Subterms
Italy’s controversial new deputy prime minister has wasted no time in causing trouble since taking office. Matteo Salvini, leader of the extreme right Lega party, is anti-immigration, anti-EU and pro-Russia. But who is he and how did he enter the mainstream? In its previous incarnation as the Lega Nord, Salvini’s party experienced uneven electoral fortunes. […] More
The conflict in Ukraine effectively began between 6.30pm and 8.30pm on November 28 2013. This is when Ukraine’s then president, Viktor Yanukovych, confirmed that he was not going to sign an association agreement with the EU – a deal that the Russian government held in contempt. The result is well-known: mass pro-European protests in Ukraine, […] More
Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, has been forced to resign by his national parliament, which voted by 180 seats to 169 in favour of a motion of no-confidence in his leadership. The vote indicates that the Spanish electorate’s patience with corruption is at an end – and puts the country on an uncertain path […] More
Around the world, populism is on the march. The election of Donald Trump and the UK’s vote for Brexit triggered a crisis of faith in democratic institutions. And populists have been victorious in other countries including Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic, and Recep Tayyib Erdoğan in Turkey. Italy has […] More
Young women across Western Europe and Canada are more left wing than their male counterparts, according to new research I carried out that also shows among older voters women more likely to be right wing than men. We already know that younger people are often more likely to vote for left-wing parties than their older […] More
With more than 278,000 followers on Facebook, Hungary’s Two-Tailed Dog Party was the the most popular party on social media to stand in the country’s 2018 election. However, its online popularity did not help win seats in the vote which delivered Viktor Orbán a third term as prime minister by a landslide. In an anti-establishment […] More
Slovakia has become the latest country in Eastern Europe to face a major political crisis. But while regional neighbours such as Poland and Hungary have been clashing with the EU over their perceived illiberalism, for Slovakia, the pressure on the government has come from the country’s own citizens. The tension has been such that the […] More
The long process of the UK withdrawing from the EU has been marked by a number of key moments. One of those, halfway through the two-year period of the Article 50 process, is a draft Withdrawal Agreement for Brexit, including jointly-agreed language on transition. Transition is important, but poorly-understood: if you’d like a Lego-based explanation, […] More
