Good morning. Finally, a little reassurance about the rise of Europe’s far right – more on that below, along with Canada’s 2-0 loss to Argentina at the Copa and a sudden Green Party resignation.
Today’s headlines
- At NATO, Biden vows that “Ukraine will prevail” in its war against Russia, amid mounting pressure to prove he’s fit to continue his re-election bid
- Dozens of ghost towns line the Israel-Lebanon border as fears of an all-out war grow
- Academics grapple with how to teach Alice Munro’s work in the wake of her daughter’s sexual-assault revelations
Protesters were in the mood to celebrate after early second-round election results in Paris, France, on July 7, 2024.Yara Nardi/Reuters
Europe
Cooling the far-right fever
It’s been a month of mixed messages when it comes to Europe’s political ecosystem. First, voters in the European Union’s parliamentary elections punished their ruling centrist parties and handed more power to the once-fringe far right. The results were so bad in France that President Emmanuel Macron rolled the dice on a snap election – only to see Marine Le Pen’s extreme National Rally make huge gains in the first round of voting.
But then Britain (which, yes: no longer in the EU) moved toward the centre-left last week with a Labour landslide. And on Sunday, a hastily assembled left-wing alliance thwarted the National Rally in France’s final round of voting. So can we all now breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to the far right’s ascendance? I called up Amy Verdun, a professor of political science at the University of Victoria, to find out.
What will Sunday’s election mean for Emmanuel Macron?
This election was an ultra-gamble on the part of Macron and the gamble failed. Macron came into power to rule from the centre. Now, he will need a coalition, which will be super difficult to find because the left is a hodgepodge and the right is the National Rally. The election was a strategic political move on Macron’s part to stop the Rally’s momentum and people did not like it – there was no domestic reason for a new election. So they voted against Macron’s leadership and now that produces a hung Parliament.
So it’s not just a repudiation of the far right in France but a repudiation of Macron?
That’s what I would highlight. To understand why we can get these extreme outcomes in the European Parliament, it’s helpful to know that people often aren’t voting on what the Parliament will do. Instead, they vote to send a firm message to their national governments that they don’t like what they’re doing. You might vote for somebody who would annoy the government the most or to give a voice to smaller parties.
If you look at the European Parliament elections, the extreme right won in France and Germany. But if you look at all of Europe, that’s not the case. The European People’s Party, which is centre-right, is still the largest party in the parliament, and that will produce a lot of stability.
Well, Victor Orban of Hungary and Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally just announced their own far-right alliance, which makes them the third-largest voting bloc in the Parliament. Could they do some damage?
I think Marine Le Pen is trying to grab the attention of Europe after the French election. Fidesz, which is the leading party of Hungary, is looked at with worry, but it’s relatively small. Can they do damage? They only have 84 members out of 720 in Parliament. They’re the third-largest group because there are so many small groups. I’m not sure they can be so creative to dominate Parliament with 84 people.
Marine Le Pen as Sunday's election results rolled in.Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
Now I’m starting to feel like the dire warnings of a far-right takeover in Europe might be a tad overblown.
In my view, that’s how it is. I think there are two cases that might give insight. In 2022, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni was elected. She ran on an extreme right-wing platform and she represents a party with a fascist past. Everybody was worried: What’s going to happen next? But even if she still uses this nationalist rhetoric, she’s become much more mainstream. She’s endorsed EU policies and NATO, and people have just not seen her as very troubling.
The second example is the Netherlands, where the populist PVV and its leader, Geert Wilders, became the largest party in an election in November. But he couldn’t form a coalition because nobody wanted to rule with him, so the process to choose a new prime minister took a very long time. During that process, the left decided that they needed a stronger voice in Europe, so they came together to vote their party ahead of the PVV in the Parliament elections.
Having said all that, I do think Europe has moved further to the right in the past 30 years. But I don’t see an extreme-right wave.
What about over the next 30 years, though? Because it seems younger voters aren’t the progressive idealists they used to be.
Yes, and we really need research to figure this out. In the past, we’ve seen that younger people are more idealistic and have more liberal values. But this time around, they voted more on the right. Germany, for instance, had 16-year-olds voting for the first time, and it looks like they didn’t vote on the left at all – they voted on the extreme right. This could be in part because they’re getting their news from social media, and if you are sympathetic to strong voices and simple solutions, you can get into an echo chamber of these populist, right-wing voices. This is virgin terrain for researchers, and it looks like it’s a different trend. So while it’s too soon to be dire about the far right now, we’re not out of the woods.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Shot
‘As big as this moment has become, it’s still the set-up for something bigger.’
Kamal Miller and Alphonso Davies.Elsa/Getty Images
For the past 40 years, the soccer world has seen Canada as an easy mark – that’s over now, even with the loss to Argentina, Cathal Kelly writes. Read more about Canada’s incredible Copa run here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: After Green Party deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault resigned for “personal reasons” yesterday, Leader Elizabeth May said she’s ready for the next election: “I am a 70-year-old angry, cranky version of Greta Thunberg.”
Abroad: A Russian court has accused Yulia Navalnaya, Alexey Navalny’s widow, of “participating in an extremist community” and says she’ll be subject to arrest if she ever returns to the country.
Building a mystery: Sarah McLachlan will take part in a new documentary on Lilith Fair that draws from more than 600 hours of archival footage.
Building a heat dome: Yup, climate change made last month’s scorching temperatures up to 10 times more likely, Environment and Climate Change Canada has found.