The Social World

Category: Europe

  • Macron has declared war on free speech

    Macron has declared war on free speech

    Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were “completely wrong” to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement” designed to “maximize advertising revenue,” a system he said is “destroying the foundations of democratic debate.”

    He accused X of being “dominated by far-right content” and added that the platform was no longer neutral because its owner had “decided to take part in the democratic struggle and in the international reactionary movement.” TikTok, he warned, was no less dangerous. Macron called for “a much stronger agenda of protection and regulation in Europe” to rein in what he views as the excesses of social networks.

    Macron is urging Europe to “take back control of our democratic and informational life.” This is not the first time that he has spoken in such terms. France and its allies, he warned, have been “naïve” in allowing their public debate to be shaped by foreign-owned platforms and algorithms that no longer respect neutrality. To counter what he calls “a crisis of information,” he wants a new “European agenda of protection and regulation.” It is, in effect, a plan to bring the digital sphere under far stricter political control.

    Macron’s comments are an attack on how an entire generation gets its news. Over 40 percent of people under 30 and nearly half of 18- to 30-year-olds now rely on social media for news. He appears to believe they should return to the days of reading and watching state-controlled media. The suggestion is astonishing. It’s frightening to even have to write this but democracy depends on access to competing points of view, not on state-managed television and subsidized newspapers. Macron cannot seriously believe that it would be good for democracy if Europeans were driven back to getting their news from government-aligned networks.

    Macron also blamed foreign interference, accusing Russia of being “the biggest buyer of fake accounts’ aiming to destabilize European democracies. “We’re facing interference on steroids,” he said. Macron has previously cited alleged manipulation of online content during recent elections in Eastern Europe, which he called “terrifying.” Yet observers found little evidence of large-scale manipulation in those cases. What really unsettled Paris and Brussels was often the result of those elections and the rejection of EU-backed candidates. His warnings about fake accounts look less like a defense of democracy than an argument for tightening state control over speech.

    The logical consequence of what Macron is proposing is that to abolish “fake accounts” you must abolish anonymity itself. If Macron is serious about ending fake accounts, and he keeps repeating that he is, the only way to do that is through digital identity. His plan leads inevitably to a system where anyone who wants to post or comment online must first prove who they are.

    The architecture for full control of social networks in the Europe already exists. The EU’s eIDAS regulation requires every member state to issue digital identities. There is France Identité, Germany has eID, Italy its SPID. Originally designed for banking, healthcare and tax, these IDs could easily be integrated into online services. Macron’s vision would plug them directly into the Digital Services Act. The result would be an internet where every post is traceable to a verified name. It’s a short step from fighting “fake accounts” to outlawing anonymous speech altogether.

    For years, Macron has argued that the internet must be brought to heel. When he cannot legislate at home, he does it through Brussels. The EU’s Digital Services Act already gives regulators the power to police what they call “systemic risks” online, a term broad enough to cover disinformation, hate speech, or anything judged destabilizing to democracy. Under the Act, platforms can be fined up to 6 per cent of global turnover, a threat that forces them to police themselves long before Brussels intervenes. The result is over-compliance and the quiet erosion of free speech. Add the eIDAS digital-identity framework, and Macron suddenly has the tools to pursue his long-standing ambition of ending online anonymity.

    In France itself, Macron is running out of power. His government has no stable majority, his authority in parliament has evaporated, and his personal ratings have collapsed. A poll in Le Figaro magazine this week puts his confidence level at just 11 per cent, among the lowest scores ever for a president of the Fifth Republic. On the streets he’s booed. Online he’s mocked daily. But in Brussels, the machinery of regulation still answers to him. The Digital Services Act and eIDAS framework move forward regardless of French politics, enforced by bureaucrats rather than parliament. Macron may be paralyzed in Paris, but in Europe he can still act like a statesman. The danger is that he could still in the time that he has left in office shape the rules that define what Europeans can and cannot say.

    Macron insists he’s defending democracy from manipulation and hate. But that’s the excuse. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare. He calls it a “resurgence of democracy.” It’s nothing of the kind. It’s the bureaucratization of thought, and the beginning of a continent where debate survives only on license. If Macron has his way, Europe’s public square will not just be regulated, it will be licensed.

  • The Dutch elections are still a victory for Geert Wilders

    The Dutch elections are still a victory for Geert Wilders

    Early coverage of the Dutch elections has inevitably focused on Geert Wilders – still the bogeyman of the country’s political establishment. Wilders lost seats and saw some of his support drift towards other parties on the right and to the liberal center of Democrats 66 (D66). Wilders’s Party for Freedom and D66 are leading in the polls, with both set to take 26 seats.

    Yet the real story lies elsewhere: in the spectacular downfall of former EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans, whose brief and ill-fated return to Dutch politics as leader of the Labour party has ended in a shattering defeat.

    Timmermans was as divisive a figure to the Dutch right as Wilders is to the left. In Brussels, as architect of the European Green Deal – that sprawling climate agenda which has brought headaches across Europe to businesses and households alike – he became synonymous with bureaucratic zeal. His return to the Hague before the 2023 elections was driven by a single ambition: to become prime minister. He has failed. Twice.

