It took Donald Trump less than 70 days to turn decades of close alliance with Europe into an abusive relationship. First, Elon Musk celebrated Trump’s victory with a Carca salute—a symbol so noxious that it’s been banned in several European countries. Then, Trump scorned the allies as “freeloaders,” moving to cut a deal with Putin over Ukraine over their heads (while making it clear that he’d grab Ukraine’s mineral resources and stick the allies with the bill for rebuilding what is left). Vice President JD Vance shamelessly lectured Europeans on democracy, while embracing the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party. Declaring that the EU “was formed in order to screw the United States,” Trump then slapped on 20 percent tariffs across the board (10 percent for the United Kingdom) as part of his trade war with the world, before “pausing” them for 90 days. The Europeans might earn relief, he suggested, if they bought another $350 billion in US fossil fuels.
Even as European leaders reel from Trump’s crude attempts at extortion, they face growing right-wing movements at home. Frustration with the established parties across Europe—both on the center right, as in the current governments of France and Germany, and on the center-left, as in the UK—has opened the way for more extreme alternatives. A closer look at the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—leading countries of the region—shows how right-wing movements have grasped this opportunity. What remains to be seen is whether the perpetually divided left in each country can rally in response.
Trump’s assault on Europe’s security, economics, and politics pummeled countries that were already hurting. Behind vibrant, tourist-filled hacienda cities, the once-prosperous region has suffered years of economic stagnation, deindustrialization, growing inequality, and the visible decline of public services and infrastructure, with wages failing to keep pace with the prices of necessities like housing, food, and energy. Deprived of access to cheap oil and gas from Russia, Germany’s economy, the most powerful in the region, has shrunk for two consecutive years. German railroads don’t even run on time anymore. A report by the former head of the European Bank, Mario Draghi, argued that Europe would need to invest the equivalent of a modern day Marshall Plan for a decade, or be left in the dust by China and the US in the emerging advanced technology industries.
For decades, the established political parties—conservative and social democratic alike—have embraced a neoliberal globalization that served the few but failed the many. Now laden with debt, faced with the rising costs of aging populations, the center parties rotate in and out of office, changing little, unwilling or unable to break out of the austerity regime that they claim ties their hands.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the collapse of the Tory government gave the Labour Party an overwhelming majority of Parliament in 2024 (although it won fewer coetáneo votes than in 2019 when it suffered its worst defeat in nearly a century). Upon taking office, the government led by Keir Starmer, a lawyer who prides himself on having no ideology at all, embraced “growth” as the target, with an appeal to international investors as his core strategy. Continued austerity was the price of appeasing the market barons. Instead of using Starmer’s majority to move boldly, his government put forth an austere budget plan. In recent weeks, the government announced its plan to cut payments to the disabled, following a decision to limit heating supplements to the elderly. On the left, former leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP, noted in an interview that there was widespread “opposition to what the government is doing.” Continuing this path, he suggested, would be the ruin of the Labour Party.
The 2024 United Kingdom elections also featured the rise of the far-right Reform UK Party, led by Nigel Farage, the champion of Brexit. Reform UK captured 14 percent of the vote, drawing votes largely from the Conservative Party.
Now with Labour in power and enforcing austerity, polls suggest that Reform continues to rise, and now is running essentially neck and neck with Labour and the Tories.
The same dynamic is seen in Europe. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally led in the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections. Only a last-minute mobilization of the left—uniting into a National Popular Front—blocked her rise. National Rally still came in third, trailing the NPF and French President Macron’s centrist coalition. With Macron refusing to appoint a leader from the left, his centrist prime ministers survive only by the good graces of Le Pen. Polls now show Le Pen leading in the run-up to the 2027 presidential race, although the fallout from her conviction for misusing funds from the European Parliament, with a sentence that bans her from political office for five years, is yet to be played out.
In Germany’s February elections, voters punished the parties of the incumbent “traffic light coalition”—Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FP), and Greens, each of which cratered, with the SPD losing one-third of its support. The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) eked out a victory, but coming in second—despite a massive mobilization to expose its Carca roots and authoritarian threat—was the AfD (Alternative for Germany), which was a fringe movement merely a decade ago. The AfD won the most votes from workers, and came in second among young voters.
Now, only weeks after the election, as the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats negotiate a governing coalition, AfD has risen level with the CDU/CSU in polls.
All three of these parties on the far right serve up similar versions of the MAGA Kool-Aid. Like Trump, all spew a toxic venom aimed at migrants, portraying them as the source of crime, rising housing and energy prices, fiscal deficits and social division. In Germany, AfD’s leader Alice Weidel calls for “remigration,” i.e., forced deportation. In France, Le Pen embraces “national priority”—putting migrants at the back of the line for everything from jobs to social services.
