Colin A · @ColinOnTweets
24th Feb 2015 from TwitLonger
The Deep Splits evolving in the EU this year and the next
#EU #Europe Sinn Fein in Ireland looks set to win the election in 2016 in Ireland. Both Fine Gael and the Labour Party vote appears to be collapsing, with Gerry Adam's party as the beneficiaries. The Irish are tired of austerity, and are prepared to vote in the political arm of IRA to power.
Syriza has already taken power in Greece, as we have seen of late when the Eurozone has tottered from crisis to crisis. Support for the party seems to be holding off. Syriza won power based on an explicit anti-austerity wave.
Later this year, in Spain, Podemos looks set to achieve the impossible: growing a governing party in a few months time. Already the party is polling even with the other parties, the labour party and the conservative party.
Here in the UK Scotland appears to be kicking out the Labour party in a process that people call Pasokification, after what happened to Pasok, the Greek Labour party. Some polls have the SNP at such a high level that they would practically annihilate the Labour party from Scotland. The SNP is explicitly anti-austerity, and belong to a loose block of other parties like the Greens and Plaid Cumry – who are also very anti-austerity.
In England and Wales, neither of the main parties are benefiting. The sitting coalition's two parties is either standing still in the polls, or collapsing. In fact, the Liberal Democrats appear to be fated to share Scottish Labour's destiny – a wipeout in that country. The English and Welsh Green party have grown from achieving 1 per cent of the vote in 2010 to polling at 7-8 per cent this time around.
In 2016 then, the EU is set to have a multi-front chasm open inside of it. It is a deep split driven by austerity resentment that stretch from Dublin to Athens. The UK vote is a little bit dependent on the final tally in the election, but if Labour is returned as the largest party, they will not be able to govern without the support of the SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru. And both PC and SNP have set anti-austerity policies as red lines in any cooperation with Labour.