"We have a great opportunity in our movements to learn how to be opponents without being enemies," says Tanuja Jagernauth. This perspective emphasizes the importance of maintaining respect and understanding even amidst conflict.
The result was a vote of no confidence in a centrist government led by the Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen. Her administration was, in the Danish context, an unusual political construction.
In perhaps a vain attempt to prove themselves moderate, the Democratic lawmakers helped override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes. Voters responded with the kind of ballot-box fury that should serve as a lesson to other incumbents. It wasn't just a case that the incumbents lost. They were buried, with several of them getting trounced by margins of 40 points or more.
Worldwide, autocracies are on the rise, populists are gaining momentum, democratic societies are under pressure. Wars, inflation, fear of economic decline are causing great uncertainty. The "Germany-Monitor 2025" shows that the vast majority of Germans believe in democracy, and that support for democracy as a form of government is increasing, especially in the east of the country. This was announced by the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany, Elisabeth Kaiser, in Berlin on Thursday this week:
I lived in Argentina in the mid-1980s, just after the fall of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983. The country was taking its first, shaky steps back toward democracy. It was a time of great hope, but also of grave uncertainty - because while the generals were gone, the political culture that enabled them remained. Like most of the nation, I was captivated by the pioneering trials of the military generals that promised to restore justice.
Populism may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.
After a day of turmoil where the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called for Starmer to resign, Labour MPs rallied around the prime minister after a speech in parliament. Miliband described Starmer as liberated, 24 hours after the departure of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he hoped that the truest version of Starmer would now show itself to the country.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans' views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008.
Blasting away one of Labour's biggest majorities shows that under the more left-populist leadership of Zack Polanski, the Greens are now playing in a different political league. Polanski and the party's new MP, Hannah Spencer, were explicit that they do not see this as a self-contained local contest but as the blueprint for all sorts of other parts of the country.
The principle of intellectual charity is fundamental to constructive political conversations. This principle states that, in any discussion, we should accept the best version of an opponent's ideas, not a distorted version or a "straw man." Exaggeration and distortion of opposing opinions (always present, to some degree, in political debates) have become the standard form of political argument in contemporary America.
The truth is that as a country we have often found one reason or another to let the powerful escape the consequences of their actions. Consider Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, commander in chief of a rebellion that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Davis spent two years in federal custody after the end of the war. The indictment against him was dismissed following his release, and he spent the rest of his life a free man.
Earlier this week, Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego's eastern outskirts, announced that he was crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats. Kendrick was the longest-serving Republican official in the region's local government. "I've been a Republican for 50 years," he said, in the statement explaining his action. "I just can't stand what the Republican Party has become. I'm formally renouncing the Republican Party."
He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly. And now he's being a racist, blatantly. They were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children, not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared.
The death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, has the potential to shake the political landscape in ways reminiscent of George Floyd's killing in 2020. The Trump administration initially claimed Good weaponized her vehicle in an act of domestic terrorism, an account that appears to be contradicted by video evidence.
The alternative may, however, have been even more embarrassing for the government. Imagine their legal arguments being picked apart in court, perhaps a judge criticising their actions, and even Nigel Farage celebrating a major win in front of TV cameras on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice. Allies of Local Government Secretary Steve Reed - who is ultimately responsible for this reversal - argue that their approach shifted because the legal advice changed. But they won't explain how.
Around 5,000 seats across 136 local councils will now be up for grabs, following the government's U-turn on council election delays. Ministers had granted 30 authorities permission to delay elections until May 2027 - including five areas where polls had already been put back from May 2025. But in February, the government said those elections would go ahead in May this year, following legal advice in the wake of a challenge from Reform UK.
