only can't make much of an affirmative case for themselves sans Merkel, but have also been caught up in several unseemly covid-related scandals. Polling seems to consistently show that if the CDU maintains a plurality however, that the Greens are their only feasible coalition partner (everyone seems tired of the CDU-SPD unity govt).
The pr flobs by the greens were such peanuts compared to all the corrupt shit CDU and CSU politicians were pulling throughout the pandemic (not even speaking about the incompetence of several conservative ministers) that the amount of hammering they got in the media sure left a bit of a bad taste. Still, at least some of them were kinda unforced errors. And the greens been way to meek and moved to the centre since they announced their own candidate for chancellor.
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
What are the mechanics of this? Does the speaker just ask each party leader "hey can you form a government" and if they run out of folks there's an election? Or is it more open ended than that?
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
What are the mechanics of this? Does the speaker just ask each party leader "hey can you form a government" and if they run out of folks there's an election? Or is it more open ended than that?
If this works as the Netherlands, which is not a guarantee, then you're close:
Basically, the speaker is now looking for a combination of parties that like each other don't hate each other so that combined, they can get 51% of the votes. This grumbling coalition will then sit together and figure out an agenda and start governing.
Do note you sometimes have minor parties that kind of form a "silent" partner with the government, and promise their few seats in support if the new agenda will involve an issue they stand for, think of like a super conservative Christian party promising support, but the government must implement a "All bars closed on Sunday" law.
Also, rarely you can get minority governments, i.e. they have less then the needed 50%, but the rest of parliament "begrudgingly" let's them rule, all the while maniacally cackling and making it near impossible.
If any of this doesn't work, all parties will say "well, screw this" and the government will "fall," triggering new elections, basically throwing it back to the voters.
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
What are the mechanics of this? Does the speaker just ask each party leader "hey can you form a government" and if they run out of folks there's an election? Or is it more open ended than that?
By tradition, the speaker comes from the party that got the second highest amount of votes, which as far as I know has always been the opposition party. So he could start by asking his own party first. But yeah, that's pretty much how it works - the speaker asks party leaders if they have a government in their pocket, but said party leaders will of course actually need the votes to form that government.
Not sure what actually happens if nobody can form a government. I think in the 2018 election we went four months without a government until one could be formed.
Fun fact: in 1968 the Social Democrats got 50.1% of the votes and had majority on their own.
Also here's an American professor of journalism living in Sweden throwing some shade. Can recommend following him for general Swedish happenings.
We had conservative governments 1976-1982, and the speaker was a Social Democrat (opposition), but the Social Democrats were also the largest party during that period.
Frin 1982 the speaker was elected from the largest party in the coalition that had parliament majority, ie the same coalition that formed the government.
In 2018 the current speaker was elected from the second-largest party in the election, ie the Moderates. Fun fact, we also ended up with the vice speaker coming from the third-largest party... the Sweden Democrats. That vice speaker is a shitheel.
Do note you sometimes have minor parties that kind of form a "silent" partner with the government, and promise their few seats in support if the new agenda will involve an issue they stand for, think of like a super conservative Christian party promising support, but the government must implement a "All bars closed on Sunday" law.
Yeah, this was pretty much how the Social Democrats got the votes from the Center party. Funny thing is, now there's a not insignificant chance this turns around, with Annie Lööf from C as the prime minister, and the Social Democrats supporting them and getting paid for it in political influence.
C also sent an invite to the Moderates (conservatives) saying "hey, how about we lower some taxes together?" but M went nope instantly for reasons I haven't really looked at yet.
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
edited June 2021
The right-wing block has one rogue ex-Center Party parliamentarian to work on, but they might actually not want to be in government for a year and a half before the scheduled elections in November 2022. But if they don't take the opportunity to remove a PM they have harangued for years they might anger some of their voters and members throughout the country. But a new election will likely see the Liberal Party they will need falling short of 4 percent. The situation is not great for them either.
In Sweden, if a party gets less than 4%, they do not get into parliament?
Here in Norway, that's no issue. But for reasons I will not explain right now, if a party goes from 3.9% to 4.1% they can easily more than double the number of representatives they get.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
4 percent is the threshold. Usually means a party needs to be around 3,5 or more for adjacent voters to feel secure enough in tossing them support, due to the likelihood that other voters facing the same dilemma will decide their votes are unlikely to be wasted.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
My primary consolation right now is that there’s still elections next year and if we end up with a conservative government until then it’ll be weak and unlikely to have time to ruin too many things.
