EUROPE’S CENTER ISN’T HOLDING ANYMORE Despite recent election wins for moderates in the Netherlands, Germany and the U.K., the far right is stronger than ever. By TIM ROSS in Jaywick, England Illustration by Merijn Hos for POLITICO In recent elections, voters in Europe have given hope to embattled centrist politicians across the Western world.   Donald Trump may have romped back into the White House, but the international movement of MAGA-aligned populists has run into trouble across the Atlantic. At elections in the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania — and in a sprawling vote across 27 EU countries for the European Parliament — mainstream candidates defeated populist hardliners and far-right nationalists.  “There remains a majority in the center for a strong Europe, and that is crucial for stability,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, after the EU Parliament elections last year. “In other words, the center is holding.”   Sixteen months later, that hold is looking anything but secure.    Hard-right and far-right politicians are now leading the polls in France, the U.K. and even Germany. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating is a dire 21 percent. His French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, is even lower, at 11 percent — and the mood is so grim that this fall’s spectacular theft at the Louvre is being treated by some as a giant metaphor for a country unable to manage its challenges.   Even von der Leyen’s own EU conservatives now rely on the votes of far right lawmakers to get her plans approved in Brussels. One outraged centrist likened the shift to those German politicians who enabled Adolf Hitler to take power. Populists at the extremes, meanwhile, cast themselves as the obvious alternative for populations that want change. And now they can expect Trump to help: In a brutal rupture of transatlantic norms, a new U.S. National Security Strategy aims to use American diplomacy to cultivate “resistance” to political correctness in Europe — especially on migration — and to support parties it describes as “patriotic.” Trump himself told POLITICO he would endorse candidates he believed would move Europe in the right direction. On that rightward trajectory, in the next four years the political map of the West faces its most dramatic upheaval since the Cold War. The implications for geopolitics, from trade to defense, could be profound.   “What [Europeans are] getting from Trump is the strategy of maximum polarization that hollows out the center,” said Will Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute, the centrist American think tank that backed Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “The old established parties of left and right that dominated the post war era have gotten weaker,” he said. “The nationalist or populist right’s revolt is against them.”  Nowhere is this recent transformation more dramatic than in the U.K.   As the sun sinks toward the horizon over a calm sea one Thursday evening in November, half a dozen regulars huddle around the bar in the Never Say Die pub, a few yards from the beach at Jaywick Sands, on the east coast of England.   Built in the 1930s as a resort 70 miles from London, Jaywick is now the most deprived neighborhood in the country. The area had such a bad image that in 2018 a U.S. MAGA ad used a photograph of a dilapidated Jaywick street to warn of the apocalyptic future facing America if Trump’s candidates were not elected.   Jaywick was named England’s most deprived neighbourhood in October — for the fourth time since 2010. | Tolga Akmen/EPA It is here among the pebbledashed bungalows and England flags hanging limp from lampposts that a new political force — Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK — has built its heartland.   At the bar, Dave Laurence, 82, says he doesn’t vote, as a rule, but made an exception for Farage, who was elected to represent the area last year. “I quite like him. He’s doing the best he can,” Laurence says as he sips his pint of lager, with ’80s pop hits playing in the background. “I’ll vote for him again.”  Laurence freely describes himself as “racist” and says he would never vote for a Black person, such as the center-right Conservative Party’s leader Kemi Badenoch. What troubles him most, he says, is the number of immigrants who have arrived in the U.K. during his lifetime, especially those crossing the Channel in small boats. Soon, Laurence fears, the country will be “full of Muslims and they’ll fucking rebel against us.”  With its anti-establishment, immigration-fighting agenda, Farage’s Reform UK offers voters a program tightly in tune with far-right parties that have gained ground across the West. According to opinion polls, Farage now has a real chance of becoming the U.K.’s next prime minister if the vote were held today. (A general election is not due until 2029).   It’s startling to note that as recently as July 2024, Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic landslide and some of his triumphant election aides traveled to the U.S. to advise Democrats on strategy. Today, Starmer is derided as “First Gear Keir” as he fights off leadership rivals rumored to be trying to oust him. And Reform isn’t the only force remaking British party politics. To the left of Labour, the Greens have also made recent gains in the polls under a new leader calling himself an “eco-populist.”   Farage’s stunning rise from the sidelines to the front of a political revolution carries lessons well beyond Britain’s borders. Europeans raised in the old school of mainstream politics fear that the traditional centerground — their home turf — will not hold.   ‘DURABLY UNSTABLE’   Macron, for his part, tried to counter the rise of the hard right by calling a snap election for the French National Assembly last year. The gamble backfired, delivering a hung parliament that has been unable to agree on key economic policies ever since. Macron is now historically unpopular.   French lawmakers’ clashes over the budget have toppled three of Macron’s picks as prime minister since the summer of 2024. A backlash against his plan to raise the pension age has forced ratings agencies to mull a damaging downgrade. Macron, who himself became president by launching a new centrist movement to rival the political establishment, now has no traditional party machinery to help bolster his position. “He’ll leave a political landscape that is perhaps durably unstable. It’s unforgivable,” said Alain Minc, an influential adviser and former mentor to the French president.  The chaos gives populists their chance. The main politicians making any running in conversations about the next presidential election belong to the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen and its youthful party president Jordan Bardella, who are riding high in the polls at 34 percent.   In Germany, too, the center ground is steadily eroding.   Though Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won a snap election in February, his ideologically uneasy coalition, which consists of his own conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), holds one of the slimmest parliamentary majorities for a government since 1945, with just 52 percent of seats. That leaves the Merz coalition vulnerable to small defections within the ranks and makes it hard for him to achieve anything ambitious in government. The far-left Die Linke party and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) both surged at the last election, too, with AfD winning the best result in a national election for any far-right party since World War II.  Merz’s attempt to defang the AfD by moving his conservatives sharply to the right on the issue of migration seems to have backfired. The AfD has only continued its rise, surpassing Merz’s conservatives in many polls.   The rise of the far-right is a cultural shock to many centrist Germans, given the country’s deeply entrenched desire to avoid repeating its past. “For a long time in Germany we thought with our history, and the way we teach in our schools, we would be a bit more immune to that,” one concerned German official said. “It turned out we are not.”   Even in the Netherlands, where centrist Rob Jetten won a famous but narrow victory over the far-right firebrand Geert Wilders in October, there are reasons for mainstream politicians to worry. Wilders’ Freedom Party is still one of the biggest forces in the land, winning the same number of seats as Jetten’s D66. He could well return next time, just as Trump did in the U.S.   WHERE DID ALL THE VOTERS GO?   