Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party won a clear victory in Britain's May 7 general elections. In Scotland, however, the Scottish National Party dramatically rose from six seats to 56 out of 59, in a clear sign of opposition to the brutal austerity backed by the major parties in Westminster.
Elections
Speaking to party activists after the left-wing Socialist Party (SP) once again recorded a positive result in the March 18 provincial elections, party leader Emile Roemer said: “This is an historic evening. We have become the biggest left party in the Netherlands.
“The SP is a powerful factor in the Senate. An ideal starting point for the SP to be elected to government at the next general election.”
Democrat Hillary Clinton has finally announced she is running for United States president in next year's elections.
In the goof-ball electoral farce that US elections have evolved into, the electoral campaign actually began shortly after the 2012 election.
So it is not odd that the campaigns of both the Republicans and Democrats are now in earnest, nineteen months before the actual election — something not seen in any other “advanced” country.
Britain's May 7 general election is set to be the closest in living memory.
In the polls, the two leading parties, Labour and the Conservatives (Tories), are within points of each other. The polls have not shifted despite the best efforts of Tory Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband to secure a breakthrough.
Why are the polls so close?
In a three-hour appearance on private TV channel Star TV on April 27, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke extensively about the challenges confronting the anti-austerity government led by the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA).
The program began with a grilling of Tsipras by interviewer Niko Katsinikolao and ended with questions from a 50-strong audience.
A lot of questions reflected growing concern that talks with the country’s creditors — mainly the “Troika” of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) — were stalled.
New at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal: 'People are capable of governing themselves', Marta Harnecker: From Allende to Chavez,
A Short History Of Social Democracy: From Socialist Origins To Neoliberal Theocracy By John Rainford Resistance Books $20, 184pp. The rise and then fall of social democracy as a movement for fundamental social change is a modern tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. It is one of the epic stories of the 19th and 20th centuries.
More than 7.7 million Cubans out of 8 million registered voters cast their ballots on April 19 to elect nearly 12,600 delegates out of about 27,000 candidates to the country’s Municipal Assemblies, TeleSUR English said the next day.
Results for Sudan’s parliamentary and presidential elections, held between April 13 and 15 and extended for a further day after low voter turnout, will be announced on April 27. Yet no one doubts the return to government of President Omer al-Bashir and his National Congress Party.
A central pillar of the Spanish economic and political establishment came crashing down on Paril 16.
Rodrigo Rato, former deputy prime minister in the 1996-2004 People’s Party (PP) government of Jose Maria Aznar and head of the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007, was detained on suspicion of tax evasion, concealment of assets and fraud.
Up to 90% of the electorate voted in Bolivia’s “local” elections on March 29 for governors, mayors and departmental assembly and municipal council members throughout the country.
The governing Movement for Socialism (MAS) of left-wing President Evo Morales once again emerged as the only party with national representation. It is by far the major political force in Bolivia, and far ahead of the opposition parties, none of which has a significant presence in all nine departments.
The People’s Referendum: Why Scotland Will Never Be the Same Again
by Paul Geoghegan
Luath Press 2015
177 pages
The British-wide general election for the Westminster parliament scheduled for May 7 looks set to be very close, perhaps even closer than the 2010 election that resulted in the Labour Party being replaced by a Conservative Party-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
Opinion polls suggest that neither of the two main British parties, Conservative or Labour, will win enough seats for a majority of their own in the House of Commons.
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