The General Political Thread

[StevenChilton]

Duuring calling out someone for making inaccurate predictions?

Oh boy, you'd be in trouble had you not deleted the 2016 politics thread.

Yes, which is ironic.

Actually, the phrase is “the die is cast”. If you’re going to lecture someone on English, at least get it right yourself.

Common misconception. The original Latin states 'alea', which means 'a game of dice'. It is not meant to be taken as a singular die. I originally put 'Let the dice be thrown', which according to Mary Beard is the most exact translation, but then changed it back and f*cked it up.

So you fucked it up. My point stands. Also please don’t censor yourself.

Don't get sassy with me boi

[Toffee]

I have no shame I do what I want.

[Theodin]

Oo, while we’re on the topic of Latin phrases done wrong in English, Descartes didn’t start with “cogito ergo sum”, he started with merely “cogito sum”, “I think, I am” because at that point he’d not been able to remove logic from skeptical doubt. It was only after getting logic back did he say “I think therefore I am”

Haha! Continue as before

[Duuring]

Duuring calling out someone for making inaccurate predictions?

Oh boy, you'd be in trouble had you not deleted the 2016 politics thread.

Stalinist photoshop has nothing on me.

[McPero]

Okay, I understand you probably think you weren't succesfully targeted by a political organisation, because people tend to think those effects only work on other people, but I can assure you, you were.

Oh yeah you know better than me of course. I was only influenced by a few teachers who were not part of any political organisations.

Unless you live in a shed with no internet (apart from FSE of course) and have succesfully avoided all human interaction (except those teachers I guess?) since the day of your birth, you have been the target of a political campaign at some point in your life. If you open a newspaper with political news, you already are.

I don't really much news and if I do I usually look up different newspapers, so I can see 2 different fake news. So you are saying every thing on internet and every human interaction is product of some political organisation/campaign nice one.

[McPero]

Okay, I understand you probably think you weren't succesfully targeted by a political organisation, because people tend to think those effects only work on other people, but I can assure you, you were.

Oh yeah you know better than me of course. I was only influenced by a few teachers who were not part of any political organisations.

Teachers are often extremely politically active. I wish I could be in this mystical realm of non-partisan teachers.

Yeah I had only like 2 partisan teachers.

Upsy I double posted but I no longer have mod to remove it. So sad, what a shame.

[DaMonkey]

cheeky

[Duuring]

Hey Steven, could you give me an example of someone using 'Fall of Saigon' as a idiom for the end of a regime? Cos I have never seen anyone do that and google search doesn't present me with anything but various links to the actual Fall of Saigon.

Changed my search-item and found a few. Still, they commonly link to end-scenario's (Because the Fall of Saigon was not a deciding moment, but merely the concluding chapter after the final Vietnamese offensive). How is overworked employees an end-scenario for the EU?

[StevenChilton]

I was referring to the fact that they're scrambling to get everything done before an expected Eurosceptic surge in the 2019 elections, rather than employees being tired which is merely a symptom. As Saigon was falling the Americans were rushing to destroy documents, pull out employees and South Vietnamese officials etc. They were in such a rush they resorted to incinerating cash reserves held in the US Embassy amounting to several million dollars.

It's a symbolic end of what you could call the EU's internal 'liberal order' (essentially the Franco-German consensus). It's going to be a very different EU; not only will the EU Parliament have an even bigger eurosceptic bloc but Tusk, Juncker et al probably aren't going to be replaced by like-minded people and the Spitzenkandidat process is kinda dead anyway.

[Duuring]

not only will the EU Parliament have an even bigger eurosceptic bloc

Are you kidding? The ECR loses nearly half its membership because the Conservatives are out, and they're soft Eurosceptic anyway; the EFDD is going to lose its 19 UKIP members and will lose faction status if their single Polish, Czech or Lithuanian MEP's lose their re-election (and that's when we pretend that their French MEPS will somehow manage their re-election even though they are split-offs). That leaves the ENF, which, after Brexit, will have members from only seven nations, meaning they also can't afford a single party losing its representation. Their German member is a AfD-split-off and their Polish members' party gained 0.05% in the 2015 national elections, so yeaaah, good luck with that.

