BRUSSELS ― Belgian police raided the EU’s foreign service and the College of Europe on Tuesday in a bombshell corruption probe — and detained two of the EU’s most powerful officials. Federica Mogherini, who once served as the EU’s top diplomat, and Stefano Sannino, a director-general in the European Commission, were questioned over allegations of fraud in the establishment of a training academy for diplomats. Mogherini was born in Rome, the daughter of a film set designer. She was elected to the Italian parliament in 2008 as an MP with the center-left Democratic Party and became Italy’s foreign minister in 2014, an appointment that, at the time, took many by surprise. The 52-year-old’s tenure was short-lived, as she was made the EU’s high representative — the foreign policy chief — the same year, a position she held until 2019. Her time in the job is perhaps most notable for her work on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. At the end of her five-year term, she became the rector of the Bruges-based College of Europe, a position she’s been in ever since. But her appointment was mired in claims of cronyism, as professors and EU officials argued that she was not qualified for the post, did not meet the criteria and applied after the deadline. She has also served as the director of the EU Diplomatic Academy, a program for junior diplomats across EU countries that is run by the College of Europe, since August 2022. It’s the academy that is at the center of the probe. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said it has “strong suspicions” that rules around “fair competition” were breached when the EEAS awarded the tender to set up the academy. Sannino, a career diplomat from Naples with a packed CV including various roles in Rome and Brussels, has served as director-general of DG Enlargement, permanent representative of Italy to the EU, Italian ambassador to Spain and Andorra and secretary-general of the European External Action Service (EEAS). He has championed LGBTQ+ rights and is married to Catalan political adviser Santiago Mondragón. He started his current role as director-general of DG MENA, the EU’s department for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, in February. He has lectured at the College of Europe and at the diplomatic academy. None of the people questioned has been charged. An investigative judge has 48 hours to decide on further action.

THE ALTAR BOYS WHO GREW UP TOGETHER — AND TRIED TO KEEP EUROPE’S CENTER FROM CRUMBING The lives of Daniel Caspary and René Repasi often overlapped as they grew up. In the European Parliament, they became political rivals — but were also united in common cause. By MAX GRIERA and NETTE NÖSTLINGER in Stutensee, Germany Photo-illustrations by Klawe Rzeczy for POLITICO Sometimes it’s the least extraordinary places that throw up the most startling of coincidences.   In this case, a tiny German town — nothing special: a stone’s throw from the Rhine river, a small 18th century castle, the kind of suburban sleepiness where boys like Daniel Caspary and René Repasi while away their teenage years cycling to the city to party or the nearest lake to cool off — has produced rival leading European politicians who have been key to assuring EU political stability in a time of unprecedented fragmentation.  The way their lives have intertwined is astonishing. Caspary, now 49, and Repasi, three years his junior, went to the same school. There, they both organized a cabaret of political satire. They honed their skills on the student newspaper. They were both altar boys in the same church. And they both scored their first political victories on their town’s council. Almost since birth, their lives have taken staggeringly parallel paths. Now, they’re on different sides in the European Parliament.  Advertisement Caspary is leader in the Parliament of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the largest faction in the European People’s Party. Repasi is the equivalent for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the third-largest national delegation in the Socialists and Democrats group. The EPP and the S&D are the two biggest Parliament groups and for decades have between them held a grip on EU power. Despite the rivalry between their umbrella political families, with antagonism only worsening since the 2024 EU elections, the two men have cemented their reputation as the backchannels between the two sides, attempting to safeguard what in EU circles is known as the “grand coalition” between center right and center left. That’s significant because the Parliament is fractured like never before. Aping a trend seen across western democracies, the middle ground is crumbling. Politicians like Caspary and Repasi represent the old ways of doing things ― political opponents, yes, but ready to put aside their differences so their two sides can work together to face down the extremes. Increasingly, that’s no longer a given in the European Parliament. That was evident when the EPP, earlier this month, abandoned its traditional centrist allies and pressed ahead with the support of far-right groups to approve cuts to green rules.  Daniel Caspary, the charismatic old-school conservative deeply rooted in his community, in his class photo from the year he graduated. | Stutensee’s Thomas Mann-Gymnasium 1993-1994 annuary René Repasi, the cosmopolitan and slick social democrat with an impressive track record in academia, in his class photo from the year before he graduated. | Stutensee’s Thomas Mann-Gymnasium 1993-1994 annuary A good relationship between the pair has been particularly useful because the leaders of the two pan-European groups rarely conceal their mutual dislike and are increasingly finding it tough to reach compromise positions on new laws, such as on green rules for business or on controlling migration.  “Of course we have many differences politically, but it’s good if you can talk,” Caspary told POLITICO. “We’ve known each other for ages … We know that we can trust each other.”   “He was always a sort of leading figure,” Repasi said, remembering their shared childhoods in Stutensee. I “looked up to him.”  Advertisement While their paths overlapped, they could barely be more different personally and politically. Caspary is the charismatic old-school conservative deeply rooted in his community, pressing the flesh at local events and using the language of the person in the street. He still lives in the area. Repasi, by contrast, is the cosmopolitan ― the slick social democrat with an impressive track record in academia, a man of scholarly rhetoric who moved away from Germany completely. “What Repasi lacks,” said Mathias Zurawski, a journalist who attended the same school, “Caspary offers. And vice versa.”   