BERLIN — Berlin mayoral candidate Elif Eralp is facing accusations of hypocrisy from political opponents after private remarks about “people with connections to Hamas” raised questions about her party’s approach to policing and the Middle East conflict.

The controversy risks complicating efforts by Eralp’s Left Party to form a coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens after winning the Sept. 20 Berlin election. The far-left party’s pro-Palestinian stance helped mobilize voters, but Jewish organizations have accused it of antisemitism. The party denies this.

The remarks appeared in internal comments accidentally included when Eralp’s office returned an annotated transcript of an interview to Der Spiegel, as per customary German journalistic practice.

Der Spiegel asked Eralp about antisemitism within her party. Eralp acknowledged that boundaries had been crossed at some campaign events. The journalists then asked whether she was referring to Ibrahim Ibrahim, a pro-Palestinian agitator who attended the Left Party’s election-night celebration. Eralp answered “yes,” according to Der Spiegel, but later sought to remove the exchange from the interview transcript.

In private comments apparently to her assistants, inadvertently included in the returned transcript, Eralp referred to advice she said she had previously received from Berlin’s State Criminal Police Office (LKA) about publicly naming individuals linked to organized crime: “The LKA said at the time that they recommend never naming specific individuals. Back then, it was about organized crime. Now it’s about people with connections to Hamas.”

She added: “I cannot put myself and my family in danger for SPIEGEL. What do we do now? Cancel the entire interview?”

In a statement through his lawyers earlier this month, Ibrahim said he was not a member of the Left Party and said he rejected antisemitism. “I categorically reject the accusation of supporting terrorism,” his statement said.

In another private comment on the Ibrahim Ibrahim question, Eralp referred to an unidentified man by his first name, saying he “does not want to name specific individuals, neither does my husband, nor do I. He is afraid of these people, and so am I.” Der Spiegel did not identify the unknown man or explain his relationship to Eralp.

The CDU’s mayoral candidate, Stefan Evers, who placed second in the vote, said the remarks exposed a contradiction between Eralp’s concerns and her party’s position. The Left Party has called for reducing police numbers, while Evers alleged that members were working with the people Eralp feared.

“If the woman who is supposed to govern Berlin in the future is so afraid for herself and her family that she hesitates to publicly name terrorist sympathizers, while parts of her own party are working hand in hand with those very circles, then reasonable voices within the Greens and [Social Democrats] must finally pull the emergency brake,” Evers told POLITICO.

Former Berlin Mayor Michael Müller, a Social Democrat, warned that Eralp could be vulnerable to blackmail.

Eralp said Thursday she still wants to become Berlin’s mayor. Asked about the report, she told journalists: “I will not comment because private, internal information has been published. But what I can say very clearly is that, as governing mayor, I will ensure the safety of all Berliners.”

LUXEMBOURG — Europe’s energy ministers are running out of ideas to protect citizens from surging energy prices as winter approaches.

But at a summit in Luxembourg on Thursday, they were clear on one thing: Demanding voters cut back on power use is not an option.  

European gas prices soared above €100 per megawatt-hour on Wednesday for the first time since 2022, as last-minute panic-buying to fill European gas reserves added to supply pressures linked to the war in the Middle East.  

But at the Thursday summit, EU energy ministers broadly acknowledged that both Brussels and national capitals had run out of ideas to contain price pressures.

“We’ve exhausted most of our short-term options,” said one senior European energy official, granted anonymity to offer a candid perspective. “What’s left is really crisis management.”

For the past year, government attempts to cushion price rises with renewables schemes, windfall taxes and costly fuel subsidies have ultimately failed to contain anxieties that have since boiled over into widespread protests across the continent.

“The EU and member states don’t have a magic wand to make the price increases go away,” Irish Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien, whose government holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, told reporters. “There’s a lot of measures that have been taken already in the short term. What today is about is actually seeing how we can move to more sustainable measures.”

But even crisis management is proving politically difficult. Despite calls by EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen earlier this year to encourage consumers and businesses to cut energy use, European ministers are reluctant to make such a move official policy.

“I don’t want to see that we will limit people,” said Mika Nykänen, the state secretary to Finland’s energy ministry. Instead, he called for policy designed to “change behavior” and reduce energy consumption less painfully. “Industry does it naturally. Normal households, normal families — they sometimes need encouragement,” he said. “For instance, subsidies to invest in the energy efficiency of houses, windows.”

Demand reduction “has an impact on industry, it has an impact on business, and in a difficult situation, it could be the way to do that. But it does not … solve the long-term,” Polish Secretary of State for Energy Wojciech Wrochna told reporters.

High prices “will regulate demand by itself,” Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch told reporters.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Such was the opposition to demand reduction measures on Thursday, Jørgensen — who was at the summit warning of a “difficult” winter of soaring fuel prices ahead — gave up even proposing it, focusing instead on subsidies. He reluctantly accepted that such subsidies could include fossil fuels as well as clean alternatives, but urged that they be “targeted and temporary.”

Since the war started, governments have paid €18 billion for tax relief on fossil fuel products, including a controversial move by Rome earlier this month to reduce the impact of gas prices on electricity costs.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned national leaders against this tendency, urging them at a summit this month to keep policies temporary and targeted to avoid inadvertently increasing fossil fuel demand and distorting the EU single market, according to two EU diplomats familiar with her comments.

That remains a point of contention among EU leaders, with some, including Greece, calling for greater fiscal space to increase energy subsidies while others warn of the dangers of subsidizing fossil fuels.

“Our concern is to make sure that we don’t create conditions where different member states go very far in different national decision-making,” said Lithuanian Energy Minister Lukas Savickas in a separate interview.

Jørgensen did not respond to POLITICO’s question at a subsequent press conference when asked whether new fiscal flexibilities were being considered.

Other ideas have gone by the wayside. Von der Leyen rejected calls by countries to establish an EU-wide tax on windfall profits of oil and gas companies at this month’s summit, the diplomats cited above said even as European oil companies like Shell, TotalEnergies and Repsol rake in their biggest profits since 2022.

Member countries also questioned the value of a Commission proposal to coordinate the purchase of energy supplies. Such a scheme would work in theory but be hard to implement for “big players” with established supply chains, Wrochna said.

Neither has the EU’s commitment to hastening the release of strategic crude oil and diesel reserves earlier this month — in response to what EU officials described as U.S. “blackmail” — done much to ease fuel costs.

Even so, the EU’s commitment will now include over 40 million barrels on top of the 10 million pledged by Paris, France’s economy minister Roland Lescure told reporters on Thursday.

A parallel push to delay methane monitoring requirements — a plank of the EU’s 2024 Green Deal that industry argued was poorly designed and would disrupt supplies — also had no impact on prices.

Slow pay-off

To be sure, measures designed to lower electricity prices and encourage consumers to switch away from imported fossil fuels are starting to work, with soaring sales of heat pumps and electric vehicles in Europe this year. “There’s no silver bullet, but when you add all of these things up, it can actually matter,” said Jørgensen.

But even longer-term efforts to encourage the switch to cleaner energy are facing backlash as countries resist ceding power to Brussels.

One example is a Commission proposal to make electricity bills more affordable and speed up electrification, including by ensuring electricity is not taxed more heavily than natural gas. Member countries pushed back against the proposal’s taxation provisions on Thursday, arguing that Brussels is overstepping EU treaties requiring that tax changes be approved unanimously, risking higher costs for households and industry.

Busch, the Swedish energy minister, said the proposal’s taxation provisions went too far, warning it would face “a lot of pushback” from countries concerned about EU interference in national tax policy.

