Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps on overplaying his hand. But they pose a problem because they are large and close to the EU, not because they are well led.

The same cannot be said for Russia and Turkey, which actively try to undermine the EU. In the eyes of some of its European peers, Brexit has turned Britain into a clown state.īritain is at least a friendly clown.

Rather than striding out as a proud independent state, it waddled out of the EU with its foot in a bucket. Britain needed four years, three prime ministers and two elections to fully leave the bloc. They worried that Britain could be a nimble, efficient state on its borders. In 2016 EU officials feared Britain’s exit. Britain mucked up leaving the EU so badly that no other country looks likely to copy it. A jester in government can swiftly look out of place.įortunately for the EU, hostile parties outside it often seem just as clownish. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party was in power before footage emerged of its leader lounging on a sofa offering state contracts to someone he thought was the niece of a Russian oligarch. Sometimes, the failings are ones of character. It backfired and Mr Salvini found himself back in opposition with his party’s polling dented. A year later, while riding high in the polls, Matteo Salvini, its leader, brought down his own coalition to try to trigger an election. The Northern League, an Italian hard-right party, took power in 2018. Traits that lend themselves to insurgency do not translate well into governance. Some parties have managed to punch a hole in the clown ceiling, but not one big enough to break through. Now it goes into a general election in March hoping for a few seats at best. Its piano-playing, Hegel-quoting leader was breathlessly profiled in the press.

Founded only in 2016, F VD was feted as the future of the far right in the EU, briefly topping opinion polls in 2019. It was a spectacular collapse after a remarkable rise. In the days that followed, as accounts of the dinner surfaced, politicians from the party lined up to quit. Later, the F VD’S leader suggested that covid-19 was the work of George Soros. Guests were asked how many people they would let die for the sake of freedom (“three million” was Mr Baudet’s offer). Over lobster and wine, allegations of anti-Semitism among the party’s youth ranks were dismissed by its leader, Thierry Baudet. It began with a row over the backing music, with guests torn between classical music or Ava Max’s “Kings & Queens”, a trashy dance hit. I MAGINE THE dinner party from hell and it would look a lot like the one politicians from Forum for Democracy ( F VD), a Dutch far-right party, held in November.

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