So, in Sweden, a party that gets below 4% in the election gets no seats.
In Norway, as long as a party gets enough votes in a district to get a member in, that member is in. E.g., last election, the Reds (literal communists) got 1 candidate through in Oslo, but less than 4% nationally. Parties that get above 4% nationally get bonus seats to ensure that the composition of the parliament is more in line with the national vote distribution (but if your party gets less than 4% you're not in the running for the bonus seats, only the regular seats).
In practice, that means that a party getting 3.9% will get 1–3 MPs, but a party getting 4.1% will get 4–6.
I understand Sweden has a simlar practice, but that the parties also needs to exceed 4% to get in at all.
Swedish PM has until midnight to decide between either an extra election, or stepping down and having the speaker start the task of forming a new government.
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
What are the mechanics of this? Does the speaker just ask each party leader "hey can you form a government" and if they run out of folks there's an election? Or is it more open ended than that?
Not sure what actually happens if nobody can form a government. I think in the 2018 election we went four months without a government until one could be formed.
If four different votes for a new government fail it automatically triggers an extra election.
It never happened last time because the speaker never let any governments go to a vote before they had enough support.
So, in Sweden, a party that gets below 4% in the election gets no seats.
In Norway, as long as a party gets enough votes in a district to get a member in, that member is in. E.g., last election, the Reds (literal communists) got 1 candidate through in Oslo, but less than 4% nationally. Parties that get above 4% nationally get bonus seats to ensure that the composition of the parliament is more in line with the national vote distribution (but if your party gets less than 4% you're not in the running for the bonus seats, only the regular seats).
In practice, that means that a party getting 3.9% will get 1–3 MPs, but a party getting 4.1% will get 4–6.
I understand Sweden has a simlar practice, but that the parties also needs to exceed 4% to get in at all.
Does Sweden also have a two vote system where one vote is for the direct candidates and one vote is for the party with the direct candidates going to parliament like you say even if the party doesn't get over the threshold (5% in Germany)? To stop those direct candidates from screwing with the relative representation of the parties in parliament according to the actual percentage they got seats in in German parliament then get filled up with additional seats over the nominative size of parliament. Leads to a lot of additional seats. Currently over 700 when the minimum is 598.
NL has no voting threshold and 150 seats, so you only need 0.67% of the vote for a seat. The system of rounding is slightly advantageous to bigger parties. The real interesting thing is that seats are personal. Parties nominate a list, you vote for either the top of the list and it will go proportionally, or you vote for someone lower on the list, and they can get elevated. Once the people are seated, it is their seat. This leads to many, many separations. Geert Wilders started as rightwing VVDer until he split off into his own party. Our worse racist party has fallen apart twice now. And hilariously, a party with 1 seat had that member separate from the party like 1 week after elections, meaning that party lost its entire representation.
Part of the current political drama over here is a fracture in our Christian Democrats. For now, their second most popular person split and no-one has followed him, but no bets in the coming 3 months that include reports, interviews, and an emergency congress.
So, in Sweden, a party that gets below 4% in the election gets no seats.
In Norway, as long as a party gets enough votes in a district to get a member in, that member is in. E.g., last election, the Reds (literal communists) got 1 candidate through in Oslo, but less than 4% nationally. Parties that get above 4% nationally get bonus seats to ensure that the composition of the parliament is more in line with the national vote distribution (but if your party gets less than 4% you're not in the running for the bonus seats, only the regular seats).
In practice, that means that a party getting 3.9% will get 1–3 MPs, but a party getting 4.1% will get 4–6.
I understand Sweden has a simlar practice, but that the parties also needs to exceed 4% to get in at all.
Does Sweden also have a two vote system where one vote is for the direct candidates and one vote is for the party with the direct candidates going to parliament like you say even if the party doesn't get over the threshold (5% in Germany)? To stop those direct candidates from screwing with the relative representation of the parties in parliament according to the actual percentage they got seats in in German parliament then get filled up with additional seats over the nominative size of parliament. Leads to a lot of additional seats. Currently over 700 when the minimum is 598.
No, we vote for party and then we can choose to vote for specific candidates within the party if we want that person to get a seat. But we have no direct votes for candidates.
Does Sweden also have a two vote system where one vote is for the direct candidates and one vote is for the party with the direct candidates going to parliament like you say even if the party doesn't get over the threshold (5% in Germany)? To stop those direct candidates from screwing with the relative representation of the parties in parliament according to the actual percentage they got seats in in German parliament then get filled up with additional seats over the nominative size of parliament. Leads to a lot of additional seats. Currently over 700 when the minimum is 598.
