From a political point of view, it was the most intense beginning of summer in many decades.
We had a thriller in the form of unexpected, dramatic and potentially very dangerous elections in France, elections in Great Britain, which open new, promising prospects for this country and its allies, and presidential elections in Iran, for which the West has had high hopes. Than it should be included a significant change in the balance of power in the European Parliament and the Washington NATO summit chaired by the US president, who is under fire. Yes, this month, from the European elections to the NATO summit, was extremely intense.
FRANCE
Choosing between plague and cholera, the French chose cholera. Even though Putin was betting heavily on the plague, he still had cholera up his sleeve.
In the New Popular Front, the winner of these elections, the most votes were won by the ultra-populist and ultra-communist ‘La France Insumise’ party of Jean-Luc Melenchon, whom Putin loves as much as Marine Le Pen. Melenchon convened his last pre-election rally in the banlieue of Champigny-sur-Marne near Paris, or more precisely in Lenin Square, where the Resistance Museum is located.
Melenchon was also the first to react to the sensational election results. Although he expressed relief that the fascist party did not win, he devoted most of his speech to attacking Emmanuel Macron and his ‘Ensemble’ coalition. He announced that his group did not intend to enter into any agreements with the presidential camp, which is responsible for the terrible misfortunes that he allegedly brought to France.
Meanwhile, all political forces of the center and moderate right wing swear with one voice that they will never enter into any coalition with Jean-Luc Melenchon.
The problem is that Melenchon cannot be isolated definitively: the next presidential election is at stake. Marine Le Pen will probably run again and will have a better chance of winning than ever. On the democratic side, there is no personality of Macron’s stature who would be able to oppose her in the second round, or even in the direct pre-election debate. Therefore, to defeat Marine Le Pen, all anti-fascist voices will be needed, including the voice of Melenchon and his party.
Since June 9, that is, the day of the elections to the European Parliament, all media on both sides of the Atlantic, have unanimously criticized Emanuel Macron. “What did this man do? “He’s handing France over to the fascists!” – screamed the headlines.
And basically no one appeared to repent of all the nonsense they wrote about Macron.
Because it turns out that the biggest winner of the French elections was Emmanuel Macron. Not only he did prevent the far-right Rassemblement National from coming to power, but he brought his own political camp, seemingly doomed to extinction, to the second place in the country.
He bet that most of the third and fourth place candidates would withdraw in the second round so that their votes would go to the democratic candidate with a better chance of winning over the RN candidates – and he won. He rightly hoped that this mechanism, which had already saved France several times from the Le Pen family and its supporters, would work again.
But the final victory will only be decided by inter-party negotiations on the appointment of a new government: will it be possible to create a cabinet that will include neither Lepenists nor Melenchon’s supporters?
If the biggest winner was Emmanuel Macron, then the biggest loser was Vladimir Putin. Its ultimate goal is to destroy common Europe: this is the only way to reduce its individual countries to the role of vassals. The victory of the French extreme right, supported by him until the last moment, could bring this goal much closer; a fascist France could cause a domino effect in Europe, starting with Germany, where neofascists are also climbing to power.
“The parliamentary elections in France did not really resemble democracy” – this is how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented scathingly on the election results.
Moscow, although who has excellent analysts of international affairs, did not take into account the possibility of 244 candidates withdrawing in the second round. “Clearly, the second round was aimed precisely at manipulating the will of voters expressed in the first round,” Lavrov said. – And if the result of the first round served as the basis for creating a parliament, there would be very serious changes in France,” he added, disappointed. His ministry failed this time.
Keeping the fascists out of the sphere of power was the result of the extraordinary mobilization of the French people. In France happened something similar as on October 15, 2023 in Poland. Mass mobilization for democracy, for human rights, for tolerance, for a common Europe, for the transatlantic alliance, for the victory of Western values over the “values” with which China and Russia are trying to nourish the world.
And if it were not for this mobilization of the French, their chances of imposing their vision of illiberal autocracy on almost the entire world would be much greater.
It is not yet known how the fate of France will unfold, what government will rule, what political arrangements will dominate the country of Descartes and Montesquieu, but for the time being we should all be happy: Europe has been saved.
The only large country where fascists rule is Italy. However, Georgia Meloni’s Italia will not be able to cause a domino effect; we saw this clearly during the competition for the new shape of far-right clubs in the European Parliament.
Orban’s Hungary and Fico’s Slovakia do not count in serious European competitions. The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, where the right wing is growing in strength, will also not be able to shake the foundations of the European Union.
Germany, which is threatened by neofascism, just like France, will have one more argument to vote for democracy in the next elections.
So: Europe as we know and love; Europe, which is our hope for peace and prosperity, will remain the Europe we want.
For it to remain so, Poles must also play a constructive role.
