Green parties have shed seats in the European elections, provisional results suggest, raising fears that the continent may be on the verge of weakening its climate ambitions. Projections for the new European parliament showed the Green faction pushed from fourth into sixth place, with 53 seats, amid a broader shift to the right.
Gosh, 21st century citizens, having seen the benefits of 10,000 years of civilsation, don’t want to revert 500 years while supporting the 873 people who, misguidedly, believe they will continue to live like kings?
Whoda thunk it?
Waters are bit muddied in Clogland where the socialists and Greens are now merged but collectively they lost 9% and Wilders’ mob gained 14% with the farmers winning a couple of seats too.
Gosh, is this the ‘lurch to the far Right’ that Twitter leftists have been squawking about all morning?
The result will only become interesting when its ramifications emerge, e.g. if Ursula Wonderlion isn’t reappointed Commission president and if the extremely hard far-right parties in the member states are seen in those countries as gaining validity with the French legislative elections being a first indication.
I look forward to Remainers demanding that Labour rejoin without a referendum before realising that the now Right Wing* EU would likely thwart some of Labour’s policies and maybe enforce something they don’t want eg ending a lot of the Net Zero crap, in the same way they used it to thwart right wing policies and inflict progressiveness on us.
*Not really but its getting that way.
Bugger – Just as we’ve (allegedly) freed ourselves from the EU’s clutches it begins a swerve to the right. And simultaneously WE seem certain to go the opposite way…
Since Uschi may have the choice between being re-elected commission president for eternity and spending life in prison, my money is on the former happening somehow.
@Otto, indeed.
The fun bit is Timmermans crowing that the socialist/green combo has “won”, being the largest fraction combined.
Along with utterings of being able to push through his New Green Deal through the EU.
Which is happily lapped up and propagated by the Media, with the comment sections (where allowed) pretty much saying the opposite.
@Dave UK is simply two decades slower, as usual.
Most mainland nations have been under the EU/Socialist/Green yoke for a couple of decades now, and the backlash has been building up for at least two decades and has now gained enough momentum to not be ignored (easily) anymore.
Outside of Brexit, your Blob has been doing Business as Usual, and is only beginning this process. So you’re going to get, as far as I can tell, the short but nasty version, starting with a Labour/Nutcase supermajority for the next years.
All, of course, the fault of Brexit, never because the Clowns have taken over.
As always…. You get what you vote for.
I’m pleased to see signs of rationality in Europe.
Here in Oz, it’ll be interesting to see whether Dutton’s policies, which violently offend the Green climate bullshitters, will actually result in an overwhelming swing to the left as the commentariat suggest.
To me they seem slightly more reasonable than the Green drivel. I especially like the idea that, if the left stop the nukes needed to provide our electricity being built, we just keep the coalburners running.
The parliament doesn’t have any powr, the EU core is still the same blob as before, it’s not going to be anything other than left wing with whatever disregard for political reality is necessary to maintain the illusion.
I assume with Europe having gone fully “far right” and Starmer about to enforce National Communism, the Graun will start supporting Brexit?
I’m pleased to see signs of rationality in Europe.
I suspect that what’s generally labelled as “far right” is more often pragmatism. Contrary to the left’s idealism. So yes.
There’s a couple of the usual scare stories running on the front page of the Torygraph.
Firstly, there’s the Reform candidate who quoted as once saying the UK should have been neutral against Hitler. Pragmatically yes if the UK was only looking after its own interests. Hitler’s ambitions were to the east not west. He attacked west to secure his flank first. It was the UK & France declared war. And Hitler was never a threat to the UK & its Empire. So the UK didn’t act in its own interests. Didn’t we all know that?
Second: Why a Le Pen victory risks dooming France to years of stagnation
France seems to be going through those years of stagnation under Macron. Plus ca change?
bis,
The AfD’s top candidate for Europe said, shortly before the election, that not all SS members were criminals.
Now, I’m sure this statement is technically correct, in that presumably at least one person managed to join the SS and not subsequently commit a crime (perhaps they managed to get shot the day after signing up), but it is not exactly clever or politically expedient to go around making statements like this, especially when the World Economic Forum Political-Media Complex accuses you of being far right all the time.
“Hitler’s ambitions were to the east not west.”
Well, we know that now, but it wasn’t exactly clear in September 1939, when the Nazis and their Russian allies jointly invaded Poland.
@BIG
I used to know a fairly senior off SS officer. Lost an arm on the eastern front. His daughter was at RADA with my girlfriend of the time. Enjoyed his hospitality. Seemed a thoroughly decent geezer from my experience. If you’d met the generation of Germans who lived through the war you’d realise that the whole thing was far less cut & dried then we’re led to believe. We watch far too much Hollywood.
Well, we know that now, but it wasn’t exactly clear in September 1939,
I think it was pretty clear. The Spartacists & the Friecorps had had a war on the streets of German cities. What birthed the Nazi party. If Stalin thought the Pact was going to hold ad infinitum he was incredibly naive. Nazi Germany wanted Liebensraum to its east & the USSR was in the way. The hate was visceral. Two totally incompatible philosophies although they amounted to the same thing. The pragmatic thing for the UK to have done was to have stood back & watch Germany win a far shorter & less bloody war to its east & then let it spend the next couple of generations digesting its gains. Hitler might have gently retired out with grateful thanks before ’45. How would you sell a Neverending War with no real benefits for no reason to the German people? But of course France & its “destiny” to be the strongest power in continental Europe. Again. So what happened is what happens when the player across the table calls your bluff & raises the stakes. But it’s bridge not poker was the game of choice in British circles.
