Super Tuesday

 

 

 

The 1^st of March this year was Super Tuesday, a huge event in the American election calendar. Firstly, Super Tuesday is the day when the most states in America vote for who they want their presidential candidate to be. This was for both the Democrats and the Republicans.

This year the candidates have been hitting the headlines, both nationally and internationally, for their comments and the race they have lead. On the Democrat side is Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and Bernie Sanders, Senator of Vermont. These two very different candidates have become increasingly popular and have very loyal supporters. Perhaps more well-known is the Republican frontrunners, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Each of them are not the traditional type of candidates we are used to seeing and has led to several concerns from the Republican establishment. Donald Trump has become a regular on the news recently with the businessman making very controversial comments. Ted Cruz could be seen as a more proven outsider than Trump and he is very popular with the tea party members of the GOP. Finally, Marco Rubio is the more establishment candidate and is more popular amongst the well-educated and women.

Super Tuesday had primaries and caucuses in over 11 states with a variety of results. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won 7 states, which may lead to both campaigns gaining momentum as we move forward to more primaries on Saturday and Sunday. Ted Cruz managed to win 3 states, his home state of Texas alongside Oklahoma and Alaska. Rubio won his first state of the presidential campaign taking Minnesota, whilst Sanders took 4 states including his home state of Vermont.

So what does this all really mean? The candidate that has the most votes in a state is declared the victor. Depending on the type of voting system in each state, delegates are awarded to the candidates. All the candidates aim for the most number of delegates and each win adds to this. This is also why second place is important as well as the winner. State wins are vital in order to gain momentum and from there gain as many delegates as possible, a larger win can also lead to a candidate receiving a larger proportion of the delegates as well.

Many people may be asking why Super Tuesday is so vital in the presidential campaign. Super Tuesday is the first multi-state voting day and so by gaining many delegates it leads to more publicity and hopefully more popularity for the later states. With Clinton and Trump coming out on top it is looking more and more likely that these two will win the nomination for their respective party. In the summer Trump was seen as an outside candidate but now it seems quite the opposite, this is causing great concern to many people given his policies and proposals.

What has come out of the primaries has been the characteristics of voters who vote for Trump. Trump seems to be gaining popularity with the evangelicals as well as those with low income and those who are under educated. The majority of men tend to favour Trump whilst Rubio has greater support from women. What Trump has grasped this year has been the anger and disenchantment with the establishment. Being the clear outsider in the eyes of the electorate they see Trump as the candidate who will bring about the change which is needed and clearly speaks his mind. However, when it comes to the candidate who shares the same values as the electorate, Rubio seems to come out on top. The difference between the grassroots and the elites in the Republican Party is huge and Trump has focused on this and been very successful.

From these results many have forecast what the next weeks will bring and from there the winners of the nominations. Having looked at the delegate counts and the states to come it seems as though the democrats will have a tighter race than the republicans. I believe that Hillary will ultimately win the nomination as her lead of super delegates is so large that Bernie Sanders would have to win the majority of the other states in order to be the nominee for the democrats. On the other side it appears as though Donald Trump is winning across a wide range of states and social groups. This makes his future victories quite unpredictable. It is clear that he is not undefeatable as Cruz has managed to win states on several occasions. However, if Trump continues as he has done in the past month I cannot see him not becoming the presidential candidate for the Republican Party.

SB

US Caucuses: So What's Bernie's deal?

With American caucuses on the way, the public is undoubtedly curious of the candidates' pasts. Many claims have been made by the candidates about their history and life altering events, a lot of which, unsurprisingly, have been proven to be false.

Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic Party - who instead identifies as being a democratic socialist - made claims about protesting for civil rights in 1963. Sanders spoke of his increasing political involvement during his time at the University of Chicago, where he studied Political Science. He focused, particularly, on his involvement in Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), through which he protested segregated housing in his university.
Sanders' involvement in the Willis wagons(racially segregated housing) protest, and in the civil rights movement itself, has much been debated since then.

However, in late February, Kartemquin Films released video footage online, depicting two police officers roughly handling a young man resembling Sanders, particularly due to the strikingly similar thick-rimmed glasses. (shown on the left - 1963, Chicago Tribune).