The party that destroyed Poland for 8 years, isolated it in the international arena and objectively acted in favour of the Kremlin’s strategic goals, still remains a powerful political force. The justice system alone will not make her return to the political open-air museum, the place where it belongs. Poles must accept the vaccine: the vaccine of democracy, so that it permanently enters their bloodstream.
Europe still faces enormous challenges. The first is the war in Ukraine. It is in the vital interest of the whole world that Ukraine wins and Russia loses; this Russia of Putin, which is beyond repair, this Russia must be destroyed and rebuilt on completely new foundations. Foundations to which part of Russian society undoubtedly aspires.
The second gigantic, epoch-making challenge Europe is facing is the climate and its protection. We observe climate change almost every day also in what was once called “temperate” climate. But anyone who watches TV news or looks on the Internet can see the terrifying changes taking place in countries closer to the equator. Temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius were once very rare; today they are part of everyday life. Some experts say that before 2050, at least one and a half billion human beings will be forced to leave their places of residence and move closer to the poles. Just to survive.
And this is the third gigantic challenge Europe and the entire West are facing: immigration. For many, many decades we have been hearing that the problem of immigration should be solved at its sources, that is, in the countries from which this immigration comes. So far, it’s all been words, empty words. It’s time for this dramatic truth to reach every citizen of the European Union and for them to give a mandate to their politicians to stop talking and start acting, because if not, in a few or a dozen years, these problems will become a matter of life or death for all of us.
UNITED KINGDOM
On July 4, 2024, in the United Kingdom, citizens elected 650 members of parliament to the House of Commons. With an overwhelming majority, the opposition Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer, defeated the Conservative Party, which had been in power for 14 years, led by Rishi Sunak.
It has a total of 411 seats, which is 174 more than the Tories and 211 more than in the previous general election in 2019, but – what few people noticed – it received fewer votes than 5 years ago.
The Conservative Party currently has 121 seats in the House of Commons, which means it lost 251 of them. It received only 23.7 percent of the vote, which is the worst result in its history. Twelve ministers of the outgoing cabinet and former Prime Minister Liz Truss were not elected. The Tories also lost all their seats in Wales.
Smaller parties performed well in the election, partly due to tactical voting against the Conservatives. Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats achieved their best result ever, winning 72 seats. The result of the far-right “Reform UK” party, established ad hoc by Nigel Farage, may be worrying: it achieved the third largest number of votes, but thanks to the unique British ‘First-past-the-post’ voting system, it introduced only five MPs to the House of Commons, but they will certainly be regularly bring chaos to her work.
For the first time in British history, a woman, Mrs Rachel Reeves, became Chancellor of the Exchequer, i.e. Minister of Finance and Budget. They call her the “Iron Lady” of the Labor Party because she has ideas like Margaret Thatcher, such as “no tax cuts without justification, we are not Tories” and “the British will not live on subsidies with me”. She is considered a ruthless strategic mind; after all, she was the British Under-14 Chess Champion.
Born in London, the 45-year-old inherits an economy and finances that have been plagued in recent years by Covid, war and the disastrous policies of Conservatives such as Liz Truss.
Rachel Reeves, from a left-wing teaching family, joined the Labor Party at the age of 16. Her sister Ellie, who is a year younger than her, also belongs to the same party.
Married, with two children, a self-confessed nerd – “I even studied at school during lunch breaks” – she graduated in political science, then economics at Oxford and the London School of Economics.
One of Reeves’ greatest achievements is convincing business that the Labor Party, after getting rid of old leader Jeremy Corbyn, is a business-friendly party. A few months ago, it even withdrew from the project of limiting bankers’ bonuses “because the economy needs stability.”
The second important woman in Starmer’s cabinet is Angela Rayner. The “Red Queen” – as Tory Lord Ashcroft called her – is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as well as the Minister for Equal Opportunities. She is 44 years old, born and raised on the outskirts of Manchester, in a very poor family. An aggressive father, a mother with bipolar disorder who constantly talks about suicide. “The motto was to survive,” Rayner said.
She loves sweatshirts, junk food, beer and cocktails, and has a weakness for eccentric shoes, because: “My father kicked me out of the house at the age of 15 when I got pregnant during my first intercourse and I didn’t want an abortion: this child was the only revenge of my life. From then on, whenever I made some money, I spent it all on shoes.”
She left school at 16, began a trade union career and then joined the Labor Party. Former blue collar Angela now has three children, and in 2017, at the age of 37, she also became a grandmother.
Two years ago, Starmer wanted to dismiss her because she was impossible to discipline. In the end, Rayner stayed, fortunately for Sir Keir. Because she is a working-class heroine in the Midlands and, generally, within the white North of England, wherever a language spoken is different than in London. Without Rayner, the Labor Party could have collapsed, so many of its supporters attract.
