The quirk of elections is that they tend to be swung by the public voting against, rather than for, a party. The sentiment is often either to kick one party out of power and give another a chance, or to re-elect the incumbents for fear of the alternative. In 2019, voters stuck with the devil they knew. This time, polls suggest that the Conservatives will be dumped from office. Their removal cannot come a moment too soon.
The Tories don’t deserve to win. After 14 years in power, they are a shambles. The original sin was austerity. But the precipitating crisis of this government was when voters were told that leaving the EU with the thinnest of deals would be good for them. Nothing could have been further from the truth. From the Pandora’s box of Brexit flew the furies of conspiracy, dishonesty, government abuse and executive overreach. It has been five years of unremitting cruelty and chaos. Starved public services and a miserly welfare state have seen life become poorer, nastier, more brutish and shorter. The right’s obsession with putting the state at the service of the market is destroying councils and universities, and spewing sewage into rivers.
The country has been exhausted by constant drama and is thoroughly disconnected from Westminster. Britain has had five prime ministers in eight years. The Conservatives can blame no one but themselves for their handling of the pandemic: incompetence, rule-breaking and cronyism bred political distrust and a shift towards populist rightwing politics. Liz Truss’s mercifully short premiership destroyed her party’s reputation for economic competence. With such a record, the Tories could stand unopposed and still come second...
Fourteen years of Tory buffoonery (Boris Johnson) and incompetence (David Cameron, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak) will come to an end this week. If only we were so lucky in ridding ourselves of the right- wingers here. Meanwhile, across the Channel...
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has taken the lead in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, initial projections showed, taking it closer to the gates of power than ever before.
After unusually high turnout, the RN bloc won with 34% of the vote, while left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition came second with 28.1% and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance slumped to a dismal third with 20.3%, according to initial estimates by Ipsos.
While the RN appears on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly, it may fall short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority, suggesting France may be heading for a hung parliament and more political uncertainty.
Projections show that, after the second round of voting next Sunday, the RN would win between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat lower house – a staggering rise from its count of 88 in the outgoing parliament. The NFP was projected to secure between 125 and 165 seats, with Ensemble trailing with between 70 and 100 seats.
The election, which Macron called after his party was battered by the RN in European Parliament elections earlier this month, could leave him to see out the remaining three years of his presidential term in an awkward partnership with a prime minister from an opposition party...
As the United Kingdom looks poised to take a major turn to the left on July 4, France appears to be lurching to the far- right, no doubt to the delight of Le Pen's benefactor, war criminal Vladimir Putin. Pending results from the second runoff round of voting, a coalition of the center and left may still bar the party of fascist Le Pen from ultimate power, if they work cooperatively to consolidate candidacies.
President Joe Biden is expected to discuss the future of his re-election campaign with family at Camp David, Maryland, on Sunday, following a nationally televised debate Thursday that left many fellow Democrats worried about his ability to beat former President Donald Trump in November, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Biden’s trip was planned before Thursday’s debate. He and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to join their children and grandchildren there late Saturday. [snip]
“The decision-makers are two people — it’s the president and his wife,” one of the sources familiar with the discussions said, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t understand how deeply personal and familial this decision will be isn’t knowledgeable about the situation.”
This account of a president and his party in crisis just a little more than four months before an election they say will determine the fate of democracy is drawn from interviews with more than a dozen Democratic officials, operatives, aides and donors. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe matters as sensitive as whether a sitting president might give up his re-election bid and how he could be replaced on the ballot.
Despite delivering a rousing speech at a rally in North Carolina on Friday that calmed some of his allies, Biden was described by one person familiar with his mood as humiliated, devoid of confidence and painfully aware that the physical images of him at the debate — eyes staring into the distance, mouth agape — will live beyond his presidency, along with a performance that at times was meandering, incoherent and difficult to hear.
“It’s a mess,” this person said...
To coin a phrase, "No shit, Sherlock!"
