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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announces proposed changes to several pieces of democratic process legislation, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
Smith makes Alberta referendum easier
Alberta Premier Danielle Smithtabled a bill on Tuesday that will make it easier for voters in her province to force a referendum to secede from Canada. Though she has not endorsed separation, critics accuse her of exploiting the sentiment to animate her base and distract from other issues. The bill could theoretically clear the way for the province to become the 51st state.
The bill lowers the threshold for a citizen-initiated petition from about 600,000 signatures to about 170,000, which separatists hope would allow the vote to happen.
During the election, Smith warned that a reelected Liberal government would increase secessionist sentiments in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, staunchly conservative provinces that profit from the oil and gas industry. Many Prairie voters blame the federal government for legislation that made it harder to develop pipelines and an emissions cap on the money-spinning oil sands.
Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning, a revered elder statesman, made a splash during the election when he published an op-ed predicting that another Liberal government could lead to Western separatism: “Voters, particularly in central and Atlantic Canada, need to recognize that a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.”
It’s unlikely to pass. A poll this month showed that 30% of Albertans and 33% of Saskatchewanians would vote to separate if the Liberals were reelected, but other polls have shown lower levels of support, concentrated in rural areas.
Canada’s Clarity Act theoretically allows for a province to separate after a referendum but only if it achieves a clear majority on a clear question, which would lead to a constitutional process at the federal level — an uncertain process.
Alberta’s Indigenous peoples, who have treaties that pre-date the creation of the province, are generally said to oppose the idea.
What Canada’s main parties are running on in upcoming election
Canada’s 45th general election is less than two weeks away, and the nation faces a fraught political climate fueled by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats towards the country. The election's outcome could have far-reaching impacts on Canada’s future and position in a fragmenting world. In an exclusive interview, GZERO’s Tasha Kheiriddin sits down with Eurasia Group‘s senior advisor John Baird and Vice Chairman Gerald Butts to unpack what’s at stake in Canada’s election, including key political players and the strategies behind their campaigns.
Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a key Liberal strategist, says Carney is seeking a public mandate after taking over during Canada’s longest-running minority Parliament. Baird counters that Carney aims to ride early popularity and break from the Trudeau legacy.
Despite clear ideological divides, both Butts and Baird agree on one point: Canada needs a strong majority government. Baird warns that, “when you have such a small number of Members of Parliament, it’s like the tail wagging the dog,” expressing concern over the instability of minority rule. Butts echoes the sentiment, stating the country would be “far better served by a strong government of either political stripe.”
With Canadians heading to the polls, the world will be watching closely. The 2025 Canada election could determine not just the nation's economic path but its place on the global stage.
Watch full interview: Canadians head to the polls — and into the Trump vortex
Robert Jenrick greets Kemi Badenoch, after Badenoch was announced as the new leader of Britain's Conservative Party, in London, Britain, November 2, 2024.
Can Britain’s new Tory leader become Thatcher 2.0?
Self-proclaimed “straight speaker”Kemi Badenoch won the leadership of the UK Conservative Party on Saturday – the first Black woman to do so – and promises to take the party further to the right.
Who is Badenoch? The British-born daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Badenoch champions “migrant patriotism,” rejects “woke” ideologies, and embraces cultural conservatism. She’s pro-Brexit,an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and campaigned on a platform of freedom and individual responsibility. Badenoch’s got a major task cleaning up after Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, but she’s aiming high. She says she will defeat Labour and win back voters lost to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party by reasserting core Conservative values.
And while some have criticized her bluntness, Badenoch considers it an asset. At the party’s weekend conference, she declared, “A lot of people are not used to a politician who says it like it is.” Straight talk, indeed.
What could Badenoch bode well for Britain?In a BBC interview on Sunday, Badenoch stated that, if elected, her economic policies would be “completely the opposite” of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ and would focus on tax cuts. She criticized previous Conservative leaders for their broken promises on immigration and taxes, which damaged voter trust. But she also said Johnson’sPartygate scandal was“overblown” and refused to “churn over” everything that went wrong with previous Tory prime ministers.
We’ll be watching whether her neo-Thatcherite no-nonsense approach unifies or alienates more moderate Tories.
