Pod Save the World - Far Right Surges in European Elections

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the success of far-right parties in the European Parliamentary elections and debate whether French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for snap elections in France is bold or disastrous. Then they talk about British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s shocking decision to skip a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the latest developments out of Israel and Gaza, including ceasefire negotiations, Benny Gantz leaving Netanyahu’s war cabinet, and the ethics of an Israeli hostage rescue in Gaza that resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties. They also walk through the horrific state of affairs in the civil war in Sudan, a foreign election interference scandal rocking Canada, a Chinese waterfall getting a little help from the government, and why Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is still very, very dumb. Then Ben interviews Dr. Rosa Balfour, the Director of Carnegie Europe, about the broader implications of the European Parliamentary election results on issues like climate change. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pots Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, do you see that we beat Pakistan, we, the United States, at cricket? Yes, I became a fervent supporter of the U.S. cricket team that I didn't even know existed a week earlier. I didn't know we had a team either. The best was that there was a guy who, I think maybe the best guy on the team, who Moonlights is a cricket player. He's like a software engineer for Oracle or something. So like Oracle put out a statement being like, we fully support our cricketeer.

whatever. No way. But yeah, talk about filing away in a category of things that will be of mild positive interest to Americans, but we're like probably an existential crisis in Pakistan. Yeah, Pakistan will hate us for us for decades. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dave, just another reason why. I don't understand cricket. People are going to get real pissed at this or international listeners. I don't understand cricket at all. I never will. But I think it can last like days. Matches can. Yeah. There used to be this like park and Queens. and I lived in Queens at the time where they'd play these

multi-day cricket matches between these West Indian dudes who would take it very seriously. And you could go out there and just kind of watch for however long you felt like it and have no idea what was going on but it's just kind of a crazy thing to look at.

Just dude's slapping at the ball. Just a dude's slapping the ball, dressed in white, you know. Oh yeah, look, USA Bowler, engineer Oracle is already achieving celebrity status in India where he formerly played for its junior team. There you go.

I also love the terminology cricket, Cricket, like it's always some super dramatic, you know, in a double extra super womp or something. Yeah, I don't get it at all. Anyway. Sorry, guys. We just made ourselves seem like. It's all our cricket talk. I actually don't think they're that.

Well, maybe there are some serious crickets. There's probably some cricket people. We got a great show, Ben. We are going to lead with last weekend's European elections. We're not leading with Gaza for the first time in a while. But we're going to talk about what they tell us about the strength of far-right political parties in Europe. And then Ben and I are going to debate whether. their French president Emmanuel Macron's decision to call snap elections in France was brilliant

or catastrophic. There's no in between here. We're also going to talk about other catastrophic political decisions like Rishi Sunak leaving a D-Day celebration early. The latest news out of Gaza, including the hostage rescue operation over the weekend, ceasefire talks and retired General Benny Gans's decision to withdraw from Netanyahu's war cabinet. Finally, we're going to talk about why experts are sounding the alarm about the civil war in Sudan. and espionage allegations that are rocking Canada.

Rocking. Rocking. Trudeau has been rocked. And a waterfall that wasn't. And then we'll check in with America's dumbest senator, Tommy Tuberville. And then, Ben, you did today's interview. What are we going to hear about? Yeah, Tommy.

I talked to Dr. Rosa Belfour, who runs the Carnegie Center in Europe. So this is someone who follows European politics very closely. We get her take on the election, but also what does this mean for the EU going forward? what is the composition of the European Parliament? How is that going to play out? Is the far right going to be able to get its act together? And what does this mean for certain issues like Ukraine or climate change that the EU has been pretty central on? So it's a good way to go in depth and understand the various ripples of this election in a lot of ways. Nice. You're going to get a bell for it and a Carnegie. You're basically running shit in 1900s there. Yeah. It's all behind the curtain. Some nerdy-ass jokes. One quick thing before we get to the news, Ben. So you are a writer and author. He's published several books. Yes. So we here at Cricket Media, we're now a couple weeks away from the release of our book, Democracy or Else.

And we've got a bit of a problem. Because you really need to get on the New York Times bestseller list, right? Like, that's the goal? Done it twice, man. Okay. So there's some monsters on there right now. Last time I checked, I think Christy Gnome, infamous dog killer, Christy Gnome, was on the list. And we cannot let her beat us.

So please buy the book. Pre-order the book. Democracy or else. Yeah. I mean, if you look at that list, there's some people that are not on the right side of democracy or else on there. And Don Jr. likes to get on there. But I was actually, I was just telling you, I was looking at the book in the office,

and it's a great, perfect time, right? Because it's like all the things you need on the election. It's a guide as well as, you know, peek behind the curtain, as well as some really good takes, hot takes, I should say. It's very funny. There's very funny. There's illustrations. There's even a section from you.

There is a, I'm in there. I got to interview. There's a lot of rotating cast of guest stars. So it's, if you like Crooked, if you like Potsie of America, Pots of the World, like, you will love this. And all of Crooked's profits from the book are going to go to Votesave America in 2024 campaigns. So it's a good cause. Go to crooked.com slash books to get a copy. You will not regret it.

And please, God help us be Christy Nome. All right, Ben. So let's go to Europe. So elections for the European Parliament happened over the, weekend. The big takeaway, the headline is that the results were good for far-right parties in some of the largest countries in Europe, and it was a tough night for incumbents generally. Before we get to the results, just a little context about the European Parliament itself, because I bet folks aren't that familiar. So the European Parliament is the institution in the EU's sprawling governance

system that represents the citizens of member states. So MEPs, as they're called, are directly elected every five years, each of the 27 countries in the EU gets a number of MEPs that is roughly proportional to the country's population with 720 MEPs total for this coming legislative session. So Germany, biggest country in the EU, has 96 MEPs, while Malta, the smallest has six total. It's basically how it works. But the Speaker. Oh, interesting. I did not know that. So the European Parliament, it works with other EU institutions like the Council of the European Union. and approve laws. They have power over issues like the EU budget trade, immigration, climate change. And then critically, MEPs get to approve or reject candidates for the president of the European

Commission, which is the person who leads the executive branch of the EU. So Ben's going to go deeper on all of this if you want more in the interview. But let's talk about the results in France, Italy, in Germany, Ben. So in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Schultz's center left social Democrats got crushed coming in third place. The center-right CDU party got the most votes with around 30 percent Then the super far right, some would argue Nazi adjacent AFD party, got nearly 16% of the vote. So they were up about five percentage points from 2019. The Greens, who are environmental-focused folks, they got about 12%, meaning their support was nearly cut in half from the last election in 2019. So not good.

In France, the far-right National Rally Party led by Marine Le Pen got around 31% of the vote. That was double what French president, you know, Manuel Macron's party was able to muster. this result will have big implications also in France itself because it led Macron to dissolve France's parliament and call for elections. We'll get to that in a bit. And then in Italy, over a quarter of Italian voters supported Georgia Maloney's Brothers of Italy party, which is not the furthest right party, but is pretty right. She's a she's a Mussolini fan. We've talked about a bunch of times. So after the vote, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had this to say about the results. Today is a good day for the European People's Party. The center is holding.

But it is also true that the extremes on the left and on the right have gained support. And this is why the result comes with great responsibility for the parties in the center. We may differ on individual points. But we all have an interest in stability, and we all want a strong and effective Europe. Of course, this election does not take place in a vacuum. The world around us is in turmoil. Forces from the outside and from the inside are trying to destabilize our societies, and they are trying to weaken Europe.

