UnHerd: Marine Le Pen: a populist who will never win the popular vote

Marine’s poll rating as ‘potential future President’ has fallen to around 16% . Her party remains more resilient than its leader electorally, but financially it is in a mess. The Rassemblement National, formerly the Front National, is struggling to keep afloat after being denied €2 million of government election funds, for defrauding the European Parliament.  [...]

Florian Philippot, her estranged former number two and the man who masterminded the de-toxification of the FN, has painted a chaotic picture of the party in his book Frexit, published last month, Few party officials are capable of writing a speech or preparing a candidate for a TV interview, he claims. Those who are capable rarely bother. The Front National under Marine, he wrote, became a “universe of laziness”.  [...]

Without Philippot’s influence, the Rassemblement National has moved back closer to the identity politics of Le Pen père – though without Jean Marie’s vulgarity, his anti-Semitism or his obsession with the Second World War. Marine Le Pen has returned to the themes of allegedly uncontrolled immigration and the internal threat from militant Islam. Unlike her father, she tries to put these issues into a “Republican” rather than “racial” context. Like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, she portrays Islam as a threat to western traditions of tolerance and democracy. [...]

To appeal to these new electorates, Marine and Philippot bolted on to the old Frontiste, anti-Socialist, small-government doctrine a statist devotion to early retirement, high pensions, industrial intervention and agricultural protectionism. No attempt was made to rationalise the conflicting programmes or explain how they would be funded. [...]

The RN will probably perform well in the European elections in May. The low turn-out always favours parties outside the mainstream.  But this is unlikely to be the “game-changer” that Marine Le Pen pretends. She will have to do very well indeed to match her stunning performance in the last European elections, when she took 25 per cent of the French seats. The fact that she is not leading the RN list herself will be a handicap. She has chosen to keep her seat in the National Assembly rather than try again for a seat in Strasbourg. Under a new French law, she cannot have both. The RN European campaign will probably be led by her romantic partner, Louis Aliot, the party’s vice President. He is a poor campaigner and a poor public speaker but in the RN/FN family comes first.

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UnHerd: How rival extremisms are firing up Britain

Choudary’s role was much more significant, however, than simply that of a self-appointed provocateur: such was his radicalising influence that Choudary has been linked to 15 terrorist plots since 2000. His followers included Khuram Butt, who was part of the attack on London Bridge that killed eight people last year, and Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby.[...]

Yet while Choudary has been in prison, Robinson has experienced a fresh rush of celebrity among the alt-right in the US, for whom he has recently become something of a cause celebre. After Robinson was tried and convicted of contempt of court in May (he already had a conviction for the same offence from 2017) Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, later called him a “solid guy” and “the backbone of this country”. Bannon recently described Robinson “a movement in and of himself now. He represents the working class and channels a lot of the frustration of everyday, blue-collar Britons.” For Robinson’s defenders, his brushes with the law are explained away by an excess of passion in opposition to Islam – although Robinson often shifts his criticism, without apparent distinction, between Islamism, Islam and Muslims in general. [...]

If the intricacies of the UK justice system don’t much concern Robinson, the same goes for his US supporters, who include not just Bannon but Donald Trump Jr. Beyond Robinson and his anti-Islam stunts and rhetoric, too, there is an ominous rise in far Right terrorist activity: Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, said last July that “the threat from extreme Right-wing terrorism is growing” with four extreme Right-wing plots disrupted since May 2017. The tiny but deeply nasty neo-Nazi organisation National Action has now been proscribed in the UK.  [...]

The tone of public debate is now one of permanent rancour: as it grows fiercer and more vituperative, many reasonable people are shrinking from open participation. It becomes harder, not easier, for British Muslims publicly to criticise aspects of Islamic fundamentalism, or for British Jews to criticise Israeli government policy – although they may do so privately – when those communities increasingly feel under broader attack from the Right or the Left. In such circumstances, voicing reservations about wrongs within the community is often seen as siding with the outsiders who are insulting the community: that is precisely what occurred over so many decades in Northern Ireland, with courageous exceptions.