According to polling firm Ipsos, a large proportion of voters in many Western democracies now have little faith in the political process. While they still believe in democratic values, they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working for them.   A large survey questioning around 10,000 voters across nine countries found 45 percent were dissatisfied, fueling support for the extremes. Among voters on the far left (57 percent) and the far right (54 percent), levels of dissatisfaction were highest of all.   The countries with the highest rates of dissatisfaction in the Ipsos study were France and the Netherlands, where political upheaval has taken its toll on faith in the system.   Anti-riot police officers stand next to a demonstration called by far-right activist Els Rechts against the Netherlands’ current asylum policy, in September in The Hague. | Josh Walet/ANP via Getty Images Alongside the coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of lockdowns, the biggest drivers of dissatisfaction were the cost of living, immigration and crime, according to Gideon Skinner from Ipsos. Trust in politics fell in the 90s and took another hit in the late 2000s at the time of the financial crash, he said.   “There may be specific things that have made it worse over the last couple of years but it’s also a long-term condition,” Skinner told POLITICO. “It’s something we do need to worry about and there is not a silver bullet that can fix it all.”  Perhaps the greatest problem for incumbent centrists is that in most cases their economies are so moribund that they lack the fiscal firepower to spend money addressing the issues disillusioned voters care about most — like high living costs, ailing public services and migration.  THE INEQUALITY EMERGENCY   The financial crisis of 2008 and the coronavirus lockdowns of 2020-21 left many governments strapped for cash. In the U.K., for example, the economy was 16 percent smaller than it should have been a decade after the 2008 crash if prior growth trends had continued, according to Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London.   “Crucially, the impact of the financial crisis, like the impact of so much else in our politics, was massively unequal,” Menon said. “Prosperous places with high productivity, with well-educated workforces suffered far, far less than poorer parts of the country.”   Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz submitted a study to the G20 in November warning that the world was facing an “inequality emergency.” Fueled by war, pandemic and trade disruptions, the crisis risks preparing the ground for more authoritarian leaders, his report said.   In many Western countries, the centerground is more than just a metaphor. It is in capital cities like London, Paris and Washington that power and money accumulate and the economic and political elites seek to maintain their grip on the status quo.   The further you travel from these centers out to areas in decline, the more likely you are to find support for radical politics.   As Menon notes, Britain’s 2016 revolution — the referendum vote to leave the European Union after almost half a century of membership — can be mapped onto the culinary geography of the country.   “Pret a Manger” is a smart national chain of sandwich and coffee shops, catering for hungry commuters and office workers in wealthy, successful British cities. “Places that had a Pret voted Remain,” Menon said. Parts of the U.K. where median wages were lower were disproportionately likely to vote to leave the EU.   IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION   After the Brexit vote in 2016, immigration slid from the top of the priority list for British voters and Farage himself took a step back. Both have now returned, as Farage rides a wave of headlines about irregular migrants landing in small boats from France.   From January to May this year, there were a record 14,800 small boat crossings, 42 percent more than in the same period in the previous year, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.   For Laurence, in the Never Say Die pub, the small boats represent the biggest issue of all. “What’s going to happen in 10 years’ time? What’s going to happen in 20 years’ time when the boat people are still coming over?” he asked.   A decade ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving into Europe from Syria, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. The AfD surged in the months that followed, permanently changing German politics. At February’s election, the AfD won a record 21 percent of the vote, finishing in second place behind Merz’s conservative bloc.  “The fundamental failure that is common to the whole [centrist] transatlantic community is on immigration,” said Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute. “All of the far-right movements have made it their top issue.”   It is the perceived threat that waves of migration pose to traditional national cultures which drives much of the support for the far right. Trump’s White House is now primed to join the European nationalists’ fight. According to a new U.S. National Security Strategy document released in December, Europe is facing “civilisational erasure” from unrestricted immigration, as well as falling birthrates. The analysis draws on the so-called great replacement theory, a racist conspiracy theory. Free speech — in the MAGA definition, at least — is another casualty of conventional centrist rule in Europe, as political correctness veers into “censorship,” the U.S. document said. Protesters demostrate under the motto “Loud against Nazis” in early February in Berlin. After years of decline, The Left party  pulled off a stunning revival in the general election later that month. | John MacDougall via AFP/Getty Images In his interview with POLITICO earlier this week, Trump aligned himself fully with the strategy paper. European nations are “decaying” and their “weak” leaders can expect to be challenged by rivals with American support, he said. “I’d endorse,” he added. In Brussels, the double-punch of the president’s interview and the strategy document left diplomats and officials feeling bruised and alarmed all over again, after a period in which they allowed themselves to hope that the transatlantic alliance wasn’t dying. One EU diplomat was blunt in assessing Trump’s new method: “It’s autocracy.” THE STOLEN JEWELS  Sometimes, it takes a random news event — ostensibly unconnected to politics — to crystalize the national mood. In Paris, the theft of France’s priceless crown jewels from the Louvre provided just such an opportunity, morphing into an indictment of an establishment that can’t get the job done, even when the job simply involves thoroughly locking the windows at the world’s most famous museum. National Rally leader Jordan Bardella called the incident a “humiliation” before asking: “How far will the breakdown of the state go?”   In Britain, just a month after Starmer’s victory last year, riots broke out across the country, fueled by far-right extremists. The catalyst was the murder of three young girls aged 6, 7 and 9, in Southport, northwest England, by a Black teenager wrongly identified at the time on social media — in posts amplified by the far-right — as a Muslim.   At the time, Farage suggested the police were withholding the truth about the suspect, earning him the fury of mainstream politicians. While stressing he did not support violence, Farage railed against what he called “two-tier policing,” a phrase popular among far-right commentators who claim police treat right-wing protesters more harshly than those on the left.  It’s an opinion that resonates in Jaywick. Chennelle Rutland, 56, is walking her two dogs along the beachfront, admiring the view as the sun sets, flaring the sky orange, then purple. The colors catch the surface of the flat sea. “It’s one rule for one and one rule for the other,” she says. “The whites have got to shut up because if you do say anything, you’re ‘racist’ and ‘far right.’”   Far-right activist Tommy Robinson invited his supporters to attend the “Unite The Kingdom” rally in September. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images It would be wrong to characterise residents of Jaywick as simply ignorant or full of rage. Many who spoke to POLITICO there were cheerful, happy with their community and up to speed with the news. But, just as they’d soured on their country’s centrist establishment, they were also tuning out its favored news sources.   