Germany and Poland also raised concerns about the proposal’s potential impact on industry and national tax systems, while Italy warned that changing tax rates could make energy more expensive rather than encourage electrification.

Ein rein berufliches Frauenproblem bringt den Kanzler in Bedrängnis. Zwar stößt die Aussicht auf die erste Bundespräsidentin im kommenden Jahr auf breite Zustimmung, doch die historische Personalie entwickelt sich zur politischen Hängepartie.Friedrich Merz droht die Kontrolle über die Debatte um die richtige Kandidatin zu entgleiten. Dabei drängt die Zeit massiv vor der Wahl Ende Januar, sodass plötzlich wieder völlig offen ist, ob am Ende wirklich eine Frau oder doch ein Mann antritt.

Rasmus Buchsteiner analysiert die hitzige Diskussion um das höchste Staatsamt. Er beleuchtet das strategische Dilemma der Akteure und den wachsenden Druck vor der nahenden Entscheidung.

Während der außenpolitische Fokus auf der Asienreise des Kanzlers liegt, ist die SPD-Entwicklungsministerin Reem Alabali Radovan im Libanon unterwegs. Carlotta Diederich von POLITICO begleitet sie und ordnet ein, welche Auswirkungen die Wahl in Israel auf den blutigen Konflikt im Süden haben könnte und wie Deutschland versucht, seine humanitäre Rolle in diesem Teil des Nahost-Konflikts versucht einzunehmen.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Rixa Fürsen, Maximilian Stascheit und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

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**(Anzeige) Eine Nachricht von YouTube: Ein verlässlicher Partner für die Medienbranche: Dass YouTube als digitale Infrastruktur ein wichtiger Motor für Medienhäuser ist und Redaktionen nachhaltig stärkt, belegt eine Studie von Oxford Economics im Auftrag von YouTube: Das kreative Ökosystem von YouTube unterstützte 2025 in Deutschland über 29.000 Arbeitsplätze (Vollzeitäquivalent). Hier klicken und mehr erfahren zum Beitrag von YouTube zur Medienindustrie.**

We live in an era where wars are fought not just on battlefields, but also on our screens, in our minds and through the narratives we are led to believe. Narratives are influencing perception while missiles destroy infrastructure. What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself? Who’s controlling the narrative?

When wars end, the fighting over what they meant begins: who won, who was to blame and who can be trusted to keep the peace. These questions are settled less on the battlefield than on screens, in feeds and in group chats. For a Middle East emerging from the war that began on February 28, that contest may decide whether any new security order holds.

The region is now asking what comes after deterrence. That question brought policymakers, military leaders and researchers from the United States, Europe, Asia and the Gulf to the TRENDS 6^th Annual Conference, held in Abu Dhabi and organized by TRENDS Global, in collaboration with its global offices. The answer cannot be measured only in missiles and alliances. Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.

What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself?

The struggle over perception can now matter as much as events on the ground. That is no longer hyperbole. In any crisis today, governments, media outlets, political movements and non-state groups compete in real time to define what is happening. Disinformation, coordinated propaganda and now content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) mean a false account can reach millions before an official one is drafted.

As former BBC correspondent Karen Allen put it at the conference, “Now in an instant, I’m able to influence millions of people,” and algorithm manipulation is what we are increasingly seeing.

This year’s war showed how real that is. Within days of the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, an AI-generated video of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa on fire, with crowds fleeing, was viewed tens of millions of times, according to BBC Verify. Fabricated images of damaged U.S. facilities in the Gulf spread just as fast, some posted by Iranian state-linked outlets. UAE Minister of State Noura Al Kaabi later described the attacks on the country as coming “from the sky and behind our screens.” Her government’s answer was to treat “fake news and misinformation as a security threat.”

A more damaging false story was not a single video. It was the idea that the Gulf was a party to the war. The UAE did not want this war and said so. On March 3, Minister of State Reem Al Hashimy said the UAE did not “seek to expand the circle of confrontation,” that it had “repeatedly confirmed” its territory could not be used for any military operation against Iran, and that “returning to the negotiating table is the only rational way forward.” The attacks continued anyway. Reuters reported, citing UAE defense figures, that 186 ballistic missiles and 812 drones were fired at the country in the first days of the conflict.

Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.

Tehran sought to blur that record, framing strikes on Gulf cities as retaliation against American aggression. Its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told NBC News that Iran had “not attacked our neighbors,” only “American bases,” and called the hotels hit in Dubai “collateral damage.” Countering that narrative does not require propaganda of our own. It requires putting the record in front of the world quickly and repeatedly: the UAE’s public calls for restraint before the war, its refusal to let its territory be used against Iran, and the hundreds of missiles and drones fired at it, most of which it shot down. Facts published fast, through verified channels, in Arabic, English and Farsi, are harder to bury than corrections issued too late.

Even after a war ends, the threats do not disappear; they simply take different forms. Ceasefires and reconstruction depend on public trust. If populations come to believe that the peace is a betrayal, or that a neighbor cannot be trusted, no deterrence framework or security pact will survive contact with domestic politics. Spoilers understand this. Their cheapest weapon is a story.

Seen from the Gulf, the lesson of recent years is that speed and credibility beat silence. Crisis communication is not a side function of security. When official channels inform the public quickly, consistently and honestly, rumors have less room to grow. When they hesitate, someone else fills the gap.

None of this is simple. Governments everywhere are still working out where countering disinformation ends and controlling speech begins, and that debate should stay open. But the common ground is wider than it looks: a society cannot be secure if it cannot tell what is true.

The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion: relitigating who was to blame, questioning whether Gulf governments can protect their people, and setting neighbors and communities against each other. Young connected audiences are the main target. They are also the best defense.

Protecting our societies from that influence does not mean closing them. It means official channels fast and credible enough that people turn to them first. It means platforms held to clear rules on labeling AI-generated conflict content, as X began to do in March. And it means a generation of young Emiratis and Gulf citizens equipped to verify what they see and able to tell the region’s story themselves rather than leaving it to others.

The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion.

This is not only a Gulf problem. The campaigns aimed at audiences in the Gulf also shape how Washington and Brussels understand the region. The UAE and its partners already work closely on defense and intelligence. Detecting and exposing cross-border influence operations belongs on that shared agenda as a joint effort between governments, platforms and researchers.

Diplomacy, investment, and deterrence will rebuild the region’s security. Whether that security holds will depend on something harder to measure: what people across the region believe about each other, and about who protects them. For the UAE, winning that argument with facts is not public relations. It is part of keeping the country safe.

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Najla Al Midfa is an Emirati researcher at TRENDS Research & Advisory, a company under TRENDS Group. Her research focuses on geopolitics, international relations, economic diplomacy and regional security, with a particular interest in the UAE’s foreign policy and strategic partnerships. She holds a master’s degree in Global Affairs and Diplomatic Leadership from the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, where her thesis examined the UAE’s economic diplomacy through its Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement strategy.

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Sources

• Sixth Annual TRENDS Conference 2026 kicks off on October 12 — WAM (Emirates News Agency), September 2026
• TRENDS 6th Annual Conference 2026 — Sustainable Security: programme and speakers — TRENDS Research & Advisory
• AI-generated Iran war videos surge as creators use new tech to cash in — BBC Verify, March 7, 2026
• Factbox: Iranian missiles and drones fired at Gulf countries — Reuters (republished by Al-Monitor), March 3, 2026
• X suspends revenue sharing for undisclosed AI war videos — AFP, March 3, 2026
• UAE urges the US, Israel and Iran to return to the negotiating table — Euronews, March 4, 2026
• Fake news treated as security threat during Iran war, says UAE minister — The National, September 15, 2026
• NBC News, “Iran’s foreign minister denies seeking war with neighbors,” March 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/irans-foreign-minister-denies-seeking-war-neighbors-rcna261954

KYIV — With another bitter winter of fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war ahead, diplomatic activity is ramping back up in a fresh attempt to close in on a ceasefire and eventually a final peace accord.

