What is the political stance/policy, that all the major parties seem to agree on?

18 comments

1. For Austria I think it’s

   1. Negative stance on nuclear energy. We don’t want it and give our neighbors shit for having it.

   2. Neutrality. Not joining NATO. The only party *slightly* disagreeing is NEOS who want a European army with Austria in it but we all know that is decades if not centuries away…

2. From a central UK perspective, Brexit is done.

   There are no major parties pushing for the UK to reapply to the EU, **however** the SNP, the largest party in Scotland from both a UK election perspective and a devolved parliamentary perspective are pro-EU. Unfortunately, the SNP have no impact on UK central government policy, and can only push further for Scottish independence in which case there will probably be a second referendum on applying to join the EU.

   The funny thing is, in lots of the world the third largest party (SNP) would be a major party, but despite them dominating Scotland due to them only standing for election in Scotland, and Scotland only making up 59 out of 650 Parliamentary seats, they are in a very real sense, irrelevent. I think only twice since 1945 has the result of the Scottish vote changed the outcome of the UK election, and the last time was in the 1970s.

3. If we take the six parties that are usually in the parliament i dont think we will find a common ground because the main principle of the AfD is apparently obnoxious disagreement

4. *All* the major parties? I can’t think of one, as there is, in the end, enough variation in parliament to create differences of opinion on all issues, which is a good thing.

   There is a widespread myth, that “everbody agrees on the welfare state,” but this is not true: recent proposals from the conservatives and liberals have shown that those two groups are very much questioning and working against the welfare state (and historically liberals and conservatives always have been against the welfare state.)

   Another myth is how xenophobic and anti-immigration stances have “won out,” but this is not the case either, rather, there is a wide agreement on the issue, consisting of the social democrats, the liberals and the conservatives, who have taken over anti-immigration stances from the national-conservative Danish People’s Party, but even internally in those parties there are divisions along those lines, not to mention how the Radicals(Social liberal movement) and the Red-Greens are ardent opponents of the inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants.

   So no, I don’t think that there is a single issue that all the major parties agree on.

5. Pro-EU and anti-Putin I guess. Now this might still be a bit nuanced because the leader of the previous ruling party has (or had) business dealings with Russia, and while the party is still insistant it’s supportive of Ukraine, is opposed to Russia, supports sanctions against it, they’re much more “neutral” in their approach than other major parties

6. Ireland has a few areas where most parties are on the same page. It’s one area where Brexiteers in England tend to make gloriously miscalculations.

   Ireland’s entire political spectrum takes a very similar view on Brexit, but the UK tabloids tend to project their domestic politics onto their understanding (or lack there of) of Ireland. So they constantly assume there’s a very heated debate on Brexit in Ireland (there isn’t) or that they can find a pro-Brexit party to deal with (none exists.)

   They’ve basically united the entire Irish political spectrum in a collective bemusement at them.

7. In Italy, as odd as it might sound, is pro-Europeanism. Might be a passing moment and we have had our ups and downs but all the major parties in the Parliament support the EU, though they want to see a change in it

   In fact, I think Italy is one of the few countries where there is a constant debate of how the EU should evolve, with a half and half dividend between Confederation Parties (FdI and League) and Federalist Parties (FI, Az/IV and PD). Then there is one minor party which might get in which is called Italexit (one name, one program), which ironically enough stopped talking about European Union and rather talks about Vaccines and Green Pass…lastly we have M5S which is generally neutral but leaning to “in favor” but for more Democratization

8. Nothing in Spain, that’s how it’s always been, Spanish politicians don’t agree on anything, even now with the coalition government it seems they don’t agree in many things, so imagine with the opposition parties

9. There’s not a lot really. The Welsh Conservatives strategy for the last 5 years seems to be “say the opposite of whatever the Welsh Government are doing even if it contradicts with things they’ve previously said or Westminster Conservative policy”.

   Even things as simple as raw sewage shouldn’t be dumped into rivers, is somehow not something that has concensus across all 3 main parties in Wales (well only 1 has a problem agreeing with that statement).

   Probably “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is bad and we should continue to support Ukraine” is about all they can all agree with at this point.

   Edit: the 1st (Welsh Labour) and 3rd (Plaid Cymru) largest parties in terms of seats in the Welsh Parliament agree with each other on a lot and are currently cooperating closely on Welsh Government policy. Its just the Welsh Conservatives that are the awkward one.

10. I think that the only thing that can be found common is across all of the parties is „Russia bad”. Even Confederates, up to a certain degree, agree with this (at least after 24th Feb, even though some of their members are still cheering up for Russians, the official stance of the faction is that this is their *private opinion*). In other aspects there’s them or PiS that are disagreeing with sentiments common across other parties.