We will never let that happen. So, Ben, Von der Leyen is right that center or centrist parties will likely remain in charge. She will likely lead them. But what do you think this surge of far right victories and support for far right parties says about politics in Europe right now? I think the main thing I take away from it, Tommy, is a deep dissatisfaction with incumbents and with a kind of status quo that people think is not working for them. Because one of the things I'm struck by, and we'll get into some of the specific results, is that this was not like a far-right wave everywhere. And the places where it did the best, and most notably Germany and France,

which really matter because they're the two biggest and most important countries in Europe, are places where the incumbent governments are kind of very establishmentarian. You know, Macron is this kind of center-right guy, you know, the kind of avatar of neoliberalism. some today. Olaf Schultz is a pretty cautious social democratic guy with a big coalition that includes, you know, the Greens, and that's probably one of the reasons they did poorly. And so I think the message is that, as we've seen for the last almost decade, there's always currency for people kind of coming in to challenge the status quo,

globalization is not working, institutions aren't working. There are very particular issues that are driving voters, particularly to the right in Europe, anti-migration politics, climate change backlash. And we have to bear in mind that the cost of living crisis has been worse in Europe than in the U.S. Because in Germany, for instance, the transition way from, you know, Russian energy is really driven up costs. That's caused a lot of dissatisfaction. So warning signs, both in terms of Europe, but also in terms of our election. I think, you know, we should, in 2016, Brexit kind of foreshadowed Trump's victory.

and the foreshadowing I see here is this kind of anti-incumbent vibe that is manifesting more energy on the right than anywhere else. And then I do think, you know, the fact that France and Germany are the places where we see this far right rising, you know, that's why it's extra concerning. She's right that the center held. They'll likely be able to have a governing majority in that parliament to elect EU leaders and kind of keep supporting Ukraine. But, you know, as in our own politics, it gets a little messier and a little more dysfunctional when the far right's kind of inside the tent, pissing around. And that's like a new reality here. We can't, if there was a hope that maybe these far right parties would kind of peak at 10 or 15 percent and then inevitably

kind of drift, no, they're building and they're taking advantage of this sense that these systems aren't working for people. Yeah, and a lot of these far right parties kind of stand off the edges and then they do well. It's notable that the AFD in Germany has not done that. They are very scary. They're very sort of neo-Nazi-like, and they seem to be growing in support. You mentioned there were some brightish spots. So in Hungary, Victor Orban's Fides party got its worst ever result,

mostly because a former Orban ally created a new party that siphoned off about 30% of the vote. So the Orban coalition still got over 44%, but it was not what he hoped for. In Poland, Prime Minister Donald, Tusks pro-Europe coalition narrowly defeated the right-wing law and justice party. That's a good thing. The far-right party led by Heard Wilders and the Netherlands didn't do as well as some people feared, though they still got the second most votes. In Spain, the far-right Vox Party doubled the number of seats it had previously in 2019, but they didn't do as well as some had thought they might because some totally unknown, like 34-year-old populist influencer came out of nowhere to snag

three seats. Similar goofy, sort of like in Greece, a politician currently in jail won a seat. So, you know, sprawling elections, 27 countries, 720 seats. It's hard to draw sweeping conclusions that apply to all of it. But again, like this is why we said at the top, bad night for incumbents, good night for far right parties, because you did see like far right guys like Orban Luz, and you also saw voters across the continent willing to vote for upstarts and kind of like people had never been part of politics before. Yeah, I do think it's worth just noting. And I've had some world those reach out to me about this shift in Hungarian politics. I mean, this is a big deal in the sense that this is probably the kind of biggest challenge to Orban's, you know, political success

that we've seen in a long time. This guy, Petter Magyar, who used to be aligned with him. But again, I think what it speaks to is you could be too simplistic in saying, oh, my God, this is the far right everywhere. No, I think the slight adjustment to that is this is an anti-establishment, anti-status quo vibe everywhere. That could even capture somebody like Orban, who's a far-right politician, because people are just getting tired of cost of living and they sense that things are corrupts. But the far-right has been better able to figure out how to capitalize on it, you know. And the National Front in France has done kind of both in terms of the moderating while still being creepy. You know, they still have like a pretty creepy core and a deeply anti-immigrant message, you know,

basically ending all immigration. And they're pretty anti-Brussels, too. They want to, which is a big problem because if the big countries are not invested in the European Union working, it's not going to work. But they've also kind of tried to kind of present this slightly more moderate phase, and they keep saying we're ready to govern. And so they're kind of trying to not just be the Marjorie Taylor Green version of themselves, but be the Mike Johnson version themselves, you know.

Not that, well, I don't know, is that the, is that the, is that work? Is this that working? But yeah, I just, the problem is everywhere, there's this need for leadership. There's this need for someone to fill the leadership gap and nobody's filling it. And, you know, Emmanuel Macron and Olo Schultz had not been filling in Europe. And so when nobody else is filling it, you know, these far right people kind of begin to creep in. And everybody senses like, where's the leadership in the world today? And they're having a hard time finding it other than the influencer or the guy in jail.

So let's talk about France. because so after getting trounced in these European Parliament elections, French President Emmanuel Macron shocked even some members of his own party when he decided to dissolve the National Assembly and call for snap elections in France. France wasn't supposed to have elections until 2027, but Macron decided, what if we did it in three weeks was basically his take? So the election will take two rounds because why not make it more complicated? So the first round is on June 30th.

Candidates that win over 50% of the vote in round one win outright. If that doesn't happen, there will be a runoff on July 7th between the two top vote getters in each of the 577 electoral districts. By the way, the Paris Olympics start on July 26th. So a couple of logistical hurdles there. So currently the far right national rally party has 88 seats in France's National Assembly. Macron's coalition has about 250 seats. Ben, I've been listening to a bunch of analysts, try to understand why he would

call these snap elections given that his standing is not looking too hot right now. They basically seem to think that Macron was worried that, you know, the status quo would just lead to legislative paralysis. So, you know, now's the time to be bold, you know, yellow it. But here's what we're going to do. So Ben is going to make the case for why this could be a smart idea politically for Macron. I'm going to argue that it's a catastrophic disaster. Ben, you have the floor. Okay. Well, first of all, people should just keep in mind, right? It's a presidential system. And it's a system with a very strong president. The French president is arguably strong in the American president in their system.

So even if Macron were to lose control of parliament, and he actually doesn't have an outright majority. Now, he's still going to be present until 2027. He's still going to control farm and defense policy. But he'll be dealing with a lot of dysfunction if he loses it. So the first point is he didn't have to bet the whole house here, like say, Rishi Sunak. But I guess the second point I'd make is, look, he's deeply in popular. So I'm not here to defend Macron personally. he's kind of been losing control of French politics to the far right all the momentum is there they get to be these kind of outsider insurgents the EU elections can kind of feel a bit like a protest vote you know like it's not here it's kind of I can register a point of view but it's not like I'm putting these people in charge of this country and in McCrone's own electoral history he's done the best when it was just this kind of stark choice me or the far right so you know he trounced Marine Le Pen in his first election and that way

won healthfully the second time. And so I think what he's doing is he's saying, look, consider these people as actually running this country. And let's make it a referendum on that. I don't think McCrone thinks it's a referendum that he's going to win in terms of himself. I think he's saying, I'm going to make this a referendum

on whether we actually want the National Front to run this country. And I think he's betting, and I'm not guaranteeing he's going to win, but I'm seeing the logic in it at least. he's betting that this is a way to kind of sober people up and get them to vote on whether or not they think the National Front should actually be in charge or not. And if he wins, then he obviously kind of faces them down and he's in a stronger position for the next two years. I would argue in a strange way, even if he loses, yes, it will be messy for him.

