Atlantic Sentinel

Category: Endorsement

  • Sánchez Has Made Spain Freer and Greener

    Pedro Sanchez
    Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez speaks at a rally of his Socialist Workers’ Party in Badajoz, May 23 (PSOE)

    Spain has done well under Pedro Sánchez. The economy is projected to grow 2 percent this year and next, faster than the EU average. Unemployment is at its lowest since 2008. Inflation is down from 8 to under 3 percent. Spaniards pay almost the lowest energy bills in Europe. Renewables provide 50 percent of Spain’s electricity.

    Sánchez, a social democrat who governs with the far left, has protected Spaniards from the worst effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine by temporarily reducing sales tax on food and fuel and by paying the wages of workers who lost their jobs. He has invested 40 percent of Spain’s EU COVID-19 recovery funds into green projects.

    He has also made structural reforms, like raising the minimum wage and reducing severance pay. He cut taxes for small businesses and incomes under €300,000, and paid for it by raising taxes on capital gains and incomes over €3 million.

    The left-wing coalition government — the first since the Civil War — banned “gay conversion therapy”, legalized euthanasia for the terminally ill and required slaughterhouses to install cameras. (more…)

  • Macron Is Succeeding. He Deserves a Second Term

    Emmanuel Macron
    French president Emmanuel Macron gives a speech in Nîmes, December 6, 2019 (Elysée/Soazig de la Moissonniere)

    When we endorsed Emmanuel Macron in 2017, it was because he was the best candidate to make France competitive and confident again. He has. French voters should give him a second term.

    Macron relaxed French labor laws, which had been among the strictest in the world. Unemployment fell to a thirteen-year low. He eased auditing requirements, streamlined bankruptcy procedures and lowered social charges and taxes for entrepreneurs. Business creation rose 60 percent.

    Foreign investors were impressed. Before the pandemic, France even overtook Germany and the United Kingdom as the top destination of foreign investment in Europe.

    Opponents have lampooned Macron as a “president of the rich” for putting the economy first. But he also enrolled freelancers in public unemployment insurance, extended welfare to one million more households, and made dental services, eyeglasses and hearing aids free.

    France became a leader again in Europe. Macron didn’t win every argument in Brussels, but the EU looks and sounds more French than it did five years ago. Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and Donald Trump’s isolationism have convinced the other member states to give France’s proposals for European “strategic autonomy” a chance. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has given European defense cooperation, long favored by the French, a new lease on life. With five more years, Macron could put those ideas into action. (more…)

  • Liberals Would Lend Urgency to Next German Government

    Christian Lindner
    German Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner makes a speech in parliament in Berlin (Kevin Schneider)

    With Germany’s Christian Democrats and Social Democrats neck and neck in the polls, and the Greens not far behind, no single party or combination of two parties is projected to win a majority in the election on Sunday. Germans should vote for the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and make them kingmakers in the next Bundestag.

    The liberals balked at a pact with the Christian Democrats and Greens in 2017, fearing that concessions to the center and left would prevent them from prying away voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany. They have wisely abandoned that strategy. Center-right parties across Europe have tried and failed to win back voters from the nationalist right by mimicking their policies and rhetoric. It’s unconvincing. The parties that did find their way back, like the Christian Social Union of Bavaria, did so by being true by their convictions.

    The Free Democrats, in their manifesto as well as their campaign, have been outspokenly liberal, calling for equal adoption rights for gay couples, protecting personal data, reducing publicly-funded media to news and documentaries, and restricting unemployment benefits. These aren’t priorities for other parties, which is why the FDP needs to get back into power. (more…)

  • Biden Would Pull America from the Brink

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa, August 8, 2019 (Gage Skidmore)

    The rest of the free world will never look at America the same way again.

    Donald Trump’s election in 2016, coming on the heels of a disastrous Iraq War few Canadians and Europeans supported, disillusioned even the most fervent Atlanticists. The land of the free was no longer impervious to the dark forces of nativism that necessitated the Atlantic alliance in the first place.

