What would you vote if you lived in ...?

I would light the first torch and be the first in line to storm the gate.

Those islands have suffered long enough.

Ah - there we have a list! Knew we could rely on you, Thomas.

Quite an eclectic mix too, if I may say. For Britain, Holland and Austria you've chosen parties that are firmly in the centre, even (traditionally) slightly left-of-centre, with socially liberal, economically moderate parties, and for France, a mainstream rightwing party thats still kindof in the same bracket.

All in all a lot more moderate than I'd given an admirer of Ronald Reagan ;-).

For the Czech Republic though, you did pick a man who preached and brought Thatcherism to the Czechs, and combines it with Thatcher's fierce aversion to the EU and occasional slip into xenophobia. (His party is called the Civic Democratic Party, or ODS).

May I suggest considering the alternative of the Freedom Union/Democratic Union? Pretty good (and surprisingly honest) English-language profile of history and electorate on their own site.

Basically, the Freedom Union united a large part of the ODS back when, in the late nineties, the party split apart over Klaus's personality and, if memory serves me, corruption scandals that erupted by the end of his rule. It united those who thought Klaus was too authoritarian, and had drifted off into too populist, national-conservative a tone. They remained wedded to the free-market, socially liberal course of classical liberalism, absorbed many of the voters of the Civic Democratic Alliance (or ODA, which in the 90s had served as the younger, intellectual, principled liberal/libertarian alternative to the ODS), and united with pro-European DEU.

What may put you off though is that in 2002 they joined a coalition government with the Socialdemocrats and Christian-Democrats, with the Socialdemocrats providing the Prime Minister (or rather, subsequent Prime Ministers).

I agree, it's an outrage!!

But aren't you worried by the reports that the Islander guerrillas are secretly armed by China?

That is exactly why I have Bolivia in my corner.

If I were British, there would be only one choice:

Its the role of the King that has me baffled.

What's your take on the mass prosecution of native Islanders in the government's anti-bestiality campaign?

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BBB


I'm with Dys, I'd vote Green just as I did in the U.S. elections for several years. I did vote Democrat in 2000 and 2004 because George W. Bush scared the bejeebers out of me. Turned out I was correct in my worry.

BBB

US: Democrats, most of the time (would have voted for Anderson in 1980).

Spain: PSOE, for sure.

Germany: SPD

Italy: PDS (Party of the Democratic Left) in the Olive coalition.

France: probably Socialist. And against Le Pen and his party in the eventual second round.

UK: NOT Tory. It would depend on my district. Either Labour or (preferably) Liberal Democrats.

Other European countries: somewhere between Socialist and socialdemocrat.

Australia: Not Conservative. Perhaps not Green either. Perhaps Labour, then.

Canada: Probably New Democrats. A slight chance for the Liberal Party.

I only wish I knew who will I vote for in Mexico!
Canada:

Totally agree with fbaezer, besides ... USA: there, I really wouldn't know whom to vote for.

I'd remain a moderate no matter which country I lived in. Liberalism must be balanced against conservatism in order to control the growth and spending of government. Most governments do not seem to have enough fiscal management skills.

Interesting picks, Fbaezer. You're generally more consistently in my corner than I would have thought. Why the SPD and not, say, the Greens in Germany? And why not Green in Australia? (I know nothing about the Australian Greens).

In Belgium I'd go for our sister party in Flanders, which has just renamed itself from Agalev (literally "Start Living Differently") to, simply, "Green!", or its Walloon counterpart Ecolo. Very reasonable, well-meaning parties.

The hyperbolic backlash against North-Africans in our respective countries would almost have tempted me to vote for Abou Jahjah's protest party Resist, but I'm not really that crazy: dont trust him for a second, either in motives or ideology. Jahjah claims Malcolm X as inspiration, but that doesnt count as a negative to me; its his purported ties to Islamists that would deter me. Plus, the trendy banner of Resist cloaked the unreformed communists of the PvdA as well as his Arab-European League; some sort of unholy alliance, in the end.

But my hands would have itched for a bit, there.

Otherwise,

- in Spain, the PSOE. I think Zapatero has shown strength. Got to admire his government for using its first-months-in-office honeymoon to make bold moves on domestic violence and gay rights, hardly the kind of issues Mediterranean politicians are normally eager to make front page splashes with. Open horizon on immigrants combined with an efficient clampdown after 3/11.

Plus, no alternative. The United Left to its left is still dominated by communists. No independently standing Greens in sight, and with the PSOE's current course on war & peace and social values, no need.

- in Greece, Synaspismos. The Socialists have over two decades shifted from a leftist course marred by clientilistic populism to a bland, technocratic reform course, and still seem able to oscillate to and fro between the two. The Communists are, I understand, wholly unreformed and orthodox. Synaspismos, way I read it, has always been there for the free-thinking leftists caught in between. Kind of like what the Pacifist Socialists used to be in Holland, before they merged into the Green Left.

- in Italy, I dunno. Counting from the left, the Refounded Communists obviously are out of the question. The ex-communist, now moderate social-democratic PDS seems to have been unable to rise above factionalism in shaping the Olive into more than a haphazard coalition. Prodi might make the Olive into more than that, but a technocratic Eurobureaucrat doesnt necessarily appeal to me either. Di Pietro, Bonino? Too dilettantistic, individualistic?

The Greens then, after all? Rutelli seems to have done a good job as mayor of Rome.

- France, another case to crunch your head. I dont know. If the Parti Socialiste would get Lionel Jospin back in charge, I'd vote for it without hesitation. Scrupulous to an un-French degree, modest and common-sensical, and took France on a reform course that was at once pragmatic, and yet true to the party's leftist identity; inventive without drifting off in Blairite territory.

Without Jospin, the PS seems impotent, rudderless. Dont trust Laurent Fabius. Perhaps if Delanoe eventually takes over, the mayor of Paris ...

If not the PS, what then? No Communist for me, no Trotskyites either, even if they come in the guise of a charming 27-year old mailman (Olivier Besancenot got 4% of the vote in the Presidential elections, and yes, another Trotskyite got a further 6%). The Greens sometimes appear dogmatically environmentalist, rather than a broader coalition of free-thinkers.

Socialist it would be, then ...

sheesh, how do you decide all of that so fast

I'm still mulling over my Australian choices.

Had twenty years to think about it... ;-)

If I lived in Botswana, I would be torn between the Botswana National Front and the Botswana People's Party.

....but I don't

Whaddaya think of self-government on the Glorioso Islands, Steve?

Answering nimh.

You think I'm a moderate because I support free trade, distrust labor unions and don't swallow all the populist-antimperalist "left wing" agenda.
You should remember that I'm a reformed Marxist, who understood early enough that most of old Karl's ideas were untrue.
But this also means that the way my social thought was built is quite on the left side of the spectrum. I may have dumped my Lenin (and along with Walter, my Little Red Book), but do know that societies in the modern world move, basicall along class interests.

In Germany, I would really like a red-yellow-green coalition. Enough balances and counterbalances and the CDU/CSU out.

Why not Green? Too many anti-growth regulations, on one side; too funky an "ideology" on the other. I'm no post-modernist.

I may have a biased view of Australian Greens because my sister-in-law and her husband lived in Perth for 20 years, and they have this thing about excesive environmental regulations there. They speak of absurdities (IMHO) like no suntan allowed on Western Australia's beaches. Too much for my taste. May be an urban legend, may be not.

You actually looked that one up, didnt you?

(Yes, I now did too ;-))