But actually, then by the time the next presidential election comes around, it's quite likely that these far right people will have some of the stench of incumbent. And so in a weird way, even if he loses this election, he might actually weaken them heading into the next presidential election. So I just pulled up his approval rating. His disapproval is at 65%. But it's been about there for like since 2019. I think the French famously hate their presence. Something I admire about the French. Richard Olawn's polling was like 11% approval by the end. He's a socialist. Also, by the way, Ben's calling them the National Front. I'm calling the National Rally. It's the same party. It is a national.

No, you're correct. They rebranded it as a national rally. They rebranded as a national. In like 2018. By the way, also, I heard somewhere that turnout in French, like local elections, their parliamentary elections is like 25% higher than these European parliament elections. So he's also probably betting that the electorate is just a little bit different. Yeah.

So it's not representative. Okay. So here's why I think this is potentially disastrous. I think Emmanuel Macron is quite full of himself. He thinks of himself is. Point conceded. bold, inspiring historic figure. That confidence is not always translated into results.

We all recall his insistence that he could talk Putin out of invading Ukraine, for example. I heard one French analyst described this election and French politics generally right now as being about the three eyes. Inflation, immigration, and irritation. Irritation. Inflation is obvious. Prices went up during COVID because of the Russian invasion. As you mentioned, Europe is very dependent on Russian natural gas. They've come down, but as we see in the U.S., voters are still pissed. And they want to take it out on somebody.

In France, that often means burning a roundabout, but also you can vote an election. Immigration, as you mentioned, has been a driver of support for far-right parties across Europe for a decade plus now. And you're really hearing a lot of the same rhetoric you hear in the U.S. about this being an invasion. They're particularly focused on immigrants of color and Muslims. And so it's like there's this anger brewing. There's this overt racism that's growing. Marine Le Pen and her party is channeling that. And I think a lot of citizens feel like the elites aren't handling the problem, right?

And then irritation is people think Emmanuel Macron is condescending. He talks down to them. I also think they feel like he doesn't focus on this stuff. They care about, for example, last week he gave a 100-minute long speech that included talking about AI and quantum computing. and a lot of stuff that farmers in Provence probably don't care about, right? So the other challenge for Macron is he can't just run against Marine Le Pen this time because she has groomed this 28-year-old guy named Jordan Bardella to front the campaign. He's kind of a dynamic, friendly-looking TikTok fascist, and I think has been doing well.

So you're right, Macron's making two bets. One, the first is that voters don't actually want the far-right in charge of France. The European Parliament votes for protests vote. but, you know, when they get serious, they won't want these goons in charge. The second bet is that if the far right wins and he winds up in a situation called cohabitation, why did I say it like that, cohabitation, where the president and the prime minister are from different parties, that it will, you know, like you said, make the far right own the results, show that they can't govern voters, sour on them ahead of the presidential election.

My concern about that approach is we learned from Donald Trump that you don't really have to be competent. You know, you can just demagogue. Like, Donald Trump convinced his own supporters to believe that there was a deep state within the government so they didn't blame him for things his own government was doing, right? Like, you could easily see, uh, in the Marine Le Penz of the world just like go with xenophobia and ginned up controversies and lay this all at the feet of Amino Macron, who by the way, I don't think has a real successor. He's got a prime minister. He's young and popular. He's got his own version of a young influencer type. Yeah. A little older in the 20. I think he's 35. He's 35. He's 35. He's a real minister. He's a young minister. He's

35. But, you know, so I don't know. It's unnerving, like I think earlier today, we also saw the traditional French Republican Party, like the Mitt Romney Party, say they would go into a coalition with the National Valley. So I don't know. I'm a little worried. I feel like people are pissed at incumbents. No, you're right to be worried. You're right to be worried. And I mean, look, the reality, too, is that if nothing else, this suggests France is going to be somewhat, you know, of a mess. politically, Germany already is a mess. And like I was saying, like, for Europe, that's terrible because they've got, you know, they've got the lunatic and Putin to their east. They've got lunatics to their west in the United States, you know, maybe Trump coming back. Barbarians at the door. You've got the Chinese throwing their weight around more. And the more Europe is kind of divided and inwardly focused. It's bad for them. Yeah, you're right that the, we really leveled down the leadership in the UK.

across Europe, like Rishi Sunak can't cut it. Olaf Schultz is no, Angela Merkel. I mean, I just don't know where the leadership's coming from. Yeah, it's like you're looking around and you know, you're waiting for that person to come along and fortunately that person is a 28-year-old fascist-adjacent influencer. On TikTok. Okay, speaking of hubris, let's talk about the UK Ben. So last week we talked about how British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had made a decision to hold

a SNAPLE general election on July 4th. The announcement was a mess. It dumped rain on Sunak. Protesters drowned out of speech by playing a song associated with the labor parties' victories in the late 90s. But amazingly, since we talked, things have gotten way, way worse. So you guys might have noticed last week was 80th anniversary of D-Day, the day when Allied troops landed in France in 1944. There was a huge set of events in France. There was a big event at Omaha Beach commemorating D-Day and the service members who fought there.

I think King Charles attended. President Biden spoke. Chancellor Olaf Schultz from Germany was there. You know, there must be a little bit awkward for him. Yeah, kind of the... It's like you're invited, but... Kind of the odd party guest. You know why you're here, pal.

Macron was there, obviously, because it was in his country. And then, but then, so the iconic, like, head of state photo, repping the UK was David Cameron, the foreign secretary. And everybody was like, why? What happened? And it turns out, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, left early. So he attends a wreathling ceremony, but then skips the main event. The prime minister of the UK left a D-Day ceremony early.

And the reason is Benaz's head in his hands right now. The reason is mind-bogglingly stupid, which is that Sunnick went home to do a TV interview that apparently was in bargood for six days. You couldn't have had those fuckers fly over to France, man? Do it there? So like Sunak misses the historic photo opportunity. Kier Starmer is there from the Labor Party. He's trolling around hanging out with Zelensky looking like a statesman.

I think Nigel Farage was there. Yeah. So Sunnet gets destroyed in the press by labor, by conservatives, by the military, by conservative news outlets. He issued a groveling apology via an interview. What's your clip? We're in an election campaign. Kirstama managed to stay for the whole event. You didn't.

What does that say about your judgment, your priorities, and your character? As I said, the itinery for this set of events was set weeks ago before the election campaign even began. So I don't think it's right to politicise these things. I stuck to the itinerary that had been set for me as Prime Minister weeks ago before the election, fully participated, express my gratitude to the veterans. No shame at all. As I said, on reflection, it was a mistake not to stay longer, and I've apologised for that. But I also don't think it's right to be political in the midst of D-Day commemorations. a focus should rightly be on the veterans and their service and sacrifice for our country.

It's the veterans who's saying that you're letting the country down. Are they politicizing this? I've apologized for not staying longer on reflection. That was a mistake. Michael, they were laughing. The British press, the follow-ups are like, but don't you a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ., I mean, I'm sorry we'd reach it almost do a whole episode on this. Yeah. There's so many things that are absolutely insane about this. The first thing is he went back to do an ITV television interview. Does he really think that this six-day embargoed interview is like a higher priority than like the, just the photo ops of being able to be, I mean, just from a pure crass political standpoint. Global news story. Like, I mean, obviously the, obviously the right thing to do is to stay and support the last surviving members of D-Day

who will ever have a commemoration like this again, right? I mean, this is not a small anniversary. This is like a big anniversary, right? Round number, last time these people would probably be there alive. So it makes no sense. Then the second thing is I love is like this kind of blame the staff. You know, someone set my itinerary. My schedule.

Oh, you didn't know what D-Day was? How weak of a fucking leader are you, Wichie Sunak, that you're blaming your scheduler for like thrusting this on you weeks ago? And it didn't occur to you? Like the day before you flew down in a normative, you didn't glance at the schedule and say, hey, wait a second, maybe I shouldn't fly back by TV. I'm sorry, I'm a captive of my scheduler who I'm going to like run the bus over on this interview with somebody, you know? Yeah, well, D-D is not a holiday that sneaks up on you.

