Since last year’s presidential election, the American left has been calling on Democrats to adopt a program of economic populism in order to lure back working-class voters.
This would be a mistake.
A lurch to the left may not bring back working-class whites but would disappoint middle-class voters who have been joining the Democratic Party in far greater numbers. (more…)
Brexit and a reinvigorated Franco-German partnership have caused the Dutch to seek a new role for themselves in Europe.
For years, the trading nation could rely on the United Kingdom to provide a counterweight to the Mediterranean bloc and its protectionist tendencies. Now the fear in The Hague is that Britain’s exit from the EU will lead to a renewed focus on political, as opposed to economic, integration.
“We should be careful with statements saying that populism has ended,” Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, recently admonished his colleagues in Brussels.
His own reelection in March and the election of Emmanuel Macron in France have been hailed as setbacks for the nativist right.
But the anti-EU Freedom Party still placed second in the Dutch election while Marine Le Pen won twice the number of votes her father did when he qualified for the French presidential runoff in 2002. (more…)
Donald Trump is breathing new life into the European Union whose demise he once predicted.
The American president’s disinterest in the Atlantic alliance, and his preference for dealing with strongmen in the Kremlin and the Middle East, is driving France and Germany closer together.
The two have been at the heart of the European project for almost seventy years.
Angela Merkel recently warned Germans they can no longer count on the United States, telling supporters of her conservative party that Europe must take control of its own fate.
Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, has been unambiguous about his wish to see a stronger Europe. His election victory against the anti-EU candidate, Marine Le Pen, was hailed as a reputation of the neoreactionary, alt-right movement Trump represents.
Macron has immediately taken a harder line against Vladimir Putin, chiding the Russian leader for interfering in Western elections.
Trump, by contrast, has yet to say anything negative about the man whose schemes helped him win the presidential election in November. (more…)
Center-right parties in Western Europe are responding to competition from the nativist right in radically different ways.
Whereas Dutch prime minister and liberal party leader Mark Rutte argued against the “pessimism” of the nationalist Freedom Party in the March election and won, conservative leaders in Austria and the United Kingdom have chosen to appease reactionary voters.
Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian foreign minister, has been elected leader of the Christian democratic People’s Party because he appeals to voters who might switch to the far right.
Kurz made his name writing an Islam Law for Austria that, among other things, prohibits foreign funding of mosques.
He also took a hard line in last year’s refugee crisis, going behind Europe’s back to do a deal with neighboring Balkan countries to control the influx of people.
Other leaders were dismayed, but Austrian voters seem to approve.
A year ago, the Freedom Party was faraway the country’s most popular with around 32 percent support in the polls. Support for the ruling Social Democrats and People’s Party languished in the low twenties. Now the three are neck and neck. There is a good chance Kurz will be the next chancellor. (more…)
What is the essence of Donald Trump? Is he an aspiring strongman? Or is he just a plain old bumbler?
These two schools of thought have been in competition ever since we started to take Trump seriously. Of course he’s narcissistic, duplicitous, misogynistic, bigoted and so forth. But what is at the heart of Donald Trump? Does he intend to emulate Mussolini? Or is he primarily an uncurious incompetent?
The answer: He’s both. And after the firing of FBI director James Comey on Tuesday evening, this has been made astoundingly clear. (more…)
The first round of the French presidential election on Sunday laid bare many of the same cleavages that have opened up in other Western democracies recently.
Emmanuel Macron, the centrist former economy minister and the favorite to prevail in the second voting round in May, drew most of his support from the big cities and the prosperous west of the country.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the nativist National Front, came in second overall but placed first across the economically depressed north of France and in the socially conservative southeast.
Five years ago, Le Pen split support in those areas with the mainstream conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, whereas the Socialist Party’s François Hollande triumphed in the cities and the west. (more…)
Conservatives worry that bureaucrats and spies are taking it on themselves to thwart the presidency of Donald Trump, but what are they supposed to do? (more…)
More parties than ever could win seats in the Dutch parliament next month, but that hardly means the country is on the verge of becoming ungovernable.
The Financial Times writes that the proliferation of political parties in the Netherlands — 28 will be on a ballot paper in March — makes the election hard to call and its aftermath potentially messy.
But less than half those parties are projected to win seats and only one newcomer, 50Plus, is expected to win more than a handful.
That could still be a record number and the Financial Times is right when it points out that support for the three largest parties — the Christian Democrats, Labor and Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberals — has fallen from almost 90 percent three decades ago to around 40 percent today.
But that observation misses a few nuances. (more…)
I wasn’t a fan of Barack Obama eight years ago, when we started the Atlantic Sentinel. It unnerved me how many people, especially here in Europe, fell over themselves to praise the new president and I disagreed with his policies.
Now I’m sad to see him go.
It’s not just that the Democrat looks like a paragon of grace and wisdom compared to his Republican successor, although Donald Trump’s shortcomings in both regards are profound.
It’s that I’ve become less right-wing and Obama was a better president in his second term than in his first. (more…)
There has probably been a tension between the rural and urban since the first cities. With a little imagination, you could write the entire political history of humanity around it.
In that story, it looks like the chapter about our time will need to describe a shift in power back to the countryside.
Andy Beckett writes in The Guardian:
Instead of a city-style politics based on novelty and compromise — the approach of the Obama and Blair eras — Britain and American now have a politics that feels provincial, old-fashioned, almost millenarian, full of suspicion of outsiders and yearnings that somehow Brexit or a strongman president will make everything all right.
He foresees a similar mood in France next year, where the center-right’s François Fillon will likely vie with the far right’s Marine Le Pen for the support of country pensioners and the unemployed or underemployed workers of the postindustrial north. (more…)
The formation of an all-left city government in Berlin that includes the once-communist Die Linke follows a pattern: center-left parties across Europe are increasingly willing to team up with their rivals on the far left.
Germany’s Social Democrats shunned Die Linke for decades. The two parties disagree on EU and industrial policy, NATO membership, relations with Russia and welfare.
The alliance in Berlin is only the second time in German history the two have shared power. (more…)