Under renewed pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Kyiv and Moscow are preparing to send negotiating teams to Abu Dhabi for a three-way meeting with American officials to explore the potential for agreement. The meeting is penciled in for Nov. 10. 

But many questions about the process remain, including whether Europe will have a seat at the table when key decisions are taken — and who should fill it. Based on remarks from key leaders, and conversations with European officials granted anonymity because the talks are sensitive, POLITICO breaks down what’s under discussion for an agreement and what could get in the way.

What will they discuss? 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the agenda for Abu Dhabi should first include initial steps toward de-escalation, such as prisoner swaps and ceasefires on energy infrastructure and for the Black Sea. There should also be a discussion among the technical negotiating teams of what format a future three-way meeting between leaders — Trump, Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — should take, he told reporters this week.

When it comes to a final deal, one overriding question for Ukraine is what form of security guarantees it will get from Europe and the U.S., or potentially NATO. Zelenskyy won’t want to accept anything he believes could leave Ukraine vulnerable to a future attack from Russia. 

Putin is also likely to raise the need for security guarantees — for Russia — including limiting or potentially reversing NATO’s presence in the neighborhood. 

Then there’s the question of territory. Zelenskyy’s view is that marking out any boundaries, temporarily or permanently, is something that can only be discussed at leader level. “No one else has the authority to do so,” he said Tuesday. 

Zelenskyy said during previous sets of negotiations over the past year, “as a compromise,” that Ukraine had been prepared to discuss the idea of a demilitarized “buffer zone” on both sides of the contact line in the Donbas region.

Similar ideas were proposed for other parts of Ukraine. Zelenskyy said his negotiators discussed these questions again with the Americans in recent weeks. “We are ready to discuss the issue of territories because the Russians keep wanting to discuss it and make it part of the agenda,” he said. But this would need to be at a leader-level meeting. 

Europe has a role 

European leaders are adamant that they must be included in final negotiations, not least because it is they who are are now providing the vast bulk of financial and military support to Ukraine. Trump ended American aid in 2025.

Zelenskyy and U.S. officials accept that European governments will likely need to be involved in discussions about security guarantees — mainly because any peacekeeping forces deployed to Ukraine would be dominated by European troops.

The Coalition of the Willing, a loose alliance of more than 30 countries led by France, the U.K. and Germany, put together detailed proposals in coordination with the U.S. almost a year ago. Ukraine is also interested in exploring bilateral security guarantees with the U.S., a discussion that would not need to involve European officials.

Plans for rebuilding Ukraine and nurturing its economic revival would also have to involve Europe, Zelenskyy said. “We cannot envision such a, so to speak, ‘Marshall Plan’ without Europe.”

But Europe doesn’t know who should speak for it 

Trump’s renewed interest in Ukraine also resurfaced some sore questions for European governments: Who should represent them when it comes to decision time? And should they even be talking to Putin at all? 

With no clarity emerging from Brussels, some leaders have taken matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a 90-minute call with Putin, urging him to end the war. It went down badly with several European governments, including Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Lithuania. One frustrated diplomat said: “There are too many middle-aged men who want to end up in the history books having solved this war.”

Russia has said the Stubb-Støre call achieved nothing of substance and the war will likely “escalate.” By some accounts, Putin used much of the time on the phone lecturing the Nordic leaders on regional history. 

One problem in identifying a lead negotiator is that the European countries with a stake in the talks are not only in the EU — the U.K. and Norway, for example, are both outside the bloc. Without clarity of leadership, European interests risk being sidelined when the talking gets serious. 

It all comes down to Trump 

One critical unknown factor in the mix is how long Trump’s attention will stay on Ukraine.

After the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran in the spring, progress on Ukraine stalled for months, only to return this fall as Trump sought to mitigate the impact of the Middle East conflict. A new escalation in the Iran war risks sidelining the negotiations all over again. 

The U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Zelenskyy, Stubb and Støre in Oslo on Oct. 20. Witkoff then went to St. Petersburg to meet Putin the next day. There was supposed to be a follow-up meeting in Brussels this week in preparation for negotiations in Abu Dhabi — but the Americans postponed the talks, apparently due to developments in the Middle East. 

“The meeting in Abu Dhabi now depends on the American side,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. At a press conference Wednesday, he added: “We very much hope that the escalatory processes in the Middle East — which are currently the subject of so much discussion — will not interfere.”

Putin can wait 

After their Kremlin call, Stubb and Støre apparently told Zelenskyy they felt Putin was serious about the Abu Dhabi opportunity. But in public and private, diplomats and political leaders in Europe are deeply skeptical that Putin is at all serious about an imminent path to peace.

Despite the Kremlin insisting he is on board, European diplomats believe the Russian leader is just playing for time in the hope that Ukraine weakens over a winter of attacks on its energy system, and Europe — perhaps with the far-right Marine Le Pen in charge of France — gets tired of paying for the war and gives up next year. 

That’s why EU officials know they cannot pin their hopes on peace and need to redouble their financial support and military aid for Ukraine, while tightening sanctions on Russia. EU leaders will discuss the issue of securing funds for Ukraine’s war effort at their summit in Brussels scheduled for November 26.

Nicholas Vinocur in Brussels contributed to this report.

Barely noticed among all the talk in the election campaign about great asses, shithouse countries and commie jihadists running for the Senate was a report from The New York Times warning of “heightened levels of tension and risk” surrounding Israel’s parliamentary elections, slated for today, and America’s Nov. 3 midterms due to the countries’ war with Iran, which has “entered a new phase.” They also offered this bracing observation: “This is how countries can escalate into full-scale war, several diplomats and outside experts noted.”

How’s that for a wake-up call?

In fairness, Donald Trump has mentioned in passing that he plans to “finish the job” after the midterm elections, with CNN reporting that the president “appears to be leaning toward major action.” On Oct. 15, the outlet revealed that the U.S. is considering using the “mother of all bombs” on Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities. (They admit that such a strike would be “performative,” since it would not actually accomplish anything, but would supposedly allow Trump to declare victory.) 

If anyone had the idea that a midterm election campaign would be the place where serious people of goodwill debate the major issues of the day, they were mistaken. For the most part, the war with Iran has hardly come up, and to the extent that it has, it’s been in the context of high gas prices, not the possibility of the conflict turning into a major conflagration from which the United States will not be able to walk away after putting on a fireworks show. We may be at a turning point, and nobody’s paying attention.

The U.S. has received credible intelligence, according to the Times report, that Iran has “advanced” plans to attack Americans at home and abroad. According to Reuters, the State Department has ordered non-emergency government employees and their family members to leave ‌U.S. diplomatic ⁠missions in Saudi Arabia and has reduced staff in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan. NBC News revealed that “the U.S. military has been quietly scaling back its troop presence at bases across the Middle East as well.” It certainly sounds as if something is afoot, which the Times characterized in fairly alarming terms:

The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump are facing critical elections that could dramatically affect the balance of power in their countries feeds into the complex set of calculations that all sides are making. Even if he is defeated on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu could decide to launch one last strike that he may believe his successor would hesitate to execute. Similarly, Mr. Trump, who knows how unpopular the war is even among his strongest supporters, may want to show that at least when it comes to his powers as commander in chief, his authority is undiminished.