It's not on a different day every year. It was like, well, because that may seem like he's like, oh, I got my schedule and I was like, whoa, I got to go to this wreathling thing. Oh, man. Then I go back. Then I love the British press, too, because we mentioned that the French, because I went down the rabbit hole in this one, because just like the French hate their presence. Once the British have smelled that you're just a loser, it is like the most relentless.

It's like watching a pack of wolves like tear somebody apart. It's incredible. What they're doing to Rishi-Sanak. And Kier-Starmer has nothing to do except to sit there and pick up the pieces. To your point, I was watching, I was literally watching some miscoverage. I'm like, huh, why is Kier-Starmor, like, with all these prime ministers in Zelensky? Like, David Lammie is sitting there having like a bylat with Zelensky on the beaches of Normandy

while Rishi Sunak is back like prepping for an ITV interview? Kirstormer should just go buy lottery tickets. Yeah. He's having like Barack Obama level political luck right now with the meltdowns around me. Here's a headline from The Guardian, Ben. Sunak will absolutely remain Tory leader

despite D-Day Blunder, ally says. You're right, that's the follow-up press. Nigel Farage took it to a gross place. You see this? He said that Sunak wasn't really British and didn't understand, quote, our culture. Clearly like just a racist comment,

But then he tried to clean it up by saying Sunak is utterly disconnected by class, by privilege, happens to be true. I think King Charles might have sped up or changed his cancer treatments to be there? King Charles has cancer and he's down there on the beach talking French. He's storming the beaches. He's storming the beaches, you know? Nish Kumar from Potsay of the UK, summed it up perfectly when he tweeted, the only person who's had a worst D-Day is Hitler. That's pretty good.

That's very good. Pretty good. I will just say this labor landslide is going to be. Absolutely off the charts. We need you. And by the way, it makes the point that this is not just like some global far right wave. It's a global people sick of the people running things. And Rishi Sunak is the perfect manifestation of, you know, as this kind of super rich, like finance guy who like didn't actually win an election, right?

You kind of got rotated in after Liz Truss. This is going to be quite the wave to watch Transpire here. It's incredible. Yes. We haven't had an election this easy in a while. Yeah, I'm so happy for them, but I'm also just so jealous. Yeah, I'm very jealous. You think that they, what could possibly happen for them?

Could the opponent get convicted of a felony? I know. Yeah. Oh, no, wait. Yeah. 34 convictions. That did happen here. Okay, Ben, that was very cathartic for me.

We were going to take a quick break, but you can't take a quick break from the Supreme Court because they're unloading horrible decisions on us all month long. If you want to learn about what they're doing and you want to learn about it from some of the smartest, funniest people in all of media. Check out our cricket show, strict scrutiny. Law professors and host Melissa Murray, Kate Shaw, and Leah Lipman will decode the drama and break down everything you need to know, whether it's about opinions, whether it's about Sam Alito's wife's love of flags.

It's like a group chat where three of your smartest friends routinely destroy Clarenthe Thomas, and it's very, very fun to listen. So check out strict scrutiny. New episodes drop every Monday wherever you get your podcast. All right, Ben, so let's turn to Gaza. Over the weekend, Israeli counterterrorism forces launched a successful operation into Central Gaza to rescue four hostages who had been kidnapped by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival on October 7th. One of the hostas rescue was a woman named Noah Argomani, who listeners probably remember as the young woman who was taken by Hamas on the back of a motorcycle while she cried for help that first day.

This absolutely haunting footage from October 7th. This military operation had been planned for months. The New York Times reported that it was aided by U.S. intelligence and logistical support. Israeli officials told the times that the U.S. and Israel are collecting on Hamas, but apparently, you know, we also fly drones over Gaza as well. But I guess there's some intel that only the U.S. and the U.K. are able to get. I assume it's, you know, some sort of cyber-specific means. But who knows. Anyway, the rescue is obviously incredible news for these hostages, amazing news for their families.

And frankly, a huge relief for people across Israel who have not gotten good news. news on the hostage front since November of last year during that ceasefire. However, there was an enormous death toll from this operation. The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 274 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded. What happened was the Israelis decided to conduct this operation during the day because they thought that would be more surprising than a night raid. But one of the commando teams got into a firefight with militants, an Israeli commander it was shot. And so they quickly called in air strikes, you know, in the middle of the day in these busy streets. In the Israeli Air Force reportedly just blew up a pathway so that the

Israeli team could escape. And the images from that aftermath were just truly horrific. There were, you know, people searching for their loved ones. The hospitals were overrun. It was incredibly gruesome. Here's a clip of IDF spokesman, Colonel Peter Lerner, talking about what happened on ABC News. The forces came under fire from 360-degree threat. RPGs, AK-47s, explosive devices on the way mortar rounds. It was and is a war zone. And so civilians in that is the tragedy of civilians being caught up in this

is precisely because of how Hamas is battling us on the battleground. So Ben, I think the question now becomes how, if at all, this operation will impact this broader conversation about a ceasefire and hostage release deal? You know, will people think, actually, we don't need to cut a deal because we can rescue hostages like this? Or, I don't know, maybe folks will think it's too hard to replicate an operation like this. What do you think? How do you think this will impact those conversations? I think, I mean, the tragedy of this thing is kind of the entire war is in miniature in this, like, one operation. You know, the inherent tragedy of October 7th manifested in these

hostages, the absolute kind of disproportional use of force in trying to achieve objectives. And as we've talked about, it's that's not normal. Like there's not, I'm not familiar with any other hostage rescue operation that killed nearly 300 people before. You know, that's not like a common collateral damage in one of these things. And, you know, there's international law that suggests that proportionality and civilian casualties has to be taken into account. and that appears to not really have been taken into account.

And that's kind of in miniature the whole Israeli response. But then that leads to the point of like, is this achieving the objective of rescuing the hostages and achieve the objective of rescuing four? But to your point, I mean, I do think it's probably sets back the broader effort, you know, and I hope I'm wrong about a ceasefire because on the one hand, you'll get some people on the Israeli right, you know, who think that there should never be.

be any negotiation and we should just try to do military rescue missions or, frankly, not even prioritize the hostages as against just destroying Gaza. And this kind of thing becomes, you know, something of a data point for them. Even though I think it, you know, it doesn't do anything to help the many, many other hostages that have been endangered by the Israeli military operation or that may face kind of Hamas retribution in the aftermath of this. And then, you know, I think from the Hamas side, it kind of reinforces that there's not, you know, that actually, and this is a horrible thing that may be happening, but that the hostages are less and less kind of even in an area of focus for them, you know, in terms of like this is all about a negotiation with these hostages. You know, just the kind of violence and militarization of the entire conflict, I think, is exacerbated by how this played out, you know. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just unequivocally true.

the best way to rescue all the hostages is a deal. Yeah. You know, we saw that in November of last year. Many, many more hostages got out than through this rescue operation. I think we've been very hard on the IDF throughout the sport for its total disregard at times for civilian casualties, especially when it comes to air strikes. You know, there was a bunch of reporting on the use of like 2,000 pound bombs, for example, in urban areas.

I do think in this case that almost any government would launch a rescue operation if it had intelligence on its citizens being held by a terrorist group. that doesn't mean the tactics are beyond criticism. In fact, like, I think the UN came out and said that this operation might have been a war crime because of the proportionality reasons you just talked about. And clearly, doing this raid during the day contributed to this massive death toll. So that decision was a mistake, it seems. But, you know, just think, like, when you authorize an operation like this, you don't know how it's going to go. You can try to predict, but they didn't know.