ALTAR BOYS Stutensee’s discreet Catholic St. Josef Church is in the town’s backstreets. The garden surrounding it boasts abundant fruit trees. Posters advertise meetings of the scout group.  It’s humble in comparison to the more spectacular Protestant church on the main street. It’s here where the Caspary and Repasi families worshipped. And it’s where the two boys built trust in each other.  “We met for the first time in the youth groups of the Catholic church,” Caspary said. “We talked about this. I think this stands for some values. We always try to be honest.”  Those early religious experiences play a big role in Caspary’s life today, said Ansgar Mayr, a regional CDU politician who has known him since he made his first steps in politics.    Stutensee’s St Josef Catholic Church, where Caspary and Repasi used to serve as altar boys. | Max Griera/POLITICO “He was greatly influenced by his time in the Catholic Church and also his time with the Scouts, who are Catholic Scouts,” Mayr said. “His circle of friends, outside the political bubble, comes very much from the Catholic Church and parish youth groups.”   The pair served as altar boys, assisting the priest at Mass and kneeling as part of the liturgy. On Christmas, they sang carols around town. The Social Democrat Repasi’s Catholicism has lapsed somewhat, but despite being “one of those guys who go to church only at Christmas,” he said Christian values serve as guidance for his daily life and political career. CHAOS AND REVOLUTION The pair’s paths crossed again as teenagers in high school. The Thomas-Mann Gymnasium is just a stone’s throw from the church. It’s seen better days and is due to be renovated next year. For now, it still looks as it did in the 1990s. It’s easy to imagine Caspary and Repasi here. The lockers they’d have used line the corridors and the classrooms are plain, aside from the vintage orange cubical washbasins. In those years, they both dived into extracurricular activities. Caspary founded an annual political cabaret show. At 18, he handed the organizing baton to Repasi, who suddenly found himself facing the daunting task, he said, of raising money to cover costs.  “If the whole thing was a success, [that] was due to the fact that he [Caspary] handed it over, and we did the transition period together,” said Repasi.  Advertisement The boys’ school yearbooks portray two kids destined for greater things. Alongside a photo of Caspary humorously dressed as a medic, his classmates described him as “source of the most creative interjections (‘yes, but…’) that elicit a wide range of reactions from teachers, ranging from amusement to annoyance.” It’s “hard to believe,” the entry said, “that this chaotic person will one day take on a leading role as a conservative politician.”  Repasi’s friends saw him as a revolutionary. His portrait shows him wearing a Soviet hat. “Discussions with him often turn into fights,” his schoolmates said. “But no one else is as good at arguing objectively.”  The boys also bumped into each other on the school’s newspaper, Pepperoni. Caspary was already acting as a sporadic school reporter, when Repasi — a couple of years later — became editor in chief. The boys weren’t scared of hitting the establishment where it hurt. Pepperoni signified “something that stings”  so was “a means to express criticism,” said former teacher Sabine Graf, who taught French and German at the school at the time.  Yearbook of Daniel Caspary, featuring a photo of Thomas Mann blended with Albert Einstein’s famous tongue picture, symbolizing science. | 50 years anniversary book, Thomas Mann Gymnasium 1974-2024 Covers of the Pepperoni school magazine, which both Caspary and Repasi contributed to. | 50 years anniversary book, Thomas Mann Gymnasium 1974-2024 Yearbook of René Repasi, featuring a pig with a black flag, symbolizing social class revolution and anarchism. | 50 years anniversary book, Thomas Mann Gymnasium 1974-2024 Those shared experiences form the basis of the two men’s relationship in the Parliament today. “You can always say you can trust me,” Repasi said. “But actually you can only do so if you have experienced it. And I experienced it in my past that I can trust him and that I can rely on him.”  VOTERS’ CRITICISM These days, Stutensee isn’t immune to the political winds that blow across the whole of Europe. With populism, of right and left, on the rise, centrist politicians who broadly prefer to focus on points of agreement rather than division aren’t in vogue. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second in Germany’s national election earlier this year ― the best showing for a far-right party since the Nazi rise to power. The AfD isn’t represented on the city council here, but locals acknowledge there’s a desire to kick the establishment. An establishment symbolized by men like Caspary and Repasi. Despite their deep roots in the town, many reject the idea they’re local heroes. “They show up at some celebratory events around town with their family a couple of times a year, but you don’t hear from them afterwards,” said a 37-year-old bartender at the smoke-filled bar in town, who gives his name only as Dominik. A handful of people at the bar hear his remarks and nod.  Dominik also went to Thomas-Mann Gymnasium. He knew Caspary’s brother. But he insisted neither politician can be trusted. They’re not “looking out for the interests of the people,” he said.  But early on in their careers, the two politicians made some tangible changes for locals. When they were both on their school’s student council,  Caspary campaigned for a night bus line between Stutensee and the city of Karlsruhe, 10km away. In some ways, he succeeded, advancing a cause that led to the construction of a durable tram connection built years later.   “During this campaign, I realized that if you start engaging with the town representatives, like the mayor, like the city council members, then you can change things,” Caspary said.      Advertisement Repasi’s political awakening came when the regional government tried to cut by a year the time that students attended high school to align practices with other European countries. The school’s leadership wanted to participate in the pilot, despite most students being opposed. “I found it total nonsense,” Repasi said. “I was mobilizing the school kids to come to this meeting of the municipal council, and I think for the first time ever it was totally full.”     