Finally, there is Sue Gray, 67, new chief of staff and pub owner in Northern Ireland. She will be a true eminence grise (as her name suggests) and Starmer’s “enforcer”. The Whitehall veteran already has 20 government bills ready. But most of all, Sue Gray was a permanent secretary in the Johnson government. She led the internal investigation into Downing Street’s Partygate scandal and destroyed “BoJo’s” career. A few months later, Gray was recruited by Starmer, leading to speculation that Johnson’s downfall may have been the result of a Starmer conspiracy.
The first moves of the Labor government are quite ambiguous. For example, the newly appointed UK Defense Secretary John Healey immediately went to Kiev to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov in Odessa. He reaffirmed all commitments made by Rishi Sunak’s government to Ukraine, including recent promises to provide Kiev with military aid worth £3 billion a year.
Keir Starmer himself called Volodymyr Zelensky immediately after the royal nomination to assure him that the defence of Ukraine remains the UK’s unwavering priority.
The newBritish foreign minister, David Lindon Lammy, immediately after his appointment set off on a journey that took him to Paris, Berlin and … Chobielin, i.e. to Radosław Sikorski’s private house near Bydgoszcz, from where he went to Sweden.
On the other hand, Keir Starmer told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that recognizing a Palestinian state is the indisputable right of his people. The election manifesto committed Labor to recognizing a Palestinian state as part of a process that would lead to a “two-state solution.”
Labor suffered significant electoral defeats in areas with large Muslim populations due to dissatisfaction with its position on Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
But this will certainly weaken the UK’s relationship with Israel and, consequently, will do nothing to reduce tensions in the Middle East.
Starmer also rushed to assure that his country’s re-membership of the European Union was out of the question, although he added that he would like to strengthen cooperation with Bussels and individual EU member states.
In any case, the dramatic change in the majority in Westminster and the change of decision-makers in Downing Street and Whitehall do not change the principles of British foreign policy, which undoubtedly contributes to strengthening global stability.
IRAN
The new president of Iran is Massoud Pezeshkian, 69, the first “reformer” since Mohammad Khatami in 2005.
A few days old beard, a blue jacket and a light blue shirt, a modest and conciliatory character, he defeated the ultra-conservative “hawk” Saced Jalilli, winning being 53% of the votes in the second round, in which the turnout was just under 50%.
This means that most Iranians want democratic reforms and reject elections in which candidates are chosen in advance by the ayatollahs.
The new president is a medic, comes from Mahabad in northwestern Iran, has an Armenian surname, an Azerbaijani father and a Kurdish mother, was quite popular among citizens of abused and repressed minorities, but did not gain any particular respect at the national level. Although he was not particularly charismatic, over the weeks he gained popularity also thanks to the support of historical reformers such as Mohammad Khatami and Ali Mohamed Karroubi.
“We will extend a hand of friendship to everyone, even to our opponents”, he announced shortly after the election results were announced. He completed his studies during the Iran-Iraq war and was a soldier and doctor on the front. Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon and headed the Tabriz Medical University. He has something in common with Joe Biden: in 1994, he lost his wife Fatemeh Majidi and his daughter in a car accident. He never remarried and raised his remaining children alone: two sons and a daughter. He was health minister under Khatami.
Pezeshkian was never concerned about the corruption and abuses rampant in the Iranian political system, which helped convince some of the regime’s undecided supporters. He is not a radical, he follows the footsteps of the Islamic republic and its basic principles.
When Mahsa Amini died, tortured to death by religious police, he wrote on Twitter the next day: “In an Islamic republic, it is unacceptable to arrest a girl for not wearing a hijab and then hand over the body to her family.” However, a few days later, as the protests intensified, he changed his mind and wrote that “young people by insulting the supreme leader will not cause anything but lasting anger and hatred in society.” He also paid public tribute to the Revolutionary Guard by wearing their uniform in parliament.
It does not propose constitutional reforms, it supports certain reform initiatives, without repudiating the regime establishment and ayatollahs.
When it comes to civil and social rights, such as the obligation to wear the hijab, he promises tolerance. He certainly doesn’t want to abolish the obligation to wear one, but perhaps he wants to loosen the control of the religious police a bit. It also proposes greater openness in access to the Internet.
His team consists of economic liberals, and a good half of them are pro-Western. They would like Iran to be re-admitted to the FAFT (The Financial Action Task Force) financial systems, i.e. to carry out transparency reforms, which have always been rejected by ultra-conservatives, and to resume dialogue with the West in order to at least partially remove sanctions.
Unfortunately, it is no coincidence that the first to call Pezeshkan with congratulations was Vladimir Putin, concerned about Iran’s possible turn to the West after the season of ultra-conservative Raisi, who filled Russian arsenals and weapons factories with drones.