And it seems like what happened is, you know, once this thing went south, once a commando got shot, Israeli commander got shot going into a building, I bet their entire focus turned to blow up everything. We cannot allow another set of Israelis to be held hostage. And I'm not saying that's the right thinking. I'm just saying I bet that's what the calculus was and what happened here. Yeah, it certainly feels that way. And, you know, the, you know, the point that the IDF makes about how Hamas is holding these people in densely populated areas is absolutely true. It's absolutely the case. I think that the challenge that, though, is that, well, Gaza is a densely populated.

This is not to absolve Hamas in any way, because I'm sure Hamas does intentionally move people to densely populated areas. But it is also just kind of an insurmountable fact of the nature of this entire thing, that Gaza is a densely populated area with like a couple of million civilians and a majority population of children. You know, and so you can't really square all these things. You can't suggest that you can obtain all these objectives militarily without the kind of destruction of this entire place. And that's why the continued pursuit of pretty maximalist military objectives, the destruction of Hamas and the rescue of all these hostages militarily, the logic of that leads to kind of destroying everything. And that was seen in miniature in this operation.

Yeah, two quick other things in the hostage front. I mean, last week, I mentioned how I'd heard an analyst say on BBC that the U.S. should consider cutting a unilateral deal with Hamas to get out the American hostages. I think it was NBC News maybe reported that actually those talks about doing just that had happened in the U.S. government. It doesn't mean that they've started a process, but it was interesting to read that. And then NBC News also reported that BB Netanyahu's National Security Advisor told the families of some of the hostages that BB won't agree to end the war in exchange for the... their release, the release of their loved ones, unless polls show it helps him politically. So I don't know if that guy gets points for honesty is the most craven person I've ever heard of or just hates his boss so much that he's willing to say something like that.

But it was a pretty stark thing to read. Well, no, and this leads into the conversation we have about ceasefire because essentially Bibi Nanyahu could get the hostages back if he was willing to end the war, you know, because that's the deal. That is the deal that Hamas has already agreed to, right? And so this question of prioritization has been an uncomfortable one for the Israeli government throughout this whole war. Is the priority to recapture the hostages or is the priority to, quote, unquote, destroy Hamas? If it was to recapture the hostages, it would be obviously diplomacy. But I think what that guy betrays, I mean, he makes it even more craving by making about politics, which I think is probably true with respect to BB.

But, you know, time and again, Bibi and Israeli leadership has shown, and this is why the hostage films are so upset. that their military objectives are, you know, certainly take paramount over the hostages. Yeah. So let's talk about that push for a ceasefire. President Biden rolls out this big plan and speech on May 31st, and the administration's been pushing hard for it since then. So on Monday, the UN Security Council voted in support of a resolution that was basically Biden's ceasefire deal. It was 14 yeses, Russia abstained. And then Secretary of State Tony Blinken visited Egypt and Israel to press the case. Here's a clip of Tony from the tarmac in Cairo on Monday.

Israel has accepted the proposal. In fact, they were critical in putting it forward. So the only party, no, that's what the official position of the Israeli government and the prime minister. So the only party that has not accepted, the only party that's not said yes is a must. So, you know, as you heard there, Biden and his team are still in this weird place where they're arguing that Biden's proposal has been agreed to by Israel while Netanyahu kind of like does this dance where you like have to nize it. Ben, the Wall Street Journal reported that Egypt and Qatar told Hamas's leadership, the political leadership that lives abroad that they could be arrested, sanctioned or expelled from Doha if they

didn't accept the ceasefire deal. It sounds like that is backfired. This was reportedly done on behalf of the White House. The journal had another fascinating piece where they analyzed messages from Yaga Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. It was messages he sent to the ceasefire negotiators since the war started as well as some of his past statements. And like the big takeaway is this guy doesn't care about civilian casualties. He actually thinks, you know, they're good in service of his broader cause. He thinks Israel has more to lose than Hamas in this fight. So he wants to drag them in further.

And he thinks victory could be worse than defeat for Netanyahu if Israel ends up occupying Gaza after the war because he knows how that goes. So, you know, Ben, I think the take home for me of like seeing Tony's push, reading about Sinwar's thinking was just to like, it height. my preexisting anxiety that this war could just drag on for a very, very long time because both sides seem to be incentivized to keep the war going for political reasons. I mean, I don't know. Like, has your level of hope of something getting done changed at all? I should know that right before we started recording, Axios reported that Israeli sources say Hamas has rejected the latest ceasefire proposal that went over. I don't know if that means rejected it outright or they're demanding amendments, but not a good sign. Yeah, look, the best thing that could happen is that between now and

when we next record a podcast, you know, we're surprised by a ceasefire deal, and I hope that does happen. I am, though, pessimistic. We talked about this dynamic with Sinwar, I think, last week. But, I mean, stepping back, the administration's approach here is essentially to go out and declare this an Israeli proposal for this phase ceasefire to jam Hamas into accepting the ceasefire so that they can then pressure Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire that they're saying is an Israeli proposal, right? And look, I get part of the logic of that, right? It's like you want to lock in one party and that's Hamas. But I do have to say, I just want to name this, it is pretty disingenuous to kind of keep standing up there and saying that this is an Israeli proposal. When,

Netanyahu says it's not. And when Tony says, no, that's Israeli government's position, that's the prime minister's position. It's just not. It may have been an Israeli proposal. Like, I'm sure that some Israeli negotiator worked out this language, right? But if the prime minister of the country can't go out and publicly say in his own words, like, this is my plan, this is my proposal. Hamas accept this and then, you know, let's get it done. Then you're kind of bridging, you know, I get that why they're doing it. It's just jiu-jitsu. But here's the prime problem with. The problem of it is, what's the gap? The gap is that in the phase plan here. So after the phase one exchange of prisoners, there's this kind of period of time before there are

other releases where essentially the ceasefire becomes permanent. And as the administration says, this is the plan to end the war. Hamas is saying, we want a written assurance in the Israeli government that that will happen, that the war will end. And Netanyahu is saying, no, I'm going to destroy Hamas militarily before the war ends. That's not changing. I'm not even suggesting. I'm not even adjusting, put aside even your views on those two respective positions. They're not, those are not reconcilable positions. Now, what the administration is trying to do, which is, I think what you try to do in diplomacy is like, well, let's at least get something going here. Let's at least get an exchange of prisoners. And then we'll, then we'll try to kind of narrow those

differences. But I think we can't kind of just sweep them too far into the rug because my concern, as you just articulated, is if this blows up and the administration has created this whole predicate that the only reason that this didn't happen is because of Hamas and that the only way that the war can end is if Hamas essentially agrees to its own destruction, which is Netanyahu's I have no sympathy for Hamas, but precisely because I think Hamas is a bunch of terrorists and Sinwar is a terrorist, why would he agree to essentially lose the war, you know? And so you either want the war to end because you think the war is wrong. and that it's not serving Israel or anybody's interests,

or you want the war to end in a kind of negotiated surrender by Hamas. You've got to pick a side in that divide. And the administration, by kind of choosing that this is all in Hamas, is kind of creating a predicate that, well, if Hamas doesn't agree, when does the war ever end? And complicating all of this is that, like, rational voices in the Israeli government are becoming harder to come by, like Benny Gantz, who is a relatively moderate, he's not a moderate.

he's not a moderate, but he's relatively moderate compared to the other parts of the Netanyahu coalition. He joined Netanyahu's war cabinet after October 7th to show unity and to bring, like, expertise to that group. And he just withdrew from it on Sunday. Gansett demanded that Netanyahu put forward a long-term plan for Gaza. That didn't happen. So this move doesn't topple the government. Netanyahu still has the support he needs in the Knesset, but it'll have political ramifications. The first being, you're already seeing the scary far-right ministers saying,

saying, okay, we know you're even more dependent on us now. So put us in the, in the, you know, national security cabinet. Second, you know, you're losing just like a professional interlocutor, if you're the United States, in Benny Gantz. And then third, he was reportedly one of the voices pushing back on others in the Israeli government that want to launch a second front in the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And frighteningly, Ben, like that part of this does seem to be heating up lately. There's been a lot of cross-border shelling, a Syrian national open fire at the U.S. in Lebanon last week. He apparently was, the State Department says he's wearing an ISIS insignia. So I don't know. I just, when I see that happening and then I read about Gantz's departure,

I really do start to worry about like who is going to be able to cool things off in these national security meetings. Yeah, I mean, the one caveat I'd make to some of the coverage that's like now Bibi will be much more beholden to these far-right guys is like he always has been. Yeah, the numbers have always been the same. And frankly, at the end of the day, the reason Gantz is quitting is because Bibi would defer to the far right instead of him. It is true, though, that now those people, there's just less voices in the room and the voices in the room are crazier. So that does matter.