There are three votes taking place simultaneously: parliament, region and municipality. Can't find a good pic, but the votes look like this, with the color signifying which election it is for. You basically grab the mix of parties you want to vote for nationally, regionally and locally, optionally check a candidate you specifically want to vote for, or leave it out, which counts as a vote for the party in general. (There are also blank ones for writing someone in, or just... voting blank.)
If a party crosses the 4% limit for parliament, they get an amount of seats, filled in order by the number of votes individual candidates got. Unsure about the specifics for regional/municipal votes, but probably along the same lines.
Caveat: never actually read up on the specifics, but this is my understanding as random voting cattle.
Ulf Kristersson, leader of the Moderates (conservatives) got tasked with forming a government by the speaker.
Doesn't necessarily mean he'll manage to, he's just getting the first shot.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
Let it also be known that as of today Ebba Busch of the Christian Democrats is a convicted criminal. She accepted culpability and fines for slander, this means that her scheduled trial for the crime will not happen. She caused this by slandering the lawyer of an 80 year old with dementia, that she is suing over a house sale. AFAIK this makes Ebba Busch the only party leader to be a convicted criminal and the only party leader to have sued an 80 year old with dementia. The Christian Democrats are of course a party with pillars focusing on good morals, being tough on crime and better treatment and conditions for the elderly.
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
Let it also be known that as of today Ebba Busch of the Christian Democrats is a convicted criminal. She accepted culpability and fines for slander, this means that her scheduled trial for the crime will not happen. She caused this by slandering the lawyer of an 80 year old with dementia, that she is suing over a house sale. AFAIK this makes Ebba Busch the only party leader to be a convicted criminal and the only party leader to have sued an 80 year old with dementia. The Christian Democrats are of course a party with pillars focusing on good morals, being tough on crime and better treatment and conditions for the elderly.
I never saw anything about him having dementia in the papers, where did you see that? Only story I saw is he agreed to sell his house then went back on the deal, so she sued him to get him to honor the deal.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i gotta say i'm loving Nooshi Dadgostar standing up and being like hey, by the way, you totally need Vänsterpartiet to get anything done so it's high time you started actually including us
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
Let it also be known that as of today Ebba Busch of the Christian Democrats is a convicted criminal. She accepted culpability and fines for slander, this means that her scheduled trial for the crime will not happen. She caused this by slandering the lawyer of an 80 year old with dementia, that she is suing over a house sale. AFAIK this makes Ebba Busch the only party leader to be a convicted criminal and the only party leader to have sued an 80 year old with dementia. The Christian Democrats are of course a party with pillars focusing on good morals, being tough on crime and better treatment and conditions for the elderly.
I never saw anything about him having dementia in the papers, where did you see that? Only story I saw is he agreed to sell his house then went back on the deal, so she sued him to get him to honor the deal.
The entire court case is centered on his dementia, or lack thereof, depending on who wins. His reason for withdrawing the deal is stated dementia impairing decision making and him feeling coerced to go along. Her counter is that his mind was changed by others after the fact.
French society is becoming increasingly “racialised”, President Emmanuel Macron has warned in comments that blamed imported US social science ideas that focus on race.
“I see that our society is becoming progressively racialised,” Macron told Elle magazine in an interview.
He took aim in particular at the idea of “intersectionality” – popular among left-leaning US academics – that seeks to explain discrimination and poverty by examining the role played by race, gender and other social factors in affecting an individual’s life chances.
“The logic of intersectionality fractures everything,” Macron said. “I stand for universalism. I don’t agree with a fight that reduces everyone to their identity or their particularity,” he continued.
“Social difficulties are not only explained by gender and the colour of your skin, but also by social inequalities.”
Dude, you are the President of France, a country that still believes that can act like a 19th century colonial power. And that, for starters, just had an open letter signed by hundreds of soldiers basically warning about preparing to wage a civil war against it's Muslim population.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
if his point were about right wing radicalization i would have been like yeah i see it
but ugh
Allegedly a voice of reason.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Intersectionality? Doesn't he know that Critical Race Theory is the new hotness of right-wing boogeymen?
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
He didn’t find a foundation to form government (yay) and the task got passed to Stefan Löfven from the Social Democrats. Stefan Löfven is most known for being the Swedish PM up until last week.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Right now Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat) seemingly has the votes to become PM again. I think this mostly depended on the Center Party saying they'd vote present again. There was the question of a rogue parliamentary member who can technically vote whatever way she wants. She said she was leaning against Löfven. But they came to an agreement?