Trump has claimed dozens of times that we have already won the war. This is not out of character; his habit is to prematurely declare victory in everything, apparently assuming that the force of his declaration makes it a reality. In the lead-up to the U.S. and Israel’s Feb. 28 attacks on Iran, Trump was apparently so pumped up by his historic political comeback and success at cruel mass deportation, murder on the high seas and the conquest of Venezuela, an oil-rich country, that he assumed he could succeed at what every former president knew was a fool’s errand: take over Iran, seize its oil and dominate the world’s oil supply. And, as Haberman and Swan reported in their book “Regime Change,” Trump had been convinced by whom he called a presidential historian (actually a caddie for Gary Player) that he was “the most powerful man who’s ever existed on the planet by far” — more powerful than Mao, Alexander the Great, Stalin, Hitler, all of them.

What Trump has succeeded in doing is making Iran a global power, capable of re-ordering the world through control of one of the most important waterways on the planet. In the process, he has exposed the U.S. as a second-rate military power, at least compared to the country’s previous reputation, by insisting on fighting an unnecessary war of choice without a strategy while being low on munitions and proving that it lacks the capability of fighting on more than one front. Having let down our Middle Eastern partners who assumed that by allowing bases in their countries they could count on America to defend them — not to mention the administration’s destructive tariffs and abandonment of Ukraine — the world knows that the U.S. is unreliable, and they are looking elsewhere for alliances and economic partnerships.

All this brings to mind historian Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly.” Published in 1984, the book examines tragic wars of choice that needn’t have been fought but, because of hubris and ignorance, were waged anyway, despite being against the best interests of the countries that started them. As Tuchman put it:

To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight . . . Secondly a feasible alternative course of action must have been available . . . third . . . the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual leader.

The war with Iran ticks all those boxes. 

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Among the conflicts Tuchman chronicled in the book are the errors of the Catholic Church that led to the Reformation, as well as King George III’s epic misunderstanding of the dynamics driving the colonists (and England’s other enemies) to rebel against the British Crown. She also turned her keen historical eye to the big kahuna of her era, Vietnam, in which the U.S. squandered its power and moral authority on a war that began as an ideological experiment, escalated for political reasons, and ended in failure and embarrassment only 51 years ago. You’d think that lesson would still be fresh enough that we wouldn’t indulge in such a folly again.

But, of course, we have. While Afghanistan had at least the fig leaf of justification after 9/11, Iraq and now Iran have both demonstrated that the U.S. has learned nothing from its own recent history. Eight months in, Trump’s misadventure in the Islamic Republic has proven even more irrational than the others. As with all the follies, Trump indulged his fantasies, failed to understand the adversary and ended up working against his country’s own interests.

A delusional, psychologically unfit president started a war based on shifting rationales, finally landing on the idea that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. This was the same country that had been complying with an agreement not to pursue a nuclear weapon, but which this president tore up simply because it had been negotiated by the man he succeeded in office. 

We don’t yet know whether these latest threats will lead to an escalation by either party. But either way, the deed is done. The world has been fundamentally changed by Trump’s daft decision to start this war, and there is no going back. That’s how all these follies end, and it’s very rarely a happy ending for the countries that started it.

The post Trump’s Iran war could escalate. Is anyone paying attention? appeared first on Salon.com.

LONDON — The U.K. government is removing import tariffs on more than 100 products, including food, drink and fuel, to ease the cost of living.

In a pre-budget announcement on Monday night, the Treasury said it would suspend tariffs on a number of popular food items, including baked beans, chocolate and gherkins, as well as fertilizer and kerosene heating oil.

The announcement, which follows a consultation earlier this year, comes after the government said last week that it would suspend import tariffs on over 250 goods that were due to expire on Dec. 31 until Dec. 2028.

Collectively, the government said the tariff suspensions would reduce consumer costs by around £245 million to £595 million a year.

“Today’s everyday fixes are just a small part of what we are doing to give families a bit of breathing space,” Chancellor John Healey said.

“Conflict in the Middle East and Europe is hitting families here at home through higher everyday costs. We can’t control global events, but we can act where we can make a difference.”

Israel wählt in einer Zeit nie dagewesener Isolation und steht vor einer Richtungsentscheidung. Während Benjamin Netanjahu um sein politisches Überleben kämpft, bringt sich Ex-Generalstabschef Gadi Eisenkot als volksnaher Herausforderer in Stellung. WELT-Korrespondent Daniel-Dylan Böhmer analysiert aus Tel Aviv, warum dieser Wahlkampf tief in die israelische Seele blicken lässt und was ein Machtwechsel für Gaza und den Iran-Krieg bedeuten könnte.

Im 200-Sekunden-Interview ordnet Armin Laschet die geopolitischen Folgen der Abstimmung ein. Der Vorsitzende des Auswärtigen Ausschusses erklärt, warum er auf eine israelische Regierung ohne rechtsextreme Minister hofft und welche realistischen Chancen er aktuell noch für einen Friedensprozess sieht.

Auf landespolitischer Ebene droht der Berliner Linksfraktion derweil weiter die Zerreißprobe um die israelfeindliche Abgeordnete Vanessa Emde. Cedric Looks beleuchtet den Machtkampf zwischen Bundes- und Landespartei und zeigt auf, warum nicht nur ein ausbleibender Fraktionsausschluss die anstehenden Koalitionsverhandlungen weiter gefährdet.

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The war in Gaza hasn’t figured much in campaigning for Israel’s upcoming election — despite the likelihood that Israel’s Arab minority, Palestinian by heritage, might well decide who gets to be prime minister. 

Israel’s Arabs make up around 20% of the electorate that will be casting ballots in the Oct. 27 parliamentary election. And thanks to complex coalition math, Arab parties might well be the ones to crown Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, who leads a center-right opposition bloc.

But campaigns by both the Arab parties and Jewish politicians have avoided talking about what the outcome might actually mean for Jewish-Arab relations in the region, for the possibility of a two-state solution and even for U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision for a comprehensive peace-through-prosperity deal between Israelis and the Palestinians.

“The election campaign has been bizarre,” said Michael Milshtein, a retired Israeli army colonel and former head of Palestinian affairs in Israel’s military intelligence agency. “The campaign has been focused on domestic and personal issues, and on Netanyahu.” 

That means it hasn’t included “the very deep complicated issue of the critical relations between us and the Palestinians, and what kind of scenarios or solutions are left after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the Gaza War — for any kind of political settlement,” Milshtein said.

But outside of Israel there’s alarm — especially among Arab leaders — over the absence of any serious debate about how to end the multi-front conflicts Israel is engaged in and what that might foretell, said HA Hellyer, a geopolitical scholar specializing in the region. 

“Netanyahu, or not, the Israelis are on a particular trajectory when it comes to foreign and security policies,”Hellyer told POLITICO. 

“Opposition politicians blame Netanyahu for Israel’s increasing diplomatic isolation and loss of support in parts of Europe and North America. But when you look at what they’re actually saying, they’re not arguing with the policies when it comes to Gaza. They support the overall settlement project in the West Bank. They support the incursion in Southern Lebanon. Their proposition is that they could have done things in a better way,” said Hellyer, who’s a fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute. 

Mentions of the Gaza conflict in election campaigns have been largely limited to clashes over who was to blame for failing to prevent the Hamas attack on southern Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people.The Eisenkot-led Change bloc has focused on Netanyahu’s role in the lead-up to the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, pointing to the failures of his government and arguing he ignored warnings of a likely big Hamas attack. But the bloc has done little to flesh out its governing policy platform.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s campaign has sought to frame Eisenkot as an appeaser and puppet of Arab party leaders — such as Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am party, and Ahmad Tibi, leader of Ta’al party — arguing he would compromise on core security issues to persuade them to join or vote with his coalition bloc after the election to give him a Knesset majority.

