Sweden’s first female PM resigns hours after appointment

Magdalena Andersson, was announced as leader on Wednesday but resigned after her coalition partner quit the government and her budget failed to pass.

Instead, parliament voted for a budget drawn up by the opposition which includes the anti-immigrant far right.

“I have told the speaker that I wish to resign,” Ms Andersson told reporters.

Her coalition partner, the Green Party said it could not accept a budget “drafted for the first time with the far-right”.

Ms Andersson said that she hoped to try to become prime minister again as a single party government leader.

“There is a constitutional practice that a coalition government should resign when one party quits,” the Social Democrat said on Wednesday. “I don’t want to lead a government whose legitimacy will be questioned.

The speaker of parliament said he would contact party leaders on the next move.

Ms Andersson was elected as prime minister earlier on Wednesday because under Swedish law, she only needed a majority of MPs not to vote against her.

A hundred years after Swedish women were given the vote, the 54-year-old Social Democrat leader was given a standing ovation by sections of the parliament, or Riksdag.

Her election at the head of a minority government followed an 11th-hour deal with the opposition Left party, in exchange for higher pensions for many Swedes. She also secured the support of coalition partner the Greens.

Of the 349 members of the Riksdag, 174 voted against her. But on top of the 117 MPs who backed Ms Andersson, a further 57 abstained, giving her victory by a single vote.

A former junior swimming champion from the university city of Uppsala, she began her political career in 1996 as political adviser to then-Prime Minister Goran Persson. She has spent the past seven years as finance minister.

Before MPs backed Magdalena Andersson, Sweden was the only Nordic state never to have a woman as PM.

Becoming the first woman prime minister in Swedish history should have been cause for a night of celebration for Magdalena Andersson, yet the sun had barely set when she handed in her notice.

The complexities of Swedish politics mean we can’t assume we’ve seen the last of her, though. If there’s another prime ministerial vote, Ms Andersson will probably get voted in again. This is because the Green Party has promised to support her, despite quitting as a formal coalition partner. But she’d end up in a vulnerable position at the helm of a fragile minority government, and would still have to stick to the right-wing budget already voted on by parliament.

What all this political chaos has underlined is just how divided Swedish politics is right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether voters break the deadlock with a significant shift to the right or the left at next year’s elections

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Al-Shabab blast by school in Somali capital kills at least 8

A large explosion outside a school in Somalia’s capital on Thursday killed at least eight people, including students, witnesses said. The extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.

The al-Qaida-linked group controls large parts of rural Somalia and continues to frustrate efforts at rebuilding the Horn of Africa nation after three decades of conflict.

The blast sent a plume of smoke above a busy part of Mogadishu during the morning rush hour. The blast shredded part of the school, with emergency workers looking through the collapsed roof beams and wooden benches.

Police spokesman Abdifatah Adam Hassan said eight people were killed and 17 others wounded.

“This is a tragedy,” said Abdulkadir Adan of the Amin ambulance service, which rushed people to a hospital.

The casualties were fewer than might have occurred since Thursday is part of the weekend in Somalia, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

Al-Shabab in a statement carried by its Andalus radio said it targeted Western officials being escorted by the African Union peacekeeping convoy. But a witness, Hassan Ali, told the AP that a private security company was escorting the officials and said he saw four of the security personnel wounded.

The attack occurred as Somalia faces major questions about its political and security future. The AU peacekeeping force was meant to withdraw from the country, but its mission could be extended amid concerns that Somali forces are not ready to assume responsibility for security. The U.S. early this year said its troop withdrawal from Somalia was complete.

A long-delayed presidential vote was meant to take place in February but now looks set to be held next year.

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UK Urges Citizens To Leave Ethiopia Immediately

The union flag flies over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, in central London, Britain June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble

The UK has suspended Covid-19 rules for travellers from Ethiopia to allow British citizens to leave the country as the war between the government and northern Tigray rebels and their allies intensifies.

“In the coming days we may see the fighting move closer to Addis Ababa, which could severely limit options for British nationals to leave Ethiopia,” Vicky Ford, the Minister for Africa, said in a statement.

She added that citizens must leave “immediately” and announced the UK government was offering financial help to assist those who want to leave.

“Those who choose not to leave now should make preparations to shelter in a place of safety over the coming weeks. We cannot guarantee there will be options to leave Ethiopia in the future,” she added.

Efforts to get the warring sides to agree to a ceasefire have not succeeded so far.

Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on Monday that he would go to the front line, leaving Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen Hassen in charge of running state affairs.

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5 takeaways on pact to make Germany great again

Germany took a big step toward forming a new government on Wednesday as the three parties engaged in talks — the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) — reached a tentative agreement on a coalition program.

The 178-page document, the fruit of weeks of intense negotiations following September’s national election, outlines the would-be coalition’s positions on everything from the minimum wage to armed drones, with a little weed mixed in for good measure.

It now goes back to the three parties for final approval (for the SPD and FDP, that entails a delegate vote at a party convention and for the Greens, a membership ballot).

If the deal is approved, the SPD’s Olaf Scholz is expected to be elected chancellor by the Bundestag, the German parliament, in the second week of December.

After 16 years of steady-as-she-goes politics under Angela Merkel, the so-called traffic-light coalition (a reference to the trio’s party colors) has promised to renew Germany across the board by investing heavily in infrastructure, weaning the economy off of fossil fuels and making the country more inclusive.

On the issues that matter most to people outside of Germany — whether Europe, the transatlantic relationship or Germany’s stance toward Russia and China — the agreement suggests the world should expect more of the same. The EU, the U.S. and NATO all take a star turn in the pact, but no more or less than one would expect from a country that in its foreign policy tends to play all sides of every issue.