In Jaywick, some of Farage’s voters prefer GB News, Britain’s answer to Fox News, which launched in 2021, or learn about current affairs from YouTube and other social media. The BBC — for decades the mainstay of the British media landscape — has lost a portion of its audience here. Right-wing commentators and politicians attack it as biased. Trump has lately joined in, threatening to sue over a BBC edit that he said deceptively made it look as if he was explicitly inciting violence. The BBC’s director general and head of news both resigned. In the process, another piece of Britain’s onetime centerground was giving way.   WHAT NEXT?   There are reasons for centrists to hope. In Rome, Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party has become less extreme in power, and the worst fears of moderates about a group with its historic roots in neo-fascism have not come to pass. She remains popular, and while pushing a culture war at home, she has avoided the wrath of the EU leadership and kept Trump onside.   Populists and nationalists don’t always win. Trump lost in 2020. In the Netherlands, Wilders lost in October this year, though only by a whisker. Romania’s Nicușor Dan won the presidency as a centrist in May, but again only narrowly defeating his far-right opponent.   Structural obstacles may also slow the radicals’ progress. The U.K.’s first-past-the-post voting system makes it hard for new parties to do well. The two-round French system has so far stopped Le Pen’s National Rally from gaining power as centrists combine to back moderates. In Germany, a similar “firewall” exists under which center parties keep the far-right out.   After the Brexit vote in 2016, immigration slid from the top of the priority list for British voters and Farage himself took a step back. Both have now returned. | Tolga Akmen/EPA Even as he enjoys a sustained lead in the polls and wins local elections in the U.K., Farage has not convinced voters that Reform would do a good job. Even some of his supporters worry he will be out of his depth in government.   The problem, for the centrists who are in power, is that a lot of voters seem to think they, too, are out of their depth. And, whether that involves dealing with migration, combatting inequality, or just boosting the security around the Mona Lisa, it’s a reputation they’ll need to fix in order to survive — no easy task given the intractability of the challenges facing the rich world.  The next year will see more elections at which the centrists — and their populists rivals — will be tested. In Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, long seen as the far-right bad boy of EU politics, is fighting to keep power at an election expected in April. There are regional votes in Germany where the AfD is on track to prosper. France may require yet another snap election to end its political paralysis. Trump’s diplomats and officials will be ready to intervene. Farage’s party, too, will be on the ballot in 2026: It is expected to make gains in Wales, Scotland and local votes elsewhere next spring. After that, his sights will be on the U.K. general election expected in 2029, by which time European politics may look very different.   “Of course I know Mr. Orban and of course I know Giorgia Meloni, of course I know these people,” Farage told POLITICO at a recent Reform rally. “I suspect that after the next election cycle in Europe there will be even more that I know.” Natalie Fertig in Washington, Clea Caulcutt in Paris and James Angelos in Berlin contributed to this report.  

BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump’s overtures to the European far right have never been more overt, but the EU’s biggest far-right parties are split over whether that is a blessing or a curse.  While Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has welcomed Trump’s moral support, viewing it as a way to win domestic legitimacy and end its political ostracization, France’s National Rally has kept its distance — viewing American backing as a potential liability. The differing reactions from the two parties, which lead the polls in the EU’s biggest economies, stem less from varying ideologies than from distinct domestic political calculations. AfD leaders in Germany celebrated the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Europe’s mainstream political leaders and approval of “patriotic European parties” that seek to fight Europe’s so-called “civilizational erasure.” “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy — which, in parts, sounds like it could have been a manifesto of a far-right European party — warning that Europe may be “unrecognizable” in two decades due to migration and a loss of national identities. “The AfD has always fought for sovereignty, remigration, and peace — precisely the priorities that Trump is now implementing,” added Bystron, who will be among a group of politicians in his party traveling to Washington this week to meet with MAGA Republicans. One of the AfD’s national leaders, Alice Weidel, also celebrated Trump’s security strategy. “That’s why we need the AfD!” Weidel said in a post after the document was released. By contrast, National Rally leaders in France were generally silent. Thierry Mariani, a member of the party’s national board, explained Trump hardly seemed like an ideal ally. “Trump treats us like a colony — with his rhetoric, which isn’t a big deal, but especially economically and politically,” he told POLITICO. The party’s national leaders, Mariani added, see “the risk of this attitude from someone who now has nothing to fear, since he cannot be re-elected, and who is always excessive and at times ridiculous.”  AFD’S AMERICAN DREAM It’s no coincidence that Bystron is part of a delegation of AfD politicians set to meet members of Trump’s MAGA camp in Washington this week. Bystron has been among the AfD politicians increasingly looking to build ties to the Trump administration to win support for what they frame as a struggle against political persecution and censorship at home. This is an argument members of the Trump administration clearly sympathize with. When Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declared the AfD to be extremist earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “tyranny in disguise.” During the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged mainstream politicians in Europe to knock down the “firewalls” that shut out far-right parties from government. “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy. | Britta Pedersen/Picture Alliance via Getty Images AfD leaders have therefore made a simple calculation: Trump’s support may lend the party a sheen of acceptability that will help it appeal to more voters while, at the same time, making it politically harder for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives to refuse to govern in coalition with their party. This explains why AfD polticians will be in the U.S. this week seeking political legitimacy. On Friday evening, Markus Frohnmaier, deputy leader of the AfD parlimentary group, will be an “honored guest” at a New York Young Republican Club gala, which has called for a “new civic order” in Germany. NATIONAL RALLY SEES ‘NOTHING TO GAIN’ In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has distanced itself from the AfD and Trump as part of a wider effort to present itself as more palatable to mainstream voters ahead of a presidential election in 2027 the party believes it has a good chance of winning. As part of the effort to clean up its image, Le Pen pushed for the AfD to be ejected from the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament last year following a series of scandals that made it something of a pariah. At the same time, National Rally leaders have calculated that Trump can’t help them at home because he is deeply unpopular nationally. Even the party’s supporters view the American president negatively. An Odoxa poll released after the 2024 American presidential election found that 56 percent of National Rally voters held a negative view of Trump. In the same survey, 85 percent of voters from all parties described Trump as “aggressive,” and 78 percent as “racist.”  Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist and leading expert on French and international far-right movements, highlighted the ideological gaps separating Le Pen from Trump — notably her support for a welfare state and social safety nets, as well as her limited interest in social conservatism and religion.  “Trumpism is a distinctly American phenomenon that cannot be transplanted to France,” Camus said. “Marine Le Pen, who is working on normalization, has no interest in being linked with Trump. And since she is often accused of serving foreign powers — mostly Russia — she has nothing to gain from being branded ‘Trump’s agent in France.’” 

