Alan's Green Thoughts

Without a doubt, 2020 has been the worst year so many British people like myself have experienced in living memory. First came the actual day of Brexit, and the realisation for many Brexiteers that Brexit was in fact built on fantasy and lies. Secondly came the global coronavirus pandemic, where Britain became the "sick man of Europe" once again with the highest death rate in Europe (or one of the highest death rates in Europe, depending on which month it was) and all its attendant consequences. Now for millions of Britons, Christmas has effectively been cancelled due to new restrictions. My 2020 Christmas message is therefore a short and simple one: Merry Christmas everyone, let us try and make the most of the next 10 days, let us remember all those who have died from coronavirus this year, and let us strive for a 2021 that will more than make up for 2020. 

The Romanian parliamentary election of 6 December 2020 resulted in a remarkable shift towards the economically and socially conservative. The Social Democrats (PSD) under Marcel Ciolacu (who did not become Prime Minister of Romania at any point, by the way) suffered a dramatic loss of support, dropping from 45.47% to just 29.24%, although they still finished top of the poll due to the opposition vote being heavily split. In fact by the time this election occurred, Romania had acquired a Prime Minister from the opposition National Liberals, Ludovic Orban (no relation to Hungarian PM Viktor Orban) due to the collapse of the PSD government, which resulted in some defections from PSD to the PNL, and to the Humanist Power Party. The previous PSD PM, Viorica Dancila, had lost the confidence of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis following numerous controversies over the Romanian embassy in Israel and a remark where she referred to some (neurotypical) MEPs as autistic simply because they "...

Readers, the results of local by-elections in Scotland (none are scheduled for England or Wales until May 2021, despite the hundreds of council seat vacancies at present) during November 2020 were as follows (NB: votes shown are all indicative of 1st preferences, like all local by-elections in Scotland): (5/11/20):  Aberdeen UA, Kincorth/Nigg/Cove : SNP 1661 (47.4%, +6.7%), Conservative 709 (20.9%, -1.3%), Labour 429 (12.2%, -5.3%), Independent (Finlayson) 367 (10.5%, -0.4%), Liberal Democrats 128 (3.6%, -1.6%), Independent (McLean) 92 (2.6%), Green 58 (1.7%), Bellizzi Houston 31 (0.9%), Independent (Iroh) 16 (0.5%), Libertarian 16 (0.5%). SNP hold at stage 6. (12/11/20):  City of Edinburgh UA, Craigintinny Duddingston : SNP 2920 (39.0%, +1.8%), Con 1420 (18.9%, -4.8%), Lab 1205 (16.1%, -7.2%), Green 1185 (15.8%, +4.1%), Lib Dem 631 (8.4%, +4.2%), Independent (McDonald) 93 (1.2%), Libertarian 42 (0.6%). SNP hold at stage 6. (19/11/20):  Clackmannanshire UA, Clackmannan Ea...

  "It's over. I said it's over." -TalkTalk advert in the UK, 2008. On 7th November 2020, Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden Jnr., who served as Vice-President under Barack Obama and who was a Senator for Delaware from 1973 to 2009 (36 years) made history by not only becoming the oldest President of the United States in history, at age 77 (he turns 78 in less than a fortnight), but also by achieving a decisive victory over divisive incumbent President Donald John Trump Snr, who incidentally in 2016 had set the previous record for oldest President-Elect, being 70 years of age in 2016. With that, Senator Kamala Harris became the first woman Vice-President in American history, and the first BAME US Vice-President, being of Afro-Caribbean and Indian ancestry. All attempts by Trump to throw out the result have been rejected by various state courts as frivolous. Although the election of Joe Biden was, in the circumstances, predictable given that Trump had angered not onl...

Last month, the Australian Capital Territory (i.e. Canberra) and the state of Queensland held their respective elections, as did the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The Australian Capital Territory experienced a Green surge, with the Greens obtaining 6 seats, the most they have ever won in the ACT Assembly, which unlike most state elections in Australia uses STV instead of AV to elect its members. They gained 4 extra seats despite only increasing their vote share by 3.2%, with Labor only losing 0.6% of their vote share and the Liberals losing 2.9% of their vote share; both of those parties lost 2 seats apiece. The Green surge is attributable to increasing awareness of the need to tackle climate change, a particularly salient issue in Australia given the increasing number of bush-fires where climate change is clearly factor. However, transfers from both Labor and Liberal are also increasingly friendly to the Greens, and a new party, the Progressives, also split the Labor vote to deny...

