Europe

Try as he might Emmanuel Macron and his party are unable to arrest the popularity of the National Rally. A month out from the European elections, the latest poll has their principal candidate, Jordan Bardella, on 32 points, double the score of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer. The latest head of state with dubious ethics to be courted by Macron is Xi Jinping Hayer and Bardella have clashed twice in recent days in live television debates, and on both occasions Hayer has condemned as ‘shameful’ the National Rally’s benevolence towards Vladimir Putin in the years leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That this strategy doesn’t appear to be working for

Like drowning men clutching at straws, Giorgia Meloni’s opponents are trying ever more hopelessly to justify their claim that she is a far-right threat to democracy. It’s not that Meloni has stopped being far right since she became Italy’s first female prime minister 18 months ago. It is just that – despite all the apocalyptic warnings about her – she wasn’t far right to begin with. The new law is not an assault on the 1978 law that made abortion legal in Italy. Meloni as a premier has proved to be much more like a Mediterranean version of Margaret Thatcher than the heir to Benito Mussolini – which many of her opponents still call her. As a result,

Elections have a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. So it is with Rishi Sunak and the Tories, who are hoping their Rwanda Bill will be their salvation come the general election. In Brussels, the EU also knows that the migrant crisis will be a significant factor in deciding the outcome of Europe’s elections next month. The omens, or rather, the polls aren’t good. The EU is bracing itself for what it describes as a ‘sharp right turn’ next month The EU is bracing itself for what it describes as a ‘sharp right turn’ next month. Certainly, the polls in France and Holland, to name but two of the

Emmanuel Macron is thinking and saying the unthinkable for a French President of the Republic. This weekend he suggested that French nuclear weapons – the holy grail of French security, intended to ensure that France never relives 1940 – could be put at the disposal of the European Union’s defence. For Macron this is a make or break moment for the EU to remain a world power or face oblivion His comments drew strident criticism from across the political spectrum. ‘Macron is becoming a national danger’, claimed the Rassemblement National’s Thierry Mariani. ‘And after France’s nuclear weapon’, he added, ‘it will be France’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council

Pedro Sanchez has decided to stay on as Spain’s Socialist prime minister, despite announcing last week that he was considering resigning. Sanchez suspended his official duties for a few days to make the decision, following the launch of a judicial investigation into his wife, Begoña Gomez, for corruption and influence-peddling. (Sanchez has said the allegations are ‘as scandalous in appearance as they are non-existent.’) Accusations of corruption against political opponents and their relatives (the more, the better) has become a standard method of warfare in the Spanish political arena The case against Gomez was brought to a judge by an anti-corruption organisation called Manos Limpias (‘Clean Hands’), which Sanchez has accused of leading

Since 2012, the French actor Omar Sy has lived in Los Angeles. One of his houses has included a sprawling villa with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, an outdoor pool and a jacuzzi. With luxury like that perhaps it’s not surprising that Sy – known to British audiences for his role in X-Men, Jurassic World and Lupin – rarely returns to the Republic. But he’s in town this week to promote a book, and has been using his time in television studios to warn the good folk of France about the danger of voting for the ‘extreme right’. First, however, as befits a millionaire actor who lives in a very big

As the German AfD’s European election campaign kicks off tomorrow, the far-right party’s leadership could be forgiven for counting down to polling day in June with dread. This campaign launch marks the end of a torrid fortnight for the party that is threatening to jeopardise the AfD’s future in Brussels. Two of the party’s top politicians have been embroiled in foreign influence scandals that have plunged the party into crisis. On 19 April, Der Spiegel reported that Petr Bystron, the AfD’s second-choice party list candidate at the European elections, was caught in a sting operation receiving ‘small packages’ of money from a Russian businessman who managed a now-sanctioned Kremlin-backed propaganda

Few would disagree with Ben Wallace’s description of Iran as a ‘bully’. The former defence secretary made his comments earlier this week after Iran’s missile attack on Israel. ‘The only option when Iran and Russia hit, I have concluded, is to hit back twice as hard and not stop until they get the message,’ wrote Wallace in the Daily Telegraph. The UK, along with the US, have since extended sanctions against Iran, as has the EU. ‘We feel it’s very important to do everything to isolate Iran,’ said EU summit chairman Charles Michel. Even before the missile attack against Israel, there had been another call to ban Iran from the

‘How do you think this looks to the rest of the world?’ asked Nigel Farage as police attempted to shut down the National Conservatism conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Belgian politicians won’t care what it looks like. This is the most undemocratic country in western Europe. And while the mayor who tried to ban the conference obsesses about what he calls ‘the far-right’, Islamism continues to thrive in Belgium’s left-wing eco-system. For a decade, France has regarded its neighbour as the ‘home of radical Islamists’, and nowhere more so than in Brussels, from where sprang the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 Parisians in November 2015. ‘Molenbeekistan’ was how the