American flag reflections in Times Square
The GOP goes native
What kind of America do you want to live in? There are many ways to answer that question. But if you are a Republican these days, chances are that your ideal America suddenly looks very … homogenous.
A new poll put out this week by CNN shows that fully 55% of people who identify as Republican or Conservative consider an “increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities” to be “threatening” to American culture.
Meanwhile, over in the other political tribe, just 11% of Democrats are worried about foreigners wrecking Americana.
To be clear, the question wasn’t about rates of immigration or policies at the border, something that people can reasonably disagree about even while still embracing the idea of a multiethnic America. And it wasn’t a question about DEI programs at schools or agencies, something that has drawn backlash in recent years.
It was, simply, about what an ideal America looks and sounds like.
And what we see and hear in the study is that more than half of one of the major parties – in a country of immigrants no less – has come to view diverse national backgrounds as a threat to “America’s culture.”
What’s more, that view has emerged among the GOP very quickly.
Back in 2016, when Donald Trump began his unlikely campaign for president with a shot at undocumented immigrants from Mexico, 39% of Republicans felt that way. In 2019, it fell to just 20%, before rising again last year to 40%.
To be fair, this has happened in the context of rising concerns about immigration more broadly, and after several years of record numbers of undocumented immigrant arrivals in the US.
Overall, the percentage of Americans who say diversity of national origins enriches America has fallen from the low 80s in 2019 to the mid-60s today.
But even amid that broader trend, Republicans and Conservatives stand out. They are currently the only demographic group in which a majority sees things this way.
White, Black, male, female, high-earners, low-earners, those with college degrees and those without – in all of these groups, the poll shows, a majority still view ethnic diversity as something that “enriches” American culture.
Even among whites without a college degree, often considered the working-class bedrock of Trumpism, 56% say a broader mosaic of national origins is something good for America.
Why have Republican views shifted more radically than anyone else’s? Some may point to the racial makeup of the GOP itself which, despite steadily absorbing more voters of color, is still 85% Caucasian – or 20 points “whiter” than the Democrats. But that’s not new.
Something else is going on. In a political culture where our identities and perceptions are increasingly shaped by political leanings, one party – one man, even – has been working hard to normalize, and give voice to, a certain kind of nativism.
When Trump speaks of immigrants “poisoning the bloodstream of America,” or repeats falsehoods about foreigners eating cats and dogs, he is fueling a kind of simmering xenophobia that has scary echoes of the past and powerful effects in the present.
There is, room for reasonable debate about how well American society assimilates people from other places. Historically, we actually do a relatively good job – particularly by comparison with much of Europe – in part because being American is, in principle, an idea rather than an ethnicity.
The question is whether, in an America that is observably becoming more diverse while also becoming hazily more skeptical about diversity, the fresh appeal of the GOP’s nativist message is reaching a climax. Or whether Trump is tapping into something deeper, darker, and broader still.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak leaves Millbank Studios after a media interview in London, Britain, May 27, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Sinking Sunak, Mellon's millions for Trump, Israelis bearish on two-state solution, Thousands displaced in Haiti, Chinese carmakers take aim at EU
516: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might be on the verge of making history … and not in a good way. He could be the first sitting prime minister to lose their seat in a general election, according to a new poll, which predicts Labour could win a whopping 516 seats in Parliament. Meanwhile, the poll suggests that Sunak’s Conservative Party will win just 53 seats.
50 million: Conservative billionaire Timothy Mellon reportedly sent $50 million to Donald Trump's presidential campaign the day after the former president was convicted on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial last month. Donations disclosed to the Federal Election Commission show that the Trump campaign raked in $68 million from donors in May. Oddly, Mellon has also been the biggest donor to independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.’s campaign, having donated at least $20 million to his super pac in the past.
26: Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, just 26% of Israelis think a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully, according to new polling. This is a drop from 35% who said the same last year.
580,000: Nearly 580,000 people have been displaced by gang violence in Haiti, according to the UN, which amounts to roughly 5% of the country’s population. It’s estimated that gangs control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. The country is now awaiting the arrival of a Kenya-led international police force to battle the gangs and lend support to a governing council overseen by a prime minister who was appointed in April.
