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    The rise of populism across Europe, which is being documented by the Guardian this week, has everything to do with the failure of Europe’s flagship project. [the Euro]
    That would be why the current wave of populism started in Hungary and Poland, neither of which use the Euro. Do better.

    Comment


      Yep.

      He seems to think the UK was in the Eurozone too. Otherwise what's the relevance of the stuff about Italy?

      Comment


        Note his spectacular lie (the same as Kippers tell) that the "same people said we should join the Euro". That'll be news to Simon Wren-lewis and a few others.

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          Surely all forms of political party aim to be populist? They aim to win the popular vote.

          I think the centrist liberal catch-all term 'populism' conveniently lumps the likes of Bernie Sanders in with Geert Wilders.

          Grauniad can go and do one.

          Comment


            Grauniad:



            Apparently Macron is left now.

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              Evo Morales and AMLO being centrists is also insane.

              The Guardian series on populism is absolutely dire shite, let that be clear. If a broken clock is right twice a day then Larry Elliott is that broken clock.

              I'm sure Tony has also noticed that the heavy Dutch involvement* with the populism series has meant Fortuyn and Wilders are very lightly mentioned in comparison to, say, Le Pen, who has never been as popular in her country as those two were/are in the Netherlands. The whole series is very heavily laden with "How this could possibly be happening?", which is making me scream "Materialism!" over and over.

              * Speaking of heavy Dutch, that Cas Mudde never talks about his brother being an open Nazi who he "respects despite our disagreements" is true Billy Bulger-esque shit.

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                What does AMLO count as then?

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                  Yeah, I think the idea that nationalism is on the rise in Europe is a bit laughable. What we have seen is the political landscape splinter as people become dissatisfied with the large parties being in bed with corporate interests. The nationalist parties are just the nationalist fractions that split off from the big parties. Geert Wilders didn't appear from nowhere, he used to be in the VVD, Dutch PM Mark Rutte's party. Le Pen is channelling De Gaulle.

                  If you've grown up in and lived as a foreigner in European countries, the fact that there is nationalism and racism is not a surprise. It's just more out in the open than it used to be, because now it comes in the form of its own party, instead of being disguised inside a large party. Which could be considered, on the whole, to be a good thing. Now we can take it on nationalism at face value, and offer a viable alternative. Or would the Guardian rather we go back to the good old days when we just pretended that racism doesn't exist in enlightened Europe?
                  Last edited by anton pulisov; 22-11-2018, 12:36.

                  Comment


                    Originally posted by Disco Child Ballads View Post
                    What does AMLO count as then?
                    Based on his campaign programme, you can put him in the Sanders/Iglesias corner.

                    EU-UK political declaration - among the highlights, both sides will introduce visas beyond temporary stays, and there is a commitment to a fisheries agreement on waters and quotas, that in no way is a rebranded CUP.

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                      You could argue Switzerland has been at the forefront of populist politics for a long time after the ascent of Christoph Blocher at the head of a once rather tame agrarian party...Bannon certainly seems to think so, gulp...

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                        Originally posted by anton pulisov View Post
                        Surely all forms of political party aim to be populist? They aim to win the popular vote.

                        I think the centrist liberal catch-all term 'populism' conveniently lumps the likes of Bernie Sanders in with Geert Wilders.

                        Grauniad can go and do one.
                        Originally posted by Flynnie View Post
                        Evo Morales and AMLO being centrists is also insane.

                        The Guardian series on populism is absolutely dire shite, let that be clear. If a broken clock is right twice a day then Larry Elliott is that broken clock.

                        I'm sure Tony has also noticed that the heavy Dutch involvement* with the populism series has meant Fortuyn and Wilders are very lightly mentioned in comparison to, say, Le Pen, who has never been as popular in her country as those two were/are in the Netherlands. The whole series is very heavily laden with "How this could possibly be happening?", which is making me scream "Materialism!" over and over.

                        * Speaking of heavy Dutch, that Cas Mudde never talks about his brother being an open Nazi who he "respects despite our disagreements" is true Billy Bulger-esque shit.
                        Jeremy Corbyn doesn't talk about his anti-Semitic crank brother either, but seems to have reasonable personal relations with him. That's probably the way to handle racist brothers.

                        What's Larry Elliot right about here? That piece is like a Rees Mogg piece with some talking points then a leap to leaving the EU.

