This Friday (1st June), there are two main events emanating from the South that of course demand attention: the moción de censura which passed successfully in the Spanish Congreso in Madrid, and the confirmation in Rome of Italian Prime Minister-Designate, Giuseppe Conte, and the rag-tag band of populists from the Lega (formerly Nord) of Matteo Salvini and Movimento 5 Stella of Luigi Di Maio, who hope they can run a government together.
Yet again we in Europe find discussion of military action plastered across the papers and broadcast across the continent. Sabre-rattling, to-war-by-jingo-ism is dominating the airwaves.
I haven’t always found goodbyes difficult. At first, as a child, it was mainly because in performing the act of saying goodbye, I didn’t ever feel like this was a permanent end so I didn’t – in the moment – see much to be sad about.
‘Simultaneously resist hard Brexit and egotistic destructive nationalism, whilst not accepting total surrender to the status quo and trying to engineer a new majority in favour of EU membership with the objective of re-entering a radically transformed, democratic Union? And at the same time implement a domestic programme of redistribution, social democracy and justice in one of the most neoliberal states in Europe? Impossible.’
Show them who’s in charge. That Theresa May doesn’t get to keep going, after the pathetic and humiliating débâcle of a campaign that she has run. Show her that she will be held responsible for the cuts in police, for undermining our safety, for continuing to arm hideous, extreme regimes such as Saudi Arabia, for submitting to a joke like Donald Trump. Not everywhere this means voting Labour. The SNP, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and even in some cases the Liberal Democrats have these objectives as well. So give them a bloody nose. Remind them that the people are watching, and we are not impressed.
Kerneuropa will finally have rallied behind teutonic economic management, for the small price of formalising the political oversight of these principles. What some seem to be painting as the next ‘Grand Bargain’ will in fact be the final capitulation to Berlin and Frankfurt’s brand of neoliberalism, and the end of any hope for Southern Europe escaping the economic crisis with its dignity.
Looking on what’s happening in Britain makes me increasingly dispirited and pessimistic. Already the politics in the country have turned utterly inwards – were it not for the fact she is leaving a European Union you’d have no idea Brexit had anything to do with the continent.
There is a common thread in these votes, even if when we get into the details we find several differences. That is that there are strong forces across Europe pushing highly disruptive, anti-establishment messages and ideas.
President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, on Tuesday made a call for unity among the European states, in the context of the rapidly deteriorating political climate they have found themselves in. In a letter to the 27 Heads of State & Government, Tusk said Europe was facing challenges “more dangerous than ever before in the time since the signature of the Treaty of Rome”.
DiEM25 aims to act as the catalyst of the construction of a broad left coalition able to challenge the rising nationalism in Europe and confront their domination of the media and political landscape – something sorely needed here in Britain.
In Search of Europa 