The Duran Live: E38. Endgame, China vs. USA

With the Russiagate smokescreen cleared, we have now arrived to the final act of this play. China and the USA are squaring off against one another, as economic differences are turning into geopolitical divides. Both countries were prepared for this, knowing full well that eventually the world would reach this point of clear division.

Iran, Venezuela, Turkey, Syria, Huawei, Big Tech, USD reserve currency, IMF, Swift, One Belt One Road, Brexit, EU, Eurasia…

The world can now be framed within the context of two superpowers duking it out.

See Also: (The Duran) – Australian election delivers stunning defeat to a Labor Party out of touch with people

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the conservative Liberal–National Coalition’s surprise victory on Saturday, Australia’s federal election. The election was widely considered to be an “unlosable” one for the Australian Labor Party. Australian voters however delivered a victory to the Coalition prime minister, Scott Morrison. The results follow a trend seen in the US election of 2016, the Brexit vote in the UK, and the Yellow Vest unrest in France, where working class voters are vocally rejecting neoliberal policies championed by center left politicians.

According to National Review the ALP entered the campaign having enjoyed a healthy lead over the Coalition in more than 60 successive polls since the 2016 election. Even an allegedly infallible exit poll promised Labor a total of 82 seats in the 151-member Parliament. In fact, Labor looks like it will end up with 69 seats against the Coalition’s 77. With five seats still being counted, the Coalition has won 75, and though Morrison has been promised the support of independents, he probably won’t need them. These statistical swings add up to what he called “a miracle” of unexpectedness.

How the Coalition won is not so unexpected. It won blue-collar workers, outer-city and suburban seats, and regional constituencies, especially in Queensland. Australia’s cultural equivalent to the U.S. South delivered only five of its 30 seats to the ALP despite the party’s high hopes of gains there. On the other hand, inner-city seats in Sydney, Melbourne, and other metropolitan areas, inhabited by well-paid professionals, continued to drift leftward, dividing their votes between Labor and the Greens. Again and again, however, that drift stopped short of toppling the seats held by Coalition cabinet ministers that Labor had targeted. But it’s a tide that will still be coming in at the time of the next election.