25: It’s a trade war summer!Chinese carmakers are calling for a 25% tax on large European cars over the EU’s plans to impose tariffs of up to 38% on electric vehicles made in China beginning on July 4. The US also recently moved to hit Chinese electric vehicles with higher tariffs — all the way up to a staggering 100%.
0PTS
Tory revolt threatens Rishi’s signature immigration bill
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is leading a group of 60 Tory rebels who threaten to vote against the bill on Wednesday unless it includes an amendment prohibiting asylum-seekers from filing legal appeals against their deportation. Johnson’s group argues it is trying to strengthen the bill. Two Conservative MPs, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, resigned as deputy chairs of the Conservative Party on Tuesday after joining the revolt against Rishi’s legislation.
But Conservative moderates fear the bill may already violate international refugee law and have signaled that they would oppose stronger language.
Sunak also worries that Rwanda will not accept the deal if the amendment is made. The Labour Party will vote against the legislation on principle, so the bill’s only hope for passage is an end to the Tory revolt and Conservatives voting as a united front.
Sunak has made stopping the arrival of “small boats” carrying refugees a central aim of his government. A defeat of such a central plank of his legislation would be disastrous at a time when his party is already expected to be wiped out by Labour in the next general election later this year.
Boris Johnson remains a dangerous force in UK politics
Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics, this week from the Oslo airport.
Is the political career of Boris Johnson over?
Seems to be the case but you can never be entirely certain, in his particular case. I think he has the ambition to come back. And clearly, he's going to remain a dangerous, in my opinion, a very disruptive force inside the Conservative Party. If they lose the election next year, which is not unlikely, mildly speaking, there might be a civil war and Boris Johnson might be one of the leaders of that particular civil war inside the Conservative Party. But remains to be seen.
What's the legacy, political and otherwise, of Silvio Berlusconi?
Well, to be on the positive side, he created a media empire. He did some reforms of the Italian political system after the scandals that sort of ripped apart the old political system in the past, but apart from that and in spite of the fact that he is now, sort of, given a state funeral and everyone is parading for him, that happens in situations like this, I think his legacy is mostly negative on the populist, who in three terms of government did very, very little to address the fundamental problems of the Italian economy, in the Italian state. A populist man who maneuvered, a man who had self-interest at the center of most things. But I think history will not judge him too kind.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Is this the end of Boris Johnson?
Boris Johnson is out of British political life for the first time in more than 20 years after announcing on Friday that he’s giving up his parliamentary seat and resigning from the House of Commons effective immediately.
Johnson took this preemptive step after seeing the results of Parliament’s privilege committee investigation that accused him of lying to parliament over the “partygate” scandal. The committee comprised of four Conservative and three Labour MPs was reportedly set to recommend that the former PM be banned from the chamber for 20 days – though the report has not yet been made public.
This recommendation would have led to a by-election if 10% of voters in Johnson’s constituency backed the move. Given Johnson’s deep unpopularity, this was all but a sure thing, and he quit in a huff – decrying the “witch hunt” on his way out – rather than risk being shown the door.
It’s a startling fall from grace for a man who, in 2019, inherited the biggest parliamentary majority since the 1970s, only to squander it by breaking his own COVID lockdown rules and lying about it repeatedly. Still, Johnson has left open the possibility of another political run, though he would have to find a new seat to run in. (His current seat will almost certainly flip to Labour.)
What does this mean for the Conservative Party? PM Rishi Sunak, a Johnson rival, said that he backs the parliamentary committee’s work. But even though Sunak will undoubtedly be glad to see the back of Johnson’s shaggy head, this drama – Johnson called the committee a “kangaroo court” – is a distraction the PM doesn’t want, particularly after he’s spent the past year trying to convince voters that the days of petty Tory Party infighting are over.
What’s more, two other Tory MPs and Johnson allies also resigned Friday over a separate matter, meaning that the Conservative Party will now face three tough by-elections next month.
This development, however, is unlikely to have a significant impact on broader politics considering that the Labour Party is pummeling the Tories in the polls and is expected to maintain this edge in the lead-up to next year’s election.