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                          Corbyn's brother? Wha?

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                            Tubby, normally i'd agree and leave it there, but Mudde did recently make a rather extraordinary suggestion that leftists in hungary should seek to ally with openly nazi jobbik party against fidesz and viktor orban, so I'm stroking my beard pensively a bit at the information about his brother

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                              http://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1065616385307549701

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                                Article 132 always had a fixed date, it was just unspecified.
                                Notwithstanding Article 126, the Joint Committee may, before 1 July 2020, adopt a single decision extending the transition period up to [31 December 20XX].*
                                Also pretty sure I recall Barnier saying one or two years in his press conference.

                                Comment


                                  YATR, er good point.

                                  Comment


                                    Not tons of time this evening so I’ve only looked at 1 article (this one, + the 2 linked articles) of this big dossier on populism in Europe. And I’m really not sure about the Guardian’s methodology on this one, the whole thing immediately strikes me as flawed (my very first comment would be of a practical nature though: it’s bloody hard to make out the precise shade of purple on the map among those on offer, especially obviously between the 10-20%, 20-30% and 30-40% brackets, you'd think that s.o in their team would have pointed that out. Never mind, we'll try to muddle through it).

                                    I had a good look at their methodology page (here) but I remain very unconvinced. Their first sentence (“Populism is a challenging thing to measure”) should have told them to exercise extreme caution, which clearly they haven’t, not sufficiently IMO. They can’t seriously try to pass this off as a very thorough study or whatever they claim it to be as they mention somewhere.

                                    I bet that anyone with a solid political knowledge of just 3-4 Euro countries in the last 20 yrs (those countries' parties, their manifestos and the successive elections) could pick holes at will in the way the Guardian arrives at their big map “Populist vote share by country 1998-2018”: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng...orce-in-europe (and ditto for the graphs below – The Alps, The south etc.)

                                    I’ll just look at the UK and France which is what I know best. The UK fares very well according to the Guardian’s analysts in the evolutive map (link above) but there are some strange things going on in there.

                                    For instance, en vrac, they have the UK in the 10-20% bracket for 2016, which means that they based it on UKIP’s score in the Local elections (May 2016), 12%. OK, fine. But when you look at their bracketing for France for the same year, they clearly haven’t factored in the Municipal elections. Why is that? So, already, discrepancies appear in their calculations.

                                    So straight away, my 2nd observation: we should have been given a full list of the elections + parties they’ve based their calculations on. Otherwise it’s largely worthless in effect, any half-clever 6th Former could knock together a more rigorous study in a few weeks. They have provided details on this methodology page but not the full list. Why? Do they think that clever readers would quickly see that it’s flawed. Probably.

                                    Also, 2016 means Brexit ref. OK, it's not a vote but couldn’t they have factored that in too given that it was a highly populist vote in its very DNA (decided by 1 man on very tenuous grounds, in most countries this would be impossible/very difficult as it requires a modification of the constitution etc. Germany, France, Italy etc.) and it was very populist in its campaigning (eg avalanche of populist propaganda and disinformation. If Brexit wasn't a populist political event in its make-up, I don’t know what is). I mean, how can you not factor in Brexit in a major study about populism in Europe? At least reference it and explain why you haven’t computed in this major criterion and market in the recent history of European populism, that would be respectable but leaving it out altogether casts a shadow on the credibility of the study IMO although I accept this one is just about debatable.

                                    The Guardian also has the UK as (I think, as this purple shading is unclear) in the 10-20% bracket for 2014. Hmm, didn’t UKIP record 27% in the Euro elections that year? Yep, they did. So why is the UK not in the 20-30% bracket for that year? Makes no sense.

                                    They have France in the 20-30% bracket for 2014. There were 2 major elections that year in France, the Europeans obviously like in the UK + the Municipals. The FN registered 25% in the Europeans and 5% in the Municipals (1st round). Clearly, they’ve haven’t factored it the Municipals in their calculations otherwise they’d have France in the 10-20% bracket for that 2014 year. Why didn't they include the 2014 French municipals in their calculations whereas they factored in the equivalent elections in the UK for 2016? (OK maybe there's a case for not including municipal elections in such a study, as it isn’t obviously in the same category as the Presidentials and Parliamentarian elections although it’s considered a major election in France with turnout of about 65%, but you need consistency, if you include municipal elections for one country, you need to do the same across the board obvs.).

