Alan's Green Thoughts

Readers, the results of this week's local by-elections were as follows: Durham UA, Dawdon: Labour 693 (52.3%, +4.8%), Seaham Community 633 (47.7%, +13.4%). Eastleigh BC, Hedge End Grange Park: Liberal Democrats 668 (56.5%, +15.5%), Conservative 316 (26.7%, -10.9%), Labour 144 (12.2%, +0.9%), Green 41 (3.5%), UKIP 14 (1.2%, -9.0%). All changes are since 2015. Waltham Forest LBC, William Morris: Labour 1,923 (68.4%, +10.2%), Green 524 (18.6%, +1.0%), Conservative 365 (13.0%, +6.6%). West Lancashire BC, Derby: Our West Lancashire 705 (42.4%, +28.5%), Labour 596 (35.8%, +0.4%), Conservative 362 (21.8%, -10.0%). Our West Lancashire gain from Labour; all changes are since 2015. The trend towards increasing support for local groups, many of which lean towards moderate conservatism in practice, continues with the local group Our West Lancashire's win of the Derby by-election and with the Seaham Community group only missing out on winning Dawdon (the largest community of which...

The most recent parliamentary election in Albania, which took place three days ago, has just seen the first single-party majority for any Albanian government in The Socialist Party of Albania, descended from the former Party of Labour in Albania (the dominant communist party from 1941 to 1991), managed to gain an outright majority, winning 74 seats. This is only the second single party majority in Albania in 16 years, and the Socialists won all but the two northernmost counties in Albania, which were won by the opposition Democratic Party of Albania. This sweep happened even though the Democratic Party only lost 7 of its 50 seats, making it still the clear opposition in Albanian politics.  Despite the existence of proportional representation by county, with a 3% threshold for single parties and a 5% threshold for alliances, Albanian politics is still almost entirely dominated by two parties, the Socialists and Democrats. The Socialist Movement for Integration, which split fr...

It has been confirmed that Theresa May will stay as Prime Minister, thanks to a confidence and supply deal made by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland to keep in power a Conservative minority government. Even then, there are only 10 DUP MPs and 317 Conservative MPs, so this deal is not stable by any means and has a majority of only 4 (working majority of 10 when 7 Sinn Fein MPs and Speaker are discounted). So what exactly is the Democratic Unionist Party? The DUP, originally called the Protestant Unionist Party, was founded by fundamentalist minister Rev. Ian Paisley Sr. (1926-2014) in 1969 on his belief that the Ulster Unionist Party was not anti-Catholic enough for his extremist tastes. He founded his own Free Presbyterian Church to further his aims, which ended up overtaking the Methodists as the third-largest denomination in Northern Ireland. He was the first such politician elected under this label, winning North Antrim in 1970; he was MP for North...

Welcome to the first week of post-2017 general election in terms of local by-elections. The results for this week's were as follows: East Cambridgeshire DC, Soham North: Conservative 423 (59.7%, -4.2%), Liberal Democrats 178 (25.1%, +4.1%), Labour 108 (15.2%, +0.1%). Conservative hold. Powys UA, Yscir: Conservative 165 (29.8%), Independent Chris Davies 144 (26.0%), Plaid Cymru 101 (18.2%), Green 80 (14.4%), Independent Daniel Evans 62 (11.2%), Independent Steve Evans 2 (0.4%). Conservative win (Yscir had no nominations in 2017 which is why this by-election was held). Sheffield MBC, Nether Edge & Sharrow: Labour 2641 (45.0%, +6.5%), Green 2509 (42.7%, +8.6%), Liberal Democrats 722 (12.3%, -2.3%). Labour hold; the Conservative candidate failed to hand in their nomination papers on time. South Gloucestershire UA, Winterbourne: Conservative 873 (47.9%, +0.5%), Labour 615 (33.8%, +17.7%), Liberal Democrats 333 (18.3%, -0.1%). Conservative hold. Stockton-On-Tees UA, Yarm: C...

The second round of the French parliamentary election (see this post for analysis of round 1: https://greensocialistalan.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/french-legislative-elections-round-1-en.html   ) resulted in a wide victory for President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche movement, who in alliance with the Democratic Movement (France's equivalent of the Liberal Democrats) won a total of 350 circonscriptions (308 for En Marche, 42 for the MoDems) giving them a majority of 123. This can be described as a bolt from the Macron since En Marche did not exist in 2012, the last time France had elections, and the MoDems were only a small party. Meanwhile, the dominant social-democratic party, Parti Socialiste, was not wiped out as some were expecting, but they and their allies came a poor third with 45 seats nonetheless, compared to the 331 they won in 2012. They retained relatively few seats in mainland France (their overseas deputies were luckier). It is worth noting that only a min...

Earlier this week, the fire in Grenfell Tower, a housing block located within London's wealthiest borough, Kensington & Chelsea, resulted in the deaths of as many as 100 people at this time of writing, although media sources claim fewer deaths. This fire occurred because of neglect to the building by uncaring landlords, the use of flammable cladding (instead of fireproof cladding) which had been banned in several other countries after similar fires, a lack of sprinklers in the building, the fact that the fire escape was placed near the gas mains, and a lack of tenants' rights. Grenfell Tower is located in one of the poorest areas of London, made starker by its location in the same borough containing mansions worth millions of pounds; the average house price in Kensington & Chelsea is in fact as high as £1,694,000, compared to only £220,000 in England as a whole; in other words, houses in Kensington & Chelsea cost nearly octople (eight times) as much as your avera...