Five days ago, the early British Columbian provincial election of 2020, which should not have been called that early given that the coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing, resulted in a landslide for the New Democratic Party, Canada's answer to the Labour Party. Even though the NDP were the party to call the early election, having only had a minority of seats and relying on the Greens for confidence and supply, they benefitted surprisingly well. The NDP gained 14 seats, 13 from the Liberals and one from the Greens; as it happened the provincial NDP MP who gained the seat of Oak Bay-Gordon Head from the Greens, following the retirement of former BC Greens leader Andrew Weaver (who left the BC Green caucus earlier this year) was Murray Rankin, who represented Victoria in the Canadian House of Commons; Mr Rankin was almost defeated by the Greens the first time he stood (in the Victoria by-election of 2012), and Victoria remains a top target for the Canadian Greens. In compensation the ...

The Lithuanian parliamentary election of 2020 concluded yesterday when the 68 of its 71 single member constituencies that had to undergo a second round of voting declared their results, with the proportional representation results having been finalised a fortnight ago. The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVZS)-led coalition suffered a resounding defeat, even though coronavirus infection rates have been low in Lithuania (10,949 active cases, 136 deaths, with at least 6000 patients having recovered). LVZS only polled 18.07% and won just 32 seats, knocking it down to second place in seat terms as well as regarding vote share, with the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) once again topping the poll. Given the fragmentation of Baltic politics, it was however unsurprising that their vote share was only 25.77%, representing an increase of just 3.14% on the 2016 elections, and their seat total came to 50, amounting to just 35.5% of the Seimas seats. It was ...

Six days ago, Bolivia held its general and presidential elections, the 2019 elections having been annulled within an ongoing political crisis that resulted in the ousting of Bolivia's popular socialist-inclined president, Evo Morales, linked to the fact there are substantial lithium deposits in Bolivia which corporations want access to for the electric vehicle market; Bolivia rightly wanted to control. These elections were originally scheduled for May 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed them by five months. Progressive parties and voters in Bolivia thoroughly repudiated the US-backed coup d'etat that led Jeanine Anez to become interim President of Bolivia for almost a year; she did not run herself or endorse any other candidate, but called on parties outside the MAS (Movement for Socialism) to ally to stop MAS' presidential candidate, Luis Arce, taking office. This did not happen and in any event Senor Arce polled 55.1% of the vote, guaranteeing him the Presidency in the...

  As predicted, the New Zealand 2020 general election rewarded New Zealand's Labour Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, with a convincing victory and the first single-party majority in the New Zealand Parliament since the introduction of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation in New Zealand elections starting from 1996. Ms Ardern and the New Zealand Labour Party won 64 seats, its highest total ever, winning 43 single member constituencies, or electorates, out of 72 and 21 out of 48 list seats. Its vote share of 49.15% was also its highest since 1946, showing an improvement of as high as 12.26%, although many pollsters believed it would poll over 50% of the vote. Ms Ardern was undoubtedly rewarded for her first-class handling of the coronavirus pandemic in New Zealand, where face masks are not compulsory on public transport and where social distancing is for the most part no longer mandated at present, although under its alert levels system this could potentially change. Prior t...

  Although no local by-elections will be taking place in England and Wales until 2021 (Northern Ireland does not hold local by-elections, except where the vacancy concerns a councillor elected as an Independent), local by-elections have started again in Scotland. The results of these three by-elections are as follows: (1/10/20): Orkney UA, North Isles: Independent (Heather Woodbridge*) 638 (69.9%), Labour 158 (17.3%), Independent (Stevens) 75 (8.2%), Independent (Adams) 42 (4.6%). Independent gain from another Independent. *Ms Woodbridge is the daughter of Kevin Woodbridge, a previous Independent councillor for the ward who died in April. (8/10/20): Eilean Siar UA, Na Hearadh agus Ceann a Deas nan Loch ("Harris and South Lewis"): Independent (Fulton) 536 (74.9%), Independent (MacDonald) 158 (22.1%), Independent (O'Donnell) 22 (3.1%). Independent gain from another Independent. (15/10/20): Aberdeenshire UA, Ellon & District (1st preference votes): SNP 1683 (42.3%, +10.6...