The students cheered loudly when their arguments, compiled by Repasi, were presented to the mayor. The council ultimately rejected the plan. If the bus line was Caspary’s first political victory, this was Repasi’s.  MR. STUTENSEE VS. MR. EUROPE Eventually, they drifted apart.   These days, Caspary’s image is one of a politician still deeply rooted to his home, who found his way to Brussels by chance. People close to him describe him as a family man, raising his five children just a few kilometers from where he grew up. Repasi, in contrast, is seen as a professor-turned-politician, someone with a strong passion for European affairs who deliberately chose to build his life abroad.   Classroom of Thomas Mann Gymnasium, intact since Caspary and Repasi studied in it. | Max Griera/POLITICO For Repasi, who was raised by a German mother and Hungarian father, “cosmopolitanism runs through his life,” said Graf, the schoolteacher. She and another former teacher both recalled his in-depth study on the Yugoslav Wars. He became a professor of European law in Geneva and Rotterdam, where he raised two sons with his Polish wife.    Caspary was elected to the European Parliament almost by accident in 2004, at 28, because of the CDU’s exceptionally strong showing.   “My plan was to become the chairperson of the group in my city council,” he said.  Advertisement For Repasi, on the other hand, ending up working in an EU institution was his dream, according to colleagues. He even dabbled with joining Caspary in the CDU. But in his village, the party didn’t feel very welcoming, he said. “I’m Western-looking enough not to have any discrimination experiences like Turkish people, but my strange family name was strange enough in my village,” he said.   Repasi’s road to the Parliament was bumpier than Caspary’s. He ran in three elections but never made it, ultimately joining when another SPD member gave up her mandate in 2022. TOGETHER IN BRUSSELS ― AND THEN APART AGAIN Reuniting in the European Parliament was almost like a homecoming for Repasi. Caspary presented him with a basket of delicacies from the region around Stutensee. Repasi’s rise since then has been rapid. He became the head of the SPD faction in the S&D only two years after his arrival. And in that time, they’ve put their friendship to good use. Cordial catchups soon turned into high-level political negotiations. They were suddenly in charge of leading the biggest German parties in the Parliament and had to overcome the increasing estrangement between their group leaders, Manfred Weber, the head of the EPP group, and Iratxe García, the S&D chair. Caspary was elected to the European Parliament almost by accident in 2004 because of the CDU’s exceptionally strong showing. | Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images For Repasi, ending up working in an EU institution was his dream. | Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images That’s why they have been in constant dialogue, “to bring together political lines,” Caspary said. “We do speak about conflicts that are arising,” Repasi said. “Whether we can totally solve them is a different question.”  Other MEPs say the good relationship between the German conservatives and Socialists has proved critical. “The stability of the mandate” ― European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s loose coalition of centrist parties ― “is at stake, and what can help cement a stronger cooperation is the link between the CDU and SPD,” said Javi López, a Spanish S&D lawmaker and Parliament vice-president.     But nothing lasts forever and the double act is about to split once more. In October, the German government nominated Caspary to be its representative at the European Court of Auditors, in Luxembourg. Advertisement On Thursday he is expected to be confirmed by the Parliament. That will leave a gap, according to his colleagues. “Over the years, he has been a steady and unifying presence, bringing together a team of highly diverse personalities,” said Niclas Herbst, chair of the Parliament budgetary control committee, and one of the names floated to succeed Caspary. “He is, in the best sense, a true generalist — someone who can swiftly and thoroughly grasp complex political issues … I know there is great anticipation in Luxembourg for his arrival.”  When Caspary departs, Repasi will have to find himself another opposite number to build up a trusting relationship. But it remains to be seen whether the fraying ties between center right and center left can retain at least one strong thread. While that won’t be impossible, it certainly won’t come as easy as a relationship forged in little Stutensee. Out of experiences in church, student politics and the school newspaper, the foundations held up well.

NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani capped a sharp-elbowed campaign for New York City mayor Tuesday night with a historic win, cementing the democratic socialist as both a rising star and a divisive figure in the Democratic Party. For Republicans and President Donald Trump, the results hand-deliver an ideal foil heading into midterm elections next year as they seek to paint their adversaries as out-of-touch leftists. Come Jan. 1, Mamdani will become the city’s first Muslim mayor and the second in modern history after David Dinkins to identify as a democratic socialist. With his win, he vanquished former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary and ran an increasingly bitter and negative general election campaign as an independent.

Former United States Vice President Kamala Harris suggested she may run again for U.S. president. The Democratic Party presidential hopeful, who lost to Republican Donald Trump in 2024, told the BBC in an interview to be aired Sunday that she is “not done” with politics. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones,” she said. Asked whether she could be the first woman in charge in the White House one day, Harris replied: “possibly,” hinting that she could make another presidential bid. But she added that she has not made a decision yet about whether to run again for president. The next American presidential election is in 2028. “There are many ways to serve,” Harris said, “but I have not decided yet what I will do in the future.” Harris dismissed polls suggesting that she would be an outsider in the presidential race with little chance of winning the Democratic ticket. “If I listened to polls, I would have not run for my first office, or my second office — and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here,” she said.