I don't want to diminish it, but it's not like Netanyahu was a centrist and now he's moving to the right. But to your core point, I think we have to just get back to a place of realizing, you know, I think people cut thinking, well, at some point this will just end the same way these wars have in the past, there'll be a ceasefire. And then there's a world in which this is kind of an open-ended thing where maybe there's not the scale of fighting in Gaza or scale of destruction that we've seen, you know, particularly early in the war. But it's still essentially an open-ended Israeli military operation occupation in Gaza with occasional horrific, you know, violence. And then, yeah, also there's this kind of exchange of fire that keeps escalating along the northern border in Israel.

There are tens of thousands of Israelis who've been displaced from northern Israel. and this is a big political issue inside of Israel, because it's like, oh, you can't even defend Israel. These people can't go home. And there could be, you know, Netanyahu has a choice. Basically, does he at some point allow for, you know, is he, does he allow an election or, frankly, does someone in his coalition withdraw and collapse to government

and then there's an election? Or is he just kind of like stumbling along with this far-right government kind of perpetuating these wars, you know, because it keeps him in power without having to make hard choices. And unfortunately, it feels like that's, where we are. That I think that's where he goes here. And everyone seems to think like, oh, everyone's waiting for him to call an election. Why would he call an election? He knows he's going to lose. He's just waiting for his numbers that tick up. Okay, we're a couple more quick things

before we get to Ben's interview. So we've talked a bunch of times on the show about the Civil War that's been raging in Sudan for over a year now. This is fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and a paramilitary group called the RSF. We wanted to raise it again today, just because things are getting historically bad and experts are sounding the alarm. So just a couple of stats, Ben. The U.S. believes that as many as 150,000 people may have died in the fighting. Up to 220,000 children could die in the coming months due to famine. And the U.N. says nine million people have been forced from their homes or displaced. On top of that, the RSF is reportedly surrounded a city called El Fasher in the Darfur region. So according to

Foreign Policy Magazine, there could be as many as 2.8 million people in Al Fasher right now because of all this displacement that's happened. And A group's are, worried that the RSF will carry out atrocities against those people because this is a city that is a stronghold for the Sudanese armed forces. So the U.S. is crystal clear that we believe that both sides have committed war crimes. Both sides are getting support from outside countries and are being treated like a proxy war. Now, the U.S. is appointed a former congressman named Tom Perielo, a special envoy to help broker peace talks, but those talks aren't really going anywhere yet. And despite the staggering death toll, Sudan is getting a tiny fraction of the attention

and press coverage and diplomatic attention that the war in Gaza is getting. So we just wanted to raise it here again because it's incredibly urgent and dire at this moment. Yeah, the scale of this is almost unimaginable. And I do think this is where the kind of breakdown and the international order in the UN system is like felt acutely. There's obviously been a lot of focus on, on Israel and Palestine and the UN. But frankly, that's just that issue has always been dysfunctional with the UN. I just kind of feel like this is the time when you would have a major push for a UN Security Council resolution for a UN supported with the push of the major powers behind it, kind of negotiation around ceasefires and humanitarian access into these places, some kind of

political process. And it's just, there's just this vacuum that, you know, the RSF is just like, we're just going to do whatever we want. And we're getting money from the Emirates and some other places. And, and with all else failing, I still think, like making a major push in every piece of the international system, the UN, the African Union, you know, any consolation of countries you can put together to just, again, you may not solve Sudan's political crisis, but to just kind of put some breaks on this thing, negotiate some ceasefires, get some humanitarian access, and much the way that, you know, the U.S., I think, made some progress doing that in Ethiopia a few years ago, because otherwise, you're just going to see, you know, a loss of life that is going to, you know,

be absolutely horrifying. Yeah, unimaginable. Okay, we also wanted to touch on a story out of Canada, which is a scandal involving members of parliament, foreign interference in elections, and questions of national security. So here's the gist. Canada's national security, and Intelligence Committee, which is made up of politicians from various parties, released a report after reviewing 32,000 pages of classified documents and concluded that some politicians in Canada had been wittingly or semi-wittingly working with foreign governments, specifically to meddle in political campaigns. This has shocked people in Canada, and now you see conservatives demanding that Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau release the names of the lawmakers named in the report, which he's refusing to do. According to this report, China is the biggest espionage threat to Canada. India is second. The broader context, though, is all these investigations and allegations of foreign interference into Canadian elections in 2019 and 2021 and whether those benefited Prime Minister Trudeau's party. So that's getting kind of wrapped up as part of these accusations about the refusal to release these names. So, Ben, I bet a lot of listeners are listening to this and wondering, why would China and India want to mess with Canada of all places. Do you have a theory there? Yeah, you know, you and I were talking before

this, but what's interesting is you've seen all these particularly Chinese focused efforts interfere in Canadian politics. One of the things that's happened, you know, Canada's always had a large Chinese diaspora, but I think over the course of the last decade or so, as Xi Jinping is kind of ruthlessly cracked down or had corruption investigations and opponents or we saw the crackdown in Hong Kong, is there's been. like a steady migration of some people from China to Canada for political purposes, right? Wealthy people, people that made it as tycoons in China, then fell out of favor, or just people that are politically critics of the Chinese government and obviously need to go somewhere for asylum.

And so there's this kind of diaspora population in Canada that Xi Jinping might see as kind of a threat in the same way as we've talked about the Narendra Modi saw the sick population there is some kind of threat. And also, Canada is not as big and powerful as the United States. And so, so it's a little bit harder for, you know, there's some people like that in the U.S., but it's a little harder for China to throw its weight around here. And so I think what we're seeing is this kind of interesting dynamic where Canada is becoming a place of refuge for prominent critics or wealthy critics of the Chinese government or diaspora movements against Hindu nationalism in India. and these strong men are like, well, I don't like that.

You know, I don't like that being this opposition. And Canada doesn't have the same strength or anybody that the U.S. does. So we're just going to start throwing our political weight around. And so I think, unfortunately, you're seeing more of this. And I would hope that the U.S. can help Canada push back against some of this interference. Obviously, I don't know that Trump would care. Because essentially, you know, I think there's a value in suggesting that, hey, North America generally. like wants you to stay out of our apologies.