  Yesterday, the state election in the Austrian capital, Vienna, took place, which featured a rather sensational result. The Lithuanian parliamentary election also took place the same day, but as the second round of constituency voting in Lithuania (which uses parallel voting) will not conclude until 25 October, I cannot report on it yet. In Vienna, the Freedom Party of Austria endured its worst ever result in an Austrian state election, falling to 7.7% of the vote and an embarassing fifth place behind NEOS. This is first time the FPO have finished fifth in any Austrian election at state or federal level. Their humiliation came about primarily as a result of the Ibiza affair last year, which resulted in the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache (who subsequently formed his own party, Team HC Strache-Alliance for Austria for this election) and the early Austrian parliamentary election of 2019. On current opinion polls in Austria FPO is now languishing in fourth plac...

The second round of six French constituency (or circonscription ) by-elections concluded yesterday, and they resulted in a sharp rebuke for President Emmanuel Macron. These were all caused by the elevation of their incumbent MP to a mayoralty in the French local elections in June. Even though his party, LREM (Les Republic-En Marche!) were defending two of the seats, they failed to make the second round in any of the six by-elections. Although President Macron has handled the coronavirus pandemic better than Boris Johnson has in the United Kingdom, the effects of his reforms are still fresh in voter memories at present. The main opposition, Les Republicans (LR), France's main conservative party, did not perform as well as expected but nevertheless came out strongest. In the 3rd constituency of Maine-et-Loire, the LR candidate only prevailed in the second round due to transfers from France Arise (DLF, Debout La France), which is France's closest answer to UKIP and the Brexit Part...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most progressive justices to have ever sat on the US Supreme Court, passed away yesterday. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg will be remembered for her commitment to women's rights in particular within the US Supreme Court, her strong dissents especially regarding human rights issues, and her authorship of three important human rights cases: United States v Virginia, which held that women had the same rights to enrol in military academies in the USA as men; Olmstead v. LC, which helped many US citizens with mental illness transfer to community programs and avoid unnecessary institutionalisation, and Friends of the Earth Inc. v Laidlaw Environmental Services Inc., which allowed plaintiffs to sue companies which had polluted in the past even if they had closed the operations responsible. Ever since she wrote the plaintiff's brief for Reed v Reed in 1971, which held that testators could not be preferred on the basis of sex and which changed many sex/ge...

  The Canadian province of New Brunswick's early election, called to break the deadlock after negotiations between Premier Blaine Higgs of the Progressive Conservatives and other parties failed, resulted in a small but decisive majority for the Progressive Conservatives. Mr Higgs' tactic, however necessary, clearly worked-the Progressive Conservatives managed to come top of the poll with 39.41%, an increase of 7.52% over 2018. They increased their seat total by 7 to 27, giving them a majority of 5. There are only 49 members in the New Brunswick legislature so a majority of 5 is actually a working majority. The New Brunswick Liberals, meanwhile, led by Kevin Vickers even though he was not a sitting MLA, lost 3 seats, leaving them with 17, and dropped to 34.36%, and Mr Vickers did not come close to capturing the riding of Miramichi from the People's Alliance. Despite high hopes and increasing awareness for the need for a green recovery in a post-coronavirus world, the Greens ...

  The most competitive executive and leadership elections in Green Party history saw much less change than expected-and notably the lowest turnout ever in a Green Party Leadership election. Even though there was a high standard of competition between the leader and deputy leader candidates, turnout dropped to 15.4% and 13.5% respectively in the said leader and deputy leader elections, and this cannot be solely attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic given the turnout levels in the Liberal Democrat leadership election whose result was announced two weeks ago (Sir Ed Davey convincingly defeated Layla Moran on a turnout of 57.1%). Sian Berry & Jonathan Bartley, the incumbents, were elected but polled only 48.9% of 1st preference votes compared to 75.1% in 2018, mainly due to the candidacy of Rosi Sexton who was also the only leadership candidate living north of the Wash (Rosi is a councillor in Solihull) and who controversially did not oppose HS2 or nuclear power. Rosi p...