The vote hasn't happened so I guess things can do.
If I were to dunk on the Center Party again, and I do. I'm going to interpret everything uncharitable here because I vastly dislike them. They came to this agreement contingent on getting three things through:
* One is relating to LAS which is a protection for employees. I believe this the same suggestion that has been pending for a while and from what I gathered then it's to make it slightly easier to fire people. It doesn't seem major but just a little less protection for employees. Sounds nice for people running companies.
* Second one I forget. Sorry.
* Third one is relating to "beach/coast protection". Basically land that is close to bodies of water are incredibly protected and hard to get permission to build anything on. This is to protect the coastal nature, nature around lakes etc. I haven't read the suggestion but I assume it's to make it easier to build on the coast. This would have proponents in the elite who are able to afford beachfront properties and build summer homes on them.
With this and the rent-law thing that brought down government I wonder what's actually Center about this party. I will forever give them credit for their staunch refusal to ever talk to the nazi party. But like what's their policy for? Is it a party that exists for all of the people who own a $5M business? They used to be called the Farmer's Party, may I suggest another name change?
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That sounds like Swedish politics right now.
With the caveat that I might misremember, there's an agreement in the current government coalition that they would never cooperate with the Left Party (V). V grudgingly agreed to this, purely for the sake of stability and not having a conservative right-wing block in charge. However, they did issue two warnings right off the bat - messing with rent control or employment rights crosses the red line and they will push back.
C messed with rent control, V pushed back and declared they no longer had any confidence in the prime minister, and now S, C and L are all
It seems because V agreed to have no real power in the current government, they'd stay completely out of everything, and then everyone else just ignored V's warnings about rent control.
Cue current fustercluck.
Just for the international crowd, this was SD in the 90s:
At the very least they can go "I quit!" whenever they want. If they're in parliament they'll keep their seat for the remainder of the period. I can't recall a minister ever doing it, but they have that position at the mercy of the prime minister, and if a minister would quit the party (no matter which one in a coalition it is) I imagine they'd be out of the seat damn quick.
If they quit the party they can vote however they want without fear from party whips, because what are they gonna do, kick them out of the party?
This happens, but it's not super common.
fake edit: oh hey, Swedish wikipedia has a good table. In Swedish, mind you. Looks like we have two in the current parliament, one from the Liberals, one from the Left Party, neither joined another party yet. There tends to be a fair amount of bridge-burning across the board if you're in parliament and quit your party.
There were nine in the 2014 parliament. Seven of them from the Nazi-adjacent Sweden Democrats, which says a thing or two about how stable they are. Four of those joined "Alternative for Sweden", an even more openly xenophobic white supremacy party.
I worry about all these alternative nazis.
They lost to the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt, so I guess things could be worse.
We had a fun one here in Prague a few weeks ago. Babiš, the criminal oligarch PM of the country put out a tweet saying, "We don't want to share our cars. We don't want to share our apartments. We don't want to share our women."
The background on this not exactly subtle bit of racism is that we have elections in October and Babiš party, ANO, ain't doing so hot. Currently it's looking like they'll lose to a coalition of the Pirates (progressive, big on government transparency) and STAN (a bunch of mayors). Throw in that Babiš is under the gun of the EU for getting EU subsidies for companies he controlled (technically they were transferred to a trust... but we all know how that works), and he's got a real incentive to pull out all the stops in order to stay in power. Good times.
The Pirate party's growth has been rather impressive. 2010 was their first election, and they didn't even make the cutoff for representation. Now they have a good shot at forming the government and get the PM's seat. Not too shabby.
The Swedish debacle is just... what did the Center party think was going to happen? Idiotic.
The whole situation seems to me like someone called someone's bluff and woops they weren't bluffing.
Worth necro-posting this to share that the nine Catalan politicians were pardoned this past week by PM Sanchez's (Socialist-Podemos) coalition govt.
This has been a flashpoint that Sanchez has tried to thread delicately the past couple years; this situation was inherited from the previous conservative PM Rajoy, whose heavy-handed response to the Catalan referendum stunt led to the arrests & sentencing of the people concerned.
The pardons are an attempt for the national govt to be more conciliatory towards Catalonia without allowing them to just up and secede to independence, while at the same time not adding fire to the flames as the right wing would prefer; a right wing with a resurgent fascist movement in the form of "vox" (not to be confused with the American new media outlet).