But a doctor born in a theocracy will tend to oscillate between the East and the West. Pursuing such a policy will not be easy. He will have to deal with a parliament dominated by religious extremists and move within the boundaries imposed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Pasdarans, the real decision-makers of Iran’s foreign and security policy.
THE ALT RIGHT IS UNITED, MELONI END KACZYNSKI ARE OUT
Victor Orban, the nationalist and pro-Russian Prime Minister of Hungary, announced on June 30 his intention to create a group in the EU parliament called “Patriots for Europe”, and today this right-wing political movement already has enough members not only to create a separate group in the EP, but to be its third force. Its goal is to “change European politics”.
As we know, to create a separate political club in the European Parliament, you need at least 23 MPs from 7 different countries. And assembling such a team went surprisingly quickly for Orban, considering that he had terminated all previous alliances.
Because it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Giorgia Meloni was to become the leader of the entire European right. Back in May, no one questioned her leadership. Her relations with Orban were idyllic, she received him with honors and made him understand that he could become the ‘de nomine’ head of her “European Conservatives and Reformists” group, (and the de facto leader would be her: Giorgia Meloni).
Orban entered into a strategic alliance with PiS before Jarosław Kaczyński’s party came to power. Kaczyński and his people often dreamed of having “as much Budapest as possible in Warsaw.”
And Orban was stuck with his Fidesz in the Christian Democrat club of the European People’s Party until the latter, due to his frequent violations of democratic principles, started the process of expelling his party; he then decided to leave the EPP himself and has remained “homeless” since then.
It seemed obvious that it would go to EKR, which it brought together most of the European far-right groups. But the fact that the leader of this group, Giorgia Meloni, accepted ultranationalists from Romania into the ECR and demanded that Orban join the pro-Ukrainian front meant that Orban began to be perceived as a candidate to join the second large club in the EP: “Identity and Democracy”, which was dominated by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and the German, neo-fascist AfD.
Nothing came of it, also because Marine Le Pen expelled the AfD from the group after its main candidate’s statements that “there were not only criminals in the SS.” This seemed to favour the ECR, especially since shortly before the European elections Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen seemed to have reached an agreement on building one strong far-right grouping.
And then it only got worse. At the EU summit, Donald Tusk with one sentence extinguished Giorgia Meloni’s hopes of playing any role in forming the new European Commission and obtaining at least a few key positions for the ECR, and then Victor Orban put the nail in her coffin when he founded in Vienna, together with the Austrian, the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) and the populist ANO of former Czech Prime Minister Andrzej Babis, the “Patriots for Europe” group.
Soon they were joined by the Danish People’s Party and the Flemish nationalist independence group Vlaams Belang, the PVV Freedom party of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the Portuguese far-right Chega party and Spain’s Vox. Finally – the Italian League, led by Matteo Salvini. The Hungarian Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), which has onr member of the European Parliament, also announced its intention to join the alliance after leaving the EPP group. So the nationalist, Eurosceptic group currently consists of 84 MEPs from 12 EU countries.
Representatives of the three founding parties signed the “Patriotic Manifesto for a European Future”, according to which the only valid European policy is that whose legitimacy is rooted in the existence of European nations that preserve and celebrate European identity, traditions and customs and continue their Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage. This sets out the ideology of the alliance, which includes greater sovereignty for EU member states, stronger measures against illegal migration and a revision of the Green Deal for Europe. In addition to campaigning for conservative family values and against immigration, the group will push for an end to European support for Ukraine’s defence against Russian invasion.
Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the EU in July, and shortly after establishing a new group in the EP, Orban went to Moscow to seek Vladimir Putin’s approval for it.
Among others that’s why representatives of other groups immediately called the “Patriots” the “Putin Group”
Jordan Bardella, former candidate for Prime Minister of France on behalf of the National Rally, became the chairman of the new group in the European Parliament.
“Our long-term goal is to change the European Union’s policy,” said Kinga Gál, an experienced Fidesz MEP who will be Bardella’s deputy. The second vice-president will be Italian general Roberto Vannacci, expelled from the army for fascism and racism.
She was not invited to join the Patriots Alternative for Germany, which had previously been excluded from a previous alliance with Le Pen when its leading candidate said the SS “wasn’t made up entirely of criminals.”
The ‘Patriots’ overtook the European Conservatives and Reformists of Giorgia Meloni and Jarosław Kaczyński, who suddenly lost almost all importance in Europe.
The “betrayal” of Vox Spain is particularly painful for Giorgia Meloni, because she delivered her most passionate, arch-fascist speeches at the congresses of this party, whose members always applauded her extremely warmly.
This leaves PiS alone with Giorgia Meloni.