Europe

Gavin Mortimer

What would Marine Le Pen’s critics do if she wins?

A well-known French radio comedian recently suggested an armed revolution in the event Marine Le Pen is elected President in 2027. Mahaut Drama made her comments not in jest, but during a debate at a left-wing media festival in Paris entitled ‘How to fight the far right’. Envisaging a Le Pen victory, Drama said: ‘What do we do? Do we have armed factions too?… Should we start a revolution?’ She continued: ‘If there are people who are prepared to be brave to that extent, I can only encourage them’. Drama’s remarks, which were broadcast to a wider audience last week on the internet, outraged Le Pen’s National Rally party. Their

Britain should follow Germany’s lead in weeding out anti-Semites

On the surface of it, Germany’s new pathway to citizenship sounds like a rare dose of sense from the one country in the Western world whose modern history means it still understands why Israel has a right to exist. One surefire short-hand for establishing who means us ill is by singling out those who mean our Jews ill The shake-up makes it easier to get German citizenship, allowing people to apply five rather than eight years after they arrive in the country – and just three years for those with good language skills. But for die-hard anti-Semites, the process will get harder, with questions that may involve naming the date of Israel’s founding

Is this the beginning of the end for Erdogan?

President Erdogan’s political star rose when he won the local elections in Istanbul exactly 30 years ago. ‘The one who wins Istanbul wins the whole of Turkey,’ he once said. His famous sentence is now back to haunt him. People already talk about ‘the beginning of the end’ for Erdogan In Istanbul yesterday, tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate not Erdogan but Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition’s incumbent mayor, in municipal elections. Despite the fatigue from last year’s general elections, over 78 per cent of Turkey’s 61 million-strong electorate turned up to cast their votes yesterday. Their backing for Imamoglu was resounding: his Republican People’s Party (CHP) performed spectacularly, securing 37.7

Katja Hoyer

Germany’s Holocaust dilemma

‘In 2024, Jewish money is once again being confiscated by a German bank’. This is a headline that makes for uncomfortable reading in Berlin. It is part of a story currently making the rounds on social media and being described as a ‘worrying echo of history.’ But there is more to this story than meets the eye. And it goes right to the heart of Germany’s Holocaust dilemma. The country responsible for arguably the biggest crime in history does not want to be seen as suppressing Jewish voices The headline was thought up by the activist organisation Jewish Voice for Peace which says its account with a Berlin bank has been frozen

Gavin Mortimer

Europe must tighten its borders to combat the Islamist threat

Europe is on a state of high alert after Friday’s Islamist attack in Moscow that left 137 concertgoers dead. France has raised its security alert to the highest level, and more soldiers will be deployed to patrol the streets and stand guard outside ‘sensitive sites’ including churches, synagogues and schools. President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Sunday that the group that carried out the Moscow attack, Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-K), an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, had attempted to commit ‘several’ atrocities on French soil in recent months, including an attack in the city of Strasbourg. Will border controls be tightened? It would be futile. The Islamist threat

John Keiger

Keir Starmer should think twice before shunning Marine Le Pen

Riding high in the polls with a 20-point lead, the Labour party is preparing for government. Across the Channel with a 10-15 point poll lead in the June European elections and predicted victory in the 2027 presidentials, the Rassemblement National is making tentative preparations for government too. Two years after forming his cabinet, Sir Keir Starmer’s cross-Channel interlocutor will be either Marine Le Pen or – should her ineligibility be declared in the forthcoming October trial for alleged misuse of European parliamentary assistants – the RN’s star president Jordan Bardella. David Lammy, who is given to intemperate language, should avoid insulting the future French government Labour’s election manifesto is yet

Jonathan Miller

How Brigitte Macron captured the Elysée

As Emmanuel Macron approaches the end of the second year since his re-election, his presidency seems to have become a cosplay. Out is Macron the policy wonk, mansplaining interminably. In is Macron the action man.  What might be behind this remarkable transformation? Brigitte, say the Elysée-ologists. President Macron’s wife, his high school drama teacher, 24 years his senior, appears to be the winner in a palace power struggle and Macron 2.0 is the result. It’s been rough for Macron since he lost his majority in the National Assembly in 2022. His relationship with the German chancellor has descended into mutual loathing. He’s tottering on the edge of humiliation to the Rassemblement

Could corruption bring down Spain’s government again?

