Can see the fun in performing a Kaepernick move in the European parliament... Not that this one really matters though, just some extra publicity, we already know where they stand..

/heh imagine them kneeling though

100% agree. Thoroughly disappointed in the Brexit party.

They should have turned up in t-shirts with bollocks to the eu on.

The only thing they are able to do after 3 years, lets wait and see their fall.

Greek elections this weekend. Looks like centre-right Nea Dimokratia will take over the government, after losing it during the Greek economic disaster.

President Tsipras' popularity has steadily decreased as he has failed to deliver many of his promises and pretty much implemented the economic policies he had campaigned against. The economy has improved, and that's what he hopes can earn him a reelection, but judging by what we see in the polls, the Greeks seem like they'd rather have ND in charge if ND-esque policies are going to be implemented anyway.

The parliament will likely be very fragmented, with centre-left KINAL (new party) taking over much of the voter base of the traditional PaSok party (which is now extinct), the new orthodox nationalist-conservative pro-russian right-wing EL (Greek Solution) taking over the political spectrum of the defunct ANEL, the communist KKE likely repeating their results, and the metaxist XA (Golden Dawn) likely losing a significant amount of seats. All of these parties will likely earn 4-9% of the seats.

The Union of Centrists and the MeRA25 party led by Varoufakis could also enter the parliament, with some polls putting them past the 3% cut-off, while others have them beneath them.

Over all, we should expect polarized results, contested between ND and SYRIZA, and then a bunch of parties in the 3-9% range.

Note that the winner of the election gets and extra 50 seats in order to ease its control over parliament, and that might allow ND to earn an absolute majority if they get the results their most favourable polls award them. However, if MeRA25 and/or the centrists make it into the parliament, the broader share of seats won't allow that, and they'll have to rely on some other party (probably EL or the centrists, or maybe even KINAL... which seems unlikely, as they don't want to follow the path that led to the downfall of PaSok).

Did you see Widdecombe's speech?



How to absolutely miss the mark 101.

ffs, straight out of Farage's Clown College

Krusty would be proud

This post was edited by zarkadon on Jul 5 2019 05:57am

Results:



Nea Dimokratia gets an absolute majority (by a 7 seat margin) thanks to the 50 seat bonus the election winner is awarded by the weird Greek electoral law. KINAL's underwhelming results (under 8%, when they were aiming for 10-ish percent) as well as the Union of Centrists' failure to make it nto the parliament, show that ND successfully captured the utility vote against Tsipras. Meanwhile, the president has failed to do the same, as Varoufakis' MeRA25 has managed to enter parliament, Course of Freedom earned an unexpected 7th place, and the KKE voters remained loyal to their traditional marxist anti-revisionist ideals (it really amazes me how such an orthodox communist party has such a stable voter base in the 21st century).

I think we can all agree it's nice to see that the metaxist party XA (Golden Dawn) has failed to make it into parliament. A party openly advocating for a dictatorship and the invasion of other countries has no place in the EU. They were pretty unlucky though, as they only missed the threshold by 0.04%. There's in fact the chance that they after the expat votes are counted they'll make it, but this is highly unlikely and the current "provisional" results are pretty much considered definitive with no seat change of any kind expected.

wasn't really that exciting tbh. in many southern european countries, parties promising to do away with austerity and opposing the eu get majorities, and eventually their leaders realise that it's not as easy as promised, and that the alternatives are significantly worse - so they'll have to find a way to keep pretending while actually changing their course. italy is currently between step one and two, but politically this routine just promotes instability and a whole lot of turnover - not that the latter is necessarily a bad thing...

The big difference is that Italy has infinitely more leverage than Greece. A 'Grexit' would have been a heavily blow to the Euro, the Eurozone and the EU in general. But it was fairly clear that it would not have been the end of the Euro or the EU.

An 'Italexit', on the other hand, would be the guaranteed death sentence for the Euro, and a gigantic blow to the EU. And keep in mind that Italy, despite all the talk about their never-ending crisis, is still one of the largest countries in Europe. They have 60m people, one of the largest economies, are a founding member of the EU and a superpower when it comes to culture and history. They have a ton more MPs in the European Parliament than Greece, they have a much higher economic weight, they have a much higher symbolic weight. Even if we put threats of leaving the Euro aside, Italy still has a ton more options to obstruct the EU than Greece had.

Tldr: the other European leaders were able to whip Tsipras into playing by their rules and abandoning the leftist, revolutionary agenda which brought him into office in the first place. Doing the same with Italy will be much more difficult.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 7 2019 07:23pm