Who really won EU elections

Conservative people, including some among my friends, are rejoicing. Social democracy, dominant throughout Europe, got a bloody nose.

People have had enough of swarms of aliens suffocating their countries. They’ve had it up to here with wokery, the real religion of the ruling parties. They are sick of diktats on what they can and can’t say, what they should and shouldn’t believe, what pronouns they must and mustn’t use.

So they came out in force and voted for conservative – okay, populist – parties to shout a resounding no into the smug snouts of Eurotrash bureaucrats. In France especially, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National got 31.5 per cent of the vote, with Macron’s lot only managing a paltry 15 per cent. In Germany, AfD did better than the ruling SPD.

Macron got such a shock that he called a snap national election, and most observers believe it’ll go the same way. Le Pen’s party will get a parliamentary majority, her boy wonder will become the new PM, and Macron will hang on to his office, but not to his power.

Nor is it just France and Germany, the axis around which the EU revolves. Similar parties made huge gains in Holland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia – you name it. The right, which is to say right-wing, side has either won or is winning or at least advancing. Joy all around.

Now, at the risk of my friends disowning me, I have an admission to make. Given the choice between the woke social democratic establishment and the so-called right-wing populism of the victorious parties, I would have voted for the former if Britain were still a member of the EU.

Do I like social democracy? No, I detest it. Do I think wokery has a beneficial effect on society? Quite the contrary. I think it’s destroying what little is left of our civilisation. Do I support large-scale immigration of aliens? No, I don’t. I’d happily let the air out of those rubber dinghies to make sure they never sail, and ground all the planes carrying illegal migrants to the continent.

So am I refuting myself? No, I am not. I see the problems that worry my conservative friends as clearly as they do, perhaps in some cases even more so. However, grave as those problems are, they aren’t the deadliest and most immediate. That distinction goes to Putin’s fascism threatening to conquer Europe or at least finlandise it, turning it into his puppet.

And all the so-called populist (in fact, borderline neo-fascist) parties are either Putin’s clients or his allies or at least his sympathisers. They are the subversive groups Putin’s security services have cultivated, funded and in many cases run to emasculate any possible resistance to Russian expansion.

Not all such parties are right-wing. All, however, are marginal and extremist. For example, in Germany both the right-wing AfD and the populist left-wing BSW are actively pro-Putin. In France, the same goes for Le Pen’s ‘populists’ and Mélenchon’s Trotskyists. Putin doesn’t play ideological favourites. He just wants to secure their support and use them as dry rot in the political and defence foundations of Europe.

The latest demonstration of that successful recruitment strategy was served yesterday, when President Zelensky made a speech in the Bundestag. Both AfD and BSW boycotted the speech, calling Zelensky a “beggar president”.

It’s true that the Ukraine, heroically fighting to stem the tide of Putin’s fascism, desperately needs Western supplies. What shows how successful Putin’s KGB tradecraft has been is that Zelensky has to beg for weapons, rather than the West being happy to give him the tools to do its job, not just the Ukraine’s.

That’s not how AfD sees it, and it beat the ruling party in the EU elections in spite of the on-going scandal with allegations that Russia has paid several AfD members to spread Kremlin propaganda. Such little emolument, plus the kinship German neo-fascists doubtless feel with Putin, explains why the party is demanding that all assistance to the Ukraine be stopped.

In a touching show of unity, the extreme Left BSW led by Sahra Wagenknecht echoes the sentiments verbatim. “By staying away, we are also sending a signal of solidarity with all those Ukrainians who want an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated solution instead of being forcibly recruited by President Zelensky as cannon fodder for an unwinnable war,” said the party spokesman.

My German is weak, but I can still offer my translation services: the BSW on the Left and AfD on the right are “sending a signal of solidarity” with the Kremlin and Putin’s plans to annihilate the Ukraine and then move on. And the Ukraine’s war can only become “unwinnable” if Putin’s client parties have their way.

Things aren’t looking unequivocally promising for the Ukraine on the other side of the Atlantic either. Biden’s administration’s approach to aid veers between vacillation and sabotage. It’s only in the past few weeks that American weapons again began to trickle over to the Ukraine after a six-month moratorium.

Biden is clearly trying to use this aid as an election booster, contrasting his generosity with Trump’s ‘pragmatic’ view of Putin, NATO and NATO’s efforts to defeat Putin’s aggression.

In that spirit, Trump declined to condemn Putin for the murder of Alexei Navalny and, in a CNN interview last May, he refused to say which side he hoped would win the war. Instead, Trump promised to end the war on his first day in office: “I’d get Putin into a room. I’d get Zelensky into a room. Then I’d bring them together. And I’d have a deal worked out.”

Someone forgot to tell Trump that this isn’t like building gaudy monuments to bad taste in Atlantic City. This is our ally fighting to the death against another fascist blight threatening to infect all Europe. Trump’s numerous statements on the subject leave one in no doubt what kind of “deal” he has in mind.

So, no, I haven’t become a woke champion of social democracy, unlimited immigration and transsexuality. But yes, I deplore the results of the EU elections because they make the main and most immediate threat to Europe even more threatening. It’s a question of priorities, and mine are beyond doubt.