In the 2016 referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, a stark division emerged: those with university degrees were far more likely to vote remain than those with few educational qualifications. And Britain is not the only country where such a gap exists - in the recent American presidential election, far more graduates voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. Edward Stourton investigates the impact of this faultline on voting and politics, and asks how policy makers and wider society should respond.
9 March 2018
Bloomberg: Europe’s Bad Boy Has a Fight on His Hands
So when voters in a small agricultural city overwhelmingly voted for an opponent for mayor for the first time in 20 years on Feb. 25, it sent shockwaves through the political establishment. No poll had predicted such a rebellion by voters complaining of rampant cronyism, much less in a stronghold of Orban’s party. [...]
The opposition parties smell an upset if they can manage to work together, and politicians who have formerly ruled out cooperation are now huddling to bridge their differences. They held a meeting in parliament to discuss alleged government corruption on Wednesday. Orban is on the offensive, with his Fidesz party doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric that's previously given it a lift in polls. [...]
Orban knows better than anyone that polls showing his party with a hefty lead -- some put Fidesz’s support equal to the six biggest opposition parties combined -- may mean little if those opposed to him back a single candidate in the country’s 106 electoral districts.
That’s where the majority of seats in the 199-seat parliament will be decided, with the rest based on national party lists. Orban, a former student activist taking on the communist regime, became premier for the first time in 1998 after he convinced parties opposed to the former communists to withdraw their candidates, most of them in his favor.
Business Insider: This leading EU politician explains why Britain will 'logically' rejoin after Brexit
His argument is based on the premise that the EU will "force" the UK to recognise the commitments it made in December and honour the terms of the Good Friday Agreement by avoiding a hard border in Ireland.
The UK for its part insists it will find a solution which avoids a hard border in Ireland and takes the UK out of the single market, which Lamberts described as a "contradiction" which was "not based on reality." [...]
He said the argument was a "contradiction" and a case of Britain "denying reality, as they denied in the past that they had any financial obligations to the European Union" before agreeing to pay a £39 billion divorce bill. The EU itself says it is open to a "better idea" from the UK than the fall-back option, but none has been forthcoming so far. [...]
"But when you also look at the interests of the UK which are mostly in the services sector, that would be shooting themselves in the foot, because it plays to the advantage of the EU27 who have a net positive balance towards the UK in goods. [...]
Norway is signed up to single market rules but has no veto over the rules the EU sets. While this option would potentially be on the table for Britain, Lamberts said that arrangement would represent a "loss of sovereignty" and prompt the question: "What is the point of Brexit?"
Bloomberg: Italy's Five Star Movement Should Think Long Term
After decades of economic stagnation, growing inequality and concerns about immigration (the latter grossly amplified by social media) Italians turned their back on mainstream political forces. The Five-Star Movement, the largest vote-winner, appeals mainly to the disaffected middle-class while the League, the other populist winner, draws support from the working class and small business community. While the League is by far the most influential political force in the north, Five Star won virtually every constituency in the south. Together they have more than 50 percent of the proportional vote. [...]
Five Star has had its share of scandals, but in its major battles, Five Star has been on the right side of history. It fights corruption, advocates for more transparency in government and typically communicates in plain language through its website. In other words, Five Star has shown its readiness to address the concerns that any progressive political force should tackle, but that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD), the leading Italian progressive party, failed to do. As such, Five Star must coalesce with other political forces, including possibly PD itself now that Renzi has conceded defeat and stepped down. [...]
Five Star's normalization would require it to change: It would have to leave aside the bigotry and bizarre anti-science agenda that has dogged some of its candidates and platform, and render its governance structure more transparent and accountable. That won't be easy: The experience of the past few years has shown Five Star to be opaque, top-down and authoritarian in the way it is run; a reality its supporters either ignore or excuse. That would have to change and it's not clear Five Star has the will or ability to make this happen. [...]
It would also need to clarify its ambiguous position on Europe. Over the last 20 years, Italian politicians – both from the right and the left– have used Europe as a scapegoat for Italy's home-grown problems. Much of this EU-bashing fueled the rise of an anti-EU sentiment in the country, giving Five Star the momentum that propelled it onto the national and European stage; the party's deputies currently sit in the European Parliament in a group with the British anti-Europe UKIP party that campaigned for Brexit.
Bloomberg: Why Germany Won't Have a Gender-Neutral Anthem
National anthems are meant to make everyone feel included, which is why Austria and Canada tweaked parts excluding women. But some lines between tradition and modern society are harder to cross than others. Not all countries are ready to take the gender-neutral plunge, fearing the political risks too great in an era of bitterly divided politics. [...]
Germans have used the combination of lyrics and music since 1922, and they've had to change the words more than once as they made history and then tried to come to terms with it. The first verse, which put "Germany, Germany above all," was the only one used by the Nazis. It fell away because of its specific, outdated territorial claims. The second verse, glorifying "German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song," seemed like a bad place to start the anthem. So, since 1991, only the third verse, focusing on "unity, right and freedom," has been sung and protected by law. In those 10 lines, Rose-Moehring suggested replacing "Vaterland" ("Fatherland") with "Heimatland" ("homeland") and "bruederlich" (brotherly) with "couragiert" (mettlesome), which would obviously changes the meaning while maintaining the meter. It's as easy to sing as the current version, and in any case, it's Haydn's music that's the masterpiece, not Hoffman's somewhat naive text that has already been mostly discarded. [...]