    A restoration under Joe Biden may be unlikely. America is drawn to Asia and Europe must take responsibility for security in its own neighborhood. But four more years of Trump could shatter even pragmatic cooperation between nations that are still committed to an open and just world. Biden would pull America from the brink and rejoin the West. (more…)

  • Liberal Democrats Are Least Bad Option in British Election

    Nick Clegg Jo Swinson
    British Liberal Democratic party leaders Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson visit Bishopbriggs, Scotland, April 1, 2015 (Liberal Democrats)

    British politics hasn’t given liberals hope in recent years.

    In 2015, we called for another Conservative-Liberal coalition. When the Conservative Party won an outright majority that year and veered to the right, embracing Brexit with a gusto, we switched to the Liberal Democrats. We still supported Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives in Scotland in 2017, but she is gone and with her any hope of moderation on the right.

    Boris Johnson, who once described himself as a liberal, has made common cause with the reactionaries in his party to take power; forced out 21 principled moderates who opposed his Brexit policy, including ten former cabinet ministers, two former chancellors and one former deputy prime minister; and unlawfully suspended Parliament in an attempt to prevent debate on his Brexit deal, which, for all his bluster, is essentially the deal the EU offered two years ago.

    Worst of all, Johnson frames this election as a choice between “the people” and Parliament. That is the sort of insidious rhetoric which paves the way for the erosion of liberal democracy. (more…)

  • Give Regional Parties the Balance of Power in Spain

    Pedro Sánchez
    Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez makes a speech in Congress in Madrid, July 17, 2018 (La Moncloa)

    There doesn’t seem to be market in Spain for a political party that is liberal and pragmatic on the issue of Catalonia. (more…)

  • Sánchez Is the Reasonable Choice in Spain’s Election

    Pedro Sánchez
    Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez arrives in Salzburg, Austria for a meeting with other European socialist party leaders, September 19, 2018 (PES)

    As long as Spain’s mainstream right would rather do a deal with the far right than the center-left, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ Socialists are the most reasonable choice in the country’s general election on Sunday.

    Sánchez’ only possible partners are the far-left Podemos and regionalists from the Basque Country, the Canary Islands, Catalonia and Valencia. Even if, as the polls predict, the Socialists expand their plurality in Congress, the next coalition government could be unwieldy.

    Podemos will require concessions and its platform is full of unwise proposals, from abolishing spy agencies to nationalizing energy companies to withdrawing from international trade deals.

    If the regionalists end up as kingmakers, they can be expected to leverage their position to extract more money from Madrid. The two largest parties in Catalonia insist they will only back Sánchez if he comes out in favor of a legal independence referendum. Sánchez insists he won’t.

    But those complications are preferable to the alternative: a hard-right government that would need the Franco apologists in Vox for its majority and exacerbate the separatist crisis in Catalonia by once again suspending self-government in this part of Spain. (more…)

  • Left-Right Coalition Would Be Best Outcome for Italy

    Matteo Renzi
    Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi answers questions from reporters in Berlin, Germany, July 1, 2015 (Palazzo Chigi)

    There are two realistic outcomes to Italy’s election on Sunday: a right-wing government that includes the xenophobic Brothers of Italy and Northern League or a German-style grand coalition between Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the Democrats.

    The second would be better for Italy and for Europe. To make that outcome more likely, Italians should vote for the center-left. (more…)

  • Liberal Free Democrats Would Keep Merkel Sharp

    Christian Lindner
    German Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner makes a speech in parliament in Berlin (Kevin Schneider)

    There is little doubt Angela Merkel will win reelection in Germany on Sunday. Her Christian Democrats are projected to win up to 40 percent support against 25 percent for the second party, the Social Democrats.

    The two could continue to share power in a “grand coalition”, but we’re hoping the liberal Free Democrats will win enough seats to help form a center-right government instead.

