Tag: Afd

On the brink – Brazil, Israel, USA go the polls

We’ve big elections, with potentially massive consequences, upcoming. The Brazilian election run-off is on Sunday, 25th, the Israeli election on Tuesday 27th, and the US mid-term election on 4th November. The French presidential election follows April next year.

Brazil looks to go far right with Bolsonaro Jnr, after he came in ahead on the first round two weeks ago. The margin may be as little as 2%, but it is of course a presidential election and the winner will take all.

The mid-terms look to be heavily weighted against Trump: the New York Times has the Democrats 11% ahead, NBC 9%. But it comes down of course to individual races, and individual states and districts, with redistricting, also known as gerrymandering, coming into play in some Republican districts.

Israeli has proportional representation so it’s multi-party. There we’ve a pro- against an anti-Netanyahu coalition. The hard right with its overt brutality toward Palestinians just might lose out by a hairsbreadth. But attitudes have changed in Israel since October 7th three years ago. It’s disturbing to read that the hard right have made gains among young people: they used to be the guarantee of social progress.

Whoever wins in the three elections in the next two weeks will win by small margins. But once the door is opened…

It used to be an assumption of post-war liberal democracies that you’d have four or five years in power and then fight another election on your record. The elections would be a level-playing field. But far-right parties (and far-left if we head back further in time) have a long record of manipulating future elections in their favour. ‘Once we’ve a right-wing, nativist, illiberal, populist government, then let’s ensure it will always be that way.’ As they might argue. Usually there’s a charismatic leader who charms and brutalises in equal measures. It’s that disavowal of the free-and-fair-election principle that could be one of the great tragedies of our times. You climb to the top, and you pull up the drawbridge. That’s the old metaphor, it’s graphic, and it’s spot-on.

We’ve seen how the tech bros have kowtowed to Trump. How might they reposition post-Trump? We’ve seen Trump align with Putin. We’ve seen a disregard for human life, with ICE and the defunding of USAID. Even the possibility of a public firing squad. We’ve seen a triumphalist Christianity with its proponents reassured by a belief in a Second Coming which would of course solve all problems. If both houses of Congress go Democrat, planned cuts to Medicaid and reining in defence spending are likely to be a focus. But foreign policy is still ultimately the President’s.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro Jnr, if he wins, will rollback deforestation regulations. Admiration for Bukele in El Salvador and a desire to mimic Trump spells danger for Bolsonaro opponents, which could include Supreme Court judges who found Bolsonaro Snr guilty on conspiracy charges.

We’re in a relatively safe space in the UK at the moment. After two years of Starmer as prime minister we can see the difference that a leader, Andy Burnham, with a clear vision, can make. Reform has, for now at least, lost momentum, a consequence in part of simple sleaziness and the reliance on massive funding from crypto-currency and property tycoons. But the hard-right mentality is deep-rooted, here, as elsewhere in Europe. The right-wing government in Italy is trying to pass reforms which might help consolidate power in future elections. But it’s stayed loyal to the EU and strongly pro-Ukraine, and anti-Russia. And PM Meloni and Trump have fallen out big-time.

Turning to France, just how far would a National Rally government, which looks likely after next spring’s election, push an anti-EU agenda? Would they maintain Macron’s focus on European defence? Would they have the sure touch that Meloni seems to have? We have to trust that the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party in Germany stays sidelined until the Ukraine war is settled, and eyes opened to the absurdities of a backward-looking nostalgia for the imagined certainties of the old East Germany.

We have on the plus side seen Fidesz and Viktor Orban lose power in Hungary. He hadn’t pulled the ladder up quite far enough. That might serve as a warning to others to dispense with a ladder altogether.

You lose an election… OK, we’ll do better next time, you tell yourself. But there does need to be a next time.

Soft power in a weaponised world

Many themes in this Putin and now Trump-disrupted world are in play at the moment. One is soft power, which we in the UK have relied on, aided by the strength of our services sector, in the post WW2 years. Soft power requires a global perspective, anchored by a trade in merchandise and ideas worldwide, something which over the last ten years we’ve downplayed. It has little time for supremacist ideas. Country always comes first, yes, but in the same way that family comes first. A well-functioning society is one where cooperate with, we don’t denigrate, other families.

Cutting foreign aid is another very much related theme. It impacts directly in our soft power. So too does immigration policy as outlined a few days ago by Keir Starmer. Do we really risk becoming an island of strangers? And is he really doubting that immigration at least sustains economic growth, or doesn’t actually help drive it?

Here in the UK we’ve tucked in behind the USA, hugging coat tails, slipstreaming, over the last few decades. But you can’t slipstream a stalling vehicle, or one, worse, that wants to go the other way. Nor should a government be slipstreaming an opposition characterised by a total absence of workable policies.

We need, in the UK, a complete reevaluation in how we relate to the world. How our embassies, trade missions and aid policy function. How our role as educators to the world, through our universities, can be expanded. How we, in cooperation with other countries, face up to very real immigration issues. How we build on our digital strengths. How we rebuild our social capital (see below). How we rebuild our relationship with our European neighbours. How we can lead a green revolution. How all the above relate to building our output, productivity, trade and prosperity. Above all, how, in working with the EU, we can strengthen and guarantee our defence.

How, in short, we can relate to the world on our own terms and no longer as a smiling American lackey.

It also requires an end to defeatism. There’s a sense in some quarters that we’re in crisis. But that is in the nature of democracy. Democracies thrive on crises. They add urgency but within a broad boundary of shared expectation.

But is this true now? A related theme specific to our time is the apparent demise of the two-party system which has anchored our politics since as long ago as 1924, and the demise of the old Liberal Party. Tory and Labour long operated within a broad framework of understanding and possibility. With Reform in play, as a false prophet, and five parties in competition in recent local elections, our politics is open to more extreme views. In Germany the Christian Democrats would never cooperate (would they?) with the far right AfD, but our hollowed out Tory party might do just that with Reform.

Is ours in any sense a failed state? As Reform would have us believe. Yes, our self-belief as a nation is at a low ebb. Likewise our social capital, our confidence in our health service, education system, judiciary and prison service, roads and infrastructure, utilities. But in each area there’s a functional basis to build on. Disruption isn’t the answer. A key purpose of government has to be to re-create that sense of self-belief.

We require that same positive approach looking beyond our borders, as exemplify by Starmer’s just-announced deal with the EU. And the government’s India trade deal.

There is a sense in which we are, in the second Trump era, all so much wiser. Under Biden we could wander along the edge of the precipice, worried about falling, but not actually do so. I’ve often written about preserving liberal democracy, sensing that precipice, one of many waving banners with too few taking notice. Now we’re over the edge, and clinging on. With Trump in power we can see what falling might be like.