Understandably, some claimed that the picture was ambiguous, despite Sanders confirming that the young man was indeed him. In response, Mother Jone magazine released an article about Sanders' past, including the newspaper clipping below, confirming that Sanders was arrested during the protest mentioned. It also states that he was later fined $25 for resisting arrest, as displayed in the photograph above.

In his campaign, Sanders brings focus onto injustices in the US, particularly focusing on a recent social movement 'Black Lives Matter'. This was sparked by the acquittal of a racially motivated murderer, George Zimmerman, and two other racially motivated murders, which occurred as a result of police brutality. Sanders continued to mention, 'as far back as I can remember, and I can't tell you why...but, injustice is something I've always fought throughout my life.'

As a politics student who is upset about these issues, it is greatly comforting to hear a democratic candidate, who has a chance of becoming US president, recognise one of the many big problems in America, regarding race. Not only this, but Sanders has been much more independent, especially with donations for his campaign, unlike his democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton.

If we look at some claims Clinton has made about her past, such as 'landing under sniper fire' in Bosnia, for which she 'ran with (her) head down' to get to a safe base, some queries have been made in response to this serious event. This is mainly due to the fact that those accompanying Clinton that day described it as being routine, and video evidence disproving her statements was released. In this clip, she was greeted by a group of people, including a young girl, who read her a poem and then kissed her.

Much to the great shock of those questioning Clinton, she later retracted her words, regarding them as a mere misstatement. Clinton then said, 'So I made a mistake. That happens. It shows I'm human.' I completely see where Clinton is coming from, just the other day I mistook a group of primary school children for an assassination squad shooting down at the public. It's an easy mistake to make.

However, despite all of this, it pleases me to see that no one has had any doubts whatsoever about Mr. Trump's 'small loan of million dollars' claim.

SN

The Abdication Crisis

On the 20th January 1936, Edward VIII became King of England after his father, King George V died. Later that year, on the 10th December he abdicated - having not yet been crowned - in a speech to the British public saying: "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."

In 1931, a friend of Edward's, Thelma Furness, introduced him to an American woman named Wallis Simpson at a party in London. Simpson was then in her second marriage after having divorced her first husband to be able to marry her second, Ernest Simpson. Following that meeting, Edward and Simpson proceeded to have a serious relationship. When Edward ascended to the throne in January 1936, it was assumed that this relationship would end. However, the pair were seen together on a Mediterranean cruise that summer. It then became clear that they intended to marry. But the match was not approved of by either the Church of England, the government or many Britons. Simpson had been divorced once (twice after she divorced Ernest Simpson in October 1936) and both her husbands were still alive, it was therefore condemned by many for her to remarry; even more so for the King, who as head of the Church of England, ought to follow their customs. As a result, when Edward announced to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that they intended to marry, he was told that the government would not accept the marriage and that the people too would not be happy with Simpson as their queen. So, he suggested three options going forward:

•      Royal Marriage: Edward and Mrs. Simpson marry each other and she becomes Queen.
•       Morganatic Marriage: Edward and Mrs. Simpson marry each other, but Mrs. Simpson does not become Queen and receives another courtesy title instead.
•          Abdication: Edward abdicates and is no longer King. He would then be able to marry Mrs. Simpson without having to think of the opinion of the people and the government anymore.

As Edward was King of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa as well as England, the Prime Ministers of these countries would need to approve his decision. He came to the decision of a morganatic marriage, but this was not approved of by the other governments, so he had to abdicate instead. The Instrument of Abdication was signed on the 10^th December 1936, making Edward the only British monarch who had ever voluntarily abdicated. He became the Duke of Windsor, and his brother George took to the throne. The couple married in France in June 1937, creating a divide in the Royal family. Wallis Simpson was not accepted by Buckingham Palace until 1968.

Edward VIII remains to this day the only British monarch to have abdicated. The sequence of events leading to it however meant that the British public lost faith in the monarch for several years.