Last week, Jamaica held an early general election (the next elections there were not expected until February 2021) despite the still ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The result was a stunning victory for Jamaican PM Andrew Holness and his Jamaican Labour Party (despite its name, this is actually Jamaica's equivalent of the Conservative Party in practice), who won 49 seats and 57% of the vote, up from 32 seats (a one seat majority) and 50% in 2016. The opposition People's National Party meanwhile won just 14 seats and 42.8% of the vote, and did not win a majority of seats in any Jamaican parish. The largest parish in Jamaica, Saint Andrew (which contains Mr Holness' constituency, Saint Andrew West Central, and opposition leader Peter Phillips' constituency, Saint Andrew East Central), was the only parish where no seats changed hands this year. The JLP and the PNP were the only political parties to contest this year's Jamaican election, and no Independent candidate polle...

  The Montenegrin parliamentary election that took place yesterday produced a sensational change: for the first time since Montenegrin independence, the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) failed to win enough seats to assure itself of being the governing party. The DPS only lost 6 seats, bringing it down to 30, but in a parliament with only 81 seats each seat loss counts for much more than in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, which has 650 members by comparison. Corruption scandals-a common theme in the politics of  former Warsaw Pact countries-against the DPS, which resulted in nationwide protests last year, were the primary reason why the DPS lost out in this election, along with allegations of electoral fraud to the point where opposition parties boycotted the Montenegrin parliament. Religious discrimination against the Serbian Orthodox Church, in favour of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, made matters worse for the DPS. The main beneficiary of the...

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, elections continue to take place in much of the world, except the United Kingdom even though other countries have shown that both local and national elections can be conducted safely with full postal ballots. The Sri Lankan election of 5th August (delayed twice due to said coronavirus pandemic) saw former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose Sri Lankan People's Freedom Alliance surged to 59.1% of the vote, giving them 145 seats and a majority of 65 (very substantial in a parliament with only 225 seats) rise again. By contrast, the United National Party, which had governed Sri Lanka for the last 5 years before splitting in a spectacular fashion, lost all but one of its 106 seats and fell to an ignoble seventh place. The largest party to emerge from the fracturing of the UNP was the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (meaning "Peace and People's Power" in Tamil), a liberal-conservative party which is now the main opposition in the Sri Lankan Parl...

The current Conservative-led government is proposing, this autumn, to bring in new legislation that would make trespass a criminal offence, as opposed to a civil one in most cases (exceptions include the railway, for example). This follows on from when squatting in residential buildings was made a criminal offence in 2012, when it was previously a civil offence. This would not only breach the human rights of travelling communities (including Roma and Irish Travellers) but would also jeopardise the right to demonstrate, the right to enjoy the countryside , and severely hamper our access to nature given that only 8.5% of UK land is publicly owned; conversely nearly half of UK land is owned by aristocrats or corporations, amounting to just 25,000 landowners. Even most homeowners own very little land at all. People need to be able to have access to nature, especially since one in eight UK households have no garden or access to one; these households are concentrated in major cities. Scotlan...

Last week in the Spectator, Nick Tyrone hinted that a merger between the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party could happen within this decade , and in the Independent, John Rentoul suggested the exact same thing. Despite their claims, a merger between the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party would in fact be a very bad idea politically, especially for the Green Party. Here is why: 1. The Green Party can reach out to many areas the Liberal Democrats cannot.  This was particularly noticeable in the 2019 local elections, where the Greens managed a net gain (notionally due to extensive ward boundary changes in many areas, in addition to council mergers) of 148 seats from the Conservatives, and mainly in rural areas and small towns where the Liberal Democrats are not competitive. Most of the Green gains from Labour that year were in areas with high qualification levels but not high affluence (such as Norwich and the southern parts of Royal Leamington Spa) that are only competitive be...