“The lack of real content is a major problem for such a crucial election,” the Jerusalem Post lamented in an editorial this week.

Few see any chance of a negotiated peace or a two-state solution any time soon. Israelis largely view international condemnation as biased, and say critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza fail to understand what the country has to do to survive. 

But at some stage or another, Israelis will have to have conversations about peace, and delaying them isn’t going to help the country reduce its deepening isolation or help repair strained ties with traditional allies, including Europeans, who are starting to impose sanctions and considering arms embargoes. 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a fierce Netanyahu critic, said that while there has been election debate about how successful the Gaza war has been in degrading Hamas, “it’s true that the main issue of our future with the Palestinians has been ignored.” He added: “Had I been running, I would have talked about it the whole time.”

So why hasn’t peace been on the agenda?

As Olmert sees it, the root lies in “the huge trauma of Oct. 7, along with the perception that public opinion, the mainstream, has shifted from where it was before the massacre and moved further rightward politically.” That isn’t uncommon: When Israel suffers a severe psychological blow, the political center-of-gravity habitually moves sharply to the right, favoring hawkish and nationalist positions and marginalizing more conciliatory perspectives.

Olmert isn’t entirely convinced that perception is completely accurate this time,  pointing out that Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party is likely to lose a significant number of its Knesset seats — from its current tally of 32 to around 20 — after next week’s elections. 

“Nonetheless, the perception is that general public opinion has shifted and, therefore, all of the other parties are hesitant to talk about any political process with the Palestinians or about negotiations or about a two-state solution, and so on and so forth, because they worry they’ll lose support,” Olmert said.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Jewish-Israeli backing for military action. When it comes to the conflict with Iran, Israel Democracy Institute surveys have recorded support levels as high as 93% for the initial strikes, and nearly 80% back the continuation of the war. There has also been overwhelming Jewish-Israeli support for sustaining military pressure on Hezbollah in Lebanon and for multi-front security strategies.

Sven Burgsdorff, a former EU representative and ambassador to the West Bank, doesn’t subscribe to Olmert’s view, instead arguing there’s not much difference between Netanyahu and the leaders of the center-right Change bloc when it comes to Gaza or a two-state solution — something Netanyahu dismisses out of hand regularly, saying that Palestinian sovereignty is incompatible with Israel’s security.

“Even if the right-wing Netanyahu coalition were to be replaced by the current opposition, none of its main leaders — Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman — question the IDF’s conduct [in] the war on Gaza, nor are they supportive of the idea of Palestinian self-determination. Only Yair Golan of the Democrats and the coalition of Arab parties are in favor of that,” he said in an interview.

Opposition leaders don’t criticize Netanyahu for the conduct of the Gaza war, Burgsdorff continued. Their issue with him is whether he was at fault for not protecting Israel from the 2023 attack. They also accuse him of being set on dismantling Israel’s democratic system and for having no exit strategy for his forays into broader regional conflicts. 

Netanyahu has made a long political career out of leveraging external crises to keep his grip on power. And even now, it would take a brave commentator to write him off and suggest that Bibi the Magician, to use one of his nicknames, has lost the magic touch. The Israeli leader has pulled off stunning turnarounds in his long political career, including in the 1990s when he beat Shimon Peres in elections held just months after the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Olmert still hopes for a Netanyahu defeat and says if Eisenkot is installed, he might make conciliatory moves like meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestinian National Authority. 

“He won’t be able to do anything big or quickly with Bennett and Lieberman in his cabinet. Both of them are completely opposed to the idea of Palestinian sovereignty. They keep saying it all the time. ‘There will never be a Palestinian state,’” he said. “So the political space will be very limited.”

But without some serious movement toward a two-state solution, Israel could risk alienating more of its traditional allies in Europe and the U.S.

LONDON — When Prime Minister Andy Burnham arrived a few minutes late to a meeting with regional mayors on Thursday, his Cabinet ally Angela Rayner had a name for it. She joked they were on “Andy Time.”

The rest of Britain is beginning to learn what that feels like.

Burnham entered 10 Downing Street three months ago promising a “new economic model.” However, the prime minister’s first budget next Wednesday will ask voters to wait a bit longer for it.

John Healey, Burnham’s top finance minister, is expected to announce cuts to business regulation, new steps to move power out of Whitehall and targeted cost-of-living help as energy bills surge due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

But while London’s banking sector is resigned to a tax rise, Healey is broadly not expected to completely overhaul tax regimes that many in Burnham’s center-left Labour Party have long seen as unfair. These include business rates, which treat high street shops more harshly than out-of-town delivery warehouses; capital gains tax, which charges less on income from assets than from work; and council tax on homes, which is based on valuations from 1991. 

Healey and his allies are already rolling out a pitch for lower-key changes to tax and spending than his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, insisting budgets are about more than their bottom-line “scorecard.” They point instead to thinning the “sludge” of business bureaucracy and helping “bloody-minded” entrepreneurs.

The reason behind this is about much more than war dragging on the British economy and keeping inflation high. Many radical reforms just aren’t ready yet. 

Next Wednesday will mark just 100 days since Burnham took office, after a whirlwind special election that ended the Greater Manchester mayor’s decade-long absence from parliament.

Burnham’s much-touted “10-year plan” to rewire Britain’s public realm is far from finished; its publication date is edging closer to Christmas. And many granular details of his plan for reform — including higher defense spending, welfare reforms and ownership of the water sector — will only come at a multi-year spending review some time in 2027. Healey is still trying to decide when that will happen.

POLITICO spoke to 22 current and former government officials, MPs and people who speak regularly to Downing Street to map out Burnham and Healey’s strategy, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. 

Several offered the view that Healey’s budget was designed to act as a stepping stone toward the 10-year plan and spending review, while not spooking the bond markets — which Burnham complained Britain was “in hock to” last year. That is despite Britain inching closer to a general election that the prime minister must call by summer 2029.

“They want it to be a non-event,” one person who speaks regularly to both 10 and 11 Downing Street said of the budget. 

Expectation management

This narrative has already left Healey’s allies bristling.

People are “accusing us of not making decisions and kicking the can down the road when actually this budget is incredibly difficult,” said one government official. This person added: “This is the first budget of this country that will have come to the House of Commons for scrutiny while the war in the Middle East is raging and an illegal invasion of Ukraine continues by Russia. The idea that this is by any means small is quite difficult to stomach.”

A second U.K. government official argued the budget would be “as ambitious as possible within the political context.” But a third government official said they believed the budget would be more “steady as she goes” than finished solutions to Britain’s problems.

Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury official who is now chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on living standards, added: “In some ways it’s quite surprising to have such a small budget, given we have a new prime minister and chancellor and quite a lot has happened in the world since the last one.”

The opposition Conservative Party is preparing to seize on this “deferral budget” theme. Tory strategists are ready to paint it as a cowardly act from an administration they claim prefers sweeping vision to hard decisions. “Why act tomorrow when you can act today?” said one shadow cabinet minister. “Have some balls!”

Cameron Brown, a former Tory special adviser in the Treasury, was more sympathetic. “There’s no need to crystallize any kind of savings or cuts now,” when the spending review is looming anyway, he argued. Brown predicted a “tight and concise” but “intellectually coherent” package: “[Healey] will have some buffer at the end, a nice little cost of living package, Labour MPs will be happy, he’ll target the bad people — gamblers and banks — and he’ll push things down the road a bit.”

A Labour official voiced concern that a cautious budget could lose the goodwill Burnham has built with the public — as happened to his predecessor Keir Starmer, who promised “change” in his 2024 manifesto.