    Polls suggest that the two parties might just fall short of a majority. Conservative and liberal voters who want to keep the left out of power ought to give the Free Democrats their support. (more…)

  • Liberal Democrats Are Least Bad Option in Britain’s Election

    British parliament London
    Aerial view of the Palace of Westminster in London, England (iStock/Robert Ingelhart)

    This British election is an impossible choice for liberals.

    We can’t possibly support Jeremy Corbyn, whose policies of nationalization and unilateral nuclear disarmament would compound the disaster of Brexit — which he did far too little to prevent — many times over.

    But we are not impressed with Theresa May either. She was the best candidate to succeed David Cameron, but only because the alternatives were worse. Many British voters could make the same calculation this week. (more…)

  • Elect Macron to Move France Forward

    Emmanuel Macron
    Former French economy minister Emmanuel Macron changes his tie on a train, December 31, 2016 (En Marche!)

    For once, the French are spoilt for choice.

    Their presidential elections used to be a battle for the center between the mainstream left and the mainstream right. Now there are five candidates with a reasonable chance of qualifying for the second voting round in May, including a big-government socialist, a small-government conservative, a nationalist of the left and a nationalist of the right.

    Our sympathies lie with the fifth man in the middle: Emmanuel Macron. Comfortable with neither the statist inclinations of the Socialist Party nor the social conservatism of the Republicans, he launched his own progressive movement last year for the rejuvenation of France. It represents the best alternative to the anti-globalism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. (more…)

  • Hillary Clinton Is the Only Serious Candidate in This Election

    Hillary Clinton
    Former American secretary of state Hillary Clinton campaigns in Elko, Nevada, February 15 (Hillary for America/Samuel Fisch)

    Four years ago, the Atlantic Sentinel was split on whether to endorse Barack Obama or Mitt Romney for president. We share the Democrats’ social liberalism and respected the president’s foreign policy, but we were drawn to the Republican’s energy and fiscal policies.

    This year, it’s no contest at all. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, is totally unfit for the office he seeks. (more…)

  • A Liberal, Realistic European Union Needs Britain

    European Union flags
    Flags of the United Kingdom and the European Union outside the Berlaymont in Brussels, January 29 (European Commission)

    France and Poland team up to block a trade pact with South America, fearing cheap agricultural imports. Opposition to a trade agreement with the United States grows in Germany and Italy, possibly dooming the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Countries in Central Europe feel squeezed in between their former occupier Russia and an accommodating Germany.

    The last few weeks have been a preview of what the European Union might look like without the British.

    They will decide in a referendum next week whether to stay in the EU or leave. We hope a majority will vote “remain”, which is the better option for everyone. (more…)

  • Spain Should Seize Opportunity of More Liberal Government

    Polls suggest no party will win an outright majority in Spain’s election this weekend. For the first time since democracy was restored, the country may need a coalition government.

    Provided it’s one between Mariano Rajoy’s conservatives and the liberal Ciudadanos (Citizens), we think Spain should welcome the prospect.

    A political duopoly is unhealthy. For more than thirty years, Rajoy’s People’s Party and the Socialists have alternated in power. Corruption and nepotism, while not at Greek or Latin American levels, are too common. When it comes to economic and social policy, the two main parties, for all their campaign rhetoric, really aren’t that far apart. (more…)

  • Five More Years: British Should Reelect Cameron, Clegg

    David Cameron Pedro Passos Coelho
    Prime Ministers David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Pedro Passos Coelho of Portugal meet in Lisbon, September 4, 2015 (10 Downing Street/Adam Brown)

    With Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives expected to once again fall short of a parliamentary majority in the election this week, this website is hoping the Liberal Democrats will scrape together enough seats to keep the two parties in power. The last five years of coalition government have been stable and successful. The alternative, a Labour government held to ransom by Scottish separatists, would be anything but. (more…)