AMSTERDAM — Socialist lawmakers expect the center-right European People’s Party to try to keep the European Parliament presidency despite a power-sharing agreement signed after the 2024 EU election. Under the 2024 power-sharing arrangement, the top Parliament job would be shared — the first half of the term for the EPP, second half for the Socialists. But Socialist lawmakers now doubt that the center-right EPP — which holds the highest representation in the European Commission, the Council and the Parliament — will let them take the job, according to nine MEPs, aides and senior officials who were granted anonymity to speak candidly with POLITICO. That is because the Socialists also have the top post at the European Council with Portugal’s former Prime MinisterAntonio Costa, and it is unlikely the EPP would let the Social Democrats — which have lost political weight across countries in recent years — lead two out of the three EU policymaking institutions, the lawmakers said. The lawmakers also said it is likely the EPP will try to have incumbent Parliament President Roberta Metsola reelected for a third term — a first in the parliament’s history — especially after she refused to go back to Maltese politics as the leader of her Nationalist Party. Publicly, however, the Socialists are holding their ground. The president of the Party of European Socialists (PES) Stefan Löfven said Friday night that his political family will not support a third term for Metsola. “If you and I make a deal, you expect me to keep it … if they still want a decent working environment in Brussels, they need to stick to the deal,” Löfven told POLITICO ahead of the Socialist leaders dinner on Friday night during the PES congress. MIDTERM RESHUFFLE He added that the 2024 deal also includes a second term for European Council President Antonio Costa, Portugal’s former Socialist prime minister — though EPP officials contest that it was not explicitly part of the agreement, opening the door to use Costa’s reelection as leverage to keep control of the Parliament president position. Ahead of the 2027 midterm reshuffle, where all top jobs within the Parliament are up for grabs, Socialist lawmakers make it a given that Spain’s Iratxe García will remain as the chair of the Socialists and Democrats group in the chamber. “If Metsola stays on, Iratxe will stay on, for consistency,” said one MEP. “I don’t see Iratxe being challenged,” said a second lawmaker, who added that García can only be ousted if the Italians turn against her — which is unlikely given both Italy and Spain traditionally stick together. “Otherwise if they are united, any challenger would need to first match their votes together, which is a lot,”  this person said. The Italians and Spaniards hold 41 out of 136 seats. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and García are meeting with Italian Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein on Saturday, as part of a busy agenda with many bilateral meetings.  “Oh, so that’s the agenda for the meeting?” Schlein laughed when asked by POLITICO whether she would support García as she walked into the room. The Italians, who are the largest national delegation within the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), are unlikely to claim the presidency as they are very divided and there is no clear candidate among their ranks for the job. Instead, they are expected to keep group Secretary-General Fabrizia Panzetti for another term as part of a power-sharing agreement among the national party leaders. “They are trying not to open the debate and just keep everything as it is,” said a third MEP. “I wish there would be a change, not necessarily about Iratxe, but we should have an open debate internally, and not just between leaders,” this person added. While everyone assumes publicly that García will stay on — as long as Sánchez stays in power — some leaders remain tight-lipped on whether they will support her. “Iratxe has done a good job,” Swedish Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson — who is topping the polls one year away from national elections — told POLITICO. But “no, it has not been decided” if the Swedish delegation will support her, Andersson said. The EPP did not reply to a request for comment in time of publication.

ROME — Three top Italian officials in Giorgia Meloni’s government helped a Libyan warlord escape justice earlier this year and concealed secret meetings about his case from parliament, according to a report to the legislature summarizing the prosecution’s case. The events surrounding the arrest and prompt release of Osama Al-Masri Njeem, wanted by the International Criminal Court, have become a national scandal. The government’s critics argue he was repatriated to avoid retaliation from Libya, which could have targeted Italian energy interests or allowed more migrant boats to cross the Mediterranean. Al-Masri, a long-time enforcer in Tripoli’s notorious Mitiga prison, had been arrested in January in Turin after attending a Juventus football match, but was released after only 48 hours. The ICC accuses him of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, murder and sexual violence. He is accused of 22 rapes and 36 murders. The role of two Italian government ministers and a cabinet secretary in letting him go is now under investigation, and the parliament will take a final vote on Oct. 9 as to whether their parliamentary immunity from prosecution should be lifted. Ahead of the vote, Federico Gianassi, an MP for the opposition Democratic Party and parliamentary rapporteur to the committee that oversees cases against ministers, summarized the prosecutors’ case in a report. POLITICO saw a copy. SAFE MAJORITY While Meloni has a majority in the parliament that will likely shield her ministers from standing trial, the proceedings still threaten to embarrass her and leave her vulnerable to accusations that her government brushes aside international law under pressure over hot-button issues such as migration.   Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano are accused by prosecutors of helping a criminal escape justice from the ICC, and abuse of office after Al-Masri’s arrest on an Interpol warrant on Jan. 19. A spokesman for Nordio said that as minister of justice he had been “obliged to carry out a preliminary political and legal assessment before forwarding requests,” which took two days, leading to Al-Masri’s release after a procedural error. The documents received from the ICC contained “doubts and inaccuracies” that rendered them void, the spokesman added. Regarding his part in authorizing Al-Masri’s removal on a state flight, Interior Minister Piantedosi said Al-Masri “was released and expatriated for urgent security reasons” and “because of the danger posed by the subject.” Mantovano’s office did not reply to a request for comment. FEAR OF RETALIATION According to Gianassi’s report, the ministers held online meetings on the days following the arrest in January where they were warned by the intelligence services that holding Al-Masri could lead to “retaliation” against Italy’s “economic interests linked to the [state-owned oil giant] ENI gas plant in Melliah and its immigration interests, given that the RADA militia is the entity that exercises security powers in the relevant areas indicated and that relations with it have strengthened over the last year.” Al-Masri was a leading figure in RADA, Libya’s “Special Deterrence Force for the Countering of Terrorism and Organized Crime.”  The officials were also warned of the danger that Italian citizens could be arrested in a tit-for-tat act of revenge for Al-Masri’s detention. Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano’s office did not reply to a request for comment. | Fabio Frustaci/EPA During the meetings, the ministers decided on a “strategy of non-intervention” that led to his release on a procedural error, the report to MPs said. This inertia permitted Al-Masri’s release and the loss of potentially important evidence on phones and in documents. His return to Libya on an Italian state jet to be greeted by cheering crowds “facilitated the continuation of similar conduct,” the report said. The flight “was not justified by security reasons” and “assured Al-Masri an immediate and protected return, without the possibility of being arrested,” Gianassi said. Accounting to parliament on Feb. 5, the week after Al-Masri’s release, the two ministers failed to disclose the ministerial meetings where the case was discussed and where the strategy of not pushing ahead with the case in Italy was adopted, the report noted. The ministers and cabinet secretary acted on “mere political opportunism, based on generic fears and not backed up by concrete evidence, which shows the Italian government’s weakness in front of armed gangs that operate abroad and violate human rights,” Gianassi told the committee deciding on ministerial prosecutions on Wednesday. If the ministers are protected from standing trial as expected because of Meloni’s majority, Al-Masri’s alleged victims could then appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Prosecutors at the ICC have also called on judges to open infraction proceedings against the Italian government that would refer Italy to the U.N. Security Council for violating its international obligations. A ruling is expected in the next few months. 

