The vote was a no-confidence signal for the Atlanticist bloc, which will continue to ignore its steadily declining popular support. From James W. Carden at theamericanconservative.com:
In line with expectations, populist right wing parties across Europe made significant gains in last weekend’s EU parliamentary elections. The results have been interpreted as a vote of no confidence in the Atlanticist establishment’s handing of the proxy war between Russia and NATO—and these very much include the war’s knock-on effects, not least soaring energy prices (thanks to the prohibition on cheap Russian gas and its replacement with expensive American LNG), economic stagnation, and widespread disillusion over the Washington-led sanctions regime against Russia.
A survey taken by the Hungarian Szazadveg Foundation showed that, with regard to the sanctions policy, “three times as many respondents (31%) thought that the sanctions primarily harmed the EU as those who thought they harmed Russia (12%)” [emphasis mine].
As Gladden Pappin, the president of the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs, recently told me, “I think that the war and the consequences of the war are the principal driver of political movements in Europe at the moment, with migration being a second one. But the problem here is that Europe itself lacks agency, lacks full agency in international affairs.”
By the most recent count, the European populist-right will control no fewer than 165 seats. Meanwhile the center-right European People’s Party is expected to control somewhere near 190 seats in the coming session—good news for the incumbent EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is widely expected to seek another term.
The fallout from the vote was immediate and, in France, dramatic. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, whose Renaissance party was crushed by Marine Le Pen’s rightwing National Rally by 15 percentage points, made the surprise decision to dissolve parliament and hold snap elections beginning June 30, with a second round July 7.
But, but, but, muh demockracy?
I voted, I’m helping. (picks nose)
In the silver lining department it should be obvious to any one with two brain cells and a synapse that they don’t give a F’ about you at all. (H/T-G Carlin)
Let them eat green eggs and ham in their big UNI club that we aren’t in.
Breaking from Jimmy Dean:
Big Bad John