Yeah, and the Chinese bludgeon you in response if you make accusations as we've seen in the past. One more quick thing on China, Ben. So I don't know if you saw the story. According to the Daily Mail, Chinese officials apologized after a hiker found a water pipe that was secretly providing water

at a site touted as China's tallest waterfall. This is the Yuntai Mountain waterfall. It's 1,024 feet tall. Millions of tourists visited it every year. So some hiker was up there, took a photo of just like clearly a point. pipe pumping water off the top of the waterfall down to the bottom. So this pipe was discovered. And then a real natural wonder of the world. Officials at the park. They posted an apology on

social media, but they did it in the voice of the waterfall itself. They said, quote, I didn't expect to meet everyone this way. As a season scenery, I can't guarantee that I will be in my most beautiful form every time you come see me. I made a small enhancement during the dry season only so I look my best to meet my friends. Can you imagine if like old faithful, like the guys are in Yellowstone, was just like Wyoming sewage water getting blasted out every 80 minutes or whatever? Or that there was like some kind of creepy AI seeming voice that is used. Why would you do that?

Yeah, that that that's actually worse than the water pipe. So much worse. You know, yeah, I, I was actually like going to say as much as you want to see these things as purely naturally driven, like, you know, okay. Maybe there's a little water pipe, but the kind of big brothery thing is a little too on the nose for the Chinese government to have like a talking waterfall. There's also like an infrastructure project. Just deny it next time, guys. You can lie to us.

Finally, then, Congress is full of morons. None are dumber than Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. Here's a recent clip of him on the right-wing Real America's Voice Network talking about the war in Ukraine. How many TV clips have you seen of a battle in Ukraine? zero in the last six, seven, eight months. It's one-sided. Putin just kind of sitting back watching what's going on, wondering, hey, when y'all going to come over and we'll draw a line here,

he doesn't want Ukraine, he doesn't want Europe. He's got enough land of his own. He just wants to make sure that he does not have United States weapons in Ukraine pointing at Moscow. See, the Russians are running a 4-3 defense too high. They can't stop the run. What the fuck are you talking about, man? Yeah, where is he?

Well, he hasn't, what is it, the real news network? I lose track of these right-wing media outlets. Hey, buddy, every time I go on Twitter, I see some horrible snuff video. That's what I'm saying. From the war in Ukraine. I don't want to see first-person drone explosions on either side, but it's everywhere. It's pervasive. I don't understand.

I turn on the one news, real news, America station, and all I see is a bunch of migrants down at the southern border there. You know, it's like nothing exists in the world except what he consumes in his right wing media diet. Has he considered that it might be hard to get Western news outlets into like foxholes and trenches and things to record some of these battles he's missing? I mean, this is a, there's a reason that Alabama came to dominate

the Iron Bowl every year when he was coaching Auburn. We're not learning, you know, this is the Nick Saban intelligence vis-a-vis Tommy Tupperville is just to make him. Just to make clear that I'm not biased against all Alabama football coaches. This is not the one that seems to have a functioning brain. Yeah. Which is uniquely qualified him for the United States Senate from Alabama. Yeah, the definition of a useful idiot there, although Nick Seventh's an asshole too.

Okay. Is he an asshole? Oh, yeah. He's probably like a mega, you know. I didn't even know about that. Okay. He's just a player's like absolute shit. Well, he's a college football coach.

He's a college football coach. We're going to take a break. We come back. You're going to hear Ben to interview with Dr. Rosa Balfour about the election in Europe. So stick around for that. All right. So earlier in the show, we talked a bit about the European Parliament vote this weekend in which we saw some gains by far-right parties, particularly in larger countries like France and Germany. We talked about some of the broader political trends at play, but we wanted to

go into some greater detail about what this result means and about what people should look for going forward at the European political and policy level. So we're very pleased to have with us today, Dr. Rosa Balfour, who's the director of Carnegie Europe. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Balfour. Hi, nice to being with you. All right, let's just start with the big picture here. You follow this closely. What are your main takeaways from the election and how did it, did it surprise you or was it pretty much in line with kind of what you were expecting coming into it? It was in line with expectations. The center-right party gained, did well. The radical rights groupings also did well across the European Union. The Greens did perhaps a little worse than I

expected. But the outcome is that the European Parliament is still able to express a majority of centre-right, centre-left parties that will be able, probably to elect the leadership of the next European Union. But the surge of the radical right continues. It's been ongoing for a couple of decades now. So how these centrist parties will position themselves vis-a-vis the radical right and how they will let the radical right influence their policy choices is the big question looking forward. So I think for a lot of people watching this outside of Europe, maybe even some people inside of Europe, the kind of machinery of decision-making at the EU level can be a bit confusing. Talk a little bit just about what this means. What are the

the main blocks in the European Parliament now. What are they going to look like after this election? And what are the key issues? I mean, let's just start with that. And then we'll get into some of the key issues that they'll be dealing with. Yeah. So let's start with, I'll go left to right. Let's start. There is a far left grouping, which actually has gained some votes. I mean, some people in Europe are protesting against, still protesting against austerity politics, against the centristism of European politics, so they gain some votes. Then there's the socialist and democrats grouping, which is the second largest group, confirmed as the second largest group. It would be the equivalent of the Democratic Party in the United States. Then we have the Greens, and they have lost a lot

of seats this time around. Then we have the liberals, who are pretty much in the middle, sort of liberal in economics. It's a bit of an old group, but that's the space they occupy at the centre. To their rights is the European People's Party. It brings together all the large centre-right parties across Europe, many of whom are Christian Democrats, but it's a bit broader than that. And then we have two radical right groupings. One is called European Conservatives and reformists and the other one is called identity and democracy. And in these two groupings, we have quite a wide range of radical rights groups, which are not in the single group because they're quite divided among them, but they do share a number of features. They're all nationalists

and nativists, mostly xenophobic. They have ultra-conservative values as far as LGBT IQ rights are concerned, for instance, and they are all Eurosceptic. The reason they're not in the same grouping is that they are divided on some key issues, for instance, Russia, NATO, China, and therefore, you know, the degree to which they are able to cooperate is really thwarted by the fact that they, you know, disagree on these big topics. And of course, them all being nationalists, reduces the scope for cooperating among them. And then this time round, we have also a larger group of non-aligned parties. Now, this is due to all sorts of dynamics taking place.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Radical Right Party in France, kicked out the Radical Right Party of Germany just a few days ago because of a number of scandals and because of statements in favour of the Nazis, etc. whether this party, which did very well in the elections, will rejoin or not, is still something that we need to watch out for. A number of shifts are going to happen in the sort of far right of the European Parliament in coming weeks as we start seeing the haggling around the nominations for the new commission, etc. Okay, so, and just a couple more questions on this formation.

It sounds like, do you expect the center right, the People's Party, which is a more conventional center-right parties, it's more likely that they'll find common cause kind of to the center and left than to throwing in their lot with the far right. Is that kind of what you expect? Yes, that's what I expect for two reasons. I mean, the first is that these parties have been working together for a long time. The outcome of these elections is likely to be a second term for the president of the European Commission. That is Ursula von der Leyen. The Commission is the executive body of the European Union. And even though over the past, year. She has fallen out of favour in some quarters, but nonetheless, I think there is a general

agreement that the past five years, the Commission has done pretty well under her leadership. She is the candidate of the largest party, that is the EPP. And to be honest, in light of the, she's a German, so Germany will support her, even if she doesn't hail from the parties that are currently in government in Germany. And in light of the crisis that we're seeing in France, with Macon calling for snap elections, I'm not entirely sure whether France will want to, you know, start a constitutional crisis in the European Union. So it seems to me that the odds are in favour of Ursula von der Leyen getting a second term. And in her past term, she was supported by a coalition of the EPP and the centre left and the Greens and the Liberals. So that seems the likely outcome.

I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I would bet on it, actually. I would say 90%, that's the likely outcome. And on the far right, you described kind of differences among far right parties. You know, some are far right xenophobic and kind of are willing to kind of make common cause in some ways with Russia. Some are far right and nationalist and anti-Russian, right? That's just one issue. What do you think the potential is for these far-right parties to actually work together? and what do you think they're trying to do?

