All Politics Is Local, After All

Most of the anti-Bush crowd in USA went gaga over Tony Blair's Labour Party getting clobbered at British local and EU elections. For them this was seen as a sure sign that voters of enlightened pacifist leftist Europe wanted to punish those who betrayed them for the sake of Bush's right-wing militaristic America.

Although Iraq undoubtedly played part in Labours being hammered, it was only one of the reasons. One party to make an advantage over Labour unpopularity were Tories who had supported war. Another was UK Independence Party, protest movement that had more to do with EU Constitution than war.

Back across the Channel the picture is getting even more murkier. As some of pro-Bush section of blogosphere have noticed, Gerhard Schroeder, who had won 2002 German general elections on clear anti-war platform, got clobbered by right-wing Christian Democrats just as hard as Blair got clobbered by British voters.

Another important trend in European elections – rise of Eurosceptic protest parties and surprisingly low turnout in new EU states – are probably going to be ignored by bloggers obsessed with USA in November 2004.

I paid much more attention towards presidential elections in Serbia. It seems that Tomislav Nikolić (Tomislav Nikolic), candidate of hardline nationalist SRS party, won only about 30% votes, less than expected. He would have to go in second round with Boris Tadić (Boris Tadic) who won only couple of percentages less and can expect solid support from overwhelming majority of pro-western and moderate nationalist voters.