                                    Ergo, with similar results between the FN and UKIP in the 2014 Europeans (25% and 27%), why does the Guardian have the 2 countries in different brackets? Again, very puzzling.

                                    They should also have France at roughly the same level as the UK in 2017, i.e 10-20% (and not 20-30% or possibly even 30-40%, it’s hard to make out but I think it’s the former bracket), and all the other big election years in France for that matter (Presidentials & Parliamentarian, see below the last para). For the following reason: you have to average both major elections held in France in 2017 for the Front National, the Presidentials and the Parliamentarians (Législatives) as it makes no analytical sense to take the Presidentials as the sole benchmark and you have to use first-round results if you are to compare like for like, that’s what they’ve had to use for other European countries as most electoral systems only have 1 round. You can't take the data on round 1 for some countries, and the one on round 2 for others. Since not every country has a round 2 in their electoral system, you therefore need to only take round 1 results. (And of course, I won't even go into voters' behaviour according to the respective electoral system. Obviously, these behaviours differ hugely from one country to another whether there's 1 or 2 rounds system, whether there's proportional rep, whether it's a mixed/hybrid system, a FPTP system etc. and that obviously influences people's voting and beyond that in fact, it dictates what sort of parties you find in a country, it therefore shapes the choices on offer for voters in a given country.)

                                    When you do that, you get 17% for 2017 for the Front National (average of 21% between the Presidentials’ 1st round, 21% and the Législatives’ 1st round, 13%). Ditto the previous big election years in France included in their 20-year study so: 2002: 14% (FN Presidentials & Législatives’ results). 2007: 7%. 2012: 15%. So not at all in the 20-30% or 30-40% bracket as the Guardian says but in the 10-20% one and even 0-10% for certain years, and not just 2007 as the Front National went through a trough between the mid-2000s and early 2010s.
                                    Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 22-11-2018, 19:17.

                                    Comment


                                      Belatedly, having read a recent legal briefing, I'm picking up this error from Tubbs on p395 of this thread:

                                      I don't see May losing the vote. She'll either get some Labour votes, or will do like Major did and make it a confidence motion.
                                      That isn't possible any more. To quote from a recent briefing by law firm Allen & Overy:

                                      Under the terms of the FTPA, a set formula must be used for a no-confidence motion, meaning that it is no longer possible to use a Government defeat on a vote on other legislation as amounting to a vote of no-confidence. It is therefore not possible for the Government to table the vote on the withdrawal agreement as a no-confidence motion, and use this to pressure MPs to vote for the motion.

                                      Link to briefing here (it's very good):

                                      http://www.allenovery.com/Brexit-Law...tification.pdf

                                      Comment


                                        Interesting thread by a Dutch analyst on fishing - the UK market is overwhelmingly dependent on European imports, while Europe prefers UK exports, making a trade agreement imperative:

                                        http://twitter.com/remkorteweg/status/1065173307769700353

                                        Comment


                                          Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post
                                          Interesting thread by a Dutch analyst on fishing - the UK market is overwhelmingly dependent on European imports, while Europe prefers UK exports, making a trade agreement imperative:

                                          http://twitter.com/remkorteweg/status/1065173307769700353
                                          There was an excellent Le Monde clip the other day (maybe 1 month ago) about fishing in UK waters, how basically the British waters were very rich in their diversity (among the richest in the world), about 40 different species as opposed to maybe 10 in Spain or France, but that only only 3 species were used for the British market (cod, haddock and I think tuna was the third one), so the 30-odd remaining species have to be sold to Europeans, mainly France and Spain. If you want me to, I'll try to find it, it explained the problematic very clearly.

                                          Anyway, if there are too many restrictions of access to UK waters, it's likely that the EU will put big tariffs on UK fish. Anyway, doesn't 50 or 60% of the UK fishing industry belong to 3 big European players? (1 Norwegian, I can't remember who else).

                                          Comment


                                            EEG, thanks, that's very useful. With hindsight, I should have wondered why more people weren't mentioning a Major-style confidence motion.

