One of the conspirators who helped Gavrilo Princip shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand survived to see the breakup of Yugoslavia. He could conceivably have watched the Neighbours episode where Scott and Charlene got married

LR want Meloni with Le Pen.

Well I would like people to seriously discuss what Ukrainian accession would mean for the EU existentially, financially and politically before we make a fundamental decision based on understandable sympathy for the Ukranian people.

Humility, humanity, glamor and talent rarely appear together. Let's hope we have a few more years with her.

Broadly speaking I would argue to the contrary: Taken together, FDR, LBJ, and Nixon (for example) built the scaffolding of presidential overreach. Trump is simply going brazenly all-in on what earlier presidents got away with because they did it in secret (although we know all about it).

Chacun doit revenir à la raison. Nous, élus, avons la responsabilité de protéger la fonction présidentielle. Aimer ou non le Président, se souvenir ou non de ce qu’on lui doit … rien ne justifie la surenchère des petites propositions pour exister médiatiquement. Cela doit cesser !

If my observation that right/left political parties have been replaced by political manifestations of internet aggression, & assuming as fact that the internet is a tool of 🇺🇲 hegemony, then makes sense that the fight for the 🇬🇧 political extremes would be conducted in American, as APHC says

“The advantages of a first past the post system, of course, are that it prevents an overly fragmented parliament in which a stable governing majority cannot be found, and that it keeps the radical right down.”

The world of political parties is over. In their place there are currents or online movements, with political figureheads. France is the clearest manifestation of this, with LFI, RE and RN. That’s why Attal would always have my vote. He is the figurehead of my movement.

I am going to repeat myself: France is the new normal. 3 political manifestations of the political internet (radical left, radical center, radical right), all roughly equal in size. Every country in Europe is shifting towards this. The days of consensus and majorities are over.

Canada has greater cultural firewalls against the United states than the UK has. LARPing America was ridiculous but harmless when they drank pumpkin spice lattes, overcelebrated Halloween and drove stupid SUVs their tiny roads. But now look at where the UK is. This is (UK) constitutional nonsense.

For a long time, former PM Edouard Phillippe was the favorite to be the next President. His numbers have fallen significantly in the previous months. So now he wants an early Presidential election presumably before everyone forgets who he is.

Macron n’a pas agi de manière impulsive ; il avait compris que le paysage politique s’était déjà fracturé après 2022. En dissolvant l’Assemblée, il a simplement accéléré un réalignement inévitable au lieu de s’accrocher à un statu quo devenu inefficace.

I was correct re: Badenoch/ECHR

🇫🇷 is representative of the new normal: 3 big block parties - LFI/RE/RN - far-left, radical center, & many smaller other parties, two of which (LR and PS) were main parties now close to death, clustered around them. None of the 3 new representative parties are strong enough to govern alone.

The LR won't work with the PS, PS won't work with LR. PS won't work with EN if EN works too closely with LR, LR won't work with EN if EN works too closely with PS. EN has its own ides of government but EN is too socially liberal for the LR and EN is too economically liberal for PS.

STOP THE PRESSES

Nutshell: Front-line NHS needs a greater number of smaller practices, weighted towards socially deprived areas (because deprivation itself signals higher and more complex healthcare needs).

Philly cleanse

As the U.S is undergoing the ratchet effect of a permanent state of exception, in the UK the less Roman version has been happening for 40 yrs: The continual expansion of police powers in response to emergencies that never make the UK safe enough to prevent the continued expansion of police powers.

I finally saw Marvel's Thunderbolts - a really fun, funny, sad and exciting movie. Really great.

The Cassandra of our continent. He hasn't always gotten everything right, but he has almost always been correct.

Does anyone else have anxiety when people you really admire follow you? This week @nicolastenzer.bsky.social and @alemanno.bsky.social followed me and now I have mad social media performance anxiety!

Pretty staggering admission from the EU's economic security director Peter Sandler, 2+ yrs after the launch of the economic security strategy: "Economic Security is not a concept which has been defined in any detail yet by the European Commission."