    The much-touted merger between his venerable Labour party and the far more radical GreenLeft – itself an alliance of former communists, greens and other assorted leftist fragments – was supposed to revitalize the left. In practice, it was a catastrophic miscalculation. GreenLeft’s informal but loud sympathies for Extinction Rebellion, antifa, rewilding and the pro-Palestine movement only reinforced public unease. Timmermans and his increasingly doctrinaire allies seemed more concerned with Gaza, asylum seekers, or protecting wolves, than with Dutch voters. Yet neither Gazans, wolves nor illegal migrants have the vote in the Netherlands – and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

    As polling day approached, talk of a broad centrist coalition began to dominate. The center-right VVD ruled out any arrangement involving Timmermans, and his party’s polling numbers duly started to erode. After two years of solid support, GreenLeft-Labour slumped on election day, losing a fifth of its seats and tumbling to fourth place. Disillusioned voters flocked instead to the upbeat, reform-minded liberal democrats of D66.

    Almost overnight, Rob Jetten – the young, energetic and impeccably groomed leader of D66 – found himself center stage. With 99 percent of votes counted, he is neck and neck with Wilders. Jetten’s surge has been extraordinary: from laggard to frontrunner in a week, powered by a deft reinvention of his party. Once derided as Europhile, climate-obsessed and tediously woke, D66 has wrapped itself in Dutch flags, quietly shelved talk of net zero and pledged to reduce asylum numbers to manageable levels.

    And that matters. The party has long been the preferred habitat of Dutch public sector workers – dominant in the media, civil service, health and education and, if rumours are to be believed, the judiciary. Yet Jetten’s youthful charm – occasionally reminiscent of a young Mark Rutte – has seduced voters across the spectrum, even prising a few away from Wilders. Should he indeed finish first, he will gain the right to appoint a “scout” on Friday to explore possible coalitions. In case he comes second, any scout sent out by Wilders will no doubt find that all other big parties will refuse to work with him, clearing the way for Jetten to try to form a government.

    Yet, the underlying message of this election is unmistakable: the Dutch electorate continues to nudge the party system rightwards. D66 has shifted to the right, clearly allowing it to win big; Timmermans’s radical experiment on the left has been routed. Other left-wing parties fared no better. The small and once-Maoist Socialist party even lost 60 percent of its support – its tenth consecutive national defeat.

    The right, meanwhile, remains potent, merely redistributed. Wilders, ever the tribune of the disaffected, will carry on in opposition – a role made for him – railing against Islamization, immigration and rising living costs. Many of those abandoned by the left will still find refuge in his rhetoric.

    An Ipsos poll found that 40 percent of Dutch voters favor a right-wing coalition, with smaller minorities leaning left or center. Jetten faces a formidable task assembling a stable majority. A coalition with the VVD and Christian Democrats would form a centrist bloc, but still fall short. The VVD will block any role for GreenLeft-Labour, leaving Jetten to look instead towards JA21, a more polished, immigration-skeptical party on the right that did very well yesterday. Such an alliance would be fragile – yet broad enough to show that D66 intends to take the country’s asylum crisis seriously, and acknowledge that “anywheres” are not the only people in the country.

  • Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Ten people have gone on trial in Paris accused of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. The defendants, eight men and two women aged between 41 and 60, are charged with “moral harassment by electronic means” and making a false claim that she was born a man by the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux. Prosecutors say their posts, many of which mocked her marriage to the President and repeated the rumor about her gender, amounted to targeted abuse. In closing, prosecutors requested suspended sentences. The defendants deny wrongdoing.

    The case stems from a complaint filed by Brigitte Macron in 2024, after a theory claiming she was transgender spread widely across French social media. Some of those now on trial shared or commented on videos repeating the rumor. Others posted memes or insults targeting her appearance and marriage. Under France’s criminal code, “moral harassment by electronic means” can lead to up to two years in prison and fines of €30,000. The court is expected to deliver its verdict later this year.

    The defendants include a small business owner, an elected local official, a computer technician and a teacher. Their alleged crime was to repost memes or post comments mocking the First Lady to modest online audiences, although some gathered considerable views. None have the resources of the presidential couple. Yet they face criminal conviction and possible prison sentences. In another country, such behavior might earn a temporary suspension from social media, or, more likely, the behavior would simply be ignored. In France, it’s a matter for the tribunal correctionnel.

    The rumor about Brigitte Macron first appeared in 2021 in Faits et Documents, a niche newsletter with a tiny circulation edited at the time by Xavier Poussard, a researcher. Its “investigation” claimed, in meticulous detail, that Brigitte Macron was born a man and was in fact the biological father, not the mother, of her three children. The theory goes that Jean-Michel transitioned prior to becoming Macron’s drama teacher when he was 15 and Brigitte was 40. The claim is false as birth records show Brigitte Macron was born female in 1953. Criminalization of the allegations is the real story.

    Whatever one thinks of the law, the scale of the vitriol directed at Brigitte Macron has been ugly. Mocking her age and appearance has long been a national sport. Adding fabricated claims about her identity turned it into something darker. Online pile-ons can become a form of mob harassment. Prosecutors portrayed the posts as part of a sustained campaign of humiliation. Brigitte Macron did not attend, but her daughter Tiphaine Auzière told the court that the conspiracy had “devastated” her mother’s health, describing anxiety, insomnia and withdrawal from public life. The judge noted evidence of a “deterioration” in her well-being.

    The theory circulated on fringe French websites before migrating into mainstream social media. Poussard later expanded his claims into a book, Becoming Brigitte, which Candace Owens then promoted to a global audience. Owens said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron… is in fact a man.” When the Macrons filed their defamation suit in Delaware in July 2025, they accused Owens of “disregard[ing] all credible evidence” that Mrs Macron was born female, and of using the claim to monetize outrage. Owens replied that the lawsuit itself was proof that the allegations are true: “If you need any more evidence that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man, it is just what is happening right now.”