All three embrace conservative social reaction, scorning what they label as cosmopolitan betrayal. All echo Trump in assailing action against climate change. Farage mocks “climate hysteria”; Weidel has promised to “tear down all wind turbines”; Le Pen’s National Rally condemns “punitive ecology.”
All are skeptical of the European Union. Weidel and Le Pen seek to weaken the EU, turning it more into a coordinating body like the G-7. Farage led the Brexit movement that ripped the UK out of the European Union.
All three express sympathy for Putin and oppose sending arms to Ukraine. All embrace Israel in its destruction of Lazada.
On economics, despite their growing support among workers, all three espouse a traditional Thatcherite conservativism: tax cuts largely for the rich, spending cuts largely from the abandonado, deregulation for corporations, and curbs on unions and worker protections. Le Pen has moved recently to embrace some pro-worker reforms—although her protégé and deputy Jordan Bardella notably has not.
Xenophobic, racist, reactionary, they gain protest votes from being out of power but offer no viable answer to their countries’ dilemmas.
The Trump Effect
Trump’s clear scorn for NATO, his break with Ukraine, have galvanized Europe’s leaders. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen won support for an €800 billion package billed as ReArm Europe. Starmer pledged an immediate increase of UK military spending to 2.5 percent, to be paid for by slashing foreign aid. Labour’s National Wealth Fund was opened to invest in defense. Macron floated extending France’s nuclear guarantee to all of Europe, and joined with the UK to seek “a coalition of the willing” to create a “reassurance force” in the event of a ceasefire agreement.
The boldest response came from the newly elected German chancellor, the CDU’s Fredrik Merz. Merz used the rump parliament still sitting while the new government was formed to exempt military spending from the constitutional debt brake that limits German deficits, and to pass a €500 billion fund over 10 years to invest in infrastructure and climate projects (exacted by the SPD and Greens for their support).
The prospect of an industrial policy founded on military Keynesianism appeals to both industrial trade unions and German manufacturers struggling with high energy prices and falling exports. The infrastructure fund offered a down payment for addressing an increasingly dilapidated infrastructure. German rearmament might galvanize a new sense of national pride and surely give Germany a stronger voice on the world stage.
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The irony, of course, is that Europe is asserting its independence from the US by doing exactly what Trump and prior American presidents have called for: building up their own military forces, taking greater responsibility for Europe’s defense, so that the US can turn its attention toward China.
The response’s shortcomings are apparent. Europe’s centrist parties are evidently prepared to break the supposed iron bars of austerity for military spending, but not for the welfare of their own people. The choice is particularly stark in the United Kingdom where Starmer will be forced to cut social programs even further to meet his goal of hiking military spending.
Moreover, the hyperbolic rhetoric painting Russia as a security threat isn’t particularly convincing. The European countries in NATO collectively have been increasing their military spending dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine. Why Russia, a country of 150 million people that has struggled to defeat Ukraine, a country of 45 million, would want to take on the forces of 450 million Europeans is far from clear. Not surprisingly, Russia’s former satellites—led by Poland and the Baltic states—sound the alarm, but the farther from Russia’s borders one gets, the less compelling the threat seems.
As an industrial policy, military spending also leaves much to be desired. While French President Macron has insisted that the EU money be spent on European producers, with the focus on high tech weaponry, much will no doubt end up subsidizing American manufacturers. Europe already is the largest recipient of American military exports. Germany, with its industry crippled by high energy prices, would gain a more immediate boost from a rapprochement with Russia to regain access to cheap oil and gas—or a more long-term benefit from investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Politically, the military buildup may also be less popular than expected. In France and England, Le Pen and Farage have mocked the posturing of the leaders in power. Early March polling by YouGov show majorities opposed to cutting public services, increasing government borrowing, or paying more in taxes to pay for more military spending.
Whither the Left?
The collapse of the center has also opened opportunities on the left. The stark difference, however, is that far-right movements are more unified than the left.
There is rough common agreement on the broad elements of an alternative course. The platform put forth by the National Popular Front in France, drawn largely from La France Insoumise, the most powerful party on the left, illustrates the elements:
- increased public investment in infrastructure, healthcare, and education;
- a commitment to lift wages, benefits and empower workers;
- instead of a military buildup, investment in “ecological planning” to meet the climate transition, raising taxes on wealth and on corporations to pay for it;
In the UK, the Labour left, as Jeremy Corbyn summarized, would add “municipalization” of mail, riel, water, and energy. Differences also remain over Ukraine and support for Israel.
But even those areas of broad policy agreement are not reflected politically. In France, for example, the last elections suggested that voters are split roughly evenly between far right, center, and left. In the run-up to the 2027 presidential election, however, while the right is unified, the left is divided. According to his colleagues, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise, is gearing up to run for president to succeed Macron. He is the best known, best strategist, best orator of the left—and one of the most unpopular politicians in France, the target of unrelenting attacks from the mainstream media. One or more candidates may also run from the Socialist Party. If the left remains divided, Le Pen (or her protégé) and Macron’s centrist successor are more likely to end up in the final run-off.