Sure, the 5-star Movement will grow (The same 5-star movement that tried to join ALDE a few months ago in the biggest meme of European party politics of the century), and so will the AfD, but that's not going to create some sort of revolution as the EPP is going to remain the biggest faction anyway and ALDE is going to be sky-rocketed by En Marche. And that's when we assume En Marche is not going to form its new (Let's just say it) Federalist Political Group. It's incredibly ironic, but Brexit might just signal the worst European Election for the Eurosceptics since the creation of the European parliament. Now, it's of course possible EFDD and ENF manage to get all their current members elected (Just incredibly unlikely), and EFDD will probably be saved by a new Dutch party entering the European Parliament. Yes, there is going to be a shift of power in the European Parliament, but nothing is going to change about the current division. EPP will be first, S&D second, ALDE third and ECR fourth (Although the left factions are kinda breathing down its neck). Maaaaybe ALDE will overtake S&D, but that's about it.

Also, let's make a prediction: Next president of the European Council will be Mark Rutte.

[StevenChilton]

There will be big gains in Eastern Europe, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Germany for eurosceptics. That will more than balance out the loss of the UK contingent. Looking at groupings is misleading imo since a lot tag along with EPP/PES anyway.

Mark Rutte? Maybe. I'd have thought they'd want a women though (it's a ceremonial job anyway). Real fight will be over who succeeds Juncker. Visegrad+ potentially have the numbers to block an appointment but not enough to impose their own candidate. Both sides will have to compromise somewhere in the middle though that'd be more toxic for Berlin/Paris than Warsaw/Rome/etc.

[Duuring]

There will be big gains in Eastern Europe, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Germany for eurosceptics.

So what are we talking? 20 seats? 30? 40? 50? They need at least 30 to just keep up their current share of the seats.

Now, if we base our assumption on national polls (which we shouldn't, but whatever)

Germany: +8
Italy: +13 (a bit more if two eurosceptic parties manage to get over the threshold)
Austria: +2 (Probably only +1 but let's give them the benefit of the doubt)
Sweden: +2
Poland: +5 (Probably only +4 but again I gave them the benefit of the doubt) and if you count Kukiz 15 as eurosceptics, +2

So that's actually exactly 30. Now, I'm gonna say FvD gains four seats, and various other eurosceptic parties somehow manage to gain another 10, so that's a seat gain of 44. I've been fairly gracious, so I think that's a pretty accurate number. At the same time, they lose 19 UKIP, 18 Conservatives and one bloke from DUP, so that's a loss of 38. Net gain...six. Revolution.

Looking at groupings is misleading imo since a lot tag along with EPP/PES anyway.

Yet for finances, support, committee assignments and some other stuff it's vital. Political Groups are not bound of faction discipline (especially eurosceptic ones who are pretty inactive in the European Parliament anyway), but they're still fairly important.

[StevenChilton]

Hang on, I'm not saying groups aren't important. I was simply saying you can't just look at ECR or EFDD numbers to tally eurosceptics. Plenty of eurosceptic parties send their MEPs to sit within the EPP or PES. Orban is public enemy no.1 in Brussels yet still sends his MEPs to sit within the EPP (same with Kurz, hell even the British Conservatives used to sit with them).

[Duuring]

Okay, so which parties did I miss that will create a grand rise of Eurosceptics?

If you include Kurz (and I guess Orban too), we're already watering down the definition of a 'Eurosceptic' to include even parties that strongly support membership of the EU and even the euro.

[StevenChilton]

I thought we were including soft euroscepticism? You can believe in a community of European countries whilst still being anti-EU. Orban's vision of such a community is just radically different from that of Merkel's.