LONDON — It’s a decade since Britain’s Labour Party caused uproar simply by printing “controls on immigration” on a mug. Ten years, it turns out, are a long time in politics. Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s new interior minister, unveiled hardline plans Monday to shake up Britain’s immigration system that make the 2015 mantra look positively tame. Under her proposed reforms, refugees in Britain who arrived on small boats will have to wait up to 20 years for permanent settlement and could be deported if the situation in their home country improves. Those with valuables will be forced to fund the cost of their own accommodation. The tribunal appeals system, which features judges prominently, will be replaced with a streamlined system staffed by “professionally trained adjudicators.” And ministers are promising to ramp up the forcible removal of entire families to their countries of origin, if they do not accept “financial support” to go voluntarily. The home secretary is “beginning to sound as though” she is applying to join Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK, his gleeful deputy Richard Tice told a Westminster press conference Monday. With Mahmood clearly spoiling for a fight with her own ranks, some colleagues to her left flank are making the same comparison. Yet despite the backlash, many other Labour MPs now believe measures like this necessary to confront a rising public backlash over immigration in many European nations. Mahmood, said one official, is concerned that public anger is turning into hate. Labour aides also argue they could be running out of time, as opinion polls project a victory in 2029 for Reform — whose immigration plans would go far further. One government frontbencher (granted anonymity, like others in this piece, to speak frankly) argued the change had been driven by the “the visibility and tangibility of policy failures” on small boats, and the growing use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. They added: “We may be in a world where we have to deliver a system we’re not quite comfortable with — or surrender the right to deliver a system to people who don’t think the system should exist. That’s a really uncomfortable place to be.” ‘LIKE A DROWNING MAN’ None of this eliminates the very real anger from Labour’s left-wing MPs — who were already concerned about votes bleeding away to the Green Party — and the likely uproar from its left-leaning grassroots. “The Starmer administration is like a drowning man,” a discontented Labour MP said Monday. “It just doesn’t have the ability to be able to make the argument that it is doing this from a progressive perspective. Where they’ve landed themselves politically, it’s not a place where you can bring people with you.” “The party won’t wear this — not just MPs, the wider party,” a second MP on the party’s soft left said. “The rhetoric around these reforms encourages the same culture of divisiveness that sees racism and abuse growing in our communities,” backbench Labour MP Tony Vaughan, who was only elected in 2024, argued on X. On one highly emotive point, officials were forced to clarify Monday that the Home Office would not seize migrants’ sentimental jewelery. That came overnight news stories suggested such items could be taken to contribute to migrant accommodation costs. The clarification did not come before MPs took to social media to speak out. “Taking jewellery from refugees” is “akin to painting over murals for refugee children,” another backbench MP, Sarah Owen, said, referencing a controversial order under the Conservatives to cover up cartoons at an accommodation centre for unaccompanied child migrants. The first Labour MP quoted above said that while many of his colleagues were seeing voters switch to Reform UK, a “hell of a lot of people” are going to the center-left Liberal Democrats and the Greens. “The tone that we’ve taken on immigration and asylum will hurt us as well,” the MP added.  ‘MORAL DUTY’ Government figures strongly disagree with the criticism — and think they have the public in their corner on this one. They sought to highlight More in Common polling that suggested even Green voters would support some individual measures that are used in Denmark — such as only granting asylum seekers temporary residence (50 percent support, 25 percent oppose.) A third, supportive MP on the right of the party pointed out there were “no surprise names” among those who had broken ranks to criticize the government’s plans. Mahmood insisted Monday the government has a “moral duty” to fix Britain’s “broken” asylum system. “Unless we can persuade people we can control our borders, we’re not going to get a hearing on anything else,” former Minister Justin Madders told Times Radio. It is an “existential test of whether we deserve to govern this country,” a serving minister said. They warned that if Starmer fails, the outcome in policy terms could be “a whole lot more drastic.” Noah Keate contributed reporting

Yulia Navalnaya is an economist and a Russian opposition leader, and the widow of Alexei Navalny. If I had to describe the movement that my husband Alexei Navalny created in just a few words, I’d say this: We are a pro-European movement. We believe Russia is an inseparable part of European civilization, and that the European model of development is the one best suited for our country. From this comes our conviction that the dark years of Putinism are not an historical inevitability but an aberration. And that when the regime of Vladimir Putin ends, Russia will have the chance to return to the European path. But what does this “European path” actually mean? From Hungary to Portugal, Sweden to Greece, Europe is vast and diverse. Its nations differ in both governance and their political evolution. Moreover, 2025 has been a year of hard tests for the continent’s countries, even by recent standards. Putin’s war against Ukraine continues, and the EU faces intense political pressure both from without and within. Economically, the situation is also far from ideal, as EU countries are forced to sharply increase their spending on defense and security, giving new ammunition to populists of every stripe. Things that seemed self-evident until recently, now appear more uncertain. Marginal views on fundamental issues — from humanist values to migration, environmental policies, minority rights and relations with dictatorships — are suddenly being expressed from the highest platforms. Not long ago, this would have been unthinkable. When Alexei Navalny spoke of the “Beautiful Russia of the Future,” he envisioned a peaceful, democratic, prosperous European country. But what does it mean to be a European country today? Despite all its internal challenges, contradictions and disagreements, Europe has always been — for me and for many Russians — a symbol of well-being. After World War II, Europe became a remarkable example of a progressive society built on mutual respect. Racism, colonialism, militarism, imperialism and, above all, the rejection of democracy and human rights became unacceptable. And the values enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights served as a guiding light for movements fighting dictatorships around the world — including in Russia, inspiring Soviet dissidents in their unequal and heroic struggle against Communist tyranny. These same values have always been the essence of our own program, forming a consistent, rather than situational, opposition to Putin. It is crucial to understand that our main disagreement with Putin is not tactical but value-based. I, my husband — who was murdered by Putin — and many of our allies opposed him long before he invaded Ukraine, at a time when he was welcomed in European capitals. And we will continue to oppose him if he remains in power in Russia when this terrible war ends. It is crucial to understand that our main disagreement with Putin is not tactical but value-based. | Contributor/Getty Images We do not ask for anything extravagant or extraordinary. We simply want Russia to be a country that cares, first and foremost, about the dignity, rights and future of its people — just as European countries do. We want the same basic rights and freedoms that Europeans see as part and parcel to everyday life. We fight for the primacy of human rights over the interests of the state. We demand genuine freedom of speech and assembly, so that anyone who disagrees with the government can openly campaign and criticize without fear prison, exile or assassination — as happened to my husband. We strive for democracy. For the right of any citizen to compete and win the trust of voters in free and fair elections. We support federalism and local self-government, so that people can choose their