And Reeves’ former Political Secretary Matt Pound urged “caution” on deferring too many decisions to the 2027 spending review. “The truth is that they could end up putting a monumental amount of pressure on that spending review,” he told POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast in an interview released Friday. “There are already a lot of pressures they will need to fund.”

Hard to get

“Energy” will be the key thread linking Healey’s messages for the budget, a fourth U.K. government official said — from “breathing space” help with bills to building a more resilient infrastructure network. 

There will also be a “fiscal devolution roadmap” on budget day, setting out terms of how regional mayors can get more power and money and drawn up partly by Burnham’s new Manchester outpost, No. 10 North. Legislation to let them impose tourist taxes will be published in the coming weeks. And officials have talked behind the scenes about procurement and boosting Britain’s heavy industries; the budget needs to find almost £5 billion to plug a hole in a defense investment plan unveiled under Starmer.

Targeted cost-of-living measures appear likely to include scrapping “standing charges” on domestic gas bills, which cost the average household just over £100 a year. Burnham said Wednesday that he had asked Healey to look at the issue — though any help could be eclipsed by a predicted £276 rise in domestic bills this January.

The other message will be that the Treasury can do big, consequential things without raising taxes. Healey will make “a political argument that actually there are other types of budgets that you can have,” said the first government official quoted above, “busting through some of that sludge and ripping up a lot of that red tape.” Cash-strapped chancellors have reached for regulatory reform before, with mixed success.

MPs are looking closely at cost-of-living support. One backbencher in an affluent seat said any help had to be significant, because even their well-off constituents were struggling to take the holidays they wanted. Defense, by contrast, barely comes up on the doorstep: “There are hardly any votes in it, but it’s just something we have to do.”

There has been heavy engagement with Labour MPs, whose detachment from No. 10 helped force Starmer out in July. Treasury ministers Torsten Bell and James Murray are among those engaging while Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds handles tricky negotiations with Cabinet ministers, alongside No. 10 chief of staff James Purnell.

Healey has negotiated with Cabinet ministers and spoken to union leaders, banks and MPs — though not lobbyists. “No one can get to Healey,” said one. “It’s very smart. Let him do his job.”

Markets will look at the “headroom” — a snapshot of the buffer between Healey’s five-year plans and his self-imposed fiscal rules. The fourth official quoted above said Treasury officials have considered having only a small “headroom” buffer compared to the £21.7 billion left by Reeves, as it could be increased in future years. 

Reeves’ former political secretary, Pound, warned against this, telling Westminster Insider: “If the headroom is so low that it’s clear that they can’t clear the defense investment plan, for example, or the wider defense pressures, then I think that that could then start to have a bit of a knock-on effect that would be quite negative.”

However, headroom is merely a snapshot, often out of date by the time it is published. It is likely to be buffeted further by any events in the Middle East arising from the U.S. midterm results on Nov. 3.

And as with all budget briefings, some opposition politicians believe there is an element of expectation management. Conservatives suspect that headroom will come out higher than predicted — which Healey can paint as a victory.

Time is ticking

Then it’ll all be over — and Westminster will immediately start preparing for the next step.

A date was never confirmed for Burnham’s 10-year plan (beyond the latter part of 2026), but some officials believe it has already slipped slightly from the original intention. 

Downing Street and Cabinet Office officials remain determined to publish it in December, though some in Whitehall worry it might be delayed. “Knowing the things on the horizon and how big they are, I genuinely don’t see how you could make space for it,” said one official in another department.

While some Cabinet Office civil servants were first tasked to work on the plan in August, others only joined the team this month as it has grown, according to one person with knowledge of the staffing. Burnham’s ally Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, is leading three “task forces” ahead of the plan on the cost of living, public control of utilities and the renewal of run-down high streets.

The 10-year plan won’t have all the answers, though. POLITICO reported this week that while it will contain a high-level vision, priorities and principles for the water industry’s future, much of the granular detail of how future ownership models will work is expected in the 2027 spending review. 

One Labour figure who has spoken to the government about the water industry said they believed ministers will choose “different horses for different courses” — an array of ownership models for various firms depending on how stricken they are. A second Labour figure talking to the government said: “You can’t do this in two years.”

The Labour official quoted earlier in this story said they feared the 10-year plan would be a let-down. “These big plans governments are always throwing forward to have a habit of turning out quite thin,” this person said. “At which point we all realize there was never a big plan all along.”

There are other plans to come, including an imminent plan to reform the welfare system by the former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, and a white paper in December that is due to set out a timetable, legislation and borders for plans to move more power outside Whitehall.

Devolution is one area where Burnham has moved quickly, pleasing many regional mayors. But some officials in the union movement fear that Burnham’s initial focus on devolution risks taking up bandwidth that could have been spent on other issues. A fifth government official added that they were worried all the conversations between different public bodies could crowd out the push for growth. They said: “I sit on Teams calls that are 30 people, all from different arms of the state. Sometimes I think — ‘You do know none of us are making this money?’”

‘Rubber hits the road’

Then there is the 2027 spending review. 

It will set out how the state allocates money across its arms for the next three to five years — turning these plans and the difficult trade-offs they require into reality.

The Treasury has previously confirmed it will set out the entire pathway to lift U.K. defense spending from 2.6% of GDP this year to 3.5% by 2035. It is also likely to address questions about Burnham’s pledge to create a state-funded national service for social care, funded by reducing the rise in the state pension.

There will be months of to-and-fro between Whitehall departments and a Treasury looking for cuts, efficiency savings or both to balance the books.

“The spending review is when the rubber hits the road,” said the fifth government official quoted above. “It’s already beginning. Departments are beginning to work out sacrificial lambs to offer up.”

Three people with knowledge of the conversations said Healey still hasn’t decided when in 2027 he wants to hold the spending review, though it is broadly expected no earlier than the summer. He has been privately musing with allies about the options.

Curtice said Healey’s options are essentially to hold a small fiscal event followed by a spending review next summer, or to hold a spending review with an annual budget simultaneously in fall 2027.

She added: “The big question we’ve posed for this budget — that we’re not necessarily expecting an answer to — is what is the spending total for the spending review that we know needs to come next year? Until we know the answer to that question, we don’t really know whether we can believe the path of tax and borrowing that is set out in the budget.”

Senior Conservatives argue the spending review will be so difficult that Burnham could call a snap election before it is due. He has insisted he will only force it in 2029.

Until then, much of the spending review work will fall to Reynolds. Her predecessor Darren Jones argued the existence of the 10-year plan and spending review meant it would be sensible for next week’s budget to be a little low-octane.

“The prime minister’s been clear that the 10-year plan is going to be the political strategy for the government,” Jones told POLITICO. “So I think it makes sense to do all of your public spending decisions after the publication of the 10-year plan. It would be odd if this October’s budget tried to deal with all the big trade-offs on defense, mayoral budgets, or more ownership of public utilities.

“So I think in many ways, actually the 10-year plan is more interesting this autumn in terms of the political strategy of the government. 

“And then 2027 will be the year in which ministers will have to start thinking about how to implement that strategy operationally, including in public spending decisions.”

Much of that will fall to Burnham himself.

Crowdsourcing

Rayner’s joke about “Andy Time” was not without cause.

Unlike Starmer, Burnham gets into the weeds of an issue even if it derails his schedule. The prime minister chews things over with colleagues so much that some have joked they could just remove his Downing Street desk, said the third government official quoted above. By contrast, Starmer used to retreat to No. 10’s first-floor study to read away from the hubbub.

Burnham’s approach can lead to Downing Street making decisions late in the day. One former No. 10 official said: “A Prime Minister needs to do 80 things in a day and if that goes to 60, then you end up massively behind.”