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The Intercept: Is This the Beginning of the End of the US-Saudi Alliance?

President Donald Trump initially responded to questions about Khashoggi’s disappearance by saying “I don’t like hearing about it, and hopefully that will sort itself out.” But on Thursday, he began to sound much less confident in his defense of Saudi Arabia, the first foreign country he visited as president. He said that it was beginning to look as though Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was indeed murdered, but worried that jobs would be at risk if arms sales to the country were halted.[...]

Washington-based lobbying firms that do business with Saudi Arabia — particularly Hogan and Lovells, the Glover Park Group, and Brownstein — are facing a difficult decision, as pressure mounts across the board to break with the kingdom. The New York Times has withdrawn its sponsorship of an upcoming technology conference in Riyadh. Meanwhile, the Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and CNBC Squawbox co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin have announced they will pull out. A CNN spokesperson told Buzzfeed News they are reconsidering their sponsorship, and a spokespeople for CNBC and Fox Business told The Intercept they are “monitoring the situation.”[...]

Turkish officials, meanwhile, while remaining anonymous, have said that a team of 15 Saudis, many of them part of bin Salman’s personal guard, traveled in two private planes to Istanbul on the day Khashoggi was scheduled to venture into the consulate, and left that same day. The professional backgrounds of the Saudis give it the clear markings of a kill or capture squad, and official Turkish sources have said that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the consulate. Surveillance video shows Khashoggi walking into the consulate, but never walking out. NBC News reported that Khashoggi checked his phone just before heading in but has not checked it since. (The Intercept has independently confirmed this claim.) [...]

None of that, however, passes the smell test in Washington. If Khashoggi had indeed left the consulate, there would be video or some other evidence of his having done so. The gap between that reality and the Saudi statement is so wide as to be its own insult to Washington, exacerbating rather than lessening the fury at the Kingdom for apparently assassinating a Virginia resident who is known personally by many influential figures in town.

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CityLab: Europe’s Capital Cities Keep Getting Richer and Younger

Per-capita GDP has risen most sharply in capital regions across the continent, with the biggest leaps coming from the Dublin region, followed by Inner West London, and the regions around Bucharest, Warsaw, and Bratislava. [...]

Meanwhile, further west there are causes for concern as countries tend to polarize between poorer and richer regions; the U.K. in particular shows an especially patchy growth map. While some sections of London remain extremely (if unequally) wealthy, per capita GDP has dropped immediately to its north, above all in most of the sprawling Yorkshire region, where an ongoing journey from an industrial economy decimated in the 1980s towards a service-oriented one seems to be neither complete nor entirely successful. [...]

Germany’s east side isn’t alone when it come to the aging of its small cities and countryside. The regions north of Hamburg and the rural districts that sandwich the heavily industrialized Ruhr region both have notably high average ages, suggesting that here too, the countryside is being drained of young people, pushing these regions towards becoming agricultural and retirement communities with little urging younger locals to stay. [...]

Another key map in the report highlights just how much Europe’s regions are diverging. The image below relates the GDP of urban regions to their national averages, with blue shading showing rates above national averages and orange showing rates below. Again the U.K. shows cause for concern, with the London region powering ahead of the national average and almost all of its former industrial heartland in central and northern England falling behind. Poland’s contrasts are also notably sharp, with Warsaw far wealthier than the national average while its rural hinterland just to the south is far poorer.

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UnHerd: Will the Catholics bring down Merkel?

This relationship holds even after controlling for other factors such as education, income, unemployment, and the share of migrants in the region. Alexander Roth of the Bruegel Institut ran such an analysis and found “a positive correlation between Catholic church membership and AfD voting in Bavaria, controlling for numerous other factors”. So we have a curious anomaly: Germany’s most Catholic party, one that recently passed a law mandating that crosses be posted in all government buildings, is losing support among Catholics. [...]