representatives not only at the national level but also in their regions, cities and towns. In a multiethnic country like Russia, this is essential. Only through functioning self-governance can its peoples preserve their culture, language and identity. We also fight for independent and fair courts. We strive for democracy. For the right of any citizen to compete and win the trust of voters in free and fair elections. | Marek Antoni Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images We defend the right to private property. At the same time, we believe that a country as rich as Russia must be generous to its citizens, and that revenue from its natural resources must not be stolen by the ruling elite or spent on wars. And, of course, we seek peace — because the very idea of waging war seems as absurd to us as it does to any normal European. We want Russia to be a good neighbor and a reliable partner to all countries around it, both East and West. These are the European values that unite hundreds of millions of people, from Tallinn to Lisbon, despite all their visible differences and the polarization inherent in daily politics today. Rule of law, not arbitrariness. Respect for institutions, not personal whim. A state that serves people, not people who serve the state. As you can see, we aren’t radicals. We are all very different people in terms of our views, but we are united by one thing above all else: We are enemies of Putin’s regime, which has brought war, dictatorship, corruption and terror to our country. We oppose not just Putin personally but his entire authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, militarist, xenophobic and chauvinistic worldview. Putinism has no ideology — it is simply the denial of modern European civilization’s values. We are normal Europeans who share fundamental European values. When I speak with European politicians, they often ask what they can do to help our movement, our struggle against Putin and his war. My answer is simple: Be strong, principled and consistent. It is in our shared interest that Europe remains united and successful — only then can it stand up to the challenges of our time, including helping those still fighting for freedom. Europe is more than capable of resisting hypocrisy and double standards. It is more than capable of extending a hand to tens of millions of pro-European Russians — and helping that number grow. This will ensure that the beautiful Russia of the future, for which Alexei Navalny gave his life, will be peaceful, democratic and prosperous — in other words, a normal European country.

LONDON — Nigel Farage is on the march. And every lever Britain’s prime minister pulls seems broken. More than a year after his center-left Labour Party stormed to victory on a promise of change, Keir Starmer is yet to show voters he is truly in command. With Reform UK’s Farage eclipsing him in the polls, Starmer’s government has now been hit by a series of unforced errors on the issue on which he’s acutely vulnerable on the right: migration. Small boats carrying asylum-seekers continue to cross the English Channel, with numbers for this year already surpassing the 2024 total. In a farcical twist, one migrant, removed to France with much fanfare under the government’s flagship “one in, one out” deterrent scheme, arrived back on U.K. shores by small boat less than a month after being deported.  More damaging still, on Friday an asylum-seeker jailed for sexually assaulting a teenager — and whose crimes sparked a wave of protests in the U.K. over the summer — was mistakenly released from prison, prompting a weekend manhunt. He was eventually re-arrested on Sunday morning — but not before torrid headlines and a declaration from Farage that Britain is “broken.” It’s been “deeply damaging,” a Labour MP in a marginal seat, who had been door-knocking over the weekend, said of the latest events. It is “playing into the hands of Reform that Britain is ungovernable by traditional parties,” the MP, granted anonymity to speak candidly, added.   Unlike some of his centrist contemporaries in Europe battling populist insurgents, Starmer should be ascendant. He has a commanding House of Commons majority, and isn’t due to face an election until 2029. But events last week are “grist to the mill” to Reform’s argument that the British state is “totally dysfunctional,” Reform MP Danny Kruger, who defected to Farage’s outfit from the Tories and its leading its preparations for the prisons system, said. Kruger will make a speech Tuesday and told POLITICO he is calling for “serious surgery on the system.” IN AGREEMENT   The frustration in Starmer’s top ranks is evident. “There is a deep disillusionment in this country at the moment and I would say a growing sense of despair about whether anyone is capable of turning this country around,” Wes Streeting, the health secretary and a close ally of Starmer acknowledged in a broadcast interview on Sunday.  Starmer — who has hit out at the legacy handed to him by the Conservatives from their 14 years in power — has hardly been shy about criticizing the state either.   Keir Starmer — who has hit out at the legacy handed to him by the Conservatives from their 14 years in power — has hardly been shy about criticizing the state either. | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images His claim last December that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline” even prompted accusations from civil service unions that he was using “Trumpian language.”   MPs are not so squeamish. A parliamentary committee on Monday launched a blistering attack on the Home Office — Britain’s interior ministry — which it said had squandered billions of pound on the U.K.’s “failed, chaotic and expensive” asylum accommodation system.  Reform — which, apart from recently gained footholds in local government, currently has the luxury of observing rather than running things — insists it would take a different tack. Kruger said Tuesday’s speech would be “high level.”    He argues the country is facing a “multifactor crisis,” which makes an argument for “wholesale reform” of the machinery of state more “politically compelling and acceptable.”   “Being radical is becoming something that respectable mainstream parties need to do. We’re not diluting our radicalism, it’s that our radicalism is becoming more acceptable,” he said.   While Reform wants to make “quite serious surgery on the system,” the party is not going to come in with a “chainsaw or wrecking ball,” he insisted. Kruger will on Tuesday pledge to reduce the civil service headcount (though he will not specify by how much), make officials directly answerable to ministers, and close some government buildings. When asked on Monday about his own plans for government after the prison release debacle, Farage pointed only to his party’s existing plan to recruit experienced people to develop policy, who could then become ministers in a Reform government. Labour MPs hope a simultaneous racism row in Reform will halt its momentum. Farage on Monday admonished one of his own MPs for saying she was driven “mad” by advertisements featuring black and Asian people. The comments were “ugly” and “wrong,” the Reform UK leader told a press conference.   The Labour MP quoted above said that row had “stemmed the bleeding” for Starmer’s party over the weekend. Labour MPs repeatedly bring up infighting at Reform-run Kent County Council, too, hoping it will demonstrate the challenges the party would face if it’s actually given power. But pollsters aren’t so sure. YouGov’s Patrick English said “any stories which relate to issues surrounding or adjacent to immigration and small boat crossings will move conversations onto grounds upon which Farage and Reform are more comfortable.”   Reform currently leads the pollster’s “best party to handle immigration” tracker by some distance, with 36 percent of the public picking them compared with just 10 percent picking Labour, and 6 percent picking the Conservatives, English points out. Starmer’s predecessor as prime minister, Rishi Sunak, discovered the cost of failing to get a grip on the Home Office and to stop the flow of small boats across the English Channel when he led his party to a historic defeat last year. His former Deputy Chief of Staff Rupert Yorke said the recent debacles were “yet more evidence for the public that the British state is completely broken.”   “Worrying about a lack of vision — which MPs understandably demand —  is missing the point,” Yorke warned. “The government has to instead focus on solving these knotty problems which are so ingrained in the public psyche.   “Otherwise they are in deep trouble, and support for Reform will continue to grow.” Martin Alfonsin Larsen contributed reporting.