    It’s an unpleasant episode, but hardly an exceptional one in the age of social media. Public figures are mocked, insulted and caricatured daily, often far worse than this. Yet in France, ridicule of public figures has a curious way of turning into a matter for the courts. From injure publique to outrage à fonctionnaire, the French state has long confused personal dignity with public order. The Macron presidency, with its high-profile lawsuits, has continued that confusion.

    France has always been conflicted about free speech. It celebrates Charlie Hebdo as a national symbol of defiance, yet prosecutes ordinary citizens for lesser acts of mockery. Even in Britain, with its infamous policing of speech, a case like this about a politician would never reach a courtroom. Britain has its own pitfalls, strict libel laws and “defamation tourism” among them. But the British expect their public figures to endure ridicule, whereas the French state tends to police it. Insulting those in power has long been treated as a kind of lèse-majesté, even in the Republic that prides itself on having guillotined its kings. 

    There’s also a deeper absurdity here. The very premise of the online attacks is that Brigitte Macron was born a man, and is therefore “trans.” The prosecution’s case rests on factual falsehood, not hostility to trans people, yet the optics are hard to ignore. The state insists on tolerance in principle but reacts with outrage when that same vocabulary brushes too close to power. Either France believes gender identity deserves respect, or it believes that being called trans is defamatory. It cannot have it both ways.

    That irony is even sharper given the couple’s record. In 2018, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron turned the Élysée courtyard into a public dance floor for the Fête de la Musique, inviting queer and transgender performers, including DJ and activist Kiddy Smile, whose troupe vogued on the palace steps in front of the presidential couple. The event, widely promoted by the Élysée itself, was hailed as a symbol of inclusivity. The event has been attacked by the right as a sign of moral decay. Yet seven years later, the same presidency would now appear to treat being called transgender as an insult. The President and First Lady who once posed for photographs with queer dancers are effectively asking the courts to criminalize anyone who implies the First Lady is trans.

    For a couple who insist the facts are on their side, the Macrons’ response has been strangely theatrical. Each new lawsuit amplifies the story they want buried. A calm, factual rebuttal would have ended the matter long ago, as would perhaps simply ignoring the rumor entirely, or even a DNA swab test. Instead, the Macrons have turned the allegations into a global courtroom saga that guarantees the rumor endless life.

    What makes this case remarkable is not the vulgarity of the posts, the internet is full of that, but the reaction from the Élysée. Brigitte Macron has launched a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens, while prosecutors pursue these ten individuals in France. For a presidential couple that prides itself on intellect and poise, it’s a surprisingly brittle response.

    Does it not occur to the President that the more he and his wife fight the rumor, the more oxygen they give it? Each legal action guarantees another round of headlines and another surge of online curiosity about the very claim they want buried. It’s a textbook case of the Streisand effect, when the attempt to suppress a rumor amplifies it.

    None of this is intended to defend the trolls. Their posts are crude, and few deserve sympathy. But public life comes with a price, and the price is mockery. Sometimes politicians are better advised simply to put up with it. The Macrons may win in court. They will not win in silence.

  • France has failed its daughters

    France has failed its daughters

    It is just over three years since a 12-year-old Parisian girl called Lola was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked France. The woman accused of the murder, 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired, is now on trial and on Monday the court heard chilling evidence from a man who encountered the defendant shortly after the death of Lola.

    Karim Bellazoug told the court that Benkired was carrying a large trunk and told him she had items to sell. When he glanced inside he saw what looked like a body. “I thought she was crazy, that she was a psychopath,” Bellazoug declared.

    The motivation as well as the mental state of Benkired will be examined as the trial continues, but the overarching question is beyond the court’s remit. It is a political question: why was Dahbia Benkired in France?

    She arrived in the country in 2016 on a student visa and took a course in catering. She was a poor student with a reputation for lateness and lying. By 2022, Benkired was a regular cannabis user with no regular employment and no fixed abode. She had also been served with a deportation order, what the French call an OQTF – obligation de quitter le territoire français.

    An OQTF was introduced in 2006; the order is issued by a prefect and requires the recipient to leave France by their own means within 30 days. The initiative took time to get off the ground; in 2007 only 3.9 percent of OQTFs were enforced, a figure that rose to 22.4 percent by 2012, the year that Nicolas Sarkozy left office. He had cultivated an image of being a president tough on crime, which can’t be said of his successors, Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron.

    In an interview in 2019, Macron admitted that the current execution rate for OQTF of under 10 percent was not good enough, and he promised that it would soon be 100 per cent.

    His boast was greeted with skepticism by Christian Jacobs, at the time the president of the center-right Republican party. He accused Macron of being “all talk and no action,” reminding the French that when he had come to power in 2017 the president promised to reduce public spending. “But the reality is that spending is increasing much faster than it did under Hollande. We have accumulated an additional €170 billion in debt in two years, and on immigration, it’s the same problem”.

    Jacobs’s cynicism was well placed. France’s debt and immigration have soared in the last six years. In 2024, a record 430,000 legal migrants arrived in France, the same number as the three previous years combined. As for the number of illegal immigrants in France, when asked for a figure on Tuesday the new interior minister Laurent Nunez refused to divulge the number. Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, has since written to Nunez demanding “transparency” on how many illegal immigrants are in France.

