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Germany’s far-right predicament — to ban or not

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

James Kirchick is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He is the author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age.”Germany is currently confronting one of the gravest challenges to its democracy since the Nazi regime — and its political establishment thinks the solution might be to ban the country’s second most popular political party.  “We all have it in our hands to put those who despise our democracy in their place,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier thundered in an August speech commemorating the 75th anniversary of Germany’s postwar constitution.Steinmeier didn’t name who exactly the despisers were, nor did he state what must be done to “put them in their place.” But there was no ambiguity in his remarks. The very next day, a Der Spiegel editorial entitled “Ban the Enemies of the Constitution!” called upon the country’s highest court to declare the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party unconstitution...

James Cleverly was meant to heal the Tory rift on immigration. It isn’t working

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

LONDON — When Rishi Suank reshuffled his Cabinet this month, he hoped to calm his party’s jitters over immigration.The U.K. prime minister’s grand plan was to deploy the charming James Cleverly as his new Home Secretary, replacing the divisive Suella Braverman with another Brexiteer — but one who has been instrumental in fostering more cordial relations with European capitals.“He was a Leaver himself, and a big Boris [Johnson] supporter, and he is very collegiate,” explained one U.K. government official closely involved in the reshuffle, in the days after Cleverly’s appointment.The hope in No. 10 was that as an amiable Brexiteer from the center-right, Cleverly — the MP for Braintree — would calm both sides of the warring Conservative party as the government tries to press ahead with its flagship Rwanda policy to combat undocumented migration. But the policy was ruled unlawful by the U.K. Supreme Court within days of his appointment and the government is still scra...

Mary Lou McDonald

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Since assuming the presidency of Sinn Féin in 2018, Mary Lou McDonald has been shaking off the shackles of history. With Ireland due an election by 2025 — potentially as early as the fall of 2024 — the 54-year-old leader of the Irish republican party many still associate with terrorism and the Troubles is far ahead in the polls, making her the country’s likely next taoiseach. A successful bid for the country’s top job would dramatically change the narrative around McDonald’s greatest ambition: Irish reunification.McDonald has managed to walk a delicate path during her time at the Sinn Féin helm, attempting to distance her party from the violence of the past while simultaneously convincing voters it’s now a serious political contender in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Her strategy has been working. Following Ireland’s last election, in 2020, McDonald became leader of the opposition, dramatically upending the status quo in which center-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ...

Björn Höcke

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long lacked a charismatic leader such as Giorgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen, capable of capturing a broader supporter base and bringing it closer to real power. That could change with Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the state of Thuringia and one of the party’s most extreme figures, whose views on race and migration recall Nazi and fascist theories of the 1930s. The hold the 51-year-old former history teacher has on his base is significant. His motto: “The EU must die for the true Europe to live.”Once confined to the margins, the AfD is becoming acceptable to significantly more German voters — sending shock waves through the political establishment. Nationally, the party is polling second with 21 percent of the vote — 5 points ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD. In the states of the former East Germany, it’s on track to take first place in elections next year in Saxony, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Höcke’s...

Alexei Navalny

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Alexei Navalny has kept the dissident dream alive, even as he himself has withered away in a remote Russian prison. Despite President Vladimir Putin’s best efforts to threaten, poison and isolate the 47-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption activist — or rather, because of them — Navalny continues to provide inspiration and provoke dissent, shining a spotlight on the dictator’s brutal treatment of his enemies.Described by some as the Nelson Mandela of Russia, Navalny is effectively its only opposition leader. While his origins in nationalist politics — and his past stance on Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — make him a problematic hero for progressive Russians, the evolution of his political positions has seen many prominent former critics fall into line behind him. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Navalny’s investigative videos exposed millions of Russians to their president’s corruption and hypocrisy, helping to draw tens of thousands to the streets to protest Putin...

Manfred Weber

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party, is a man on a mission: Stop the conservatives’ backslide in national elections around the bloc and beef up their numbers around the EU’s top tables. In pursuit of that quest, Weber is dragging the EPP further to the right, seeking to mop up votes from those frustrated with rising migration and new green laws — and undermining European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s signature policies in the process.As part of his bid to expand the EPP’s ranks, Weber is courting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her far-right Brothers of Italy party — currently members of the European Conservatives and Reformists. In comments that wouldn’t be out of place in an ECR manifesto, Weber has said he supports the construction of an EU border wall. He has also called for a moratorium on new green laws and vowed to kill any that could lead to higher food prices — in a threat to von der Leyen’s legacy, given the Green Deal has been ...

Dreamer #1

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

 This name will be revealed during the POLITICO 28: Class of 2024 live event, taking place Tuesday November 28 at 9 p.m. CET. Register for the online unveiling.Check out the other names in the POLITICO 28: Class of 2024, and read the Letter from the Editors for an explanation of the thinking behind the ranking.

Marine Le Pen

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Whisper it: Marine Le Pen could well be the next French president. All the far-right leader has to do is fly under the radar for the next few years, keep her hands clean while President Emmanuel Macron pushes through his unpopular reforms, and continue to rebrand herself and her party all the way into the Elysée.Previously kept at bay by the “front républicain” — an informal pact that saw French voters on the center left and right come together to keep those on the fringes out of office — Le Pen’s National Rally party is raking in ever-more ballots with every election. In recent polling, 42 percent of respondents said they had already voted for a National Rally list or candidate, up from 30 percent in 2017. And in ominous news for the European Union, the latest French polling data for the European Parliament election puts her party in first place, well ahead of Macron’s Renaissance. While National Rally is no longer seeking Frexit, the big fear in Brussels is that Le Pen will underm...

Ursula von der Leyen

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Name a mightier president of the European Commission than Ursula von der Leyen. We’ll wait. The 65-year-old, the first German to hold the post since Walter Hallstein left office in 1967, amassed unprecedented power (or “competences,” to use the naff EU parlance) as she steered the bloc through a series of epoch-defining crises. With a reshuffle of the EU’s top jobs due next year, von der Leyen appears to find herself with the enviable choice of either serving another five-year term in the Berlaymont — or perhaps giving in to U.S. President Joe Biden’s overtures and becoming the next NATO chief.The former German defense minister has put her stamp on every recent challenge, from securing COVID vaccines to corralling EU countries to impose sanctions on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For a while it looked like she had comprehensively answered Henry Kissinger’s infamous — and apocryphal — question: “Who do I call when I want to call Europe?”More recently, however, v...

Gérald Darmanin

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:30:24 GMT

Gérald Darmanin is young, ambitious, talented, backed by the world’s richest man — and likely France’s next prime minister. The 41-year-old hard-liner is seen in political circles as a rising star in President Emmanuel Macron’s flagging Renaissance party, able to reach across the aisle to ram through unpopular reforms, and entrusted by the president with negotiating some of the stickiest pieces of legislation, including a deadlocked migration bill. But his ambitions for France’s top job are likely to be curbed by a rape scandal and a history of sexual harrassment allegations.Darmanin, who rose through the ranks of the right-wing Les Républicains during the Nicolas Sarkozy era and remains close with the former president, was Macron’s man on the front lines throughout last summer as the government dealt with riots following the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel M. The interior minister cemented his reputation as “France’s Top Cop” by (once again) strongly backing the police — and ea...