The EU should swiftly pull funding from organizations that fail to uphold its values, and do more to tackle hate speech, France, Austria and the Netherlands urged in an informal document seen by POLITICO. Citing a surge in antisemitic and racist incidents following the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza, the three countries call on Brussels and national capitals to “redouble their efforts to combat racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred” and ensure that “no support is given to entities hostile to European values, in particular through funding.” The document lays out proposals to tighten financial oversight and expand the EU’s criminal and operational response to hate crimes. It calls on the European Commission to fully apply existing budget rules allowing for the exclusion of entities inciting hatred, and to make beneficiaries of programs such as Erasmus+ and CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) sign pledges that they will respect and promote EU rights and values. The document comes just one day before a European Council meeting in Brussels at which EU leaders are expected to discuss support to Ukraine, defense, and also housing, competitiveness, migration, and the green and digital transitions. According to a draft of the Council conclusions obtained by POLITICO, national leaders are expected to stress that EU values apply equally in the digital sphere, with the protection of minors singled out as a key priority. Beyond funding, the document demands tougher measures against online and offline hate speech. It also urges Europol to launch a project looking at hate crimes and calls for education and awareness programs on tolerance and Holocaust remembrance through Erasmus+ and CERV.

LONDON — Nigel Farage is gambling that a hardline stance on migration is a surefire vote-winner. But it’s a risky bet. Amid a spate of protests outside hotels housing some of Britain’s asylum seekers, Farage’s insurgent Reform UK party faces a dilemma. Should it condemn the demos and disappoint voters on the right? Or lean in — and risk alienating the more moderate voters who are now powering its rise? Reform UK’s base is increasingly mirroring the average Briton, according to fresh polling from the think tank More in Common. Just 40 percent of its current supporters backed the party in 2024, and just 16 percent of its current backers once voted for Farage’s old outfit, UKIP. Its gender gap has narrowed, its age profile has evened out, and many of its newest recruits are less glued to online culture wars. That makes Reform’s growth, in the pollsters’ words, both “a blessing and a curse.” The broader the party gets, the greater the risk of being defined by its more radical supporters — and losing the very voters Farage has worked to bring in. Members of the far-right have egged on protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. What began as a local protest quickly drew in the Homeland party — a breakaway from Britain’s biggest far-right group, Patriotic Alternative — alongside Britain First, and hard-right agitator Tommy Robinson. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” “We don’t pick and choose the protest,” his Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview. “We don’t choose to support some and not others. We just say lawful, peaceful protest is an important part of a functioning democracy.”  DISTANCE But it’s a careful line for a party that has spent the past year trying to sharpen its operation — tightening vetting rules for candidates and putting distance between itself and overt racism. “They’ve drawn a clear line when it comes to distancing themselves from Tommy Robinson,” said Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at the Institute for Public Policy Research. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Nigel Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” | Neil Hall/EPA “That’s actually come at quite significant costs for Nigel Farage, because of its consequences for his relationship with Elon Musk.” The Tesla owner has been a staunch online backer of Robinson, who was jailed in the UK for contempt of court after he repeated false claims about a Syrian schoolboy. Farage — whose party descends on Birmingham for its annual conference this weekend in a jubilant mood — is riding high in the polls, and will be buoyed by polling that consistently puts migration at or near the top of Brits’ list of concerns. But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. Farage “feels under pressure from the online right,” argued Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank. Over the past month, Reform has doubled down on its anti-immigration pitch — in language critics say edges closer to the far-right. In August, Tice told Times Radio that there should be more groups of men on a “neighborhood watch-style basis within the bounds of the law” to protect women from the “sneering, jeering, and sexual assaults and rapes that are taking place, coincidentally, near a number of these asylum-seeker hotels.”  Pressed by POLITICO, Tice doubled down on this position. “There is already vigilantism going on. No one wants to report it, but that’s the reality of life … It is much better to shine the spotlight on an issue, talk about it … and then government can make better policy.”  Tice likens asylum arrivals in the UK to “an invasion double the size of the British Army.” But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. | Tolga Aken/EPA “That’s how people talk about it in the pubs and clubs and bus stops and sports fields up and down the country. I know that makes people in Westminster uncomfortable — tough,” Tice told POLITICO. THE CONNOLLY FACTOR The party has also wrapped its arms around Lucy Connolly, a 42-year-old woman who was jailed after pleading guilty to stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers with a post calling for migrant hotels to be set on fire. Reform has painted Connolly as a political prisoner of Keir Starmer’s government, with Farage even flying to Washington this week to slam Britain’s online safety rules and likening the UK to North Korea on free speech.  Cabinet ministers blasted Farage’s U.S. trip as a “Talk Britain Down” tour. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds called it “as anti-British as you can get. More in Common polling shows that while voters are split on whether Connolly’s sentence was too harsh or too lenient, 51 percent want politicians to distance themselves from her, including more than a quarter of Reform voters. “The transnational neoconservative right is a massive danger to the British right, not an opportunity,” argued IPPR’s Morris. More in Common polling shows that many of Reform’s newer supporters view U.S.-style populist figures, such as Donald Trump, negatively. Social attitudes are also shifting, with six in ten voters supporting same-sex marriages, and 46 percent thinking the legal abortion limit should stay at 24 weeks. POLICY PITFALLS While Reform is confidently ahead in national voting intention polls, there is evidence of some unease about its specific policy pledges. A proposal to work with the Taliban to return Afghan asylum seekers got a mixed reception. Some 45 percent of Britons said that giving money to the regime to take returns would be “completely unacceptable,” according to a YouGov poll. The party has also struggled to clarify its stance on deporting children. Chairman Zia Yusuf suggested unaccompanied minors could eventually be removed under the party’s mass deportation plans — only for Farage to row back, insisting it wouldn’t happen in Reform’s first term. “When it came to deporting children, they realized that what they proposed isn’t really sustainable — it seems, frankly, inhumane,” said Morris. “If [Reform] wants to appeal to the wider public, and not just to its base, it can’t just appeal to this kind of narrow group of people.” Tice has since sought to narrow the focus. “We’ve said that we will start focusing on detaining and deporting males first,” he said. “If a husband is detained and deported, if he’s got a wife and children, they’ve got a choice to make. “The children of parents who are here illegally, those children are not British citizens by law,” he continued. “There are bound to be specific cases and things, but as a principle, we’re not going to go through a whole long list of exemptions. If you do that, you actually create a criminal gang focus on the exemptions, and then people try to game that system. So we’re not playing that game.”

