With Congress out until Moscow Mitch deigns to call the Senate back to endless debate gun control legislation before ultimately passing the most minimal bill that the Republicans think they can get away with, it’s a good opportunity to talk about the politics of our allies.

The biggest one for domestic politics is probably the Israeli election.  A mere four months ago, Israel went to the polls and Benjamin Netanyahu eked out a narrow victory.  However, given that Israel uses proportional representation, coming in first is not enough to be prime minister.  And many of the groups that would naturally support a Netanyahu government have conflicting non-negotiable demands.  (The big dispute on the Israeli right is between secular and religious parties.  Current Israeli law exempts religious students from the draft.  The religious parties want to keep this exemption.  The secular parties want to repeal this exemption.)  Because he could not put together a majority behind a unified agenda, Israel is going to have a second election on September 17.  Again, like our own President, Netanyahu has to face allegations of improprieties and could likely be facing criminal charges if he loses.  One of the interesting factors in Israeli politics is the use of joint lists in which various parties agree to run as one list to assure meeting the threshold for winning seats (and to maximize the seats won) with internal agreements based on estimated support determining how any seats won are allocated between the parties.  Not much has changed since April so another narrow Netanyahu win is the most likely result.

In Europe, there are a lot of elections set for the smaller economies — Portugal, Poland, Austria, Croatia — but the big question is the United Kingdom.  After the recent Conservative Party elections, Boris Johnson is serving as Prime Minister, but when Parliament returns from the summer recess the Conservatives and their allies from Northern Ireland will have a 320-319 majority.  However, the United Kingdom is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on Halloween.  Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister because Theresa May could not negotiate a deal for the departure that could obtain the consent of Parliament.  While Johnson is trying to negotiate a new deal, the European Union is not willing to negotiate against itself.  It made concessions in the negotiations with Ms. May and is not willing to agree to move the goalposts (especially as the main problem is the Ireland-Northern Ireland border).  There is a solid bloc of the Conservative Party that is opposed to departing without a deal which could lead to Mr. Johnson losing a “no confidence” vote when Parliament reconvenes.  If there is not a consensus alternative to lead a “national unity”government, early elections (but no sooner than October 31) are likely.  Given that the predominant issue in the UK remains the relation between the UK and the European Union (and that the UK is split down the middle on this issue) and the use of a first-past-the-post system (which means the fact that there are multiple parties on both sides of the divide can lead to weird results in individual constituencies). Continue Reading...