AE

A Politics Student's view on the European Referendum

When David Cameron returned from the European Parliament clutching his ‘new deal for Britain’ it seemed to me that the concessions that had been granted were minor and didn’t address any of the real problems that the British people wanted resolving in the first place. The whole renegotiation process seemed to be a pre-arranged charade agreed by EU leaders which aimed to fool the UK public into rejecting Brexit and stay in a virtually unreformed European Union.

Mr. Cameron knows that anti-EU feeling in the country is growing so he has called for a referendum in just 4 months’ time on the 23^rd June 2016. It’s times like these where we will be seeing the establishment whip out any tactic to sway ordinary people in their favour. “EU exit could threaten jobs” and “sterling could lose another 20% of its value” are just two of the many headlines that will effectively scare Britons into voting ‘remain’ and not thoroughly thinking through the consequences of living under a superstate which is, in the words of the late Tony Benn, on board a ‘federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach.’.

The British people are faced with a once-in-a-lifetime decision – are we to be a self-governing nation or not? The so-called trading bloc has grown into much more than just an economic community, we are now dealing with a union which is inherently undemocratic and starves its member states of the power they once had. A fundamental principle of the UK’s constitution is the fact that parliament is sovereign. However, as a member of the EU, Britain must take all EU law over the statutory law passed in Westminster or the common law ruled by judges and it all, in effect, comes to nothing if the European Parliament passes a law that is conflicting.

No doubt, over the next few months we will be hearing endless claim and counterclaim from both sides of the argument, but in reality, no-one can know exactly what will happen if we leave the EU. Brexit will offer Britain a key to the rest of the world as we are relinquished from the harnesses of a powerful few at the top of the European food chain. I only hope that the British public will realise soon enough that we are a strong country, ready to break the status quo and once again trade with the whole world on our own terms, especially with the Commonwealth countries who we so shamefully abandoned when we joined the Common Market.  

The issue of ‘in or out’ rises above party politics and isn’t a question of whether you’re on the right or the left, it’s whether or not you believe in Britain and its people to govern themselves. If we do leave, whatever happens afterwards will be down to us to tackle as a sovereign state once more.

JW

 

UN Work Experience

Recently, in the February half term, I had the amazing opportunity to partake in a study visit to the UN. Previously, I had a vague idea of the work and function of the UN, however this experience really gave me a thorough understanding of the UN.

            Each day I – and 36 other aspiring students – attended three or four talks given by members working for the numerous different organisations within the UN. The organisations we visited varied from the UN Refugee Agency to the World Trade Organisation to the International Environmental House.

            It was quite surprising to see the sheer scope and multitude of varying tasks that the UN actually carries out. However, it was quite new to hear of how sometimes the UN can be limited in its responses due to having to be politically neutral as well as needing to be invited by countries in certain situations (for example when setting up refugee camps).

What was equally as surprising was that climate change and its impacts is a pressing matter for the near future. Climate change was featured in nearly every talk. The impacts of climate change include natural disasters that will result in an overwhelming amount of refugees. This really impacted my understanding that climate change is something that we can’t afford to neglect because we think it won’t impact us much here in England (with our already miserable weather). This helped me understand that its consequences will impact every corner of the world on a large scale, both socially and economically.

            Overall, this experience gave me the opportunity to meet many passionate people with different opinions and ideas on current issues. Additionally, this experience helped me gain a deeper insight into the UN – how it has a role and responsibility in so many different things; helping the environment, trading, research on weather and natural disasters, refugees, etc. that I hadn’t previously known or even thought about.

MG

The EU Referendum

As part of the Conservative party’s manifesto, a referendum on the topic of EU membership of the UK will be held before the end of 2017. David Cameron is now suggesting that this could occur later this year. There are pros and cons to both sides of the argument and the opinion polls show that Britain is very evenly divided, so the outcome of this referendum remains unclear. But what would leaving the EU mean for the UK and why is a referendum even taking place?