Here are five takeaways on the agreement:

1. Don’t believe everything you read

Despite all the work that went into the coalition pact (in some cases, negotiators spent “hours” debating single sentences, FDP leader Christian Lindner said), it might best be described as an aspirational document.

Chancellor-in-waiting Scholz described the agreement as the cornerstone for a “decade of investment” to transform Europe’s biggest country into a social-democratic, green Wunderland. That certainly sounds ambitious, the only question is how they’re going to pay for it all. Among the pledges is one to reactivate Germany’s “debt brake” in 2023, i.e. a balanced budget law that makes extra borrowing tricky. Though the parties signaled they would rely on creative accounting with the help of state-owned reconstruction lender KfW to achieve more fiscal leeway in the coming years, that’s unlikely to provide the coalition with the kind of resources it will need to reach its spending goals without breaking the bank.

So what’s with all the song and dance? The best way to think of the coalition agreement is as a marketing prospectus party leaders can use to sell the coalition to their bases, because without their vote, there’s no deal.

2. Culture and remembrance

One of the most striking features of the traffic-light coalition’s sales pitch is how much space it devotes to progressive causes. The parties say they want to lower the voting age to 16, legalize cannabis and make it easier for foreigners not just to become German, but to have dual citizenship. Those are all red-meat issues for conservatives, especially the citizenship plan, suggesting that Germany could soon see a return to the divisive migration debates triggered by the refugee crisis in 2015.

If that’s not enough controversy, the parties have also resolved to tackle the minefield of gender identity. The pact’s chapter on “queer life” is nearly three times as long as the section on Jews, a fact that prompted raised eyebrows in some quarters given the recent surge in anti-Semitic attacks in Germany.

3. All that glitters isn’t Green

Given the central role of the Greens in the proposed coalition, it’s not surprising that climate policy is a dominant theme. What is surprising, however, is how unrealistic some of the targets are. The parties said they would seek to stop burning coal by 2030 and vowed to increase the contribution of renewable energy to Germany’s supply of electricity to 80 percent by the same year. Renewables currently account for just 35 percent of electricity generation. With the country due to switch off its last nuclear power plant in 2022, the new goals are extremely ambitious — all the more so when one considers that the price of natural gas (the only non-renewable fallback) is soaring.

Keep in mind that Germany’s renewable push has already left the country with some of Europe’s highest electricity prices. With inflation already rising and working people complaining about their heating bills, accelerating the coal pullout could soon prove politically untenable.

4. Beware of the Bundesrat

The Bundesrat is Germany’s federal upper chamber, where the 16 states have a big say on important legislation. Without it, the traffic-light agenda is nothing more than a pipe dream. Trouble is, the three parties don’t have anything close to a majority there, meaning that they will need buy-in from the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) on all of their big projects. Together, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU belong to 10 of the 16 regional governments, giving them substantial influence over the governing coalition’s agenda.

5. The unknown unknowns

If there’s one thing that Merkel’s tenure should have taught her successor, it’s that in Germany’s modern politics, nothing goes according to plan. None of the issues that dominated Merkel’s time in office, whether the banking crisis of 2008, the European debt crisis, refugees or the pandemic, were mentioned in any of the carefully prepared coalition agreements. There’s little reason to believe Scholz will have any more luck.

And as with Merkel, he will be judged not according to how many chapters of the coalition agreement he managed to pass, but on his leadership when the Scheiße hits the fan.

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France takes aim at UK PM’s migration ‘double talk’ after Channel sinking

What has so riled the French about Boris Johnson’s letter to President Emmanuel Macron recommending how to combat people-smuggling and loss of life in flimsy dinghies in the Channel?

An angry Paris says it resents the UK “double talk”. The French government asserts that the UK prime minister has private conversations with President Macron, by phone or face-to-face, and then his words are misrepresented by Number 10 when discussing those conversations with the press.

Mr Macron’s team insists that was the case this week after the two leaders spoke following the death of at least 27 people in the Channel.

This is not the first time Paris has levelled the “double-talk” accusation at Mr Johnson in recent months. And it’s an assertion Downing Street would deny.

The UK insists the prime minister’s letter to Paris sent on Thursday evening was sincere; meant to be constructive, not combative.

But President Macron is annoyed the letter was made public by Number 10. He seemed impatient on Friday, telling a press conference in Rome that communication between leaders should not take place over Twitter. “We are not whistle blowers. Come on now, come on.”

The French suspicion is that the letter, perceived by them to be largely putting the onus on France to improve the Channel situation, was actually directed more at Mr Johnson’s Conservative party than Paris.

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The French believe Mr Johnson is in an uncomfortable position with his supporters now, having promised that Brexit would mean “taking back control” of UK waters and borders.

The UK government insists the letter was sent in good faith. Paris says such a delicate matter as migration, especially between France and the post-Brexit UK, should be handled with care, discreetly and away from the media glare.

So how then does France justify Friday morning’s very public rejection of Mr Johnson’s letter? And the French interior minister disinviting – on various media outlets – UK Home Secretary Priti Patel from a brain-storming meeting in Calais this weekend with EU immigration ministers?

France has its own domestic political agenda of course. And Mr Macron is fast-moving towards a tough presidential election next spring.

Under pressure from the political right in France, he is mindful of sounding tough, resolute and nationalist. In fact, Team Macron are making public statements about the row with the UK, hoping to appeal to the French electorate.

In the end then, how seriously should we take this latest Franco-British flare-up of tensions?

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

If private talks continue between French and UK officials, the bilateral public bad temper carries far less weight.

Security officers and other UK officials were being sent to Paris on Friday to discuss cross-Channel co-ordination.

And the UK says even if the home secretary is not going to Sunday’s meeting in Calais, British officials will be there.

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