Right wingers, fascists, and Spaniards otherwise ignorant of the fact that their country suffered under a decades-long military dictatorship, are upset about this gesture, but assuming Sanchez's government helps Spain continue treading water in the "post-covid" era this event may turn out to be a relative blip in their culture wars. The concern is voters will use this to mobilize in the next general elections for the benefit of the trad-con and fascist parties.
Sanchez oversaw the exhumation of Franco's remains from his own state-sponsored masoleum to fascism, so I'm pretty OK with Sanchez continuing to anger the right wing in the... right ways!
In a more general-EU-politics development, the fragmenting of Spanish parliament (from two parties to four and then five with vox's ascent) appears to be gradually "snapping back" to two parties if polls and Madrid's regional elections are any indication. This is happening concurrently with French regional elections which have seen historically low turnout (how much of that a product of the pandemic TBD) albeit to the benefit of the once-pronounced-dead trad-centre-left-and-right parties.
Macron's LREM project will basically have no presence at the local level, and Le Pen's far right movement hasn't seen any further significant gains either. At the same time, they're still predicted (for now) to be the final choice for the next French presidential elections. This could be less a "return to incumbents" trend like we're seeing in Spain and more that the older French parties retain structural advantages in local politics esp with covid still around.
Meanwhile Germany's Green Party may or may not have exhausted their "Baerbock-mania" after the announcement of their youngish, charismatic, female(!) candidate for chancellor led them to briefly topping Merkel's CDU in the polls. The CDU have gone back to pole position after some PR flub-ups on the part of the Greens, but I'm hoping voters are willing to show the door to the CDU when the general elections happen in the fall; they're now running entirely on inertia from the Merkel years, and not only can't make much of an affirmative case for themselves sans Merkel, but have also been caught up in several unseemly covid-related scandals. Polling seems to consistently show that if the CDU maintains a plurality however, that the Greens are their only feasible coalition partner (everyone seems tired of the CDU-SPD unity govt).
...so Stefan Löfven resigned and now the speaker will start doing his thing to cobble together a new government.
What are the mechanics of this? Does the speaker just ask each party leader "hey can you form a government" and if they run out of folks there's an election? Or is it more open ended than that?
If this works as the Netherlands, which is not a guarantee, then you're close:
Basically, the speaker is now looking for a combination of parties that like each other don't hate each other so that combined, they can get 51% of the votes. This grumbling coalition will then sit together and figure out an agenda and start governing.
Do note you sometimes have minor parties that kind of form a "silent" partner with the government, and promise their few seats in support if the new agenda will involve an issue they stand for, think of like a super conservative Christian party promising support, but the government must implement a "All bars closed on Sunday" law.
Also, rarely you can get minority governments, i.e. they have less then the needed 50%, but the rest of parliament "begrudgingly" let's them rule, all the while maniacally cackling and making it near impossible.
If any of this doesn't work, all parties will say "well, screw this" and the government will "fall," triggering new elections, basically throwing it back to the voters.
By tradition, the speaker comes from the party that got the second highest amount of votes, which as far as I know has always been the opposition party. So he could start by asking his own party first. But yeah, that's pretty much how it works - the speaker asks party leaders if they have a government in their pocket, but said party leaders will of course actually need the votes to form that government.
Not sure what actually happens if nobody can form a government. I think in the 2018 election we went four months without a government until one could be formed.
Fun fact: in 1968 the Social Democrats got 50.1% of the votes and had majority on their own.
Also here's an American professor of journalism living in Sweden throwing some shade. Can recommend following him for general Swedish happenings.
We had conservative governments 1976-1982, and the speaker was a Social Democrat (opposition), but the Social Democrats were also the largest party during that period.
Frin 1982 the speaker was elected from the largest party in the coalition that had parliament majority, ie the same coalition that formed the government.
In 2018 the current speaker was elected from the second-largest party in the election, ie the Moderates. Fun fact, we also ended up with the vice speaker coming from the third-largest party... the Sweden Democrats. That vice speaker is a shitheel.
Yeah, this was pretty much how the Social Democrats got the votes from the Center party. Funny thing is, now there's a not insignificant chance this turns around, with Annie Lööf from C as the prime minister, and the Social Democrats supporting them and getting paid for it in political influence.
C also sent an invite to the Moderates (conservatives) saying "hey, how about we lower some taxes together?" but M went nope instantly for reasons I haven't really looked at yet.
Here in Norway, that's no issue. But for reasons I will not explain right now, if a party goes from 3.9% to 4.1% they can easily more than double the number of representatives they get.