The flipside is that ministers and officials know what their leader actually wants from them — even if they are left to work out the detail.

“It’s like we’ve woken up from a political coma,” one backbench MP enthused. “I know what the prime minister thinks,” added the third government official quoted above.

Aides used to complain that Starmer, by contrast, tried to be efficient but would end meetings without setting a clear political direction. “Keir was always a stickler for time, even if the issue wasn’t resolved,” as one former colleague put it.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, suggested this week that Burnham was failing to flesh out the detail behind his vision. “Talking about it is not making a decision,” she said of social care reform at prime minister’s questions. Burnham was visibly frustrated—insisting he was making the long-term decisions other politicians duck.

And for the prime minister’s allies and most of his MPs, the vibes remain good. The No. 10 environment is more relaxed and open. Junior ministers, in meetings over bacon sandwiches, feel they can share their views and be heard.

“There’s definitely still a buzz,” said the person who talks regularly to Downing Street, who was quoted earlier in this story. “But you don’t want to spend too much time buzzing while Rome burns. There’s a reality check that I feel is going to come imminently.”

Patrick Baker, Sascha O’Sullivan, Esther Webber and Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.

LONDON — Nigel Farage has been careful to downplay his closeness to Donald Trump to a MAGA-loathing British public. But to U.S. conservatives, it’s a different story. 

“There are very few human beings I know with whom I agree on so much as I do with Donald Trump,” the Reform UK leader told an American podcast. “And I admire his guts and I admire his courage.”

During an interview with Trump-aligned commentator Benny Johnson on Sept 30., the veteran Brexiteer struck a markedly warmer tone toward the U.S. president than in any of his recent remarks for a British audience.

“Donald’s been a friend for many, many years. I’m a regular at Mar-a-Lago,” Farage boasted on the Benny Show. “I get on with many of his family. We have a laugh together — I mean, he’s a proper bloke.”

In Britain, Farage has publicly dampened his closeness to Trump as he tries to position himself as a contender for U.K. prime minister, particularly since the war with Iran.

“I haven’t really been in touch with Trump for many months,” Farage said in an interview with Times Radio in April, as the U.S. and Israel got bogged down in a price-spiking conflict with Tehran.

A spokesperson for Farage told POLITICO: “Nigel has never hidden his relationship with the President. However, he has been a critical friend over Canada, Greenland, Ukraine and various other issues.”

Farage, whose right-wing Reform insurgency has been a disruptive force to traditional British politics, had to correct his initial support for the war, which has been perceived negatively in U.K. from the off.

Initially Farage said that Britain should “do all we can” to support the U.S.-Israeli action in the Middle East. He’d later go on to say “let’s not get ourselves involved in another foreign war.”

Farage described Trump’s tariff threats as “wrong” and said that he’d be “having some words” with the U.S. administration; he has also been careful to question Trump’s “51st state” comments on Canada; and, at times, he has distanced himself from Trump’s views on Ukraine.

The U.S. president is deeply unpopular in the U.K., like he is across much of Europe. And Farage’s relationship with him is off-putting to many British voters.

But Farage clearly sees his links with the U.S. right as deeply important, too. As he told Johnson, there have been numerous trips to D.C. and Mar-a-Lago — even if allies have also noted their relationship has cooled since 2024 and not all his Palm Beach visits have yielded meetings with Trump.

Farage noted on the show that there are things they don’t see eye-to-eye on, but was keen to stress they are “friends and allies” who “agree on quite a lot.”

BRUSSELS — The center-right European People’s Party joined forces with far-right lawmakers Thursday to push through a vote delaying a key EU climate law governing the methane emissions of oil and gas companies.

It was the latest example of the European Parliament’s biggest group ignoring old taboos and working with the far right to pass legislation weakening environmental rules.

The EU Methane Regulation requires fossil fuel companies to monitor and report emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s a major cause of global warming.

The requirements were due to come into force in 2027, but the Commission last week proposed delaying implementation by a year following intense lobbying from the oil and gas lobby and the U.S. government.

The EPP proposed going further, calling for a three-year delay. The amendment passed by 326 votes to 244, with the support of far-right groups Patriots for Europe, the group of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; and Europe of Sovereign Nations, the group of the German far-right party the AfD. Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists also backed the proposal.

Most lawmakers from other centrist and center-left groups, including Renew Europe, Socialists and Democrats and the Greens, opposed the three-year delay.

The right-wing majority also voted for an amendment that would force the Commission to review the law and propose any necessary changes by mid-2029.

It comes a year after the EPP — the group of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — set a new precedent when it sided with the far right to vote to weaken environmental reporting rules for companies, breaching the so-called cordon sanitaire. Since 2024, right wing groups have made up a majority in Parliament.

Thursday’s vote, if adopted by other EU institutions, would move the deadline for implementation of rules to 2030 — well beyond the Commission’s proposed delay to 2028.

It comes after a months-long pressure campaign by oil and gas companies, which claimed that key elements of the rules requiring them to monitor and track leaks of the potent greenhouse gas were unclear, risking compliance failures that could deter critical supplies from reaching Europe.

The Parliament’s position aligns it with industry’s own call for a three-year delay, and lawmakers echoed the sector’s concerns about the risk of supply disruptions linked to hasty implementation of the rules.

“The postponement of the requirements for oil and gas importers in the Methane Regulation is a matter of political responsibility … We need legally certain rules in place … to safeguard Europe’s energy supply and competitiveness,” MEPs Andrea Wechlser and Christian Ehler, both in the EPP, said in a statement to POLITICO.

“The crisis in the Middle East is already putting massive pressure on energy markets—about 20 percent of global LNG trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz,” they added.

The Parliament’s position could empower national delegations — which failed to agree on a joint position Wednesday after pushback from Germany, Italy and Poland — pushing for a longer delay. Member countries hope to find a compromise next Wednesday after failing to find agreement earlier this week.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to reflect that Parliament voted to delay the rules until 2030.

The president of Cyprus wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calling for the EU to resume talks on its mutual defense clause.

“I cannot overstate the importance of this provision for the EU and its Member States, especially in times of geopolitical uncertainty,” Nikos Christodoulides wrote in a letter dated Oct. 20 addressed to von der Leyen, seen by POLITICO.

Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty states that if an EU member is faced with “armed aggression,” other members have an obligation to provide “aid and assistance by all the means in their power.”

The defense clause article had risen up the agenda because of mounting geopolitical threats, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s undermining of the transatlantic alliance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hybrid warfare campaign against the EU, and wars in the Middle East.

“Given the gravity of the challenges we face, Cyprus would welcome the resumption of discussions at the relevant preparatory bodies. I would therefore appreciate an update on the proposals under consideration, as well as a timeline for the next steps,” Christodoulides wrote.

The EU gamed out how the clause would work in practice with exercises earlier this year. Cyprus’ six-month presidency of the European Council, which ended on June 30, prioritized the issue after Iranian drones struck a British base on Cypriot soil in March.

But the topic has largely fallen off the bloc’s radar, as the EU turns its attention to negotiating its seven-year, almost €2 trillion budget and finding more funding for Ukraine.

Article 42.7 is not scheduled to be discussed at any European leaders’ summits in the foreseeable future, confirmed an EU official, granted anonymity to speak freely.

PARIS — Looting and rioting across France over the weekend are threatening to reshape the contours of the French presidential race.

Far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen is seizing on the crisis to cast herself as the candidate of law and order, but there are risks for her too. Many voters see her as a highly divisive leader whose 2027 victory would only deepen the societal fault lines exposed by the riots.

Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, widely tipped to challenge Le Pen in the second round next year, is also treading carefully as rivals accuse him of encouraging the rage on the streets that has morphed into pillaging and arson.

For the flailing centrists, there is now an opportunity to finally make an impression in the contest — but only if they can distance themselves from President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as fluffing his response to the nationwide wave of vandalism.

Overall, it’s pushing the election into uncharted waters.

“If there’s a real crisis, you don’t know where it could lead,” said one conservative who holds regular talks with officials from the far-right National Rally and was granted anonymity to discuss the subject.

Where does that leave the candidates? POLITICO takes a look at the strategic calculus for the leading runners across the political spectrum.

Marine Le Pen, on the up

Le Pen is receiving an immediate boost. Even her rivals admit it.

This Saturday’s unrest “benefits the far right,” said center-right European Member of Parliament Nathalie Loiseau. “They are circling around the violence like vultures,” she said in an interview.

Le Pen has already cast herself as the alternative president, delivering a sober address to the nation Sunday and pitching herself as the candidate of a “pacified France.”

Jordan Bardella, president of her National Rally party, upped the ante on the protests and pitched his party as the only one able to restore order, dialing up fears about the pillaging. The rioters “will soon be breaking into people’s homes,” he said at a press conference in Paris. “The authorities are collapsing.”

But excessive, prolonged chaos could backfire on a party long seen as instigating civil unrest. And the topic is already becoming a talking point inside the National Rally.

“Some say that this shows that there will be riots if the National Rally comes to power,” said Charles-Henri Gallois, one of Bardella’s advisers. “But I don’t believe it.”

According to the conservative quoted above, periods of instability can lead the French to turn their backs on anti-establishment figures and prefer traditional veterans.

“You could end up with [Charles] De Gaulle on the Champs-Elysées,” the official said, referring to how the first president of the Fifth Republic emerged with extra powers after the 1958 crisis that roiled the nation.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the defensive

Far-left leader Mélenchon is in a bind as he walks a tightrope between supporting protesters and distancing himself from violence.

The France Unbowed party supported the school protests in the run-up to last weekend’s riots, and far-left elected officials have played a prominent role in the blockades, either in decrying alleged police violence or in support of the protesters.

In the battle for leadership between Mélenchon and center-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the former grabbed the limelight.

But the violence this weekend could end up marginalizing the far left, especially with the government and political rivals accusing them of fueling the unrest. “They tried to aggravate the situation,” Loiseau said.

According to a poll from Cluster 17 for POLITICO, the 75-year-old far-left firebrand is already one of the most commonly “rejected” politicians in France.

On Monday, Mélenchon tried to turn the tables, firing back at the government, saying the prime minister was fomenting “disorder” with his accusations that ultra-left groups were trying to disrupt the election.

Edouard Philippe, looking for a reset

For the center-right presidential hopeful Philippe, the riots aren’t good news either. He has to work hard to distance himself from his old boss, President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as failing to respond sufficiently to the crisis. (Philippe was Macron’s first prime minister.)

But the protests could also be his opportunity to show some character, and rebut critics who think his campaign lacks energy and panache. Philippe, the best-placed centrist candidate to beat the far-right, has seen his poll ratings stall in recent months and has struggled to cut through the campaign noise.

A break with Macron might just be what he needs.

Philippe came out hard against the president after he failed to announce any measures during his primetime television address Sunday. “I would have preferred… decisions and initiatives to restore order,” he wrote online. “This country needs someone in command.”

But the former PM will need to stick his neck out more if he’s going to make an impact.

“He’s very presidential, and it’s a posture that suits him,” said one of Macron’s ministers, who, like others cited here, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“But he’s not saying anything. What’s his measure? Why doesn’t he say we need to call a state of emergency? “

Raphaël Glucksmann, on the offensive

For the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the protests are a trial by fire after he won the Socialist Party primary contest earlier this month and became the center-left’s presidential candidate.

On Monday, Glucksmann tried to strike a very different note from Mélenchon, telling reporters that “it’s unbearable … that hordes of looters should attack symbols of the state.”

Sensing a chink in the far-left leader’s armor, he accused the leader of France Unbowed of being “a springboard” for Le Pen, who would be “the beneficiary of the chaos.”

Glucksmann has seen his poll ratings go up since he won the Socialist Party primary outright, reaching 15% to 16.5% according to a recent Elabe poll — in a similar territory to Mélenchon and Philippe.

But the minister quoted above expected Glucksmann to peak soon.

“He can only take voters away from Mélenchon,” the minister said. “A left-wing voter may vote for the right, but a right-wing voter won’t vote for the left anytime soon,” the person said.

Emmanuel Macron, on the skids

Macron is being roasted for going on television to address the nation and announce … absolutely nothing.

On Sunday, Macron promised that rioters who “destroyed” things would have to pay the price and called for “clear answers” on why the protests turned violent.

“Fucking hell, it’s rubbish,” said one former senior government official.

Macron has cultivated an image of being above the fray and went on a trip to the Middle East on Monday. But his failure to respond to the violence risks damaging his final months in power. “It’s out of touch,” a regional official said.

According to the minister quoted above, Macron should have let his prime minister do the talking but instead was encouraged to make “a speech to calm” the situation.

On Monday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu tried to get a grip on the situation, announcing localized curfews, movement restrictions, and bans on public demonstrations.

But another day of demonstrations has already been announced for next Saturday, sparking fears the protests will snowball into sustained protests similar to the Yellow Vests movement in 2018 and 2019.

If so, this chaos will be a defining element of the 2027 campaign.

Un week-end marqué par des scènes de pillage et des heurts dans toute la France. Un chef de l’Etat qui s’exprime à la télévision sans convaincre son propre camp. Des candidats qui dénoncent en chœur des failles sécuritaires. Des forces de l’ordre dépassées. Les violences des 17 et 18 octobre sont-elles le tournant de la présidentielle et comment Emmanuel Macron, parti depuis au Moyen-Orient, peut-il reprendre la main ? Marcelo en discute avec Elisa. Des questions? Des commentaires? Ecrivez-nous sur Whatsapp au +32 49 07 69 41

**Un message de GSK : Prévenir, soigner, innover : GSK appelle à investir dans la santé des Français pour accélérer l’accès aux innovations et atteindre un objectif : zéro perte de chance pour les patients, en renforçant la recherche et les investissements industriels en France.**

One of the key arguments for a great power — other than the great power itself wanting to be one — is that they act as a guarantor of stability and the status quo. That is far from the only public or global good. And a great power will ensure that status quo on its own terms and mostly to its own advantage. But if you have any acquaintance with history, you know you can do a lot worse than relative peace and the status quo. Trump’s Iran War has been a bracing illustration of all these realities. Once the great power starts letting things break, those breakages can start multiplying very fast. Eventually you’ll find a new equilibrium, of course. But eventually can take a long time. And again, even a passing acquaintance with history tells us that things can suck without end for extended periods of time.

There’s an interesting New York Times piece from over the weekend that illustrates all these things. We know the outline. But it provides new details. As a knock-on effect of the U.S. war with Iran, the ongoing battle between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebel government in Yemen has again become hot. In recent weeks, the Houthis have partly cut off Saudi Arabia’s other path to the ocean. Put simply, the Saudis can export oil through the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea. The former has been mostly closed for months. Now the Houthis are in de facto or near control of the second. That’s a big crisis for the Saudis. This is part of the larger U.S.-Iran battle because the Houthis are clients of Iran. And Iran’s core strategy has been to create enough pain for the U.S.’s regional allies that they will force the U.S. to end the war. Remember, each time the U.S. attacks Iran, they respond by attacking the various Gulf emirates.