From Brexit to ‘Britaly,’ Blackouts in Ukraine, Swedish Signals?

Few things can exercise British humor like Downing Street chaos, and the swift downfall of Prime Minister Truss will likely give Fleet Street a busy workout until a new Conservative leader is chosen, which is due to happen by October 28. The Economist led the charge when earlier this month it posited that Ms. Truss’s grip on power amounted to “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.” That prompted the tabloid Daily Star to produce (no pun intended) a livestream with a photo of Ms. Truss alongside a head of iceberg lettuce in a blond wig with the question, “Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” The lettuce, obviously, emerged the victor.The gag generated headlines around the world but the food-based comparison richocheted right back to the Economist, the new cover of which features a cartoon of Ms. Truss dressed as a modified Britannia wielding a forkful of spaghetti and clutching a shield made of pizza emblazoned with the Union Jack, one slice conspicuously missing. Above it, a headline that captures the moment better than any photograph: “Welcome to Britaly.”What invited the comparison to, or rather figurative convergence with, the Republic of Italy was, according to the magazine, Britain’s “political instability, low growth and subordination to the bond markets.” Apt though the comparison may be, it did not go down well at Rome. Italy’s ambassador to London, Inigo Lambertini, cooked this up on Twitter: “Your latest cover is … inspired by the oldest of stereotypes. Although spaghetti and pizza are the most sought after foods in the world, as the second largest producer in Europe, for the next cover I would suggest choosing between the aerospace, biotechnology, automotive and pharmaceutical sectors.”Worth noting is that the buyer’s remorse over the outgoing premier was preceded by seller’s remorse over Prime Minister Johnson’s ousting. As far back as August, polling in Britain showed that many Conservatives had such remorse. Reporting that month from Greece, where Mr. Johnson was spotted buying groceries, the Sun wagered that the New York-born Londoner was not yet down for the count. Not entirely unlike Napoleon making his exit from idyllic Elba, Mr. Johnson will be wrapping up a holiday in the Dominican Republic and dashing back to London, the Times of London reports today. Mr. Johnson will be attempting what the newspaper calls an extraordinary political comeback, and he “has assembled the support of dozens of Tory MPs, former donors, party activists, and the team that helped him to win the election in 2019 as he attempts to make it to the final two of the Tory leadership contest.”Vying for leadership of another, and possibly more elusive, variety — credibility on the global stage — is the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdogan, who seems to be cozying up to Vladimir Putin almost as much as the Italian ex-premier and political kingmaker, Silvio Berlusconi. Following his trip to Azerbaijan, Mr. Erdogan told reporters he has had “several talks with President Putin and I found him much softer and more open to dialogue.” Mr. Erdogan also said he spoke with President Zelensky and “I realized that we are not hopeless … our hope is to bring the two leaders to the same table.”What people in Ukraine need more urgently than dialogue, in addition to the obvious imperative of giving Russian intruders the boot, is functioning electricity. Moscow’s nefarious pairing of battlefield defeats with renewed missile strikes on civilian infrastructure such as power plants has imperiled Ukraine’s grid. The dire situation prompted the national energy company, Ukrenergo, to urge citizens to “charge everything” in anticipation of power cuts. As much as 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged, the BBC reported, and it is not even winter yet. Are the Russians resorting to new tricks in their attempts to freeze Ukrainians into submission? It may be so. Addressing the European Council yesterday, Mr. Zelensky said, “We have information that Russians mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.” Because the Kakhovka dam holds about 18 million cubic meters of water, he said, “if destroyed, over 80 settlements, including the regional capital Kherson, will be flooded.”It’s been an unusually tumultuous week in Europe, where as the New York Times phrased it “impatience, even inchoate anger, at the inflation fueled by the war” in Ukraine has swelled the ranks of French strikers, fueled weekly protests in Germany, and “in some countries threatens to chip away at the united front for sanctions against Russia.” In Hungary, where the Times reports that inflation has hit 20 percent, “the Eurosceptic prime minister, Viktor Orban, has doubled down on his policy of denouncing sanctions against Russia in pursuit of deals with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom for supplies of natural gas.”Monday will mark eight months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the holes in European consensus on how to handle the war have only widened. For many Europeans, domestic crises like inflation and illegal immigration are trumping almost everything else. The compass needle of the EU’s next crisis could point, oddly enough, to Stockholm, where the Sweden Democrats are pushing ahead with an agenda focused on fixing issues related to soaring crime and immigration. Although technically outside the government, the far-right party is now the country’s largest in terms of the number of lawmakers. In a single week, the cabinet of the new premier, Ulf Kristersson, abolished Sweden’s environmental protection agency and ditched its radical, so-called feminist foreign policy. Just as Sweden was an outlier in the Covid pandemic, shunning the lockdowns that paralyzed economic activity elsewhere — notably in Britain — there is a sense that the Nordic nation could be on to something. What that is might turn out to be at odds with the blurry vision for which Brussels is famous.

From Brexit to ‘Britaly,’ Blackouts in Ukraine, Swedish Signals?

From Brexit to ‘Britaly,’ Blackouts in Ukraine, Swedish Signals?

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From Brexit to ‘Britaly,’ Blackouts in Ukraine, Swedish Signals?

From Brexit to ‘Britaly,’ Blackouts in Ukraine, Swedish Signals?