In Norway, as long as a party gets enough votes in a district to get a member in, that member is in. E.g., last election, the Reds (literal communists) got 1 candidate through in Oslo, but less than 4% nationally. Parties that get above 4% nationally get bonus seats to ensure that the composition of the parliament is more in line with the national vote distribution (but if your party gets less than 4% you're not in the running for the bonus seats, only the regular seats).
In practice, that means that a party getting 3.9% will get 1–3 MPs, but a party getting 4.1% will get 4–6.
I understand Sweden has a simlar practice, but that the parties also needs to exceed 4% to get in at all.
If four different votes for a new government fail it automatically triggers an extra election.
It never happened last time because the speaker never let any governments go to a vote before they had enough support.
Does Sweden also have a two vote system where one vote is for the direct candidates and one vote is for the party with the direct candidates going to parliament like you say even if the party doesn't get over the threshold (5% in Germany)? To stop those direct candidates from screwing with the relative representation of the parties in parliament according to the actual percentage they got seats in in German parliament then get filled up with additional seats over the nominative size of parliament. Leads to a lot of additional seats. Currently over 700 when the minimum is 598.
Part of the current political drama over here is a fracture in our Christian Democrats. For now, their second most popular person split and no-one has followed him, but no bets in the coming 3 months that include reports, interviews, and an emergency congress.
No, we vote for party and then we can choose to vote for specific candidates within the party if we want that person to get a seat. But we have no direct votes for candidates.
There are three votes taking place simultaneously: parliament, region and municipality. Can't find a good pic, but the votes look like this, with the color signifying which election it is for. You basically grab the mix of parties you want to vote for nationally, regionally and locally, optionally check a candidate you specifically want to vote for, or leave it out, which counts as a vote for the party in general. (There are also blank ones for writing someone in, or just... voting blank.)
If a party crosses the 4% limit for parliament, they get an amount of seats, filled in order by the number of votes individual candidates got. Unsure about the specifics for regional/municipal votes, but probably along the same lines.
Caveat: never actually read up on the specifics, but this is my understanding as random voting cattle.
Doesn't necessarily mean he'll manage to, he's just getting the first shot.
Let it also be known that as of today Ebba Busch of the Christian Democrats is a convicted criminal. She accepted culpability and fines for slander, this means that her scheduled trial for the crime will not happen. She caused this by slandering the lawyer of an 80 year old with dementia, that she is suing over a house sale. AFAIK this makes Ebba Busch the only party leader to be a convicted criminal and the only party leader to have sued an 80 year old with dementia. The Christian Democrats are of course a party with pillars focusing on good morals, being tough on crime and better treatment and conditions for the elderly.
I never saw anything about him having dementia in the papers, where did you see that? Only story I saw is he agreed to sell his house then went back on the deal, so she sued him to get him to honor the deal.
she was a good pick to take over the party
The entire court case is centered on his dementia, or lack thereof, depending on who wins. His reason for withdrawing the deal is stated dementia impairing decision making and him feeling coerced to go along. Her counter is that his mind was changed by others after the fact.
On today, we have him saying that is the US's fault that France is becoming "more racialized":
Dude, you are the President of France, a country that still believes that can act like a 19th century colonial power. And that, for starters, just had an open letter signed by hundreds of soldiers basically warning about preparing to wage a civil war against it's Muslim population.
but ugh
Interesctionality has been France's culture war thing for decades.
It's not unlikely it will go something like this. In fact, it went exactly like this in the 90s.
The vote hasn't happened so I guess things can do.
If I were to dunk on the Center Party again, and I do. I'm going to interpret everything uncharitable here because I vastly dislike them. They came to this agreement contingent on getting three things through:
* One is relating to LAS which is a protection for employees. I believe this the same suggestion that has been pending for a while and from what I gathered then it's to make it slightly easier to fire people. It doesn't seem major but just a little less protection for employees. Sounds nice for people running companies.
* Second one I forget. Sorry.
* Third one is relating to "beach/coast protection". Basically land that is close to bodies of water are incredibly protected and hard to get permission to build anything on. This is to protect the coastal nature, nature around lakes etc. I haven't read the suggestion but I assume it's to make it easier to build on the coast. This would have proponents in the elite who are able to afford beachfront properties and build summer homes on them.
With this and the rent-law thing that brought down government I wonder what's actually Center about this party. I will forever give them credit for their staunch refusal to ever talk to the nazi party. But like what's their policy for? Is it a party that exists for all of the people who own a $5M business? They used to be called the Farmer's Party, may I suggest another name change?