11. Right now, support for Ukraine and desire to contain Russia is pretty much universal. The only exception is the alt-right Konfederacja who has a few loud openly pro-Russian clowns, but even they are not fully and completely against.

12. Dutch politics is becoming more and more polarized these days with new flank parties joining the scene every other parliamentary cycle. This has already been a development for the last thirty years but only reached a critical point during the previous decade when the thee traditional governmental parties: christian democrats (CDA), social democrats (PvdA) and pro-business liberals (VVD); have been without a majority and had to rely on support of newer (formerly minor) centrist parties turned establishment parties such as liberal D66 and the Christian Union. To a lesser degree also the ultraconservative/calvinistic SGP party and the GreenLeft have become system parties keeping the government afloat in one way or the other:

    In the old days, international conventions (human rights, migration, European integration) and the rule of law (independence of the judiciary) enjoyed support from a supermajority. Right now, this is not always the case anymore.

    There are still some issues left that have wide support among the population and political parties.

    – All parties support some form of welfare (social allowances, state pensions, free education, subsidized health care) although it ranges from very minimal (VVD, JA21, FvD) to a socialist economy (Bij1).

    – Parliamentarism: Many parties have ideas about adjusting our electoral system but the general believe that proportional representation with a low threshold and parliamentary democracy are superior to FPTP and the presidential system is almost universal.

    – Water defences: This is very much part of the national identity and therefore not as political as elsewhere.

    – LGBT rights and reproduction rights: All parties support this except minor christian parties (SGP and Christian Union) and neofascist FvD.

    – Participation in the EU: Within a broad spectrum ranging from reversing the Maastricht Treaty (JA21, SGP) to establishing a European federal state (D66, GreenLeft, Volt), all parties at least support membership except for, again FvD and national populist PVV.

13. I don’t think they agree on anything. As soon as the right says something is good the left block is immediately against it. Nuclear power, more immigrants from the middle East and africa, harsher laws against rape and violence. The right wanted to help Ukrainian refugees and the left who is always on their high horse how important it is to help people instead said “it’s other countries’ turn to help”.

    We are about 10 years behind the US politics, so in 10 years we will be where they are now. Quiet horrible how polarised we have become, especially compared to our Nordic neighbours who have a better political climate

14. – Hate for Russia.

    When processing the NATO application of Sweden and Finland, our Socialist, Center and Far Right parties all voted in unison “Yes”. While it would be a lie to say they voted because they care about Finland’s and Sweeden’s security, we all know they voted as a FU to Russia. And we’re all absolutely OK with that.

    – EU is good.

    While the degree of how “good” EU has been for Romania may vary between parties, we don’t have a single one that would even imagine to propose a ROexit.

15. For Austria it‘s relatively simple:

    1. Pro-Neutrality: Nobody cares about joining NATO.
    2. Anti-Nuclear: Will likely trigger many nuclearbro redditors.
    3. Anti-Turkey?: I don‘t think any party likes Turkey.

16. Both the AfD (mostly because they’re anti-establishment idiots – best example: early on when Corona was starting they were pushing for a lockdown while our politics struggled with deciding, and after the lockdown they started doing anti-lockdown propaganda) as well as to some degree the Linke (because they have understood what it means to be an oppositional party in a parliamentary republic – they question everything and make the coalition parties explain themselves all the time) have a very deserved image of being an “Anti-party” just voting the opposite of the other mainstream parties on practically all issues – so there’s not a single point that all the major parties will agree on.

17. Concern of continuity of Estonian republic and other constantly threatened national countries like us.

    It appears as following: we must to help Ukraine and Ukrainians as much as we can, we need to belong to NATO, we need to have conscription service, Estonian language must be only state language.

    Also rules for obtaining citizenship by naturalization (immigration rules) have been strict and hasn’t been changed during last 30 years, despite of the fact that during different times we have had different parties in parliament coalition. We have big mouthed “anti-immigration” party but in fact they aren’t more conservative than all the mainstream parties, mainly they are just more loud.

    Few elections ago one of the major parliament parties started to flirt with idea to have paid army instead of reserve army. When they got first opinion poll results, they immediately shut up and changed their agenda. Nobody has tried that since and now barely anyone remembers that this has been even tried.

18. UK

    * The nuclear deterrent. Nobody would get elected saying they’d do away with it even though it costs us stupid money.

    * On foreign policy the UK is very much Pro Israel, Pro Taiwan, Favours strong links with Saudi-Arabia, Pro Egypt, Pro Turkey, devoted to NATO, Five Eyes, Whatever USA says. The parties might argue about a lot on foreign policy but those things are pretty inviable.