    As for the number of OQTF orders that have been enforced, they have fallen to 7 percent. In a report published last year by the independent authority for monitoring the conditions of detention, this low rate is attributable to “the structural obstacles (both material and administrative) that have long hindered the implementation of forced removals.” The report added that the situation “does not appear likely to change in the coming years.”

    A few weeks after that report was issued, a student called Philippine was raped and murdered in Paris by a Moroccan, who had recently been released from prison after serving a short sentence for rape. “Philippine’s life was stolen from her by a Moroccan migrant under an OQTF,” posted Bardella on social media. “This migrant therefore had no place on our soil… Our justice system is lax, our state is dysfunctional, our leaders let the French live with human bombs.”

    A similar message was heard in a Paris court last month during the trial of an African man accused of raping two women at knifepoint on a Saturday afternoon in 2023. The man, who was found guilty, had ignored OQTFs in 2020, 2021 and 2023 and during that time committed several other crimes.

    One of the women, Claire Geronimi, waived her right to anonymity, to declare: “We’re talking about a brutal rape, something that shouldn’t happen in the middle of the afternoon, in the heart of Paris… It’s something that’s very difficult, especially since my attacker was subject to three OQTF orders.”

    Claire has raised a support group for victims of sexual crimes. “I am lucky to be able to testify, I am lucky to be alive,” she said. “I think we could have been Lola, we could have been Philippine.”

    A poll last month found that 86 per cent of French people are in favor of imprisoning foreign criminals issued with a OQTF while they await deportation. It seems logical, but there is little logical about the French political class in this era of chaos. The new coalition government leans to the left and there is little chance that anything will be done to rein in the rampant lawlessness before the 2027 presidential election.

    On Monday, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin admitted that the Louvre heist was a “terrible” reflection on France, adding that the country had “failed” to protect its national treasures. The same can be said of how the country fails to protect its girls and its women.

  • How Germany is preparing for war

    How Germany is preparing for war

    Hamburg

    What would happen if Russia was planning an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia – and the threat was sufficiently great that NATO felt the need to send troops east across Europe to face off against Moscow?

    This was the scenario the German Bundeswehr spent several days rehearsing last month, working out how the army would transport its soldiers towards NATO’s eastern flank in the event of conflict in the Baltics. For three days, the port city of Hamburg played host to the exercise Red Storm Bravo: 500 soldiers, along with roughly 300 members of the emergency services and other civilian organizations, took part – the largest military exercise in the city since the end of the Cold War.

    In the event of conflict with Russia, Germany would, because of its geographical position, become a “hub” for NATO to coordinate the flow of soldiers and weaponry to the front line in the east. Troops from the US and across western and southern Europe – including Britain – would flow through the country toward Warsaw and on. The purpose would be deterrence in the hope that a show of international force would put Vladimir Putin off an attack that would test NATO’s commitment to Article 5, which considers an attack on one member to be an attack on all.

    It would be a huge operation: the Bundeswehr’s Operation Plan Germany, details of which were leaked to the press last year, envisages 800,000 NATO troops and 200,000 vehicles traveling across the country toward the front line. According to one army source, even with Germany’s motorways and ports used to full capacity, this would take close to a week. Red Storm Bravo was a rehearsal of the section of Operation Plan Germany that runs through Hamburg.

    The purpose of Red Storm Bravo was as much to familiarize German civilians as the army regarding what to do in the event of a coming war. Only a fraction of the Operation Plan Germany soldiers took part but the scenarios neatly reflected the possible challenges. Soldiers rehearsed setting up and manning checkpoints; the fire service practiced fishing a sinking barge out of Hamburg’s port; and the ambulance service simulated a mass casualty event with multiple victims.

    The first day’s main event was moving a military convoy through the center of the city after dark. As the sun set over Hamburg’s port, I watched the heavily armed soldiers march toward a fleet of about 70 military vehicles, lined up three abreast. Some were small armored vehicles, others enormous Rheinmetall-branded trucks, several with machine-gun turrets that would later be manned as the convoy sped through the city. Many soldiers wore balaclavas to prevent them being identified, according to our Bundeswehr escort.

    There is an art to traveling in a convoy. It moves as one, meaning that as long as the leading vehicle continues to move, the others follow in an unbroken line, regardless of red traffic lights or civilian traffic. This convoy of just 70-odd vehicles snaked back roughly 2.5 miles – a considerable logistical challenge.

    At two points along the route, the convoy was stopped by pretend protests: at the first, army reservists in civvies waved banners and chanted at the convoy to “turn back”; at the second, “protesters” staged a sit-in, with signs saying “glue” around the necks of some to denote those who would have stuck themselves to the ground. The point was for the riot police to practice removing them. Groups of three took turns: a grab at the protester’s head from behind and a knee to the back, one arm twisted around, then the other, allowing the police to peel them off the ground and carry them away.

    When the planning for Red Storm Bravo was initiated, few could have predicted the new significance it would take on in the weeks leading up to it. Last month, a series of suspected Russian drone incursions into NATO territory set alarm bells ringing. Alongside Germany, Romania, Denmark, Norway and Poland have all reported drone activity close to military bases and other critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace for a total of 12 minutes on September 19.

    “We developed the scenario for Red Storm Bravo last December and now reality has actually caught up with us somewhat,” said Captain Kurt Leonards, the head of the Bundeswehr’s Hamburg command, who oversaw the exercise. “Whether that’s in Poland, in Estonian airspace, or even the whole discussion now taking place in Denmark, it shows how topical this issue is, and that’s why we have to react very quickly and expand our capabilities.”

