00:00Well, across Europe in recent years, in not all, but in most European countries, you have seen
00:05the rise of Eurosceptic nationalist parties increasing their level of support and their
00:12popularity. And nowhere really is this more dramatic than in Portugal, where this Shager
00:18Party, a party that wasn't even founded until 2019, has dramatically reshaped the political
00:26landscape in Portugal, to the point that the country has just implemented a huge ban. Now,
00:32before I get to that, just to give you some context and the background on this, in the
00:36most recent Portuguese elections, you actually saw the Shager Party overtake the Socialists
00:42to become the official opposition in the Portuguese Parliament. Now, interestingly enough, that
00:49was confirmed after overseas voting was taken into account. That's when Shager actually
00:54took their lead over the Socialists. So clearly, many Portuguese voters who live abroad and can
00:59vote in these elections support Shager. Now, when it came to the presidential election, the
01:06leader of Shager, Andre Ventura, got to the final two, got to the runoff, got to the final
01:11presidential vote. And he was pretty much crushed by now-president Antonio José Seguro, who was
01:21backed by many figures, both on the left and the right, to stop Shager from winning. But Ventura's
01:28still got 33% of the vote. He got 1.7 million votes, another 400,000 that he achieved in
01:34the first
01:35round after the Shager Party, as I said, became the official opposition. Now, as I said, the impact
01:43that this has had on Portuguese politics has been profound. It's been a radical reshaping, really,
01:48of what Portugal's doing, to the point now where they've just actually put in place a
01:55burka ban, banning face coverings in a public place. And you can see here, fines of 150 to
02:013,000 euros with some exemptions you can see there. But basically, the key part of this
02:09to think about is this was actually, this law originally proposed by Shager. And things
02:15have changed so much in terms of the Portuguese political outlook that the president, Antonio
02:21José Seguro, has now actually approved this. And this now will become law, it seems, in
02:30Portugal. And you can see there the quote that, for the president of the republic, the uncovered
02:36face constitutes a structuring dimension of social trust, a characteristic of Portuguese society,
02:42and said there that daily coexistence is based on mutual recognition and the possibility of
02:47establishing a direct relationship between people, going on to say in the statement, and
02:52to admit that women and only women must hide their entire faces implies an asymmetry incompatible
02:57with the values of parity and equal dignity between men and women, values that shape European
03:03democracies. Now, we know overwhelmingly that there is support for such a ban in the UK as well.
03:09I think pretty much every single poll was shown a majority of people in the UK would support ban
03:15in the burka overwhelmingly. But I think that shows you in terms of Portuguese politics,
03:19an example there of profound change that has swept Portugal in recent years, as indeed we've seen
03:26in many countries across Europe. Please do let me know though your thoughts on that in the comments
03:30below. Would you like to see a burka ban in the UK? Please do whack this video a quick thumbs
03:36up
03:36and of course as ever. Cheers for watching.
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