The only way to stopper Reform UK’s anti-establishment, far-right proclivity for perverting our fundamental political practices is to hope for Farage’s success in Clacton. Some of Reform’s cousins have trod this path many times: Alternative für Deutschland, MAGA, or Rassemblement National, all use the same method. The implicit goal is to erode the average voter’s faith in the system, and with it increase the belief that establishment parties take average voters for granted.

On 23 July 2026, the EU adopted its 21st sanctions package against Russia as part of its efforts in the war it is waging against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Measures in the package include a price cap on Russian oil of $44 per barrel, permission for member states to sell confiscated oil, and a visa ban for Russian combatants. This brings the cumulative total of sanctioned individuals and entities to a record 3,100. The EU, however, finds itself in a quagmire, with me

Much was made of the Online Safety Act last year, which covered self-harm and suicide materials, misinformation and disinformation, and social media algorithms. Perhaps the most hotly discussed point was the requirement for porn site users to verify their identities, the major reason being to prevent children from accessing harmful material and improving their internet safety. The influence, in particular, of misogynistic or extreme acts found in some porn films nowadays, ha

CPAC UK ran this past July 16 – a disconcerting day for many, including myself. Having worked on a start-up magazine for some time with a media veteran – and resultantly used to a diverse but nevertheless objective array of politicians’, professors’, and authors’ viewpoints – I had been surprised to learn of my partner’s contacts attending CPAC, whom he swore weren’t all right-wing loons, and even more shocked to learn he knew people speaking on the main stage, too. I was a

The event that best captures the folly of Keir Starmer was the sacking of three trade envoys and the suspension of “four persistent rebels” in July 2025, after he faced the most serious rebellion to his government yet. He and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, were attempting to push through a welfare reform bill which, according to its detractors, would have cut vulnerable people off of PIP. They failed, with backbench Labour MPs forcing them to reverse the welfare cuts. Instead

Robert Paxton’s seminal The Anatomy of Fascism conceptualises it not as a category but a political process: “all that is required… is polarisation, deadlock, mass mobilisation against internal and external enemies, and complicity by existing elites.” Nearly all are present in the UK. The collapse in electoral support for the Conservative Party and rise in support for Reform UK, the Green Party, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru are the most obvious political signs of polarisation. Ma

On July 14th 2026, under the scorching Parisian sun, French military troops marched down the historical Champs Elysées. Unusually, this year the military parade was opened by the thirty five countries making up the Coalition of the Willing, flying over and marching down the avenue in front of their respective leaders. What followed was one the biggest parades ever witnessed on Bastille Day, with 6.700 troops, 98 aircrafts, 31 helicopters and 315 vehicles mobilised, simultaneo

The Nazi Party came to power in 1933 in a Germany devastated by the Treaty of Versailles and Great Depression, and paralysed by a huge unemployment crisis of over 6 million. Six years later it was arguably the greatest power in Europe, tearing across the continent in relentless pursuit of ‘Lebensraum’. What happened in between might therefore be chalked up to nothing less than an economic miracle. It was not. When defining economic success on the regime’s own terms, namely au

The UK awoke this week to news stories of demonstrations and agitation in the capital alongside a review of the overrunning and overspending on the HS2 rail project. These seemingly disparate stories tell another story, however, when linked together. In part, the reason we have creaking sclerotic bureaucracy capable of blowing £100bn on – well, it is hard to say what exactly is being delivered in return – is the same reason extremist groups are able to galvanise large number

Reform UK’s burgeoning popularity has never stemmed from policy alone. A central pillar of its appeal has long rested in the promise of purification; an anti-establishment, anti-corruption party supposedly untainted by the deceitful Westminster habits that have set Labour and the Conservatives hurtling towards electoral devastation come 2029. If polls are to be believed, this gambit will reap lucrative electoral dividends for Nigel Farage’s latest insurgency project. But the