    Poland and Estonia triggered NATO’s Article 4 less than two weeks apart, requesting alliance members come together to discuss the incursions. While the mood in NATO’s Brussels HQ appears to be calm so far, the rhetoric coming from individual members is somewhat more bellicose.

    In comments supported by NATO chief Mark Rutte, Donald Trump gave his endorsement to any NATO ally shooting down Russian aircraft entering its territory. Poland and Lithuania have declared they will do precisely this. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: “We are not at war, but we are no longer living in peace either.” The German government intends to change the law this fall to allow the army to shoot down any drones deemed a threat. Last month, the EU agreed to move forward with building a technological “drone wall” along its eastern boundary.

    The mood on the ground in Germany is clearly jumpy, too. At approximately 1 a.m. on a stretch of road just outside the center of Hamburg, as the Red Storm Bravo convoy paused to set up for the second of its two protest simulations, a whining buzz became audible overhead. Alarm bounced around the crowd of assembled press and official observers as a small black drone hovered above us. “Is it one of ours?” someone asked nervously. It was only after a press photographer was able to get a grainy shot of it that one of our military escorts confirmed it did indeed belong to the Bundeswehr.

    Leonards agreed that Hamburg had seen an increase in drone activity. “Of course, you don’t always know where the drones are coming from,” he said. “Are these drones the work of a state actor that’s systematically operating here? Or do we have a teenager with a remote-controlled drone who wants to test how fast the police can arrive on the scene?”

    Following years of underinvestment, the German army is restocking its arsenal thanks to reforms that will see defense spending exempt from the country’s rigid debt rules and a one-off €100 billion fund ringfenced by Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Some of this will be invested in anti-drone technology.

    Following years of underinvestment, the German army is restocking its arsenal

    In an army barracks in the Hamburg suburbs, the Bundeswehr demonstrated some of the gadgets already available. First to be sent up was a type of “hunter drone” capable of ensnaring other drones mid-flight by shooting out a web, Spider-Man-style. Disabling drones this way avoids having to use expensive weaponry to shoot them down and lowers the risk of falling debris injuring civilians. Once the hunter drone had lowered its catch to the ground, a four-legged “drone dog” dubbed “Lassie,” equipped with a camera and other sensors, was sent out to inspect it.

    Despite these recent undertakings, questions over the German army’s readiness for conflict remain. In June, defense chief General Carsten Breuer warned that Russia could be ready to launch an attack on a NATO state by 2029; according to one government source I spoke to, this could be even sooner. Meanwhile, according to official figures, just under 183,000 soldiers are actively serving in the Bundeswehr, and a damning report published in May revealed that, at the end of last year, more than 20 percent of military positions remained vacant. The reintroduction of conscription seems inevitable to meet its commitment to NATO troop numbers.

    So, is Germany prepared for the defensive challenges ahead? When asked this, Leonards said: “Germany is in the process of significantly developing its armed forces and the Bundeswehr. And I believe we’re really on the right track.” Not a resounding yes, then. But any preparation against an increasingly provocative Russia is better than none.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • Macron’s story has become a Shakespearean tragedy

    Macron’s story has become a Shakespearean tragedy

    This week has been a tale of two presidents. On the one hand there is Donald Trump, who has masterminded a peace deal between Israel and Hamas which, the world hopes, will end the conflict in Gaza.

    Even Trump’s long-standing detractors acknowledge his role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table. “Trump’s unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed to this breakthrough,” explained the BBC.

    It hasn’t been such a good week for Emmanuel Macron. On the contrary it’s been the most humiliating few days of his eight and a half years in office. On Monday his Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, tendered his resignation after 27 days in office. It was the shortest premiership in the 67 years of the Fifth Republic. Lecornu resigned 12 hours after unveiling a new coalition government that was so unpopular he felt compelled to throw in the towel.

    Then late on Friday evening Lecornu was reappointed prime minister. He explained that he had accepted “the mission entrusted to me by the President of the Republic to do everything possible to give France a budget by the end of the year.” It smacks of desperation. Macron has run out of options and run out of candidates.

    As Macron’s presidency falls apart so his friends and allies are turning on him. On Tuesday one of his former prime ministers, Édouard Philippe, urged Macron to leave office “in an orderly manner.” Another, Gabriel Attal, said that he “no longer understands” Macron’s thought process.

    Rumors about Macron’s state of mind first surfaced in 2022 when he was re-elected president but a few weeks later lost his absolute majority in parliamentary elections. On a trip to the US in December that year he confided that he had for a while been in a “very serious depression.”

    His behavior in recent days has left the French bemused; not just the public but also members of his dwindling inner circle. Speaking anonymously to Le Figaro, one Élysée insider said: “No one has any news. He is more than ever in a parallel universe.”

    Macron appears to be in a state of denial about the gravity of the crisis facing France. The country is mired in debt, violent crime is soaring and on Thursday official figures showed that immigration reached record levels in 2024. There are now 7.7 million immigrants in France, more than 11 percent of the population.

    It is chaos, but you wouldn’t know it to see the President. “Macron’s problem is that, with him, everything is always going very well,” said one of advisors.

    The rise and fall of Emmanuel Macron is one of the more remarkable political stories this century. The liberal global elite breathed a sigh of relief when he was elected in 2017. An adult was back in the room, they cheered, ready to clear up the mess made the previous year by Britain’s vote to leave the EU and America’s vote for Donald Trump.