The conservative German leaders' desire to put a stop to changes to the anthem lyrics is understandable. Germans have only recently regained their national pride, and they like singing the anthem. Why mess with that just to keep up with the times? And why hand over a rhetorical trump card to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which strongly condemned Rose-Moehring's proposal? A parody version of a "multicolored, queer, open-minded national anthem" even circulated on Twitter -- not a good thing under any circumstances, but especially not when society is as divided as it is today.
Quartzy: What happens when a hotel is de-Trumped?
The Panama tower was one of 12 properties remaining in Trump portfolio of hotels—properties which his firm mostly manages rather than owning the actual real estate involved. Since taking office, the Trump moniker has also been erased from hotels in Toronto and Manhattan, though the Panama “de-flagging” was the most dramatic—with some Trump Organization staff forced to leave the property in handcuffs (paywall). [...]
Following a series of anti-Trump protests around the hotel, management reached an agreement to remove the Trump name from the building (paywall). The hotel’s new owners said the break was amicable, and had more to do with the city’s struggling luxury hotel sector than Donald Trump’s political reputation. Today, the building is getting a face lift: New interior design will scrap the Trump-style “champagne-and-caviar” lobby of black marble. And the hotel will soon become part of the St. Regis portfolio of properties—which means little change to its luxury pampering and service as far as guests are concerned. [...]
Trump’s rapidly thinning hotel portfolio is beginning to resemble an episode of The Apprentice, but watchdog groups have warned the president that his refusal to divest from his company could lead to such predicaments. Since inauguration, for instance, his Washington hotel has come under repeated criticism for failing to disclose the flow of money from foreign governments into the property.
Kyiv Post: Low wages and unpredictability driving Ukraine’s brain drain
Ukraine’s official minimum wage is only Hr 3,720, or $139. This makes neighboring countries as Poland a more attractive option for employment for Ukrainians.
“A person living in Lviv pays 10 euros to go through the (Poland-Ukraine) border, and now they have access to 800-1,000 euros,” Mykhaylov said. [...]
Although Ukrainians cannot officially work in the EU, they can find jobs in the shadow economy. A Ukrainian can work for up to three months in the EU and then “live off of this money in Ukraine,” said Tetyana Korol, director of the Financial-Economic Department of Ukraine’s Pension Fund. [...]
As of January, Ukraine’s population was 42.3 million people according to the State Statistics Service. In 2017 alone, the country’s population decreased by 198,000.
The Guardian: Catholic hierarchy to be confronted over gender inequality
Meanwhile a manifesto of women for the church, which calls for women’s roles that “are coherent with our competences and capacities”, is circulating on social media. It says: “As adult women we experience daily the subordinate role of women in the church.”
The rallying cry comes days after a magazine article exposed the exploitation of nuns at the Vatican. Headlined “the (nearly) free work of nuns, the article revealed dire economic conditions experienced by many nuns, alongside resentment about the low value placed on their vocations compared with men’s.
Women in religious orders work long hours cooking, cleaning and serving the cardinals, bishops and officials who run the church, it claimed. With nominal or no pay, and no contracts of employment, the nuns are barely acknowledged by the men whose needs they provide for. [...]
In previous years, the annual conference has been held at the Vatican, but the organisers switched venues last month after the Holy See refused to give approval to Mary McAleese, a former president of Ireland, and two other speakers.
No reasons were given, but McAleese has spoken in favour of women’s ordination, which has been ruled out by the pope, and LGBT rights. McAleese has declined to comment other than disclosing she had written to him about the refusal.
The Huffington Post: Do Not Misunderstand The Significance Of The Five Star Movement's Electoral Victory
Although the success of Di Maio’s formation had been largely predicted, the real shift in these elections came from the rise of the right-wing and Eurosceptic party ‘Lega Nord’. If the latest numbers are confirmed, its leader Matteo Salvini will have taken the party from a meagre 4% in the 2013 elections to an astonishing 17.4%. There can hardly be any misunderstanding regarding the significance of this outcome – a sizeable percentage of Italians have put their weight behind the ferociously divisive and openly racist rhetoric of a leader who, over the years, capitalised on popular discontent and perfected the art of appealing to the voters’ resentments while stoking their fears about migration, terrorism and the economy.
Having presumably captured (some of) the vote which was expected to otherwise go to political formations further to the right, such as Forza Nuova or Casa Pound, the Lega Nord is now strong enough to significantly alter the political calculations regarding what the next government will be. They have become the first party of the centre-right coalition, to which they ostensibly belong. However, should they decide to form a coalition with the Five Star Movement, that would mean access to an absolute majority in Parliament – a rather unsettling scenario in many ways. [...]
It is hard to say what will happen next. Given the uncertainty and ideological flexibility of some of the winning parties, all options are on the table – including a centre-right government, a coalition government by the Five Star Movement and Lega Nord, and a coalition government by the Five Star Movement and the centre-left (probably the least likely scenario). That is, unless Brussels decides to respond in its own way to Emma Bonino’s unlucky electoral slogan, and steps in once again to bring ‘stability’ and a bit ‘more Europe’ to bear on Italian politics; or, as others would say, to save Italy from itself.
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