Just four months into its second term, Spain’s Socialist-led government is already mired in corruption allegations. The latest scandal emerged this week and focuses on the wife of prime minister Pedro Sanchez, Begoña Gómez.  Gomez is alleged to have had secret meetings with the management of Air Europa, Spain’s third largest airline, in late 2020, just before it was bailed out with a €475 million aid package by her husband’s leftist government.   The Conservative Popular party (PP) has wasted no time in capitalising on this. Eloy Suarez Lamata, a PP representative in Spain’s upper house, claimed that the allegations against Gomez ‘would have brought down’ any other president in Europe ‘because

Gavin Mortimer

Can Macron halt the ‘Mexicanisation’ of France?

Emmanuel Macron showed off his virility this week with the release of two photos in which he is seen giving a punchbag his best shots. Is Vladimir Putin scared? More to the point, will the drug cartels of Marseille be frightened into submission by the Elysee Palace’s very own Rocky? The day before the publication of the photos, Macron visited Marseille, his thirteenth visit to the Mediterranean city in seven years. As usual, the president swung by to talk tough about the deadly violence that has gripped the city for years. Last year, 49 people were shot dead in tit-for-tat killings among rival drug gangs, and 123 were wounded. ‘In

Gavin Mortimer

Could Jordan Bardella be France’s next PM?

Dixmont, Yonne In Britain, France’s National Front is synonymous with the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie founded the right-wing party in 1972 and his daughter Marine replaced him as its leader in 2011. In France, however, the National Rally – as it was rebranded in 2018 – is increasingly the party of Jordan Bardella. The 28-year-old was elected its president in November 2022. The party members had a straight choice: Bardella, a working-class youngster from northern Paris, or the veteran Louis Aliot, the 53-year-old mayor of Perpignan who had joined the party before Bardella was born and who was for many years in a relationship with Marine Le Pen. ‘You grow

Is Viktor Orbán really anti-Semitic?

Much of the criticism directed at Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s long-serving populist prime minister, is richly deserved. Orbán poses as the bête noire of the EU, despite Hungary being a net recipient of EU largesse. Another source of the opprobrium directed against Orbán is his opposition to aiding Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. This is downright indecent for someone who, as a handsome young political firebrand in 1989, helped to end Soviet control of Hungary. Has Orbán forgotten, now that he is grey-haired and rather porky, what it means to yearn for your country’s freedom and independence? Continued access to cheap Russian gas and oil just isn’t a good

Gavin Mortimer

What the French left could learn from Keir Starmer

Last week on Spectator TV Fraser Nelson saluted the ‘intervention’ of the Labour party in the debate about whether the magazine he edits, as well as the Telegraph Media Group, should be sold to a UAE-backed consortium. In an interview, Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture secretary said that ‘ownership by a foreign power is incompatible with press freedom, which is essential in a democracy’. We shouldn’t have been surprised at Labour’s championing of press freedom, even for publications in the Conservative stable. The party’s leader, Keir Starmer, has written more than a dozen columns for the Telegraph. The most recent was last December when he accused the Tories of having betrayed voters

Gavin Mortimer

The EU is divided in its bid to stop the boats

There was good and bad news for the European Union last week: the number of migrants arriving in Europe on the Central Mediterranean route in the first two months of 2024 dropped 70 per cent compared to the same period the previous year, the latest figures revealed. The bad news was that they were up 117 per cent on the eastern Mediterranean route. The really bad news was that they were up 541 per cent on the West African route as Malians, Senegalese and Mauritanians arrived in large numbers on Spanish territory. The nationalities crossing the Eastern Mediterranean in the greatest number are Afghans, Syrians and Egyptians. The figures will

An ex-German diplomat’s withering verdict on Berlin’s ‘flawed’ Russia policy

Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven couldn’t have had a worse start as Germany’s ambassador to Poland. Germany’s fraught historical legacy with the country – six million Poles killed in the Second World War and Prussia’s role in wiping Poland off the map from 1795 to 1918 – inspired Freytag von Loringhoven in his final posting to push hard to improve ties with Warsaw. But the Polish government saw things differently. His approval as ambassador – a role he finally took up in 2020 – was delayed by members of Poland’s then ruling PiS party, who campaigned against him using Nazi slurs. They targeted him because his father, Bernd, was a

Gavin Mortimer

Will France’s Olympians embarrass Macron?