    Macron was pictured walking on water on the cover of the Economist, and TIME magazine simpered its way through a lengthy interview with the President. It compared Macron and Trump: one “the scholarly French globalist” and the other “the brash, anti­-globalist septuagenarian.”

    TIME stated that the “battle of ideas between the two has only just begun.” In essence this was Macron’s progressivism against Trump’s anti-progressivism, which is tiresomely characterized by his enemies as populism.

    There was little doubt which side TIME was on. “If Macron is proved right,” it gushed, “France could emerge as a far more important global power than it has been in decades.”

    Sorry, TIME, your man lost. Macron has ruined France. Not just its economy and its social cohesion, but also its reputation. It has no global power and Macron has no authority. His approval rating has fallen to 14 percent (Trump’s is 40 percent) and 70 percent of the French want their president to resign.

    Macron cuts an increasingly tragic figure, alone in his palace, like Macbeth in his castle, tormented not by Banquo but by Trump.

    “Whether purposely or not,” said Trump earlier this year, “Emmanuel always gets it wrong.”

    Out, out, brief candle!

  • Britain’s MAGA moment is coming

    Britain’s MAGA moment is coming

    Summer is fun. Winter is serious. Autumn in London feels almost Boolean – the light, the air, the mood, seemed to turn on an equinox dime. The political situation, I heard, had grown even stranger since my last sojourn. “Cool Britannia” is dead. Nothing today is more dated than centrism.

    And yet the inexorable rules of the unwritten constitution mean no election until 2029. And the great barbarian, Nigel Farage, his weapons a grin and a beer, lies in wait as his numbers rise. Like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, in an age of immediate media, Farage’s great weapon is that he is human. The same in public and private. Who is Kemi Badenoch in private, or Keir Starmer? Are they even anatomically correct? Someone must know. We never will.

    A series of small quakes shake the bond market. All of Britain, chic and squalid, tower blocks and Jermyn Street, is in the red. It borrows and borrows – for what? For railroads, factories, fabs, tangible capital? For single-needle shirts, for motability (lol), for a vast, shady corps of Afghan “interpreters.” A pound is not a dollar – not even a euro. Sure, with infinite Fedbucks the IMF can bail anyone out. And Glendower can call spirits from the vasty deep – but if they come when he calls, it is Trump who sends them. Will he? And if he does, what are the terms of the deal?

    And yet! Johnson remains right: when one is tired of London, one is tired of life. On stage in Hampstead, Alastair Campbell told me scornfully that I and my fellow MAGAts think London is some Turd World Mogadishu Dhaka Trenchtown hellhole. Maybe in Idaho, but we contain multitudes. If life was not real I would live nowhere else but London. And I never feel real when I’m in London. Even the problems are surreal. Problem: can’t enter a proper club without a collared shirt that takes a tie. Can’t film a chat with Lord Skidelsky without a mandarin collar to match my Nehru jacket (bought 25 years ago in… London). On my way from A to B, would I find myself on Jermyn Street? Would just the right thing appear in a window? For less than a hundred pounds, even? Yes, yes and no.

    Alastair Campbell. Somehow this dark lord of the Britpoppers, the Vader to Tony Blair’s Palpatine, was tricked by a sly impresario into literally “platforming” me, presumably under the impression that he would get to work out on some weird San Francisco nerd in pajamas, before a sympathetic audience of classic North London champagne Bolshies. No one expects the Nehru! Before the match, like boxers, we traded backhanded sartorial compliments. Yes, my charcoal trousers were a shade long. Yes, while I would never wear paisley, it did compliment his thin lapels and aged, yet athletic, physique. And yet it’s not all fun and games out there. I had questions. Security questions. The answer: an absolutely lovely chap who looked like he’d been a West Ham supporter since roughly 1980 (and 1980 was rough indeed!) and who shadowed me at every point. Not much may be left of the Homeric Bill Buford Among The Thugs world I devoured as a teenager, but the yobbo ultra we have always with us. And on that crisp fall day, nothing looked better than those face tattoos. And nothing happened. Thanks, mate. Thanks from my wife as well – thanks from my unborn son. No one is immune, and anyone can be a threat.

    It was not just Charlie Kirk’s assassination that woke up the American normiecons – it was the cruel, mendacious, gleeful response of millions of seemingly civilized liberals. Leftism, we realized, is not love. It is the violent lust for power. The left in power is soft and flabby, yet nothing of its darkness is slaked. Once it stops being able to silence its enemies with a quiet call to Nick Clegg at Facebook, it goes right back to bullets and bombs. The anni di piombo return. Wait ’till anyone can buy a war drone on Alibaba. I shudder. Fun time is over.

    When we of the right do next get the power in our hands, how do we handle this? Not with maximum violence – violence is the language of the left. With maximum force – force is the language of the right. Violence is chaos. Force is order. My own clever idea – one which will measure my actual influence over the Trump administration, which sadly is almost (but not quite) zero, is to prosecute old 1960s radicals. Bill Ayers. Angela Davis. Like good ol’ boys in the 1960s Deep South, they did political murders and got off, “guilty as sin and free as a bird” – in Ayers’s own words. Well, the federal government invented double-jeopardy “civil rights” laws to deal with that. A legal solecism. Who cares. And the Department of Justice even has an office, OSI, for prosecuting 99-year-old Auschwitz secretaries. What are they supposed to do for the next century? Twiddle their thumbs?