So jein: Borrowing against Euroclear income creates bonds that are #eurobonds in legal form but the proceeds are ring fenced for Ukraine. The precedent matters symbolically for EU fiscal capacity, yet the positive material impact for Europeans is frankly, again, minimal (megathread warning)

NI is the Achilles’ heel of the British state. The political problems with the ECHR began not w/ migrants, but when the HRA provided an internal mechanism for litigating the state’s culpability in unlawful killings, collusion, and torture in NI (and for its complicity w/ CIA a rendition aroad)

This is building to a serious confrontation over Kaliningrad

Honestly this (from Le Monde) doesnt strike me as that optimistic

This Disability Employment Awareness Month, I'm going to judge companies that are aggressively rolling back work from home.

"Once more it’s the nation state and our national Poltical class that prevent europe from being effective and credible on the international stage."

Honestly, this tired, fractious and unambitious #EUCO is emblematic of our malaise. And that #VdL has turned the #Commission into a EUCO drafting service during a time where EUCO does nothing means nothing willl happen, slowly.

And noone to take her place, although there should be so many of us. What a world.

Is Macron seriously the only EU leader who sees nothing but opportunity here?

FFS if (as this article suggests) stablecoins spark instability, the #EU needs a banking union, CMU & #eurobonds NOW. They’d instantly make the €zone the only credible safe-asset hub, cut borrowing costs, attract global capital, boost resilience & autonomy... and make Europe rich as Croesus!

We are now in the domain of not just illegal impoundments, but targeted illegal impoundments to punish liberal spaces. Not different from what Trump is doing to to universities.

Merz once again demonstrates his typical monomaniacal chauvinism by rejecting the ban on combustion engines from 2035 even though the industry itself warns that a delay in full electrification could lead to China overtaking Europe in the truck market.

#Merz zeigt einmal mehr seinen typischen monomanischen Chauvinismus, wenn er das Verbot von Verbrennungsmotoren ab 2035 ablehnt, obwohl die Branche selbst warnt, dass eine Verzögerung der voll-Elektrifizierung dazu führen könnte, dass China Europa auf dem Lkw-Markt überholt!

So EU enlargement is impossible without first transforming EU fractured fiscal and financial order into a single framework capable of mobilising continental capital to absorb more fragile economies with weaker fiscal positions, lower GDP per capita, or exposure to conflict and demographic decline.

ECB estimates suggest EU equity depth could rise by 60%, lifting GDP by 0.5–1% a year (€80–160 bn). That growth, plus cheaper sovereign and corporate borrowing, would make MS richer through higher tax revenues, lower debt-service costs, and reduced reliance on subsidies or national development banks

A #CapitalMarketsUnion mobilises the EU's €33t private capital at scale, channeling savings from pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, and households into #Ukrainian infrastructure bonds, equity stakes, or guaranteed securities. Upfront reform costs are small relative to recurring gains.

Basically, without a Capital Markets Union, financing Ukraine would depend on fiscal transfers and guarantees from member states, all of whom are one election away from European retrenchment or outright veto.

The hard truth is that we cannot afford to integrate Ukraine because we have no mechanisms to mobilise capital at the scale its reconstruction demands, already minimally priced at a €400–500 billion over the next decade.

As they realised they were becoming a regional and not national power, there was some talk about liberalizing voting for immigrants within the #SPÖ a few years back. Great until Anders pointed out that you would basically just create two Turk (SPÖ) v Serb (FPÖ) racial v racist voting blocks.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE DSA

On your marks...

Well there you go...

And yes, I know, it’s about having your own armed cadre within the state - a loyal, ideologically aligned force that can be used domestically if needed. I know, I know.

This is so contradictory it makes my head hurt: #Hegseth wants internal cultural reform based upon a mythical idea of an American warrior caste, to shadowbox imagined enemies like 'woke' and DEI so that the U.S. can deter enemies she isn't going to fight because the U.S. wants to stay out of wars