Former EU Commission candidate Rocco Buttiglione is apparently actively working to reduce the political damage caused by his remarks about homosexuality being a sin. Yet his strategy seems a little erratic. After reaching out to the social right last week by declaring his desire to build an influential conservative Christian political movement in Europe, like [...]

Her Majesty’s government?Some light Saturday reading…
I think Tony Blair will from now on try to leave press conferences before someone gets a chance to ask the last question.
Back in September 2003 in Berlin, a British journalist asked Blair about being embarrassed about being a spokesperson for the American President when talking to Chancellor [...]

Yesterday was regional elections day in France. France has not traditionally had any strong local government structure - one of the first acts of the revolution was the abolition of the old provinces and their replacement with purely administrative “departments.” However, the last 20 years have seen radical changes in the way French [...]

Both Chris Brooke and Matthew Turner have raised the suggestion that the Socialist victory in Spain may not have been caused by an actual swing in the electorate from the Popular Party (PP) to the Socialists (PSOE) after Thursday, but rather by the attacks in Madrid inspiring more people to go out and [...]

Two versions of the Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero story, Fox and Bloomberg, choose for yourselves.
BTW: anyone out there help me: what is the Blair/Labour Government official position right now on the UN and troop withdrawal? Just to put this in some sort of perspective.

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If you’re looking for an eminently sensible warning againt misinterpreting the PSOE’s electoral upset of the PP, see Edward’s post below. This here is just my own ?0.02 cast in about the margins.

Read more… or Read more right here… »
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By now virtually everyone must know the results of the Spanish elections. I suppose the real questions people are asking involve how to interpret them. I would advise against jumping to hasty conclusions here. I picked up one comment on Crooked Timber to the effect that:

“anybody who decided to vote Socialist after the bombings [...]

Reports from Spain indicate a victory for the Socialists in the election, taking 43% to the PP’s 38%.
(Live results in Spanish can be found here and here)
Meanwhile in Russia, Vladimir Putin seems set for a landslide re-election, with exit polls predicting he’ll get almost 70% of the vote.

The great leftist protest movements of the past have often involved a certain questionable division of labour. The workers march and the academics think. Well, I guess France has always been a bit different.
First, Les Inrockuptibles circulates an Appel contre la guerre ? l’intelligence (Petition against the war on intelligence), accusing [...]

So Greece has a new government, Haider seems to be staging a comeback and next Sunday Spain is going to the polls. On this latter I will post something during the week, meantime, since I confess to knowing next to nothing at all about the significance of the Greek results, or the real state of [...]