When it was announced by the Conservatives that a referendum would take place, David Cameron promised that changes within the EU for the benefit of the UK would first be sought. These changes were suggested to target what Britons were worried about with the EU and which led to demands for a referendum in the first place. So, at the EU summit in December, David Cameron asked the other member states for reforms in four areas. These were: that immigrants to the UK from the EU would not be given benefits until they had lived here for four years (this has proved to be problematic, as it requires a treaty change); that individual parliaments of the member states should be given greater control enabling them to block EU legislation; recognition that currencies other than the Euro exist within the EU and that the UK would be allowed to opt out of closer union of the European people. Cameron hopes that a deal will be decided upon in February, but so soon seems unlikely. For one, many of the Eastern European countries did not like that their workers would be paid less for their work than a British citizen and believe that this would be discriminatory.

In the latest opinion polls, it seems that Britons narrowly favour leaving the EU. 40% questioned said that they supported leaving, 38% supported remaining a member, 16% are undecided and 6% said that they would not vote. But why do people want to leave? What are the benefits? Many people believe that the billions of pounds of membership fees for the EU is not worth it and gives us few benefits. Also, groups such as Ukip want the UK to have greater control about the number of migrants coming here to work. One benefit of leaving would be that the rules and regulations decided by the EU regarding trade, agriculture and industry would no longer restrict the UK and more relevant ones for the UK could be put in place. This has been seen previously in Norway and they now have greater freedom in this matter.

However, there are many risks involved with an EU exit, which has been dubbed a ‘Brexit’. It is estimated that this could lead to a 2.2% decline in GDP, as Britain would no longer be able to benefit from free trade in Europe. Therefore, trading overseas could become both more difficult and more expensive. Additionally, a reduce in immigration would reduce the number of workers that employers have to choose from, most of whom are keen and help to fuel economic growth. Nick Clegg argues that 3 million jobs depend on Britain’s involvement in the EU. Others believe that a ‘Brexit’ would lessen Britain’s military influence and general status in both Europe and the world.

I believe, however, that the greatest risk in leaving the EU is that there is no clear plan of what would happen if this occurs. It is all fine to say what is bad about the EU, but Britons are not able to evaluate the alternative, as there isn’t really one yet. We have been a part of the EU since 1973, and we shall have to wait for the outcome of the referendum, to see if we will be for much longer.

AE

What exactly are the gun laws in the USA?

Following the recent shootings in San Bernardino, USA where 14 people were killed by a radicalised couple, I realised that I was not really aware of the gun laws in the country. Surely not just anyone can own a gun and carry it with them all the time? Also, why has no change be proposed to them as the number of shootings seems to be rising so quickly?

Essentially, any American citizen over the age of 18 is allowed to buy a shotgun or rifle and once they are over 21, they can also buy and carry a handgun. Some people cannot own a gun, these include: convicted criminals, people with mental health illnesses, drug addicts and army veterans who left under dishonourable conditions. However, there is a notorious way for the above-mentioned to still get hold of a gun, this is known as the ‘gun show loophole’. The buyers of a gun are not checked at a gun show and so anyone of the right age can buy a gun here. Similarly, many mentally-ill people who really should not be able to own a gun are not registered in this way by a court and so most are still able to get their hands on one.

Individual states’ policies vary hugely though. For example, the states of the District of Columbia and Florida ban all carrying of guns in public, whether open or concealed. They are among only five states to do so. But Oregon allows these for all who own a gun, so long as they have a permit.

This ‘right’ to own a gun comes from the Second Amendment of the US Constitution of 1791. This stated that: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Americans take this to mean that every individual has the right to own, carry and use a gun.

Whilst gun lobbyists claim that stricter gun laws would only make the population less safe as only criminals would be armed and there would be no method for self-defence, there is a clear relationship between ownership of guns and gun-related violence. In the US, 117,000 Americans are shot every year and 33,000 of them die from their injuries (that’s 101.13 per million of the population). 270 million guns are owned by US civilians. In contrast, in Britain in 2012, there were 640 gun-related murders – only 10.43 deaths per million of the population – due to there being only 1.8 million legal guns in Britain. This clearly shows that the greater the number of guns in a country, the greater the number of murders by shooting.