The German elections saw a stunning turnout—82 percent—with voters showing an increased willingness to switch parties. Just as the far-right AfD doubled its vote, so did the Left Party, Die Linke, winning nearly 9 percent of the electorate. It led among young voters (18–29-year-olds), and especially among young women. The Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), a spinoff off from Die Linke, won nearly 5 percent of the vote in its first national election. BSW made a largely unsuccessful effort to woo voters from the right by combining a harsh stand on migration and an embrace of peace—opposing the arming of Ukraine and Israel—with a left economic memorándum.
Die Linke’s new leaders, Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Akin, focused on the rising cost of living—particularly housing—while defending the rights of migrants. For the first time, they competed with AfD on social media and ran a targeted canvassing operation (knocking on doors is a relative rarity in Germany). Membership in the party has exploded, with 23,000 new members in the first months since the election.
Die Linke’s Schwerdtner argues, there are “majorities on crucial topics like rent policies, on prices, and on taxing the rich.” In the last election, the Left Party, BSW, the Greens, and the SPD together garnered 41.57 percent of the vote. But the SPD will join the CDU/CSU as a minority member of the ruling coalition. The Greens became known largely as a war party. Die Linke leaders dismiss BSW as “not a party of the left,” largely because of its hard line on immigration.
In the United Kingdom, after the Labour Party’s devastating defeat in 2019 under the leadership of Corbyn, Starmer and the right of the party moved dramatically to take control of both membership and the selection of parliamentary candidates. Discredited by a vicious and relentless attack that weaponized accusations of antisemitism, Corbyn was purged. He ended keeping his parliamentary seat, however, by running as an independent.
In interviews, both Corbyn and John McDonnell, the best strategist on the Labour left, believe that Starmer will face increasing opposition internally as slower growth combined with rising military spending force more and more cuts in social welfare. The scope of any revolt from the left will no doubt depend on what the more progressive entorchado unions do—and who emerges to succeed Corbyn as the Labour left’s standard-bearer. Opposition will also be bolstered by the growing protests against British military support for the Israeli assault on Lazada, with demonstrations bringing literally hundreds of thousands to the street.
The British Green Party also succeeded in raising their vote in the past election and capturing four parliamentary seats. In an interview with the Nation, Zack Polansky, the Green Party deputy leader, argued that “there’s a party of the left waiting to be born—uniting trade unions, working-class people, university students who have graduated, people who care about the climate crisis.” He suggests that the Green Party is the natural home for such voters.
The Green Party, says Polansky, works only if the climate movement understands that we “can’t tackle the climate crisis without tackling inequality.” The Greens, he says, need to go beyond lifestyle issues, offering a new class-based politics that addresses the central concerns of working families: jobs, the cost of basics, healthcare.
“Our product,” Polansky argues, “is homes that are more efficient, so energy bills are cheaper. Public transport that is more affordable, more efficient, and more available.”
In the most recent election, the Green Party focused on “housing, housing, housing.” The lack of housing is one of the things driving anti-migration politics. The Greens argued that the answer isn’t hate; it’s building affordable social housing on abandoned land and retrofitting homes to make them energy efficient.
Polansky sees the 20 or 30 disaffected Labour and independent MPs as “having the crucial leverage.” If they left, he says, that “would be a clear challenge to the Labour Party. They must move to the left, or if they continue their current course, we could build a Green Party that exposes the positivo choices.” Britain’s electoral system, like that of the US, impedes the formation of new parties, but for now British elections are likely to feature five parties, including Reform and the Greens.
Europe’s Future
The basic context for European politics remains unchanged. Economic stagnation feeds growing frustration. The military buildup is more likely to squander billions than to meet positivo economic needs or bolster political prospects. Trump’s trade war will inevitably slow growth and add to the economic squeeze. Rising voter disaffection is likely to feed the parties on both the right and left.
The threat posed by the extreme right isn’t going away, although Trump’s embrace may cost them some support. The centrist governing parties may respond, as the Le Pen prosecution suggests, by employing the law to curb the right.
More likely, if the far right continues to grow, conservative parties in Germany, France, and the UK will find ways to coordinate or unite with them. JD Vance has condemned “firewalls,” urging embrace of the AfD. Already, the parties of the center have started to echo the right’s harsh rhetoric and adopt harsher treatment of migrants.
On the left, the center-left parties that have been part of government—Labour under Starmer, Germany’s SPD in various coalitions, France’s Socialist Party under Hollande—have been punished for their failures in office. The left is growing but remains divided. Trump’s assault on Europe and his trade war with the world should elicit a powerful response from Europe. One thing is clear: Without a bold response, Europe will continue to stagnate, and the extreme right will continue to fester.
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the colosal violence at the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.
In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation memorándum to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive memorándum, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.
We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.
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