Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

Our exit polls are usually fairly accurate, but trust me, I'm not celebrating yet. I cant ever celebrate because Tories still rule this country but... Wilders not as big as projected, nowhere near, at least give me that to be pleased about guys. Give me something, I don't ask for a lot tbh.

think maybe the 2015 poll called a wafer-thin majority compared to how it played out?

It's still a reasonably thin majority but yeah a similar error here in Wilders' favour would not be good.

Well, apparently a bad result for populists in Australia as well: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/03/15/australia-just-delivered-a-blow-to-its-far-right-populists-heres-how-we-did-it/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.05eb2dcdb262

Any Australians who can elaborate?

Re: the 2015 exit poll - all the major polls running up were pointing towards a hung parliament but the first exit poll that came out at 10pm that night predicted a Tory majority, and it was correct.

lol Pauline Hanson is a running joke, she never had a chance.

Already entirely sick of all the triumphant 'populism was defeated!1!' headlines. Populism wasn't defeated, it's been wholly adopted by the mainstream parties.

So the system works?

I suppose.

Freddy B, hats off for the Danish newsreaders presenting a whole item in Dutch!

Lol. Danish people love Dutch, as it's a common held opinion that it's the only language in the world uglier than ours...

Sorry...

This guy seriously looks like a Willy Wonka wannabe:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/842366245093707777/3LF-CSXO?format=jpg&name=600x314

Or a last-minute Jimmy Page costume:
http://noisecreep.com/files/2014/01/Jimmy-Page.jpg

Starting to really believe that if the Brexit referendum had happened after Trump, the results would have been different.

Of which?

I really dunno about that. Brexit and Trump are lumped in together a lot in the media and amongst Remainers, but I don't know if many Leavers make the association (even with Farage advising Trump and etc.)

It is probably a wash between 'the world is becoming more chaotic so we need the stability of old alliances' and 'the world is becoming more chaotic so we need the freedom and flexibility to create new alliances' depending on your existing biases.

We are about to hand a massive majority to a leader promising a much more extreme version of Brexit than was ever hinted at - on the assumption that she can work out a sweet deal with Trump.

For much of last year, even the UKIP people who too regularly appear on QUESTION TIME would respond to questions about Trump by saying they disagreed with him and wouldn't vote for him if they were American.

I suppose this implies that for them, Brexit was much less extreme than Trump.

Also they knew that even their own supporters regarded Trump as a disaster.

I was thinking that if Trump had won already, the voters who were soft on Brexit but showed up just to vote Leave out of spite might have chosen otherwise. I think Trump's win seems to have been an effective warning to moderates to turn out and vote for the sane option. Swinging the result two points in the other direction doesn't seem improbable.

Of all the causes of the vote for leave in the referendum (of which there were many), I don't think what is or was happening in the US was very high up the list, and I don't think a change to the chronology would have made much of a difference to the result of the vote.

Nor do I think Trump/Brexit had much to do with yesterday's French election. Neither of those results has had enough impact *yet* to persuade/dissuade voters concerned with, for instance, immigration.

It's impossible to say for certain of course but it's entirely possible that Trump's massive, world-famous incompetence at being president has taken the wind out of the sails of some of the people who think their country needs a fascist outsider to "shake things up a bit"

yeah our fascist outsider should be enough to shake things up a bit for everyone, for at least a while

y'know Tracer given your triple threat of France/UK/USA affiliations I am kind of surprised you have not had some kind of health event over all this shit

All his oafs in difference basketcases

This is definitely the wrong thread, but I wanted to ask something some place where the politically interested posters from many countries would see it. Because in Denmark we just had the end of yet another court trial against greedy bankers, and yet another complete acquittal and a lot of wasted tax payer money. So wanted to ask, has any other countries had more luck? Any good writing on what the differences has been in countries, what laws there were to defend against this, what strategies countries has taken.

More proper for this thread: Finns Party kicked out of Finnish governing coalition, and apparently, according to polls they've lost half their support since last election. From 17% to 9%.

Yeah I'm not entirely sure I get that. The two Finns I talk to had differing views on how much of a swing that was and what it meant.

I would love to hear expert opinions about the swing, but personally I note that populist movements fall apart whenever they have to take responsibility. The lesson for me is to never compromise in the fight against populism, since even if we lose they will then fall apart themselves, while in Denmark and elsewhere, compromising has meant giving them power without responsibility.

We've not had any luck with bankers probably because it's all murky as fuck and they could justifiably (legally) argue that the system was rotten and they acted in good faith etc etc etc

Everyone cites Iceland as an example of how to do it I'm not convinced Iceland is a useful comparator for any other country in the world tbh

I note that populist movements fall apart whenever they have to take responsibility.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/12/italys-populist-five-star-movement-humiliated-municipal-elections/

Great news! Some good examples this week, then.

Yeah, Iceland seems like a special case that has given everyone unrealistic ideas. I mean, fuck the guys in the Danish court case, the manager got payed a 10 million kr bonus right before they went under and their costumers lost everything, but it wasn't illegal at the time, and... I'm not sure it's constructive. x-post.

Oh, and the story in Finland seems to be that the membership of the party did a sort of coup when the old leader stepped down, and chose a much more radical candidate than expected. And the other parties just went 'nope'.

Lol, this just in: Old leader of True Finns now trying to make a new party with 20 other members, to stay in government coalition...

The lesson for me is to never compromise in the fight against populism

u unaccountably seem to have left 'right wing' out of that formulation

Ffs, the thread is named 'Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift'

"populist" has an almost exclusively right-wing connotation in europe, as i learned to my chagrin when i interviewed the then-head of the hackney empire and called his programming "populist" - he grew visibly and audibly incensed (which improved the interview tbh)

Seems otm

I mean left wing populism just dies on its feet as soon as anyone asks who's paying usually

I'm not so sure that's the case anymore.

Podemos, Syriza, *gulp* Corbyn...

Fair to note that was more a comment on the debate shutting down but yeah

tbh I don't even know where the Five Star Movement is, ideologically, but any political party started by a comedian has to be resisted at all costs.

aye, it could so easily lead to tyranny

I'd probably include Podemos and Syriza as unfortunate examples of my point about populist movements crumbling once they're unable to deliver as promised - though the circumstances are completely different, of course. Corbyn smart to make a fully costed popular manifesto that could hopefully begin being implemented as soon as he gets power in 2018.

Wait, sorry, I actually thought Podemos was in power. My bad.

as soon as he gets power in 2018

or sooner, the way things are going

Well, yeah, but I just wanted to use a cautious estimate ;)

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they ripoff your messaging in a half ass attempt to hold onto power pic.twitter.com/uITiNNJrI8

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) June 13, 2017

No one in the Democratic leadership–not Schumer, Pelosi or Perez–has congratulated Corbyn. Our Dems are tighter with Netanyahu than Corbyn.

— Chase Madar (@ChaseMadar) June 9, 2017

congratulations on not losing quite as badly as had been predicted