The weekend after our snap general election, France held the first round of its own legislative elections, although these were timed to happen now anyway. The two-round system applies to parliamentary elections in France just as it does to Presidential elections, although since there is no proportional element it is nearly as difficult for smaller parties to enter the legislature as it is in Britain, and the tactical voting element is often even stronger (especially against the extremist and racist Front National). The dramatic rise of En Marche!, President Emmanuel Macron's centrist and reformist movement, and the collapse of the most dominant force on the French left, Parti Socialiste, are undoubtedly the key stories of the premier de tour de elections legislatives de France. En Marche has only elected two representatives so far in round one alone, but they lead in the vast majority of French circonscriptions (constituencies for the Assembly of the Republic) and are set to win ...

The 2017 general election, like the February 1974 general election, was a snap general election and both marked a real turning point in British politics. February 1974, which elected the most Liberal MPs for 38 1/2 years, marked the point where the two party system had really cracked. It opened the door for many smaller parties to come through and politics locally and nationally became a more crowded field. The Green Party was one of them, and in England has reasserted itself as the fourth party with UKIP's collapse and imminent demise. Due to the unfairness of FPTP, Caroline Lucas is still the only Green MP and is one of only 9 MPs (the other 8 being Liberal Democrats) in England bearing neither the red rosette nor the blue rosette. June 2017, conversely, marks a turning point back to two party politics in the UK, for the Conservatives achieved 42.4% of the vote, the highest since 1983 (and equal to their vote share of 1983), and Labour achieved 40% of the vote, not much less t...

Theresa May's opportunistic plan has backfired-the Conservatives, far from gaining a landslide majority, now have no majority at all. At this time of writing only Kensington is still to declare, and there is a chance it could elect a Labour MP despite having some of the wealthiest real estate in London (especially around Earl's Court). Only a handful of Labour seats fell to the Conservatives despite UKIP's collapse and subsequent transfer of votes. Those seats were Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland, Copeland (a by-election hold), Walsall North, Mansfield, North East Derbyshire, and Stoke-on-Trent South, with crucial seats like Newcastle-under-Lyme being held by Labour, if only by 30 votes in the latter. It is worth mentioning nonetheless that the last three of these seats had been held by Labour since 1922, 1935, and 1935 respectively, and it was inevitable Labour's dominance in Stoke-on-Trent would be brought to an end. Labour in return gained from the Conserv...

Just one day to go now, everyone. Labour are still edging close to the Conservatives in opinion polls-but that depends on whether enough young people will turn out to vote tomorrow. An ICM poll puts the Conservatives on 45% and Labour on 34%, but a YouGov poll puts the Conservatives on 41% and Labour on as high as 40%. The key difference between these polls is that ICM assumes that the higher youth turnout will not occur in the end, whereas YouGov assumes it will actually happen. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are still stuck on 8%-the same percentage they polled in 2015. UKIP are on 5%, with the Green Party on 3% even though they have far more candidates to vote for than UKIP do in this general election. The SNP are still comfortably ahead in Scotland, this time with the Conservatives as the main challengers to them instead of Labour, and Plaid Cymru are not having nearly the same level of success in Wales. Earlier, I made many predictions for this election, which were made wh...

Malta, part of the British Commonwealth and also the EU (along with Cyprus), held a general election recently, which in spite of all the whiffs of corruption around Labour, led by Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, led to another Labour victory. The vote shares of the two dominant parties in Malta, the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party (Malta's conservatives) only increased slightly, by 0.21% and 0.34% in terms of first preference votes; Malta is one of only a handful of countries to use Single Transferable Vote at all levels. Because of the near-total dominance of the two parties, however, Malta has not been able to develop a multi-party parliament in the way Ireland has, even though all Maltese constituencies have 5 seats and Irish constituency sizes can vary from 3 to 5 seats. Malta also uses compensatory seats to make sure first preference votes match seats, a feature that does not exist in the Irish Dail. Malta's Green Party, the Democratic Alternative, remaine...

In recent opinion polls, Labour has been substantially closing the gap on the Conservatives, culminating in the latest opinion polls showing Conservative leads over Labour being reduced to just 3% (although this was from a poll with a sample size of only 1,875) in some cases, and the average considerably less than 10%. The Conservative slide has been occurring in spite of UKIP continuing to flatline at an average of just 4%. Why is this happening with 1 week to go before polling day? What is causing it? As I mentioned earlier, opposition parties generally close the gap on the governing party (or the other way around, if the governing party is sure to lose, which this year is certainly not the case); however, this is being enhanced with Theresa May's refusal to attend election debates of any sort and the Conservatives running poor and lacklustre ground campaigns in many key constituencies (e.g. Ealing Central & Acton). It also transpires that former UKIP voters are not as wi...