Worth remembering that WW2 is the continuation of WW1. Which started in Serbia spread due to all those conflicting alliances. Again Germany attacks France to protect its flank from French intervention & the UK gets drawn in. Without France there is no Western Front. And what has been the history of the EEC/EU? A French attempt at economic domination of Europe. It is always the fekkin Froggies.
I wouldn’t want to argue with that analysis, BiS. I had a mother whose best years were ruined by spending them on the shop floor of an aircraft components factory in Slough, and a father whose best years were ruined fighting Russians and assorted Communists in Ukraine and the Balkans. It’s madness that they went through all that misery as enemies.
But I just don’t think it was “incredible naivety” to take the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact at face value in 1939. There’s that passage at the start of Evelyn Waugh’s Men At Arms, where Crouchback reacts to the news of the Russian-German alliance: “But now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle.”
Over the subsequent three books Crouchback gets disabused of that clarity. But I don’t think you can blame him for feeling that way back then.
BiG: “Now, I’m sure this statement is technically correct, in that presumably at least one person managed to join the SS and not subsequently commit a crime (perhaps they managed to get shot the day after signing up),”
It is correct, not just technically.
The SS was huge, and contained almost the entire army.
With loads of rank-and-file who were just there because their number was up and protesting that fact was… detrimental to not just their health, but also the health of their direct and indirect family.
In many Interesting Ways.
Plenty of evidence of SS-ers doing their best under difficult circumstances to protect people from the other SS and compatriots ( often local asshats and rats ) who were indeed ….. Not Nice..
So Herr Krah was indeed technically and factually correct.
He was just Bloody Stupid Johnson levels of naïve to think you can get away with stating it like that, because, especially on the Left worshipped by the Media, “SS” is equated to the Todeskopf arm.
Which is like saying all the peeps in Stalin’s Red Army were bloodthirsty plundering rapists.
Or, for that matter, all the peeps in the Allied Forces True Heroïc Knights.
Because we know that’s not true as well, and can’t be stated like that.
You, know, two hateful, murderous political regimes finding common ground. It’s not a stretch to believe it. Nor that their joint attention would turn westwards towards France and then the great prize of the British Empire, once they’d finished carving up the old Austro-Hungarian empire between themselves.
Locally I’ve been building increasing support for “trade freely with our neighbours”, which has been blown out of the water with this morning’s “JOIN EU SOONEST, PLEBS!” headline.
Sheesh. where did the grass roots campaigning go?
But I just don’t think it was “incredible naivety” to take the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact at face value in 1939.
It was Stalin’s naivety I was referring to.
@Grikath
Yes, the whole episode of history has gone mythic. And myths require polarised good & evil. But it is really getting about time to start getting behind the myth & understand what actually happened. Because if there’s no understanding it’s impossible to learn. And if people don’t learn, it makes it more likely it’ll happen again.
It’s like Steve’s fantasy Ukrainian Nazis. Derived from a complete ignorance of what happened at the time. Is it surprising that Ukrainians now feel a connection with Ukrainians in the ’40s? Both of who suffered/are suffering under Russian aggression? Sure there were Ukrainians then who sided with the Germans. What would you have done? Your enemy’s enemy is your friend. If they recycle the symbolism of the time they’re recycling 40s Ukrainian symbolism not 40s German symbolism.
Same with the AfD guy. If you’re going to counter an objection to immigration by invoking now mythic Nazis, don’t be surprised if the people on the receiving end of it start identifying with the other side of the myth.
The Soviets had been complicit in rearming Germany from the early ’20s and knew exactly what they were capable of and that one day they would turn east, but needed time to build up their own battered economy and armed forces.
Stalin was also expecting and planning for a communist revolution in both France and Britain as we collapsed under the weight of the German invasions, although ideally he wanted us and the Germans to fight ourselves to a standstill, which would have made his aims easier.
Stalin was even warned about Barbarossa but wouldn’t believe it because he didn’t think Hitler would
open up that front so early, against the advice of all his senior commanders.
There were no easy choices but doing a deal with Hitler and the Fascists was beyond the pale for most of the establishment which had been almost sympathetic towards him up to the night of the long knives when he showed his true colours.
Hitler and the Fascists was beyond the pale for most of the establishment which had been almost sympathetic towards him up to the night of the long knives when he showed his true colours
i wonder how that would have down in Marylebone drawing rooms? It was Hitler they liked. Ernst Rohm & SA were the unacceptable bully-boys. Bit not our sort of chaps, doncha know. They may well have seen it as welcome house cleaning.
The hate was visceral. Two totally incompatible philosophies although they amounted to the same thing.
USSR = International Socialists; Nazis = National Socialists. It’s the People’s Front of Judea vs the Judean People’s Front.
Nazi Germany wanted Liebensraum to its east & the USSR was in the way
I think we *all* want Liebensraum. 😉
(Liebe = love; Leben = life/living)