Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

4 hours ago, AUcal said:

If the early indications are correct, then it's a big victory for solidarity in the face of fascism.

Actively standing down candidates in hotly contested areas to avoid splitting the centrist / leftist vote, combining powers and resources etc, good to see. 

People having some sense and deciding they would rather relinquish little bits of power here and there if it means defeating fascists.

The optimist in me would hope in this country that if Reform threatened to get power on 35% of the vote that the same would happen.

I have a nagging doubt it would though.

[cyderspaceman]

10 hours ago, Jedi2 said:

Massive relief about the French result, good news coming out of Iran...just need to get the Democrats to get their act together in the good old US of A now 

...and someone to undemocratically assassinate Putin.

[cyderspaceman]

14 hours ago, sophia said:

I found this picture to be so very unsettling 

 

[ClydeTon]

5 hours ago, cyderspaceman said:

...and someone to undemocratically assassinate Putin.

Why not do it democratically?

Spoiler

 

[Granny Danger]

I don’t know much about the geography of France, but I saw this graphic on the BBC website which suggests incredible geographic polarisation of support for the fascists.  ETA particularly is the South East of the country.

Any explanation/clarification from people itk and not just Googleists would be appreciated.

 

Edited July 8 by Granny Danger

[MazzyStar]

1 minute ago, Granny Danger said:

I don’t know much about the geography of France, but I saw this graphic on the BBC website which suggests incredible geographic polarisation of support for the fascists.

Any explanation/clarification from people itk and not just Googleists would be appreciated.

 

National rally areas=middle class

[Wee-Bey]

22 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I don’t know much about the geography of France, but I saw this graphic on the BBC website which suggests incredible geographic polarisation of support for the fascists.  ETA particularly is the South East of the country.

Any explanation/clarification from people itk and not just Googleists would be appreciated.

 

The South East is her auld man's base and has been for years.

She sits in the North block where she hoovers up petit boug votes from the semi rural, semi urban 'Tory Shires' type of places.

This is a broad generalisation though as they'll receive votes from all social and class groups.

[MazzyStar]

11 minutes ago, Cheese said:

The South East is her auld man's base and has been for years.

She sits in the North block where she hoovers up petit boug votes from the semi rural, semi urban 'Tory Shires' type of places.

This is a broad generalisation though as they'll receive votes from all social and class groups.

The polis are very right wing and even make the yank cops look tame. I saw a poll of who police officers were voting and I’m sure it was about 70% national rally. 

[Wee-Bey]

4 minutes ago, MazzyStar said:

The polis are very right wing and even make the yank cops look tame. I saw a poll of who police officers were voting and I’m sure it was about 70% national rally. 

The frogs love a protest and a riot tbf, I'd imagine that has something to do with it.

[GordonS]

20 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The optimist in me would hope in this country that if Reform threatened to get power on 35% of the vote that the same would happen.

I have a nagging doubt it would though.

Reform aren't as far right as NR, though undoubtedly a lot of their members and voters are.

Eejits say FPTP is better than PR because it keeps out the nutters, you don't end up with them in parliament. That's only true up to a point. FPTP gives all of the power to the largest minority, hence Labour getting two-thirds of the seats from one-third of the vote. If Reform reached the level of support that NR have, they'd get an outright majority.

France had the benefit of a two-stage election, so parties knew where they stood and what was needed to defeat NR. We don't have anything like that.

Bear in mind we have no formal constitution, parliament is sovereign and they can make, amend or repeal literally any law they want.

[The DA]

5 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Reform aren't as far right as NR, though undoubtedly a lot of their members and voters are.

Eejits say FPTP is better than PR because it keeps out the nutters, you don't end up with them in parliament. That's only true up to a point. FPTP gives all of the power to the largest minority, hence Labour getting two-thirds of the seats from one-third of the vote. If Reform reached the level of support that NR have, they'd get an outright majority.

France had the benefit of a two-stage election, so parties knew where they stood and what was needed to defeat NR. We don't have anything like that.

Bear in mind we have no formal constitution, parliament is sovereign and they can make, amend or repeal literally any law they want.

Parliament isn't sovereign in Scotland - Claim of Rights and all that.

I suspect that, if it were put to the test, the CoR might be ignored.

[GordonS]

1 minute ago, The DA said:

Parliament isn't sovereign in Scotland - Claim of Rights and all that.

I suspect that, if it were put to the test, the CoR might be ignored.

Yeah legally that means nothing, as we've seen with cases on the Acts of Union and the Sewell Convention. In the event of a proper constitutional crisis there's a teoretical possibility of the Court of Session taking a different view from the Supreme Court, but I think you'd need to get to the level of abolishing elections before that would kick in.

The Supreme Court said on the prisoner voting cases that parliament could withdraw the right to vote from anyone that it originally gave the right to vote. That means women, and men who don't own a certain value of property. The only thing protecting that right now is ECHR but we could be sure a Reform government would leave that.

[Freedom Farter]

What it means to be "pro-Ukraine" is less simple than is often made out. 

With the Baltic states, the governments in Estonia and Lithuania particularly, less so in Latvia, have made support for Ukraine central to their own legitimacy. Not only has it shored up their support domestically but it has boosted their international profile too. Estonian PM Kaja Kallas was recently confirmed to take over as EU foreign policy chief this autumn. This wouldn't have transpired had Russia not fully invaded Ukraine two years ago from which Kallas harnessed the political opportunity. Which is not to say her actions since then have been solely self-interested. She will sincerely believe that they dovetail with the interests of her nation and her electorate clearly agree.