    The pendulum theory of politics is over. The Roman Republic will not endlessly oscillate between optimates and populares. One side will win – and win permanently. Britain and America will restore their greatness, or become Third World Chinese tributary debt farms with posh Hunger Games museum tourist enclaves. From where we are, frankly, I would bet on the enemy! But nothing is written yet.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • Crime and no punishment in London

    Crime and no punishment in London

    Those of us trapped in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London are now obedient, resigned. We expect a car journey of under a mile to take 40 minutes. We don’t hope for anything more. On a recent Sunday, around five o’clock, my son and I stuck fast in Dalston Lane, but as we settled down to wait in a mist of carbon monoxide, there was a commotion up ahead. Down the wrong side of the road, horn blaring, lights flashing, came a Mercedes G-wagon, matte black with that handy snorkel up the side, the favorite ride of north London’s gangsters. It was interesting how calm everyone was about it, how unsurprised. A souped-up tank of a car coming at us head-on, and no one shouted or beeped. Each car in the line ahead pulled seamlessly to one side, like the teeth in a well-functioning zipper. They don’t shift like this for ambulances or police cars any more.

    There are cameras everywhere; the eyes of the state in the sky. Not for the gangs, though

    We all know who drives the G-wagons. There are two rival drug gangs in north London, the Tottenham Turks, aka the Tottenham Boys, and their rivals, the Hackney Turks, aka the Bombacilars. In May last year, the Tottenham Boys attempted a hit on the Bombers and a nine-year-old girl was caught in the crossfire, shot in the head as she ate ice cream just a short walk from my house. And the Tottenham Boys got away with it. Only the getaway driver, a non-Turkish stooge called Javon Riley, was ever arrested, found guilty this summer of grievous bodily harm and three counts of attempted murder. The Sun newspaper did a big feature on the gangs: “Inside the Turkish drug lords’ medieval London turf war, with shootouts and soundproof torture cells, leaving cops terrified.” When Riley was asked by the police to provide the names of gang members, and of the hitman whose bullet hit that nine-year-old, he refused. He feared for his family. The Turks are too ruthless and too effective.

    The G-wagon blared past, faded away, and we law-abiding cars crawled our way to Kingsland Road, where we were careful not to speed up. If, in the euphoria of a clear-road moment, you drive just 4mph over the 20mph limit, you’ve had it. That’s a £100 fine and three points on your license. Then there are fines for pausing in the wrong place, for turning into one of the increasing number of restricted zones, for doing a U-turn. There are cameras every-where; the eyes of the state in the sky. Not for the Turks, though. They do as they please. As I drove, I imagined all the charges piling up in the marbled hall of some gated mansion in the Edmonton area, all the court summons swept up, thrown away. It’s not two-tier justice or two-tier policing, it’s gaslighting.

    Just to enrage myself, I like to play a sort of memory game, where I pair a nasty crime that’s gone entirely uninvestigated with another minor infraction that’s been diligently, exhaustively policed. The speeding and opioid-dealing of the Turks vs minor parking misdemeanors; the virtual violence of “hateful” tweets vs the real violence on real streets.

    My favorite recent Twitter case revolves around a journalist, Greg Hadfield, who last year tried to warn the Labour party that one of its own former MPs was posting pictures of penises on his X account. Hadfield posted a screenshot of one of the tweets with a comment suggesting that Labour should have a word. As a result, Hadfield was charged himself, for passing the picture on. His crime was to “send by a public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing message or matter,” and he has just found out that he’s lost his appeal to have the case dropped and must go to trial. The CPS made a “not unreasonable” decision to prosecute, said senior district judge Paul Goldspring. Not unreasonable! All Greg did, as far as I know, was try to prevent indecency and obscenity. I’d pair his crime in my mind with all the offensive, indecent, obscene and menacing matters that I see as I pass police-free Finsbury Park tube station on an average evening – for instance, a few weeks ago, a group of young men that looked like proper trouble: black clothes, black masks, circling like jackals. The Nextdoor app confirmed it: “If you have teenage children around Finsbury Park station, please tell them to be vigilant as there are around 30 youths masked up, robbing and violently attacking local kids.”

    “Hope the police are aware,” read one comment. “They are about as useful as a chocolate teapot,” read the next. “Why not report someone’s hurt feelings and they’ll soon show up?”

    Round the corner, the usual mental case was standing and shouting with his trousers down, groin at eye level for a nine-year-old in a car. Violent attacks on passing children and public nudity – that’s menacing and indecent, Judge Goldspring. If the police just walked up and down past Finsbury Park tube all day, they’d be earning their keep.

    I try to shield my son from the absence of policing. I want him to believe that there’s a robust and vigilant army of officers between him and criminal chaos. “Just youngsters having fun!” I say to him blithely as I lock the car doors in the Finsbury underpass. “They wear masks because they’re paranoid about germs… and that man? Well, darling, some people do just forget to put their trousers on.”