France host England tonight in the final match of the 2024 Six Nations. ‘Le Crunch’, as this fixture has come to be known, is never for the faint-hearted but this evening’s atmosphere is likely to be especially febrile. The match is being played in Lyon, in the south-east of France, instead of the Stade de France in the north of Paris. There’ll be 20,000 fewer fans because of Lyon’s smaller stadium but the noise they will generate will be far greater than the corporate crowd in Paris. Lyon is rugby territory. There are several famous clubs within a 100 mile radius and the chance to barrack les Rosbifs ­– the French retort

How Ozempic fattened up Denmark’s economy

It’s official: weight-loss wonder drug Wegovy (also marketed as Ozempic) makes US celebrities shrink but makes the Danish economy grow. This week, the most amusing Oscars clickbait featured not the typical best- and worst-dressed actors, but instead celebrities who have experienced recent miraculous weight loss. The Daily Mail helpfully split this award category between those confirmed to have taken Wegovy, and others who have merely inexplicably and rapidly shrunk. Their collective weight loss is Denmark’s economic gain: this week, Denmark’s statistics agency confirmed the Danish economy grew 1.8 per cent in 2023 – but without the contribution of Wegovy’s owner, Novo Nordisk, it would instead have shrunk 0.1 per cent. Free market

Gavin Mortimer

Does it matter that Emmanuel Macron doesn’t have children?

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the French press this week and passed on a message to the people. ‘Your children are not going to die in Ukraine,’ he said. He made his remarks 24 hours before the French parliament voted on a bilateral security agreement that Zelensky signed with President Emmanuel Macron last month. The vote, which went the way of the government by 372 to 99, is symbolic but it allowed parliament to voice their opposition to Macron’s recent belligerent rhetoric towards Russia. The left-wing La France Insoumise voted against the agreement, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally abstained. A leader without a child is more likely to think

Why can’t Ukraine trademark the phrase: ‘Russian warship, go f**k yourself’?

Ukraine’s bravery and daring in the face of Russian aggression marks a stark contrast with European – or at least EU – lethargy and disinclination to take sides. A recent spat over, of all things, European trade mark law is a case in point. In early 2022, a soldier on the desolate Snake Island in the Black Sea famously added to Ukrainian folklore by greeting the Russian cruiser Moskva, which had come to take over the island, with the words ‘Russian warship, go f**k yourself’. This slogan quickly became hot merchandising property. Kyiv understandably decided to put to work to aid the war effort: it applied to register the phrase as a European

Jonathan Miller

Macron has spied an easy win with his assisted dying Bill

Emmanuel Macron was predictably theatrical when he introduced his Bill on the end of life yesterday. In the proposed legislation, medical staff would be authorised to help their patients to die – which Macron described as a law of ‘fraternity’. He pronounced: ‘With this text, we look death in the face.’ A guaranteed headline in the Catholic daily La Croix. The President has often favoured dark suits and I have previously described him as having a funereal mien. But he was positively bouncy extolling the Bill, which will be debated by the National Assembly this spring. Macron is swimming with the tide of popular opinion He chose to kick off the

John Keiger

Why is Macron suddenly pro-Ukraine? Fear of Le Pen

Its an old ruse to deploy foreign policy for domestic purposes. France has a long history in that vein. General de Gaulle was adept at using popular domestic anti-Americanism on the world stage to embarrass pro-Nato political forces at home; François Mitterrand exploited the early 1980s Euromissile crisis with the Soviet Union to humiliate and isolate the French Communist party. Emmanuel Macron’s startling declaration that the West should not rule out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine is less a Damascene conversion than a strategy to stymy the Rassemblement National’s runaway 10 point poll lead for June’s EU elections. Macron has doubled down on his new-found international bellicosity by