Bavaria’s high number of Catholics almost certainly includes many for whom Catholicism is a cultural heritage rather than something that is a center of their lives. Only about 10% of German Catholics regularly attend mass, according to 2016 figures from the German Bishop’s Conference. These people may, like their American brethren, be afraid of Islam and migrants but be unconnected enough with the Church to pay attention to its stances on “Islamophobia” and migration. [...]

That cultural identity may also combine with isolation from formal institutions to create a warm climate for anti-Islam fears. Data from Germany’s past and America’s present again reinforces that view. The vote share for the Centre Party and the BVP was relatively stable throughout the rise of Nazism: those Catholics close enough to the Church to vote for the Church’s party did not waver despite the Depression’s pressures. So, too, did more nominal Catholics who voted for parties with ties to strong unions such as the Social Democrats or Communists. But those who voted for other parties, presumably those without active membership in strong institutions, switched en masse.

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Politico: The man who lost Bavaria

Barring a minor miracle, Söder’s Christian Social Union, which has dominated Bavarian politics for decades, will suffer an epic thrashing in state elections on Sunday. Recent polls put the CSU at just 33 percent, nearly one-third below where it finished five years ago. [...]

There’s some truth to Söder’s argument that the CSU’s troubles reflect the reality of the age of populism, in which old standards for measuring political success and failure no longer apply. But that’s only part of the story. More than anything, Bavaria’s politics have been upended by a groundswell of popular dismay over the party’s handling of the migration crisis. [...]

At the same time, the CSU’s aggressive rhetoric on migration has disenchanted its liberal supporters, many of whom have fled to the Greens. The latest polls put the AfD, which is running in its first Bavarian election, as high as 14 percent, while the Greens are expected to finish second with 18 percent, more than double their last showing. [...]

Given that the CSU’s sway on the national stage rests solely on its strength at home, a drop of support for it in Bavaria could make the party, already a difficult partner, even more unpredictable. For decades, the CSU has sold itself at home by arguing that it alone can ensure Bavaria can influence national politics, a claim the migration crisis has shown to be exaggerated. [...]

While there’s no doubt that Seehofer — whose clashes with Merkel over migration this summer nearly brought down the government — bears much of the blame for the CSU’s image problem, whether Söder can survive is another question. His biggest selling point may be that most Bavarians can’t think of a better alternative.

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Political Critique: Romanians didn’t show up to an anti-LGBT referendum. But the battle for equality continues

A statement published by MozaiQ claimed the result shows “that Romanians have rejected hatred and division in society and have not identified with a political act aimed at stigmatising and discriminating against the LGBT community.” The result was hard-won. Ahead of the vote, activists reported an increase in homophobic and transphobic hate speech. [...]

The timing of this referendum provided a government under attack from anti-corruption protests with a chance to deflect attention from their own problems. By allowing the referendum, MozaiQ argued, “the political class has shown that it is disconnected from the daily realities” of Romanian people. The third thing to note is that voters rejected outside interference in their democracy from international ultra-conservative anti-LGBT groups. [...]

The ballot box defeat of their agenda suggests that outside groups determined to undermine LGBT rights around the world have been rejected in Romania. It also suggests that the influence of the Orthodox Church – whose Patriarch urged Christians to go and vote on Sunday – has been overestimated.

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Politico: Life wouldn’t neccessarily be worse without EU, survey finds

The survey, commissioned by Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank, found that 64 percent of the nearly 11,000 respondents weren’t sure their lives would be worse without the EU. Almost half (49 percent) reckon the bloc is “irrelevant.”

Younger respondents, however, have a more positive view of the EU, with 41 percent of under 35-year-olds thinking life would be worse if there were no Union. [...]

However, Europeans don’t want “less Europe,” the study found, with 90 percent of respondents saying the EU should be more than just a single market. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed said they do not think the EU should prioritize leaving more decision-making to national governments, which the think tank said “suggests that national sovereignty isn’t an issue for the majority.”[...]

Additionally, the survey found that more than a third of Europeans want more transparency from the bloc, particularly on issues such as budget spending, and 41 percent would welcome having a bigger say, for instance, in voting on EU-wide policy decisions.

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