Serbia has provided more arms to Ukraine than the three Baltic states. Yet there's near total contrast between Serbian President Vucic's public messaging and that of Kallas. He has done all this objectively pro-Ukraine business in secret. So much so that you can find countless think tank idiots online writing about Serbia being controlled by the Kremlin or similar. Recent spats between Vucic and his Kosovan equivalent have seen both the EU and USA take the side of Vucic. That's despite the enormous interest USA retains in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel and the rest. The reason for Serbia getting preferred will be multiple but the volume of arms Serbia has been providing Ukraine will probably top the list. This isn't good for the Serbian populace, incidentally, as Vucic is a dreadful leader and that tacit EU/US approval helps him stay in power.

From the FT article linked in Balkan Insight:

Even in the nations of the European periphery such as Serbia, arms production for Ukraine is providing a welcome economic boost.

 

Commentators on the French election often used the "pro-Ukraine" notion cynically to try and colour how we viewed things. Much of liberal media, supportive of Macron, pushed the idea that only Macron winning would be good for Ukraine. This has been commonplace since 2022 where the issue of Ukraine is used by liberals to bash their political opponents both to their right and their left. Sometimes they are fair in doing that but often not. In the case of the French election, definitely not. The NFP (left coalition) had Ukrainian debt cancellation in their manifesto which presumably they'll now try to implement (and it'll probably be blocked by the Macronists and RN). Ukrainian socialists have been stressing the importance of debt cancellation since the beginning (https://jacobin.com/2022/04/ukraine-russian-invasion-sovereignty-war-debt). There's a clear contradiction with the liberal position here. If, as we're regularly told, Ukrainians are indeed "fighting on behalf of us all", well don't fucking bill them for it then.

[coprolite]

12 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

I don’t know much about the geography of France, but I saw this graphic on the BBC website which suggests incredible geographic polarisation of support for the fascists.  ETA particularly is the South East of the country.

Any explanation/clarification from people itk and not just Googleists would be appreciated.

 

I'd want to see a version of that map proportiobal to population rather than land area before drawing any conclusions. That big blob in the South East looks made up of large areas (what do the French call them? Departments or something?) and is pretty much the Alps foothills I think.  The north looks almost as bad. 

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, coprolite said:

I'd want to see a version of that map proportiobal to population rather than land area before drawing any conclusions. That big blob in the South East looks made up of large areas (what do the French call them? Departments or something?) and is pretty much the Alps foothills I think.  The north looks almost as bad. 

Certainly in terms of land coverage National Rally and their cronies seem to represent large areas but as you say without knowing density of population it could be misleading.

Could be the fascists are better represented in sparser rural areas (though there are a couple of large cities in the South East) and the non-fascists better represented in most of the urban areas?

ETA from what I can make out Nice, Marseille and Montpellier seem to be the pockets of common sense in the South East.

Edited July 9 by Granny Danger

[coprolite]

27 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Certainly in terms of land coverage National Rally and their cronies seem to represent large areas but as you say without knowing density of population it could be misleading.

Could be the fascists are better represented in sparser rural areas (though there are a couple of large cities in the South East) and the non-fascists better represented in most of the urban areas?

 

 

 

ETA from what I can make out Nice, Marseille and Montpellier seem to be the pockets of common sense in the South East.

I'd expect there to be higher numbers of non white voters in the cities. 

The dynamic of the far right in France seems very different from Reform in the UK, but i don't know any more about it than that. 

 

[O'Kelly Isley III]

We were in the charming and middle-class harbour of Cassis in Provence for a day trip last month and I was shocked to see the number of posters for Le Pen's mob.

[Wee-Bey]

[HibeeJibee]

On 08/07/2024 at 19:59, MazzyStar said:

The polis are very right wing and even make the yank cops look tame. I saw a poll of who police officers were voting and I’m sure it was about 70% national rally. 

 

On 08/07/2024 at 20:06, Cheese said:

The frogs love a protest and a riot tbf, I'd imagine that has something to do with it.

Oddly enough both modern French riot forces - CRS police and Mobile gendarmerie - originated from the Vichy regime during WWII.

 

12 hours ago, coprolite said:

I'd want to see a version of that map proportiobal to population rather than land area before drawing any conclusions. That big blob in the South East looks made up of large areas (what do the French call them? Departments or something?) and is pretty much the Alps foothills I think.  The north looks almost as bad. 

Departments, each of which is divided into a number of circonscriptions (basically constituencies), so all have similar population. Thick white lines are departments, thin are circonscriptions:




Hex map:

Edited July 9 by HibeeJibee

[Fullerene]

On 08/07/2024 at 20:18, GordonS said:

Reform aren't as far right as NR, though undoubtedly a lot of their members and voters are.

Eejits say FPTP is better than PR because it keeps out the nutters, you don't end up with them in parliament. That's only true up to a point. FPTP gives all of the power to the largest minority, hence Labour getting two-thirds of the seats from one-third of the vote. If Reform reached the level of support that NR have, they'd get an outright majority.

France had the benefit of a two-stage election, so parties knew where they stood and what was needed to defeat NR. We don't have anything like that.

Bear in mind we have no formal constitution, parliament is sovereign and they can make, amend or repeal literally any law they want.

Labour's massive majority on such a small percentage of potential voters makes it almost pot luck who can get a majority. 

Reform only got 5 seats for 4 million votes but people would not be so happy if they got an overblown representation for the exact same voter share.