In the American context, I guess, it's like MAGA people getting elected to Congress to kind of make it not work or something, right? Because these are people that are usually outwardly hostile to the EU as an institution. What do you think all these far-right members believe they're going to Brussels to do? Yeah. I mean, the truth is that in the past, many of these did very well in the European Parliament elections, but then they didn't show up. So they just didn't show up.

they didn't come to vote, they didn't participate in the debate. And sometimes they voted one way and then went home and pretended that they'd voted in another way. So, you know, they've benefited enormously by the fact that there isn't that much scrutiny with respect to what happens in the European Parliament. But of course now, you know, it's not just that together they've managed to get 25% of the vote roughly in the European Parliament. It's also that they're doing well at national elections. So in seven EU member states, we have governments that are either include to the radical rights or are led by the radical right or are supported by the radical right. And, you know, it could happen that after the snap elections in France, Rassimlement National will become

the first party and therefore another government led by the radical right. That makes it eight. And then in September, we have elections in Austria, where the radical right came top in the European Parliament election. So it's likely that the next prime minister, the next chancellor of Austria will be the leader of a radical right party. So that makes it nine governments out of 27. And that's when, you know, you need to start looking a little bit more seriously at what these parties want and what they think, and not just at what they've done in the past. So you're right to ask, what is it that they want? If we take the playbook of Victor Orbach, who has been leading Hungary for 14 years now,

what he wants is the economic benefits of being part of Europe, that is the single market, the economic opportunities that European programmes offer to countries, but what he doesn't want is the scrutiny from Brussels on rule of law. He doesn't want to conform to, the sort of collective agreement over, for instance, foreign policy matters. And, you know, as Boris Johnson, who, you know, led the UK out of the European Union, he wants to have his cake and eat it. And the question is, is that possible? Is it possible to have a European Union

that is formed of, you know, countries that are loosely hanging in there together with a the glue of deeper integration, without the glue of political values that can hold them together. And that is a big question. But clearly, at this present historical juncture, it is a question that needs to be addressed because Europe is seriously challenged internally by these political parties and externally by the international environment. So you paint a good picture here, and if I hear you right, obviously, and what you anticipate happening, one of the functions that the Parham Woff undertake is the selection of the leadership in Brussels.

It seems like Ursula von der Leyen has a bit of an insight track to that. But then there's a question of how the EU deals with a set of issues. So I just want to go through a very quick number of the kind of leading ones. Ukraine, obviously, let's start with. The EU's been pretty forward-leaning and supporting Ukraine in a variety of ways, both with funding for Ukraine and also for kind of fast-tracking Ukrainian candidacy for the EU for membership. Do you see any changes or strains or challenges to the existing Brussels position on Ukraine? How should we see the European Parliament's role in Ukraine policy going forward and what should we look for?

No, in terms of supporting Ukraine financially and militarily, the European Parliament is pretty irrelevant. And I would say that until the US elections, we can expect continuity from the European Union. The US elections could well be a big game changer. I mentioned, you know, we have the radical right is divided and some parties are pro-Russian, some parties are, you know, pro-American, and many of these actually really like Donald Trump. So if Donald Trump were to win the next presidential election and decide to reach some kind of peace deal with Putin over the heads of Ukraine, this would be a huge problem for some of these parties, especially the pro-American ones, who are also anti-Russian and are, you know, staunch supporters of Ukraine. So that would be a really

big challenge. If conversely, Biden were to win the elections, then I think we can expect a continuity of the EU policy insofar as Ukraine is concerned, especially in terms of the military and the financial support. However, the European response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine also needs to look at two different dimensions, which are perhaps slightly more in the longer term, but are equally important. And one is the degree to which the EU manages to credibly pursue a strategy to allow Ukraine, Moldova

to join the European Union in the long term. And the second is the degree to which the European Union needs to step up its game in focusing on its security and defence. And I think here, you know, there'll be differences. The differences that exist regardless of the political party

in charge. Do we do this via NATO? Do we want to spend more on defence? That's a big question. And how do we want to address beefing up Europe security and resilience? Are we prepared to pay for it? And are we, most importantly, are we prepared to cooperate in doing that? That means are we, are Europeans prepared to integrate a little bit more their defence structures, their infrastructures of resilience, et cetera. That is a bigger question. Substantively, what issues do you see the parliament having the biggest decisions to make in the coming year or two? And how might this election affect those issues? Well, I mean, there are two areas I'm worried about insofar as the gains of the radical rights are concerned. The first is Europe's climate agenda. Europe has been

pioneering a climate agenda. It pushed through the Green Deal. And now we're seeing that the radical right is really pushing back against A, the Dictat coming from Brussels. So the simple fact that Brussels is actually setting the pace of the agenda, but B, you know, challenging some of the ideas that are connected to the need to green the economy. And the problem is not so much the radical right. The problem is the fact that center-right parties often respond to those instances is coming from the radical right by watering down measures that have been already agreed upon. So what I'm worried about is the implementation of the Green Deal, and I'm worried that it'll get watered down. The second area I'm worried about is rights. The European Parliament has always

been a very progressive actor. It has worked hard to promote human rights, LGBTIQ rights, gender issues, and a whole set of progressive issues. and the European Parliament has really pushed for them. And the risk is that this whole set of issues will go on the back burner. And, you know, there are all sorts of issues related to it. For instance, academic freedom. For instance, the degree to which human rights are incorporated in dialogue with third countries, there are all sorts of dimensions of this. And they really risk being put on the back burner if the champions of the progressive policies are silenced and if the mainstream parties feel that they should not endorse that agenda for fear of antagonizing the

radical right. Yeah, so, I mean, that leads me to one last question here, which is that we're obviously in a pretty unsteady international political environment. The U.S. could swing to Trump, dealing with their own divisions. China, increasingly. being viewed as a competitor, certainly by the U.S. and by some in Europe. Russia is in Ukraine. Middle East is on fire. All this would suggest that now is the time when Europe would want to coalesce around a set of positions and a set of political views.

But it does feel like what we just learned is it's actually going to be harder for Europe to do that, and we'll see what happens in the French election. I mean, what does this mean for how we should look at European politics in this global context. How is Europe going to be able to speak with one voice or to take on hard issues when there's such internal divisions that we see in these elections? Yeah, no, I mean, this is going to be really difficult. And, you know, if the EU sees through the next five years without fragmenting too much, that already will be an achievement. If the EU manages to stick to its promise towards Ukraine, that will already be an achievement. But I don't think we can expect

a European Union that is proactively engaged with the rest of the world. It's already going to be hard to find the consensus around the degree to which the EU needs to sort of fireproof its own economic model, its own democracy against all these threats. One thing to look out for, I think, is there are going to be elections in the UK soon in July. And I think one thing to look out for is how European Union can connect with its neighbours. So at least try to build a bit of a block there and some common principles, which, you know, might give the region a little bit more weight and clout. And then the other, of course, is what happens in France and Germany,

because we've seen very weak leadership coming from those two countries, and now they come out of the European Parliament elections. I mean, it's been a real bashing for them. There's going to be snap elections in France for the Assembly, but Macron will be fully in charge until the next presidential elections that are in 27. In Germany, the next elections are going to be in 2025, and it looks like the centre-rights will win.

And maybe there'll be some new leadership coming out of Germany. But at the moment, we cannot assume, I think all countries, large countries or blocks in the case of the European Union, they've all been consumed by domestic politics and unable to really engage with all the international challenges. This is going to continue in Europe, for sure. Well, it sounds familiar, unfortunately. Thank you so much for joining us, Rosa, and shedding light on this. Thank you. Thanks to Dr. Balfour for joining the show and talk to you guys next week. If you want to get ad-frey episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content,

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