Labour Party

• The future of its moderate parliamentary leader, John Pesutto, who took over from the hapless Matthew Guy, now hangs in the balance.
• Read more:
  Victorian Liberals embarrassed by extremists within: how does this keep happening?
• But Dutton’s comments represent a significant escalation in a crisis that seems increasingly likely to end up in the courts.
• Pesutto’s removal is also now more likely given that several Liberals in his depleted caucus have backed rebel MP Moira Deeming.
• Deeming is challenging her suspension from the party following her attendance at an anti-trans “Let Women Speak” rally in front of Parliament House.
• The intervention itself would also be likely to end up in court, with opponents challenging its legality and the force of its decisions.

• A number of court cases are still being pursued against the election outcomes from votes cast earlier this year, but these aren’t expected to affect the inauguration.
• As a political scientist who studies elections and observed the elections, I believe there are five takeaways from the elections that need to be addressed before the next general elections in four years’ time.

Electoral violence has not gone away

• Nigeria has a long history of violence during elections and it sadly manifested again in 2023.
• A newspaper puts deaths from the 2023 elections at 39 while the European Union at a media briefing claimed 21.
• Violence marred the elections in parts of the country: Lagos, Delta, Kogi and Kano States.

Voters’ suppression was the name of the game

• Also known as deliberate disenfranchisement of eligible voters, this is a strategy designed to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing voters from voting.
• Alternatively, some Nigerian politicians have resorted to voter suppression to undermine their political rivals.
• Voter suppression was also recorded in Abia, Borno, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Ogun, Sokoto, and Rivers States.

Ethnic politics on the rise

• The elections further heightened ethnic resentment and tension, especially in Lagos State.
• Ethnic politics has been a bane of Nigeria politics for long.
• The Labour Party, a relatively unpopular party, defeated the ruling APC in Lagos State during the 25 February presidential election.

Low voter turnout

• Voter turnout refers to the percentage of people who actually take part in an election relative to the total number of registered voters.
• In an earlier article, I identified five reasons why the voter turnout was low.

Technology is not enough

• The outcome of the elections showed also that the deployment of technology is not enough.
• While voter accreditation was largely carried out with the Bimodal device, the electoral commission’s failure to carry out real time transmission of the presidential election results created room for alleged result manipulation.

Conclusion

• Perpetrators and financiers of electoral violence should be arrested and diligently prosecuted in order to deter others who see violence as a viable pathway to electoral victory.
• Political leaders should also tone down their vitriol to whittle down the charged political atmosphere that is capable of rail-roading Nigeria to the 1994 Rwanda experience.

• The 2023 Turner prize shortlist has been announced featuring British artists Jesse Darling, Rory Pilgrim, Ghislaine Leung and Barbara Walker.
• With a whirlwind 40-year socio-political history this lens can be applied to the prize.

From Thatcher’s 1980s to Channel 4’s 1990s

• Things changed in 1991 with Channel 4 as a hip new sponsor and a ban on artists over 50.
• The prize would raise interest in a newly youthful, increasingly fashionable area of UK culture.
• The 1990s prizes are remembered for Young British Art.
• The televised celebrity-strewn Channel 4 under 50s version of the Turner prize was part of this – feeding the feel-good 1990s vibes, fuelled by PR and underwritten by a debt-driven boom.

2000’s third way

• Some of the tax income from a seemingly buoyant economy was spent on the arts, which were newly redefined as consumer services and required to prove value and efficiency using metrics.
• Titled State Britain, it was created when Tony Blair passed a law to make it illegal to protest within a mile of Parliament.
• Positioned across the perimeter of the one mile from Parliament no-protest-zone, it probed a line between art and politics.

2008’s financial crash and a new outlook

• Shortlisted Turner prize art from that time didn’t say much about austerity or that moment, instead looking a lot like the art of the early 2000s.
• Anti-austerity movements found a home alongside trade unions in a Labour Party reimagined under the radically social democratic leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
• Lubaina Himid, aged 62, was named winner in 2017, after the Turner prize age cap was dropped.
• By implication, the work conveys something about the failure of institutions to provide either basic support or transformative change.
• Hope is found instead in a politics of community and care, vulnerability and interconnection, which offers occasional glimpses of better worlds.

• Both agricultural runoff and the release of untreated sewage are leading causes of river pollution in the UK.
• Between 1991 and 2019, the percentage of Europe’s bathing waters with “excellent” water quality increased from 53% to 85%.
• In several countries, including Austria, Greece and Malta, more than 95% of bathing sites are now classified as excellent.
• So, what lessons can the UK learn from European countries that have cleaned up their act?

1. Croatia

• The practice of discharging untreated sewage into the Adriatic Sea reduced the quality of Croatia’s coastal waters.
• But between 2009 and 2015, a World Bank loan worth US$87.5 million (£70m) funded a project to improve sanitation in Croatia.
• This included the construction of 14 new wastewater treatment plants and the installation of 162km of sewerage networks.

2. Germany

• The Ruhr river in western Germany flows through the country’s major industrial Ruhr region.
• In 1971, bathing in the river was banned due to heavy pollution, both from sewage and chemical effluent from the local steel and mining industries.

3. Albania

• This was largely the consequence of the country’s underdeveloped water supply and sewerage network.
• But in recent years, bathing water quality in coastal areas of Albania has improved significantly.
• Over two-thirds of the country’s bathing sites are now of excellent quality, including some of the country’s biggest tourist destinations, such as Durrës in western Albania.

4. Italy

• The water quality in Lake Varese, a small lake in the north of Italy, had deteriorated over a long period since the 1960s.
• This was the result of extensive algal blooms that were likely caused by nutrient enrichment from industrial effluent.

A major political issue

• Water quality is now a major political issue in the UK.
• The leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, recently accused the government of “turning Britain’s waterways into an open sewer”.