So Avigdor Liberman is Israel’s new Defence Minister, right..? Well, not yet. Negotiations are ongoing for the now-5-seat Israel Beiteinu to join the coalition, with Liberman getting Defence and some sort of vote on the use of death penalty in military courts which might or might not actually happen. But one big ‘red line’ remains. […]
Author: arieh
Israel: What if there’s no coalition by tomorrow’s deadline?
The state of play Yesterday, Yisrael Beiteinu rejected the offer of joining the next Israeli Government. Likud immediately signed a coalition agreement with Shas, leaving them with 53 coalition members and only one open negotiation – with Naftali Bennett and Jewish Home. A couple of weeks ago, Bennett announced that handing over the Religious Affairs […]
Top 20 crazy and funny-named parties in the 2015 General Election
Conservatives. Labour. Liberal Democrats. Scotish National Party. UKIP. Boring. Luckily, there are loads of parties standing candidates in the UK’s 2015 General Election. Here’s the 20 most interesting, funny and crazy-sounding parties, taken from this rather longer list of all ‘micro parties’. Read on: 1. (An) Independence From Europe This breakaway party from UKIP founded by […]
Could Galloway’s by-election victory have been voided like Rahman’s?
I’ve been reading the fascinating judgment(pdf) that today resulted in Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman being removed and barred from office and his election being voided. The judgment is long but well-written and genuinely interesting. It covers a lot of ground specific to Tower Hamlets – internal Labour party splits, vote-tampering and personation, and the use of public […]
Election Day 2015 – early afternoon update
I voted this morning a bit after 10, so now I have time to speculate about what’s happening out in the country. To be clear – I have no access to any exit polls or opnion polls since Friday — which is good, because it’s illegal to publicise them even if I did. Those last polls showed […]