Contrary to what I expected, as the number of mass shootings in America has risen, the public’s support for stricter gun laws has declined. A survey taken every year where the same question is asked – do you favour or oppose stricter gun control laws? – found that in 1989, 65% of Americans favoured the stricter laws, but this year the public was evenly divided. Herein lies the reason why imposing more gun laws is not a priority for the government and is rarely addressed in presidential campaigns, it is simply such a divisive issue and one which will gain a party few votes. Additionally, pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America (GOA) are extremely influential and wealthy, so politicians fear that arguing against these groups will lose them support.

In 2013, Obama proposed to Congress that all buyers of a firearm should require a background check (including by private sellers, which were exempt). This was strongly rejected. It is believed, on the other hand, that even if this law had been approved, that nothing would have changed. Due to the system where it is up to states themselves to decide their gun laws, a change in national law would not have had much of an impact on the gun laws of individual states.

This surprises me, as it seems clear that increasing control on guns would be a very easy way to reduce gun crime – including mass murders. It is more difficult to carry out the killings themselves and a petty dispute would not lead to death.

AE

Mao: Hero or Villain?

McDonnell brandishing Mao's 'Little Red Book'

"We must learn to do economic work from all who know how. No matter who they are, we must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and conscientiously. But we must not pretend to know what we do not know."
-Chairman Mao

The image of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, quoting Chairman Mao's 'Little Red Book', and subsequently throwing it at George Osborne has sparked controversy amongst many.

Although McDonnell has stated the stunt served only to prove a point about the Chancellor selling £5 billion worth of British public assets to China and said it was a "self-deprecating joke" (after having been accused of being too left-wing), the "joke" fell flat and backfired on the Labour politician.

This is because the historical context of the book is far more unsettling than McDonnell perhaps realises. He merely said, "yeah of course and I condemn all that” when confronted on BBC News about how Mao is responsible for 20 million deaths in China (although the actual death toll may well be up to 78 million).

These deaths were primarily caused by starvation, due to ill-fated policies such as the 'Great Leap Forward' into modernisation in 1958, which aimed to rapidly industrialise China through collectivised agriculture, yet actually backfired and caused the economy to shrink and 20 million people to starve in the Great Chinese Famine. The 'Cultural Revolution' followed in 1966, and aimed to reassert Mao's power through the destruction of any capitalist or traditional elements still remaining in Chinese society. This involved the closing down of schools, the ransacking of historical sites, and the Red Guard's public humiliation and arbitrary imprisonment of anyone suspected of opposing Mao.
  
Yet it is not only the vast number of deaths blamed on Mao that created such a negative stigma around McDonnell's actions, but the insensitive reminder that it caused for many Chinese of Mao's tyrannical regime, epitomised in the form of the 'Little Red Book'.

Children holding the infamous book

I asked an ex-Chinese citizen about his experience of growing up in Maoist China in the 1960s and 70s, who said "as soon as I entered primary school, I had to learn the entire Little Red Book from cover to cover. The first words I ever learned to write were "long live Chairman Mao". If you dropped a newspaper with Mao's image on, and just so happened to accidently step on it, you could be persecuted...we didn't know anything about the outside world".

This event, however, has also sparked conversation as to how terrible Mao truly was for China, Diane Abbott (another Labour politician) recently stating that Mao "did more good than harm".

In China, Mao remains an untouchable icon, and the Chinese government has said Mao's legacy consists of "70% effective revolutionary, 30% bad governance". Another defender of Mao (who wishes to remain anonymous) has said that "Westerners like to demonise Mao, and often look past his many achievements". He did, admittedly lead the country out of countless civil wars and foreign invasions following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, promoted equal rights for women and raised Chinese life expectancy from 35 to 65.

So was Mao a hero or a villain? The answer is most likely both. He was an idealist whose poorly executed plans led to the loss of countless lives, and whose power and fame eventually corrupted him. Yet his regime arguably laid the foundations for his successors to build China's economy to its current towering height. McDonnell's "jocular" statement serves to highlight how unaware people are of Chinese history and how something so seemingly innocuous as a book can actually embody a period of history characterised by decades of famine, failure and a ruthless personality cult. In Mao's own words: "Lifting a rock only to drop it on one's own feet" is a Chinese folk saying to describe the behaviour of certain fools."

LB