LONDON — It was March when Gretchen Whitmer bumped into Morgan McSweeney in London while on a trade visit to the U.K. Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan and potential hopeful in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, and McSweeney, the chief of staff to embattled British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, discussed Labour’s landslide victory in its 2024 general election campaign, said a person who recalled the encounter. There, Starmer’s chief of staff accepted an eye-catching gift from Whitmer — a £90 “Michigan Wood” pen. The encounter was a small glimpse of the ties that remain between the U.K. prime minister’s aides and the U.S. Democratic Party, still licking its wounds after a resounding election defeat by Donald Trump and the Republicans. It was also indicative of something else: McSweeney’s personal desire to build a coalition and playbook for center-left parties to win and govern worldwide, with Starmer at its heart, including and going beyond just the U.S. Democrats. That desire was undimmed in recent months, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations, despite Starmer and McSweeney firefighting crises (and falling poll ratings) in office. Labour’s engagement with the Democrats has faded to the background since Trump’s reelection last November, not least because of Starmer’s efforts to charm the president — Trump’s gilded state visit to Britain starts on Sept. 16 — and the fact the Democrats have no candidate to charm. But that may change soon. The Starmer-friendly think tanks IPPR and Labour Together and U.S.-based Center for American Progress (CAP) will take a “Global Progress Action Summit” — previously held in Canada — to London for the first time on Sept. 26. Events planned so far include the newly minted justice secretary and deputy prime minister, formerly the foreign secretary, David Lammy — a friend of Barack Obama — in conversation with past (and perhaps future) Democratic hopeful, Pete Buttigieg. High-profile further speakers are expected to follow. McSweeney has been a key figure behind the scenes in recent months shaping thinking around the conference, said the four people referenced above, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. That’s despite him battling political turmoil at home — which in the past fortnight has included the departures in disgrace of Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, and his ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, and a reshuffle of both his Cabinet and No. 10 staff. A second, private day at the conference is planned for staff, where Labour government aides can swap notes with counterparts from nations such as Australia and Spain, whose socialist government’s proposals to tackle a housing crisis are being watched closely in No. 10. One of the four people said: “Morgan sees Keir as being a leader among global progressives.” Another said: “We’re trying to write kind of a blueprint or playbook of what it means to be a center-left government in the era that we’re now in” — one where neither left-wing populism, nor a return to the shared “Third Way” politics of former leaders Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, are the answer. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a huge poll lead and is promising to deport hundreds of thousands of people. Public disillusionment with establishment parties — and Starmer, the process-driven former lawyer — is high. No. 10 aides are looking at artificial intelligence and social media’s impact on society, an aging population, a public sector in need of reform, growing Chinese might and public unease at mass migration — problems plaguing governments everywhere — and believe “deliverism” is the way forward. It might not work. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks during the 69th Annual Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner on May 19, 2024. | Monica Morgan/Getty Images So how close really can Labour and the Democrats get right now — and can they teach each other more than just how to lose ground? POLITICO talked to more than a dozen politicians and strategists, several on condition of anonymity, in a bid to find the answer. THERE IS NO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE The first difficulty with meeting the Democrats is obvious. Who are you supposed to meet? The party structure is different to Labour, which almost always has a leader. A senior figure in a U.K. think tank said: “It’s not like you can speak to the equivalent of Keir Starmer in opposition and start to build relationships.” Labour MP Emily Thornberry, the chair of Britain’s cross-party foreign affairs committee of MPs which went to Capitol Hill over the summer, said: “I wasn’t, for example, being taken to see Democrats and being told, ‘Oh, this is a rising star, we think that this guy or this woman is worth cultivating, because we think that they are future leaders.’ “No, it was all about who we think are the movers and shakers on the Hill. Or who we think might be — we haven’t even worked it out yet.” Enter, then, an army of center-left think tanks to fill the void. The CAP, Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Third Way all have regular contact with U.K. counterparts about Democratic renewal. “Britain has proven a useful place for them to have those conversations that they can’t have easily in the U.S.,” argued the senior think tank figure quoted above. Others involved in this transatlantic dialogue include the U.S.-based Open Markets Institute, the former home of Biden antitrust guru Lina Khan, and the Sunrise Movement, as well as the U.K.-based Future Governance Forum, backed by a roster of Starmer donors, and the Labour Climate and Environment Forum. Claire Ainsley, a former aide to Starmer who is now the director of the PPI’s project on center-left renewal, said: “Looking at who’s going to be the next candidate is actually only one part of the equation. The other part of it is which faction, if you like, is going to get their candidate to emerge?” With Bill Clinton in the 1990s, she argued, “you build the platform and the candidate emerges. It wasn’t as if Clinton came with all these ideas — you had to build a platform.” But this becomes a battle of competing ideologies too, with different think tanks lobbying for the kind of center left they want to see. BUILDING A NETWORK Third Way, the D.C.-based Democrat-friendly think tank, talks to people “both in and adjacent to No. 10” and “a variety of folks in government,” said Senior Vice President Josh Freed — though most conversations are informal and not at the level of elected officials. Likewise, Labour’s recent former General Secretary David Evans, now an adviser to PPI, has been to the U.S. with Ainsley to speak to Democratic strategists, including at a Denver summit in April. The pair are due to attend a similar behind-closed-doors “retreat” in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, where speakers will include Obama’s former chief of staff (and potential presidential hopeful) Rahm Emanuel. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a huge poll lead and is promising to deport hundreds of thousands of people. Public disillusionment with establishment parties — and Starmer, the process-driven former lawyer — is high. | Lia Toby/Getty Images The PPI has its eye on talented governors such as Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, newcomers such as North Carolina’s Josh Stein and former governors such as Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, who also served in Joe Biden’s cabinet as a commerce secretary. Shapiro and Whitmer in particular, argued PPI President Will Marshall, embody an “impatience with government bureausclerosis” — a battle occupying Labour in the U.K. Friendly think tanks like to hail Shapiro for fixing a key interstate in just 12 days after it collapsed. In the U.K., PPI is interested in center-left ministers such as Lammy, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, John Healey, Ellie Reeves, Alison McGovern, Torsten Bell, Kirsty McNeill and Lucy Rigby, along with new junior ministers such as Kanishka Narayan and Mike Tapp. Democratic former Congressman Tim Ryan — who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 as well as against the now-Vice President JD Vance in a 2022 Ohio Senate race — came to the U.K. in July, facilitated by the PPI, and held briefings with Labour MPs and peers. Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and former Starmer adviser who works with the PPI, presented research on swing voters who are becoming disillusioned with center-left parties. Ryan also met Starmer at a pre-arranged encounter during an event in parliament and the two spoke about politics, said one person who was there. Marshall said the PPI-Labour relationship “withered” in the years the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn led Labour, but the history goes back to 1989, when he met Patricia Hewitt, a center-left think tanker in the political wilderness, who would become a Cabinet minister under Tony Blair. THE GOVERNMENT CAN HELP Labour isn’t in the wilderness this time — at least not yet — and has the levers of government to help. The U.K. Embassy and consuls general will play a role in building links between the government — in a non-party-political way — and potential Democratic runners and riders. Diplomats will keep tabs on rising stars and gather contact details for their teams, and this will likely kick up a gear when the picture becomes clearer after the U.S. midterm elections in November 2026. This, of course, is true of Republican rising stars too. “We do have the advantage of the machinery of the Foreign Office network to deal with that,” said one former Labour adviser. There are always two tracks, the adviser added — cross-party, pragmatic relationships with U.S. administration figures come first, “but clearly, you also have your political family that you are part of, and the alliances that you have as fellow progressive political leaders.” Such fellow leaders could include California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose pugilistic and Trump-mimicking social media style has made waves with Democrats, or JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor whose deep pockets as the heir of a hotel fortune could allow him to self-fund a presidential candidacy. These tracks can sometimes appear to overlap. Starmer gave the job of ambassador to Washington D.C. — usually reserved for a civil servant — to Peter Mandelson, a close ally of McSweeney and long-time operator on the center left (although he was also quick to cultivate relationships with Trump’s MAGA right). Mandelson was due to be briefed on this month’s summit before he was sacked on Thursday over revelations about his friendship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Likewise, Emily Thornberry’s choice of meetings in Washington this summer was guided by diplomatic officials, and the embassy would sometimes have someone taking notes in the room. But Trump and the Republicans are by far the priority, at least for now. Labour officials are still scarred by a row during the 2024 U.S. election, in which Trump’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” after activists went to volunteer for Kamala Harris’ campaign. | Jeff Kowalsky/AFP Thornberry recalled of her visit: “The impression I got was that reengaging with however the Democrats emerge is on the back burner, waiting for things to happen — because the pressing issue is trying to understand what the hell is going on under the Trump regime. So that’s the priority.” Thornberry recalled a surprising bond between MPs and some Republicans, because many of them had links to the U.S. military. “For these guys who’ve actually been under fire with Brits, they have a very different relationship with Britain than Democrats, who see us as, you know, their liberal friends from across the pond — but they have lots of liberal friends across the pond,” she said. DON’T WAKE THE BEAST Bonding too closely with Democrats is fraught with danger. Labour officials are still scarred by a row during the 2024 U.S. election, in which Trump’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” after activists went to volunteer for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Many Labour activists privately saw it as the weaponization of the sort of routine campaigning that would usually pass without comment. The row erupted after Labour’s Head of Operations Sofia Patel told would-be volunteers: “We will sort your housing.” One Labour volunteer who went to the U.S. said: “It was a foolish, ill-advised LinkedIn post, and it wasn’t even properly true, because many of us were just organizing ourselves into groups — former staffers, current staffers, who were warm and interested — it wasn’t all organized by the party. Lots of us had just got ourselves into a group, booked ourselves into an Airbnb and a hotel and booked the same flights.” People paid their own way and many avoided posting on social media, the volunteer said. The danger hasn’t passed. While Starmer is seeking to define himself as a friend of Trump, many Democrats define themselves by resisting him. Formal contacts with Democratic politicians are rare for Starmer and his aides these days, though the PM met with House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer at the NATO summit in July. Mike Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said Starmer’s government is focused on making sure the “U.K. is in a decent place with regards to Trump.” JUST KEEP TALKING The conversations continue regardless. Organizers behind this month’s London summit are hoping for representatives from most center-left governments in Europe and others from further afield. McSweeney has relationships with people in progressive think tanks in the U.S. and other countries, is close to former Biden and Obama officials and attended the Democratic National Convention last year alongside Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s then-director of communications. One former Labour staffer argued, however, that