                                            Comment


                                              Also, something odd and half-arsed that struck me in the same Guardian article that I hyperlinked in my post #10048 (the previous one, with the big bollocks groundbreaking European map & study that the Guardian says has never been done before). I found this sentence: Perhaps as remarkable as that, her [Marine Le Pen] first-round score was little higher than that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the surging populist leftwing group La France Insoumise.

                                              So, the Guardian has categorised Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise party as far left (very debatable) and therefore populist, which is a mistake IMO. How is Mélenchon more populist than the Socialists for instance? Or the LR party? (mainstream right). By that token, all parties are populist then (which they probably are to varying degrees of course but in the context of their study on populism, a very grey area therefore hard to define, they should really only have picked the blatantly populist parties, so for France only the Front National, and Debout La France maybe on the rare occasions when the latter have scored more than 2% which was one of the Guardian’s criteria for picking a party).

                                              Benoît Hamon, the socialist candidate in last year’s Presidentials, wanted to create a Universal Income, which could be quite conceivably considered a populist measure. He had other "interesting" (i.e unfeasible) plans in his manifesto that nobody really bothered to read (the poor Hamon, who's now left the Parti Socialiste - like everyone else - to create his own party was saddled with Hollande's toxic legacy so he had no chance. He scored 6%). So why didn’t the Guardian pick the Parti Socialiste in their study then, at least for 2017?

                                              Likewise, François Fillon, the disgraced Conservative candidate, vowed to slash 500,000 public sector jobs. This is of course a classic right-wing measure that could easily be considered populist as all the previous right-wing French presidents (say, Chirac or Sarkozy for instance) made the same pledges but never slashed many public sector jobs, not in those proportions anyway. Why didn’t the Guardian pick Fillon's party (LR) then? (again at least for 2017). To me, there’s not much difference between Mélenchon vs Hamon or Fillon in terms of populism.

                                              Comment


                                                Surely Mélenchon's plans to hold a referendum on EU membership if negotiations with Brussels fail, along with his scepticism about the single currency place him in the same bracket as Syriza?

                                                Comment


                                                  Well, yes he is a Eurosceptic of course but what you’re writing ("he plans to hold a referendum on EU membership if negotiations with Brussels fail")he’s only said this year, end of August, for the first time. Up to now, and certainly last year in the Presidentials and Législatives elections, he was only talking of renegotiating various EU treaties or somehow pull out of those treaties.

                                                  Here for instance, in this Le Monde article of April 2017, he denies wanting to leave the EU:

                                                  Le candidat de La France insoumise a demandé à ses soutiens, mardi, de ne « pas croire » qu’il voudrait « sortir de l’Europe, de l’euro ». Explications.

                                                  […]

                                                  C’est ainsi que le candidat de La France insoumise a résumé sa position lors du débat du 4 avril. Il a toujours affirmé que son objectif premier était de rester dans l’Union européenne, mais à condition qu’elle soit « refondée ».
                                                  This is Mélenchon’s manifesto in last year’s Presidentials (from: https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/po...1896728.html):

                                                  Europe

                                                  -Renégocier les traités avec les partenaires de l'Union européenne ou sortie unilatérale de la France des traités européens.

                                                  -Sortir du pacte de stabilité et des règles européennes encadrant les déficits et dénoncer le Traité sur la stabilité.

                                                  -Refus des traités de libre-échange: le traité trans-atlantique Tafta entre l'UE et les États-Unis, Ceta avec le Canada et le traité Tisa de libéralisation des services.
                                                  Anyway, it’s all for show really, he knows full well that it’s almost legally and constitutionally impossible in France to hold a Frexit ref’. I briefly explained why it would be so hard in France to have a Frexit ref in this post which is linked to a more detailed article in French on the subject.

                                                  Even the Front National backtracked about holding a Frexit which was never really on the cards during the Presidentials:

                                                  Sur la sortie de l'euro et de l'UE, Marine Le Pen a complètement retourné sa veste

                                                  The Guardian has put him with the populists, on balance I wouldn't. Or else most of the other French parties should be classed similarly.

                                                  Comment


                                                    It almost seems as if they are calling "populist" all those parties that were traditionally classified as "protest" parties, which don't share a coherent ideology at all.

                                                    That said, the American Populists (an agrarian party of the late 19th c who were primarily focused on facilitating the availability of credit, particularly through the monetisation of silver) wouldn't recognise any of these people as fellow travelers, either.

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