    On the main street that runs perpendicular to mine, there’s been a spate of burglaries, a youngish man smashing in through basement windows. We know it’s the same man every time because there’s footage of him in action on the Ring doorbell cameras. One neighbor offered the video to the police, but was told they couldn’t use it, that actual footage of the crime being committed wasn’t good enough evidence. See? Gaslighting.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • Sébastien Lecornu’s resignation is a humiliation for France and Macron

    Sébastien Lecornu’s resignation is a humiliation for France and Macron

    In a sensational development, Sébastien Lecornu has resigned as prime minister of France. His departure, after 27 days in office, makes the 39-year-old the shortest reigning premier of the Fifth Republic. Lecornu’s resignation is a humiliation for him, for France and for Emmanuel Macron. The president has now worked his way through seven prime ministers in eight years, a Fifth Republic record he shares with Francois Mitterrand. He, however, presided over France for fourteen years.

    The catalyst for Lecornu’s departure was the new government he unveiled on Sunday evening. He has promised a “break” with Macron’s centrism, but when he announced his government it was anything but. Twelve of the eighteen ministers had been reappointed to their posts, and the response across the political spectrum was one of fury. Within hours the left and the right had promised to bring down the government at the earliest opportunity. They probably didn’t expect that Lecornu would do the job for them.

    Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, has demanded fresh elections. “There can be no return to stability without a return to the polls and without the dissolution of the National Assembly,” he said.

    For Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far left La France Insoumise, the only route left for Macron is the exit. “The countdown has begun. Macron must go,” declared Mathilde Panot, one of the party’s leading figures.

    Even venerable centrists believe that the game is up for Macron. In an interview on Monday morning, prior to Lecornu’s shock announcement, one of the Republican party’s grandees Xavier Bertrand, castigated Macron for creating the “mess” and then “losing interest” in France.

    It is hard to gainsay that statement. Macron is rarely seen in France these days; if the people want to get a glimpse of their president they must switch on their televisions and watch him pontificating at the United Nations or hugging a minor world leader in some quiet corner of the globe.

    It explains why his approval rating is at 16 percent, and two thirds of the country want him to resign. Increasingly, that does appear the only way out of the quagmire into which Macron has led France.

    A few weeks ago, Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the Republicans and the minister of the interior, declared that “Macronism will end with Emmanuel Macron, simply because Macronism is neither a political movement nor an ideology: it is essentially based on one man.”

    He is right, but unfortunately for France this one man is as intransigent as he is inept. His presidency has destroyed and demoralized the country in so many ways – economically, socially, diplomatically and intellectually. But he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions.

    Xavier Betrand accuses Macron of “losing interest” in France. But did he have any in the first place? Macron is a narcissist; the presidency has always been about him. France is an afterthought. France is in agony, and the pain will only get worse as long as Macron is in power.

  • The Free Palestine mob’s response to the Manchester attack was shameful

    The Free Palestine mob’s response to the Manchester attack was shameful

    As so often, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis hit the nail on the head over yesterday’s terror attack in Manchester. It was, he said, the result of “a tidal wave of Jew hated.”

    Jews have spent the past two years highlighting the danger posed by the authorities’ refusal to take more than perfunctory action against the regular hate marches and gatherings. We have warned what was coming – and yesterday it came. It will, I dread to write, not be the last terror attack.

    Palestinian statehood is a decent and worthy cause. It is no more intrinsically poisonous than the push for a Scottish, Welsh or Catalan state, or indeed Irish unification. But as with the latter, for all that there are those who are entirely decent in the way they advocate and campaign for their cause, the broader movement has indeed been infected with poison.

    Look at what happened last night, hours after two Jews had been murdered and the deaths of many others prevented only by heroism. How did the so-called Free Palestine movement react? By staging an “emergency” pro-Palestine protest organized by the “Global Movement for Gaza UK” on Whitehall. Mobs gathered not just in Whitehall but also in London railway stations and in Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Bournemouth and elsewhere. Is this how normal people react after a terrorist attack?

    While the answer to that is clearly “no,” it is exactly how the Free Palestine mob react. It is, for example, how the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) reacted after the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Jews. On the day itself, while the massacre was still in progress, the PSC contacted the Metropolitan Police to signal their intention of staging a march the following week – on October 14, before Israel had even entered Gaza. It was the very definition of a hate march. And it was the first of the many that have followed, on which Jew hate is openly displayed, from banners with antisemitic caricatures that could have come straight out of Der Stürmer, the Nazis’ propaganda tabloid, to chants calling to the “globalize the intifada” – kill Jews – and “Khaybar, Khaybar, Ya Yahud! Jaish Mohammad sawf ya’ud!,’” which means “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews! The Army of Muhammad Will Return!”.

    Dismissing these examples as the work of “bad apples” on the marches doesn’t wash. For one thing, all too often the organizers have utterly failed to condemn those responsible. Of course they have – because such behavior is in the DNA of the movement. Look at the smaller mobs that gather regularly – such as one in London on Wednesday night, the day before the Manchester attack. It was not just physically threatening, launching fireworks and pushing its way through crowded streets. It was united in chanting for the destruction of Israel.

    These mobs spring up across the country on streets, in malls, at railway stations – anywhere where they can be seen and intimidate. And, almost always, the police stand and watch (although yesterday’s mob in Whitehall turned so bad that 40 people were arrested, six of whom were for attacks on the police).

    Back to October 7, and the idea of staging a march straight after a massacre of Jews. Guess what is now scheduled for this Saturday, two days after the murder of Jews? A rally for Palestine Action, the proscribed terrorist group. The police have asked the organizers to reschedule, given that they are on high alert for more terror attacks on Jews. Leave aside that pathetic phrase, “the police have asked,” and ponder why on earth a mob which harasses, frightens and intimidates Jews would respond to the murder of Jews by stepping back from its latest plan that will harass, frighten and intimidate Jews.