Across Western Europe, major countries are facing political unrest. On Monday, France’s government fell apart; in a whopping vote of 364 to 194, Prime Minister François Bayrou was ousted from his position. His crime? Attempting to tackle some of France’s budget woes.
France has “a debt to GDP ratio of 114 percent,” according to National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford. “The latter is the third wors[t] in the EU after Italy (138 percent) and Greece (152 percent).” Now, France is without a government while President Emmanuel Macron searches for a replacement PM. (He has burned through five since January 2024.)
Bayrou infamously told his opponents that they had “the power to topple the government” but not “the power to erase reality.” French voters like their social welfare too much to change it. It’s the same problem we are facing here in the U.S. We keep chugging along, but that’s only because we are the world’s number one superpower and can entice other countries like China to buy our bonds. However, if our hegemony crumbles and the time comes to pay the piper, we will likely be in a world of hurt.
What’s also intriguing in France is the politics at play. The biggest issue is that Macron and his ilk are doing everything they can to suppress the National Rally — the more right-wing party of Marine Le Pen. The powers that be succeeded in entangling Le Pen in a lawfare scandal, and a court ruling bars her from seeking public office. That déjà vu you’re feeling is because Democrats tried the same thing here by attempting to remove Donald Trump’s name from the ballot during last year’s presidential election and by filing frivolous lawsuits. Fortunately, Le Pen still has an opportunity to have the verdict overturned on appeal.
The National Rally is champing at the bit for Macron to call for a snap election, which he did before. However, Macron wants to stay in power, and if an election did happen, his own political influence would become null and void. Ergo, he will quickly find another “centrist” prime minister to placate the majority of Parliament and hope that he can ride out the chaos until his term is up in 2027.
UPDATE: Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has been selected as France’s new prime minister.
In Germany, there has been a rapid rise in candidates for the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party. Its platform eschews mass migration and calls for a repatriation effort to send illegal aliens back to their homelands. The AfD is also against the European Union and for preserving German culture. Its leader, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian; however, the party’s official doctrine defines the family as including a mother and a father and as the backbone of society.
The AfD is worried that 80% of Germans see the populist party’s rise as a shadow of Naziism returning, and it is working to silence and undermine those voices. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has called the AfD Germany’s last hope. Mass migration has deeply hurt Germany socially, economically, and culturally. The Germans are very conscious of their tainted history with the Nazis and see mass migration as a form of atonement.
The AfD is trying to instill a sense of national pride once again. Could some of its ideas be extreme? Perhaps, though it’s hard to get a good pulse on the facts because of the heavy amount of biased reporting from mainstream media. Moreover, right-wing voices aren’t even being allowed to debate. Germany is repeating the same mistakes again and again because, instead of allowing free speech and debate, it actively suppresses and punishes dissent.
The United Kingdom is facing immense pushback from Britons who are tired of being relegated to second-class citizenship and having their free-speech rights taken away. From the ongoing horrors of migrants harassing young girls (and a Scottish girl being apprehended for defending herself) to cops arresting an Irish comedian for disagreeing with transgendersim to the English being demeaned for flying their own flags as a sign of patriotism, the UK is a pot about to boil over.
The dictatorial and nonsensical pretensions of left-wing politicians have dragged Western Europe into disaster and ruin. Something has got to give, and one element of the “give” is the rise of more right-wing parties that are focused on national pride and opposing globalism. Reality and justice have a way of reassuring themselves, and that may be what we are seeing at scale in Europe.