party HQ actually cultivated stronger links with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) than it did with the Democrats before Britain’s 2024 election. Labour hired Aussie strategist David Nelson to help run its general election campaign last year, alongside a second, more junior former Australian Labor staffer. Evans and Ainsley of the Progressive Policy Institute went to Australia to meet the ALP this past June. “Politically, we’re more similar to Australia than anywhere else in Europe,” the former Labour staffer added. “Their electorate behaves more like ours.” Despite all his domestic woes, Starmer’s allies believe he can still lead the pack. “There is a method and a recipe that worked for the center left, and it worked to get Labour into power … It is having a clear leader, vision and program to change the lives of working people for the better,” Ainsley said. She added: “Where center-left governments drift from that as their priority, it’s where they come unstuck.” But Keir Starmer is now drifting in the polls, and his critics have also accused him of a lack of vision. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images At the Denver summit in April, PPI’s Marshall said Democrats were asking Evans “ ‘How did you all win? What did you do? How did you win back those Red Wall constituencies in the July election last year?’ ” But Starmer is now drifting in the polls, and his critics have also accused him of a lack of vision. The conversations now are not just about how to win — but how to rebuild. “Conceivably, we learn the most from failure,” said Williams of CAP. “I think there’s a lot to learn.” Some failures unite most center-left strategists — like needing to focus on voters’ wallets rather than distant economic indicators. Marshall said part of his conversations with British MPs in early 2024 were “reality therapy about the Biden administration and Bidenomics.” Until Biden’s crushing defeat, he said, many center-left politicians including in Britain were looking to his strategy as the answer. Other issues, such as migration and gender politics, are thornier. Williams argued: “Do I think that we’re learning the right lessons yet? No. The folks [in the U.S.] who are pushing this whiplash back to the center and saying that we need to be tough on immigration, we need to push back on transgender rights — I think they’re dead wrong.” And for Freed of Third Way, Starmer would benefit from pushing the bureaucratic part of his personality aside. “Far be it for me to give advice to someone who successfully won an election and is leading a government,” he said. “But I think the thing that we’re seeing in general is that this is not a moment for buttoned-up, cautious, precise leaders. That this is not the moment to only go on controlled interviews where you know the questions and it’s only going to be 15 minutes. It’s not the moment where you’re unwilling to share insights and glimpses of yourself, of who you are, of the passions you care about.” Freed then put it more directly: “The blunt challenge of the moment is, this is like two owners of football clubs talking to each other. The Democrats just got relegated. The other [party, Labour], let’s be blunt, looks like [it] might be relegated — they’re in a relegation battle at the very least.” For football fan Keir Starmer, it’s a battle that may define his legacy. Shia Kapos contributed reporting.

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party nearly tripled its support in municipal elections in Germany’s most populous state on Sunday, according to initial results. The results in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany’s west, underscored the party’s growing appeal to voters outside its strongholds in the states of the former East Germany, where it is the strongest political force. AfD leaders now see the more populous west of the country — including the declining industrial cities of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to steel factories and a diminishing coal industry — as the key to expanding the party’s base, particularly with working-class voters increasingly defecting to the far right. The AfD won nearly 15 percent of votes in the state, coming in third place, according to the initial results. In the last municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia five years ago, the party won 5.1 percent of votes. In the city of Gelsenkirchen, a former center of heavy industry, the AfD candidate appeared set to face a center-left politician in a runoff for mayor. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. Merz’s coalition partners in the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — once the dominant political power in North Rhine-Westphalia’s industrial centers — came in second with around 22 percent, according to an early tally. These vote shares are slightly lower than results for the parties in the state’s municipal elections five years ago. The elections, while having no direct effect on national politics, were widely seen as a barometer of the national mood, coming roughly four months after Merz took office. Some of Germany’s conservative and centrist politicians expressed relief that the CDU and SPD performed as well as they did, since both parties have seen their national poll numbers slump while the AfD’s have risen. “All Christian Democrats will be delighted with this result,” Hendrik Wüst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, said in a televised interview shortly after the polls closed. At the same time, Wüst added, the AfD’s strong result “cannot allow us sleep peacefully.” Centrist politicians must ask themselves “what the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration,” Wüst said. “Are all parts of our welfare system really fair? What about problems with housing costs? Some issues have been allowed to drag on for a very long time.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. | Andreas Arnold/Getty Images In Germany’s federal election in February, the AfD came in second with 20.6 percent of the vote, the best national result for a far-right party in Germany’s postwar history. The AfD’s success rested largely on its dominance in the former East Germany, where it came first in virtually all regions. Since then the AfD has become even more popular despite being designated as an extremist party by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, intensifying a simmering debate as to whether the party should be banned under the provisions of Germany’s constitution. AfD leaders are now intent on increasing their support in the former West Germany. Turnout in the North Rhine-Westphalia municipal elections increased significantly to 58 percent on Sunday, according to exit poll data, suggesting the party may have mobilized new voters. AfD politicians celebrated the results. “A huge success,” Alice Weidel, a national party leader, wrote on X. “We have cemented our voter base,” Enxhi Seli-Zacharias, an AfD politician in North Rhine-Westphalia, added in a televised interview. “It is no longer purely a vote of frustration.”