NORWICH, England — Outside the vast art deco headquarters of Norwich’s municipal government on a soggy Wednesday evening, anti-immigration protesters gather to make their voices heard. Many in the 120-strong crowd in the Norfolk city in the east of England, 100 miles from Westminster, are either waving — or are wrapped in — the red-and-white Saint George’s Cross or the Union Jack. Some chant “send them home,” while others have harsh words for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a government struggling to stop undocumented migrants arriving on U.K. shores in small boats.   “I will never stop raising my flag, and never stop celebrating my culture,” Jake, who declined to give his full name citing concern about potential repercussions, said of his motive for bringing along a Union Jack flag. He’s not the only Brit who has been raising the flag this summer.   An online campaign — #OperationRaisetheColours — has prompted a guerrilla movement that has seen St. George’s Cross and Union Jack flags hung from hundreds of lampposts in towns and cities across the country. Red crosses have been painted on white mini-roundabouts, and flyovers along some of Britain’s main arterial routes have been adorned. It’s a striking development in a country where flag-flying is usually reserved for special occasions such as sports tournaments, royal weddings and military anniversaries. And for some, the timing of the initiative in the heat of a politically-charged summer of anti-migrant protests has set off loud alarm bells. The Hope not Hate advocacy group claims a number of the campaign’s organizers have links to far-right activists. Tommy Robinson, who co-founded the race-baiting and now-defunct English Defence League party, has been posting in support of it all on X — along with the platform’s owner, U.S. tech mogul Elon Musk. A sizable chunk of the British public (42 percent) see the flag campaign as a political statement against immigrants, polling conducted this week for the More in Common think tank found.  Three in five of those same Brits polled say they want to see more flags on lampposts and roundabouts. “Whatever the intentions of the people who started this off it’s actually not a campaign that should worry anybody else,” said former Labour Minister John Denham, now a professor in English identity and politics. Flags are not seen as overtly political by the British public, he added. “If you put a MAGA [Make America Great Again] hat on, you are clearly declaring your support for [U.S. President Donald] Trump. If you fly a St. George’s Cross or a union flag, for somebody like me, that’s my flag and whatever the intentions of the person who put the flag up, I’m entitled to see it in the way that I want.”   “I think we should be quite relaxed about this,” he said. TAKING OFFENSE  Back in Norwich, in a similarly sized counter-protest crowd, where two Palestinian flags are being flown, people are not so sanguine. Pro-refugee advocate Caroline, who also wouldn’t give her full name, said the flags had become “political symbols.” It’s a striking development in a country where flag-flying is usually reserved for special occasions such as sports tournaments, royal weddings and military anniversaries. | Martin Pope/Getty Images People in minority groups are “very frightened of that flag,” she said of the St. George’s Cross. “It’s an emotional trigger for some people.” That’s a view dismissed by Sue Hubbard, a 62-year-old living in a village outside Norwich, who was part of the anti-migrant protest across the road. She questions why people flying the Palestinian flag could object to the flag of St. George. “I don’t know why they are offended with this,” she says.  Nigel Farage is, of course, getting in on the action. His poll-leading Reform UK is not behind the movement, but the right-wing populist is jumping on the bandwagon.  While some local councils have been removing flags amid concerns they could be seen as disrespectful or unsafe,  Farage has made great play of promising that his newly-won Reform-led councils will not remove “sensibly”-placed flag paraphernalia. “Union flags and the Cross of St. George should and will fly across the country,” Farage said in a press statement. “Reform UK will never shy away from celebrating our nation.” It follows a furor in May when Reform UK — flush with success from local elections — ordered town hall bosses in areas they had won control of to only fly the Union Jack, St. George’s flag and county flags.   Pride flags supporting LGBTQ+ communities and Ukrainian flags, which had been flown across many councils in support of the country after the Russian invasion in 2022, should be removed, Reform said.   Farage’s potential rival on the right, Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, also appears to see political merit in backing the campaign. He posted a picture of himself up a  ladder hanging a flag, and followed up with an opinion piece in the right-leaning Telegraph newspaper claiming people were “mobilising to restore the country they know and love.”  FILLING THE VACUUM The movement could be a big test for Starmer, the embattled prime minister and leader of the center-left Labour Party. Since taking the reins of the party in 2020, Starmer has been at pains to insist he is “proud of being patriotic,” often appearing in front of a Union Jack flag and pointedly marking St. George’s Day. The British prime minister, who has been on holiday, told journalists through his spokesman on Tuesday that he “supports people who have got pride in our flag and our history and our values,” pointing to the flags which are put up on Downing Street when England plays in international sporting tournaments. But Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, is wary. He thinks politicians like Starmer should be going further in their response to the Raise the Colours movement — and make it clear that while “pride in place is good, vandalism is bad.” Ethnic minority politicians on the left and the right should also be taking on those who claim the flag is for one group, he says. “They don’t know the history of our country,” he warns of those claiming the flag as their own. “They don’t know the history of our flags, because we know that British identity has always mattered a great deal to ethnic minorities in Britain.” “Nobody feels threatened by the England flag when 65,000 people come out on the Mall to celebrate the [England women’s soccer team] lionesses bringing the trophy home. So I think sort of normalizing its use, rather than it having this frisson is quite an important thing to do,” Katwala adds. Luke Tryl of More in Common agrees.  “Many Brits like the idea of more Union Jacks flying around their neighborhood, and only want the council to take them down if they’re causing a safety risk,” he says. “Guerilla flag installation isn’t a problem for most. But when it comes to acts of vandalism, damage to property or anything that looks like bigotry or racism the public will recoil. For most, it’s lets fly the flag — but do it respectfully.” 

