The politics in various Western nations are undergoing some interesting upheavals right now, some of which are getting press, some of which aren't. Here's a bit of a round-up (with my own opinions, of course :-) ).

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

On the surface, there's not much new going on here -- Tony Blair is still Her Majesty's Prime Minister, and is slated to be for a little over four more years¹. His Labour Party still commands a majority in Parliament. For the most part, he's able to get stuff done.

For the most part. That's where things get interesting.

You see, Tony Blair made two interesting decisions—one recent, one a bit longer ago—that are making his life a bit festive. The more recent decision was to announce ahead of time that this would be his last term in office. This essentially makes him a five-year-long lame-duck.

This shouldn't be problem. Five years is more than enough time to develop and implement meaningful policies that will improve the lives of Her Majesty's subjects and, more to the point, keep Labour in power for a while. If Blair were in firm control of a united party, there's probably be no issue at all.

But Mr Blair is not in firm control of a united party, because of that other decision he made a few years ago.

That decision being to support Mr Bush's War.

Much of Labour have never forgiven Blair for that. They support him because they have to, because they want to remain the party in power, and Blair has that Clintonian charisma that keeps him popular even when some of his policies are dodgy. The war doesn't really have much support in the UK, but neither do the Tories, yet, which also helps Labour cling to their majority.

But it may not help Blair cling to the PM's seat for his full term. His Government was recently (well, a couple months ago, now) handed a defeat on a bill that was very important to Blair—a bill reforming the National Health System. It faces an uphill battle on an education reform package coming up, and on its budget proposals. And just recently, a new firestorm broke out when Mr Blair announced that he would consider giving up a portion of the 'rebate' the UK currently receives from the European Union as part of the Byzantine financial arrangements of the EU (see sidebar).

The upshot is that Mr Blair is in trouble inside his own party. His announcement that this is his last term already had many in the party clamouring that he should at least start indicating whom he would like to succeed him. Many think that he should step aside significantly before the next set of elections, so that a new PM has a chance to establish himself and his programme ahead of those elections, and pick up that glow of incumbency. And now, it's increasingly clear that for many in his party, 'significantly before' means, 'today would be nice'.

Federal Republic of Germany

Germany has just finished an extraordinarily bruising political season, one that ultimately resulted in a significant change in its leadership. Parliamentary elections held back in September resulted in a photo-finish, with the vaguely conservative Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union², headed up by Angela Merkel, barely edging out the vaguely liberal Social Democrats, led by then-current Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

The result bore some striking similarities to our own electoral crisis in 2000, when the election between Messers Gore and Bush was neck-and-neck, although the machinery behind the mess was very different, because of the fundamental differences in the electoral processes.

The problem here was not only that both the ruling SDP and the opposition CDU/CSU polled almost equally, but that the CDU/CSU's narrow combined victory was not enough to establish a majority in the Bundestag. This left both the incumbent party and the party with a narrow plurality scrambling to find coalition partners that would put them over the top.

The problem is, that wouldn't work, either. If the CDU/CSU had maintained their early lead, they would have wound up either with a clear majority on their own, or a majority in combination with their closest natural ally, the Free Democrat Party. As things actually fell out, however, this combination was left just shy of a majority—36.9% for the CDU/CSU and 9.9% for the FDP, for a combined 46.8%.

Similarly, the SDP had manged to stay in power in recent years by bonding with its closest natural ally, the Greens—not actually all that good a fit given the SDP's more centrist view these days, but as close as they could get. In final polling, SDP wound up with 36.2% and the Greens with 8.3%, for a combined 44.5%.

Oddly enough, nobody wanted to caucus with the so-called Left Party, whose leader, Oskar Lafontaine, is highly controversial, and whose antecedants include the East German Communist Party. The Left Party, in turn, didn't really want to caucus with any of the others, either, proclaiming they preferred opposition to alliance with either currently-major party.

Througout the early stages of the debacle, Merkel and Schröder both claimed the right to be the next Chancellor—Schröder by right of incumbency and a track-record he stands behind, and Merkel by right of electoral plurality. This delayed the inevitable—talks between the SDP and CDU/CSU to form a Grand Coalition—for several weeks. Negotiations, once entered, dragged on this point, along with several more salient differences between the two parties as to how the Government should be composed and what its policies should be.

In the end, Merkel prevalied, and on 21 November was installed as Chancellor, presiding over a mixed left-right government that will pursue a watered down version of the CDU/CSU platform. Schröder is, for the moment at least, out of politics.

Next Time...

A look at Canada and Israel...

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¹The British Parliament sits for a maximum of five years, as per the Parliament Act of 1911. The Prime Minister can ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call a new General Election any time before that, however. This is somtimes done if either a bill significant to the Government fails, but usually only if a formal motion of no-confidence makes it clear that the PM no longer commands a majority in Commons.
²Minnesotans will be familiar with this concept: the Christian Democrats have no direct presence in the state of Bavaria; instead, they have a 'sister' party, the Christian Social Union. In Minnesota, we have a similar thing, where the Democrats are actually the Democratic Farmers and Labourers Party.