Charlie Kirk understood — perhaps more so than anyone except Donald Trump himself — how power really operates within the MAGA movement. As the myriad tributes to Kirk in the day since his death have captured, he served a dizzying array of functions within the broader Trumpian universe: a firebrand activist and debater; a media mega-personality overseeing a vast digital empire; the head of a multi-million-dollar political machine at Turning Point USA; a popularizer of the ideological fashions of the young and online right; an occasional adviser to Trump and his inner circle; and a bosom buddy with many of the most powerful denizens of the White House and Mar-a-Lago. Kirk has no real equivalent on the left. A rough approximation of a left-leaning Kirk would begin with some amalgamation of gun control activist-turned-erstwhile-DNC official David Hogg with the party consensus voice of the Pod Save America crew, supplemented by the online edginess of lefty streamer Hasan Piker and the institution-building power of a George Soros. Yet such a figure on the left is probably impossible. Kirk’s preternatural charisma and otherworldly fundraising abilities no doubt played a major role in his rise: During his early days of building TPUSA, stories circulated of skeptical megadonors writing five-figure checks after even the briefest of encounters with the 18-year-old Kirk. But a figure like Kirk is probably only possible within the unique circumstances of Trump’s GOP. Throughout his career, Kirk’s real superpower was intuiting — and deftly exploiting — the institutional hollowness of the Republican Party under Trump. Beginning in 2016, he systematically built political organizations to fulfill the functions once served by the party infrastructure that Trump destroyed. In the place of anemic campus groups like College Republicans, Kirk built Turning Point USA into a grassroots powerhouse with chapters on over 800 campuses. In the place of party-run turnout operations, he expanded the organization’s activist arm, Turning Point Action, into a multi-million dollar get-out-the-vote machine. He inserted his podcasts and his social media presences into the space left by traditional party messaging and media initiatives. As the GOP became an increasingly hollow shell with Trump — and Trump alone — at its core, Kirk created new institutional scaffolds to keep the rickety structure together around its leader. He was clear about his ambition to turn TPUSA into a kind of substitute for all the old official actors of the right. “We want to be an institution in this country that is as well-known and as powerful as The New York Times, Harvard and tech companies,” Kirk recently told Deseret News. “And we believe we’re creating that.” He didn’t quite succeed, but the success he did achieve gave him real political power within the GOP. In 2021, he identified then-candidate JD Vance as a rising figure in the MAGA movement and introduced Vance to the powers-that-be in Trump world. By some accounts, TPUSA’s get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin helped tip the 2024 election in Trump’s favor, earning Kirk a quietly powerful role in Trump’s transition effort and a direct line to the Oval Office. MAGA was a somewhat surprising ideological space for Kirk to have landed. Growing up in a wealthy Chicago suburb, Kirk began his career as a high-school student with a pronounced libertarian bent, a passion for Rush Limbaugh and a budding interest in Tea Party politics. After founding TPUSA in 2012 to challenge what he saw as progressive orthodoxy on college campuses (despite not attending college himself), he was somewhat slow to embrace Trump: In 2016, he supported Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and then Sen. Ted Cruz, before joining the Trump campaign as a scheduler and social media coordination for Donald Trump Jr. Over the next eight years, Kirk built TPUSA and its activist wing, Turning Point Action, into two of the most powerful conservative youth groups in the nation — and essential vehicles of the MAGA movement. During the same period, he underwent a subtle ideological transformation of his own: He gradually left behind his Tea Party-era libertarianism in favor of a Trump-inflected populist nationalism, premised on the idea that conservatives were locked in a war to “save Western civilization,” as he recently put it to Deseret News, from the destructive forces of progressivism. During the pandemic, he embraced conservative Christianity and began hosting conferences that mixed Trumpian populism with more explicitly Christian nationalist ideas. All the while, he perfected his more potent method of political evangelism: the live, in-person debate on college campuses, where he would spar with students about wokeness, race, immigration politics, faith, family and any other culture war skirmish of the day. Even in the realm of ideas, Kirk exploited the ideological landscape that Trump’s hollowing out of the Republican Party had left in its wake. A party without strong institutional structures is also devoid of any meaningful ideological checks, one where the boundaries between its intellectual mainstream and its ideological fringe — to the extent that those boundaries exist at all — are extremely porous. Kirk expertly navigated this porousness to build his brand, vacillating between an apparently good-natured “just asking questions” earnestness and a real tolerance — and even appetite — for extreme ideas. Kirk sat for hours-long debates with liberal college kids, then turned around to seek out right-leaning figures that even many within the MAGA movement considered beyond the pale — people like the openly theocratic pastor Doug Wilson, whom Kirk invited to a TPUSA faith summit in 2024, or the monarchist writer Curtis Yarvin, a one-time guest on Kirk’s podcast. In one breath, he professed — and often lived out — a commitment to small-L liberal debate in the old-school market of ideas; in the next, he flirted with implicitly anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideas, including the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen. Yet Kirk’s real power was never as an intellectual or a theorist — he tended to reflect ideological trends on the right rather than set them — but as an institutional builder in a landscape where all the institutions had been dynamited. And that, in part, helps explain why he still has no real counterpart on the left. Kirk arrived on the Republican scene at a moment when conservative institutions had been leveled by Trump and his allies. Starting from these decimated foundations, he was able to build his way into every corner of Trump’s GOP. The Democratic Party today suffers from a hollowness of its own, but its existing structures still stand — for better and for worse. As Kirk well understood, you can’t become the New York Times, Harvard and Meta all rolled into one if those institutions still hold sway.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba plans to step down from his leadership role after less than a year on the job. He announced his intention to resign during a press conference on Sunday. Ishiba won the leadership of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September last year, effectively landing him the prime minister’s job. His party lost its majority in the lower house during snap elections in November 2024, and a LDP-led coalition also failed to secure a majority in the upper house elections this past July. The Liberal Democratic Party has been gripped by a scandal over the misuse of campaign funds since 2023. In July, Japan reached a trade deal with the U.S., which was signed into effect by U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday. Under the agreement, the U.S. imposes 15 percent tariffs on most goods, and Japan pledges to invest $550 billion into the U.S. Ishiba cited the completion of the trade deal with the U.S. as a reason for him to step down and not run in an upcoming leadership contest of the Liberal Democratic Party.