A Turkish court on Wednesday blocked access to chatbot Grok, operated by Elon Musk’s xAI, after it generated offensive responses about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, founder of the republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and religious values. The news comes as Grok faces widespread blowback over Nazi statements it produced in recent days. The chatbot has also angered the government in Warsaw with offensive comments targeting Polish politicians including Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Ankara launched an investigation into Grok on Wednesday morning “in response to Grok’s insults against Atatürk, our esteemed President, and the Prophet,” it said in a statement. Under the law of Turkey — a country of 85 million people — such insults are punishable by up to four years in prison. The country’s Criminal Court of Peace granted the prosecutor’s request to block access to Grok, and the telecom authority is enforcing that block on internet access providers, it added. The news quickly went viral on Turkish X. Some users shared pictures of robots being arrested by Turkish police, while others portrayed Grok as part of the opposition to Erdoğan’s government. The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Ankara launched an investigation into Grok on Wednesday morning. | Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images According to Yaman Akdeniz, a human rights professor and digital rights activist, authorities had identified around 50 posts for removal, citing the “protection of public order.” X’s legal representative in Turkey Gönenç Gürkaynak commented on the platform that he never imagined that one day Grok might need to be defended against direct criminal prosecution. On Tuesday, Grok came under fire for producing antisemitic posts and praise for Adolf Hitler. In May it faced criticism for its responses relating to claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. On Wednesday, Poland’s Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski told the RMF 24 broadcaster that he “would consider” shutting X down if authorities found violations of the law, responding to reports that the chatbot had also generated vulgar and insulting comments about politicians Tusk. “Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not artificial intelligence, ” Gawkowski said. Poland is planning to report Grok’s comments to the European Commission, he added. The team behind Grok said early on Wednesday that it is “actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.” It said “xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.” POLITICO has contacted X for comment.

PARIS  — You’d think the National Rally would be in turmoil after a key architect of the far-right party’s “de-demonization” campaign was found to have written homophobic, racist and antisemitic comments in a magazine and supported a Belgian Nazi until 2020. But the response to the news regarding Caroline Parmentier, a National Rally parliamentarian and longtime close ally of Marine Le Pen, as well as revelations that the party’s lawmakers were found to have joined Facebook groups that contained offensive content, was a collective shrug. Parmentier — who said her quotes had been taken out of context and denied the accusations of homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism — does not appear to be in any danger of losing her job. And the National Rally as a whole does not appear to have taken a popularity hit. Given the party’s sordid history of antisemitism and xenophobia under its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, such scandals aren’t exactly a surprise. The French are probably even a bit desensitized to them after all that has emerged over the years. The National Rally’s response has been to downplay the affair as ancient history that doesn’t interest most of the public. Le Pen said the French are “miles away from stories like that.” Sébastien Chenu, a National Rally vice president, called the allegations “an old thing pulled out a dustbin.” And a far-right lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak about the issue was even more candid. “Nobody gives a damn,” the lawmaker said. That public relations strategy includes a fair mount of political spin. Every little scandal threatens Le Pen’s relentless quest to make her party squeaky clean as she sets her sights on taking power in France. “When they say that the electorate doesn’t give a damn, they are somewhat lying,” said Sylvain Crépon, a specialist on the far right at Tours University. The National Rally appears increasingly immune from scandal, but Le Pen isn’t exactly an unstoppable juggernaut hurtling toward the Elysée Palace. GOING MAINSTREAM Le Pen has for years doggedly worked on detoxifying the image of the National Rally, ruthlessly sidelining officials with extremist views or unsavory pasts. In a denouement worthy of a Greek tragedy, Le Pen kicked her own father out of the party in 2015 after he repeated his claim that the Nazi gas chambers used to commit genocide against millions of Jews had been a mere “point of detail” in the history of World War II.   While Le Pen ended up losing both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections to Emmanuel Macron, her party’s support grew between the contests. Caroline Parmentier — who said her quotes had been taken out of context and denied the accusations of homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism — does not appear to be in any danger of losing her job. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE A study of the 2022 election by the Paris-based Jean Jaurès Foundation published last year showed that Le Pen has successfully erased the far right’s toxic image for a large chunk of the population. Polls show that Le Pen is a frontrunner ahead of the next presidential vote in 2027, despite an embezzlement conviction earlier this year that threatens to keep her off the ballot. But not everyone is convinced her politics are popular enough to win. Bruno Jeanbart, head pollster at OpinionWay, said Le Pen has noticeable weaknesses with “older voters, more traditional conservative voters who haven’t joined the National Rally, and upper-middle class voters who still doubt [the party’s] economic agenda and are sensitive to discourse that is too extreme.” “She is doing better, but not enough to break the glass ceiling,” Jeanbart said. WEEDING OUT THE UNDESIRABLES The National Rally knows it needs to do a better job of vetting prospective leaders, especially considering how some of its candidates embarrassed themselves in the final days of campaigning during last year’s snap election. Party President Jordan Bardella dismissed those problematic politicians — including one revealed to have been photographed wearing a Nazi Luftwaffe cap and another sentenced for taking someone hostage — as a “few black sheep.” But internally the issue is being thoroughly addressed, a senior National Rally official said. The party is now using questionnaires and social media checks to thoroughly screen potential candidates in case Macron calls a snap election before his term ends. “There is absolutely no tolerance for racism or xenophobia,” the official said. But there’s also a limit to how normal the party can become. The National Rally must walk “a fine line between radicalism and becoming normal,” said Crépon, the academic. “If it becomes too normal, it will lose its uniqueness and its appeal,” he said. “But if it stays too radical it will remain a marginal player.”