Spanish politics has undergone profound transformations in the last decade. The shift from a relatively stable two-party system to a fragmented and highly polarised multi-party system has not only reshaped the electoral landscape but has also weakened the capacity for dialogue in the Congress of Deputies. The emergence of new forces to the left of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and to the right of the People's Party (PP) did not revitalise Spanish democracy; on t

“Damn Daniel! Back at it again with the white vans!” Says the narrator in a viral Internet meme from roughly a decade ago. You probably associate this meme with reactions of laughter or derision in the school corridor. Regardless, the meme remains in your mind years later. Internet memes – colourful static photos, gifs, or short videos – are easy to recall. Constant repetition helps to reinforce the meme in the memory – your friend may have laughed at “Damn Daniel!”, repeatin

A teenage boy in Guldborgsund, Denmark, is searching for a pirated stream of the newly released Project Hail Mary on YouTube. Five videos later, he is watching a man wearing a crisp Oxford shirt calmly making the case that immigration to Europe is eroding Western civilisation. The boy does not pause to think. He does not resist the idea. He now actively searches for content that feeds this narrative. By the third day, the algorithm, having already registered his latent prefer

Viktor Orbán’s vanquishing in Hungary’s April election was, on paper at least, the kind of moment that once nourished Europe’s left. After sixteen-years of calcified nationalism, prolonged democratic erosion and Hungary’s suffocation beneath the dense smog of permanent culture war, one might have expected the floodgates to buckle for a great socialist or labour revival; a broad, popular movement surging through the opening, wiping out Orbán’s Fidesz and ushering in a fresh pr

Elon Musk seemed to be omnipresent a year ago. 2025 was swathed in a succession of Musk's political undertakings, his name part of the furniture of the headlines. January saw him salute in a way akin to the Nazis at the inauguration of Donald Trump, February his awkward wielding of a chainsaw at CPAC and the painful declaration that he had, quote, “become meme”. His role as leader of DOGE resulted in immense pitfalls for federal agencies and slashing of government jobs, as we

Orbán spent 16 years making himself the EU’s biggest problem. His legacy, it turns out, is an opposition equipped with a supermajority to dismantle everything that he built – if they choose to. Last Sunday, Péter Magyar 's insurgent Tisza party got the mandate to re-wire the state Viktor Orbán had consolidated around himself. For the EU, the implications of this election are immediate, and for once are in Brussels’ favour. The most relevant and urgent consequence is that the

In 1916, a twenty-four year-old British soldier arrived at the Battle of the Somme, where over a million men were killed or wounded over just five miles of ground. John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R) Tolkien lost two of his closest friends in the battle, an experience of indiscriminate slaughter that stayed with him for the rest of his life. Echoes of the First World War can be found throughout Tolkien’s later literary work, most famously in The Lord of the Rings - from the corpse-st

In the aftermath of the Cold War, scholars such as Francis Fukuyama argued that liberal democracy represented the final stage of ideological evolution, famously framing it as “the end of history.” However, what was celebrated as the final and best form of human government began to buckle under its own contradictions almost as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. “The end” became the starting point for a new political reordering, characterised by the rise of anti-liberal and, eventu

I was driving in the suburban Newtownabbey area just north of Belfast recently. I went up past the Ballyduff estate, on my way to Larne or Carnlough, I forget. My attention was drawn to some flags on lampposts, at a crossroads, which I didn’t recognise. I have learnt to tune out the various assortment of flags. The Union Jack, The Ulster Banner, Orange Order flags, flute band flags, State of Israel, or even Danish flags. However, this flag drew my attention. They were four br

The New York Times published one of the finest long-form features in recent memory last week. The piece was a thorough chronicling of the US-Ukraine relationship and its evolution over the past 12 action-filled months. Despite the US’s off-the-cuff approach to foreign policy, the brazen contempt it shows Ukraine and the rest of Europe is consistently striking. Pressure is barely exerted on Putin, with any attempt to end his barbarous actions feeling futile. Everything is stu