  Earlier this week, Robert Jenrick (Conservative MP for Newark since 2014), the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, announced a major shake-up of planning laws to allow for housing to be built rapidly and quickly on brownfield sites and designated "growth sites", in response to Boris Johnson's wish to "build, build, build". It cannot be denied that there is a housing shortage in Britain. However, the real reasons why it has occurred are the effects of Right to Buy from the late 1980s onwards, which has decimated Britain's social housing stock and stigmatised council housing, a lack of affordable homes, speculation on house prices, and one million empty homes which have been left unoccupied not being compulsorily purchased so they can be used for housing. The planning reforms proposed by Mr Jenrick and co will make Britain's housing problem worse, not better. Here is why. 1. They will create, in effect, a new generation of slums. Bro...

John Hume, a founder of the peace process that ended The Troubles period of Northern Ireland and culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, passed away earlier today. John Hume's political life started when he helped found the Northern Irish civil rights movement, to counter the repression Catholics like him faced at the hands of the Protestant powers that be in Northern Ireland. He served as a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for 3 years for Foyle (covering the western part of the city of Derry) until the Northern Ireland Parliament was abolished in 1972. He was subsequently elected as the SDLP MP for Foyle in 1983 and served as MP for Foyle until he retired in 2005, and he was also an MLA for Foyle for 10 years. He led the SDLP (which he co-founded with Gerry Fitt) from 1979 to 2001, taking it through a period of significant growth and ensuring that Catholics obtained much better representation in Northern Ireland's Westminster constituencies than before, with ...

Yesterday's general election in North Macedonia was the first to be held since the country officially renamed itself from FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to North Macedonia, having been repeatedly told by Greece not to merely call themselves simply "Macedonia". Like all elections in this current period, the coronavirus pandemic significantly depressed turnout, which dropped from 66.8% to just 51.3%, the lowest turnout level since North Macedonia gained independence from the now defunct Yugoslavia. Also, because of said coronavirus pandemic, this election was held four months ahead of schedule; it was originally due for November 2020. Neither the social democratic/minority interests coalition "We Can" (comprising of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, the Besa Movement, the VMRO-People's Party, and the Turkish Democratic Party) of former North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev (who still led the coalition in this election even though ...

Ennio Morricone, one of the best film composers of all time, passed away last week. He will be forever remembered for his "sphagetti western" film soundtracks, the most famous of them being from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". His music for "A Fistful of Dollars", "For a Few Dollars More" and other films by Sergio Leone will also be forever remembered, more than 50 years after these films were first released.  Jack Charlton, a former Leeds United player who went down in history when he helped England win the FIFA World Cup of 1966 (our only win of the World Cup to date; the closest we have come since then is when we were defeated in a penalty shoot-out with Germany in the 1990 World Cup semi-finals), died three days ago at his home in Northumberland. He managed to win as many as 108 international caps for England, a record that took Peter Shilton (the English footballer with the most international caps to date) 12 years to surpass (the curre...

The Singaporean general election of 2020 which took place yesterday returned the governing People's Action Party with a large majority yet again, rather predictable.  However, the opposition, led by the Worker's Party and parties that agreed to anti-PAP pacts including the Progress Party, People's Voice, Reform Party, Singapore Democratic Party, Singapore People's Party, the National Solidarity Party, People's Voice, and Red Dot United, managed to win the highest number of seats ever for the opposition since Singaporean independence occurred in 1959. They managed to win 10 seats, by gaining Sengkang GRC (Group Representation Constituency, a type of constituency unique to Singapore where teams of candidates either win all of the seats or none at all), holding Hougang SMC (Single Member Constituency) and holding Aljuned GRC with a 9% swing in their favour against the PAP. This notably resulted in the defeat of Ng Chee Meng, the Minister in the Prime Minister's O...

Yesterday, Croatia held its 2020 parliamentary elections, and as with most elections this year the COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced turnout because many voters around the world still do not feel safe going to the polls even when social distancing measures are tightly enforced in said poll. Consequently, turnout in this Croatian election dropped to 46.45%, the lowest in any Croatian election since Croatia gained independence from the now-defunct Yugoslavia; this mirrors the sharp drop in turnout in the second round of French local elections the week before, and the Polish presidential election's first round last month. The perceived handling of the COVID-19 pandemic played a decisive factor in this election, allowing the conservative HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), who were lagging behind the Social Democrat-led Restart Coalition in the year leading up to this election, to achieve a surprise victory, in alliance with the Croatian Liberal Party and the Croatian Demochristia...