Croatia and Finland not rejecting EU shock
Cheerful news on the electoral front today. Croatia has voted by almost 2 to 1 - rather more strongly than opinion polls suggested - to join the European Union. (Official results are not out yet but my old friends at GONG have done their own calculations.) And the Finnish presidential election will be a runoff between the establishment Conservative candidate and the gay Green; the extremist nationalists placed a poor fourth with less than 10%, less than half what they got last April when they nearly ended up the largest party.
A few days ago I was on a radio show (for Australia listeners, for what that is worth) as one of a panel and found myself the only commentator daring to suggest that the EU-pocalypse may not, in fact, be at hand; that perhaps we will muddle through. The moderator was inclined to point to the likely success of the True Finns as evidence that I was wrong. I'm glad that that has been falsified and that the Croats have surprised us with their enthusiasm for the EU. The English-speaking media may have generally adopted the narrative of imminent European collapse, but that doesn't make it true.
(Electoral geek point re Finland - Väyrynen was a whisker ahead of Haavisto on absentee ballots, and initial media coverage had him qualifying to face Niinistö in the runoff. But Haavisto was well ahead of Väyrynen on votes cast today rather than in advance, which shows that the ground campaign is still worth something.)
A few days ago I was on a radio show (for Australia listeners, for what that is worth) as one of a panel and found myself the only commentator daring to suggest that the EU-pocalypse may not, in fact, be at hand; that perhaps we will muddle through. The moderator was inclined to point to the likely success of the True Finns as evidence that I was wrong. I'm glad that that has been falsified and that the Croats have surprised us with their enthusiasm for the EU. The English-speaking media may have generally adopted the narrative of imminent European collapse, but that doesn't make it true.
(Electoral geek point re Finland - Väyrynen was a whisker ahead of Haavisto on absentee ballots, and initial media coverage had him qualifying to face Niinistö in the runoff. But Haavisto was well ahead of Väyrynen on votes cast today rather than in advance, which shows that the ground campaign is still worth something.)