Europe

British PM Andy Burnham’s move to impose sanctions on West Bank settlements is politically savvy – but not because it will achieve his purported aim of advancing a two-state solution. For one thing, the impact in Israel will be minimal. Ed Miliband was clear that the new sanctions regime will target those “providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements,” while trade within the Green Line will continue. Yet the principal providers of such services to the settlements are Israeli banks, major companies and the Israeli government itself. Short of Miliband sanctioning them, the policy is unlikely to achieve much. The economies of the West Bank and Green Line Israel are completely intertwined.

Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government this weekend became the longest surviving Italian government since the fall of fascism in 1945. It is a remarkable achievement for a woman who identifies as a conservative, but who has been relentlessly branded as “the heir to Mussolini” and a far-right threat to democracy because she was once a post-fascist. Regardless, Italy’s first female prime minister has become the standard bearer of the European right as the people of Europe continue to pivot right. Elections next year look likely to bring the right to power in both France and Spain.

Affable, unflappable and imposing (he was a 6ft 2in ex-Olympian), the late King Harald of Norway was also blessed with good luck for much of his life. The first notable dose of good fortune occurred at the age of three, when his mother managed to spirit him and his sisters out of their home country hours before the Nazi invasion – and away to safety in the US. He returned to a nation so devoted to its monarchy that the children of postwar Norway pooled their pocket money to help buy his grandfather, King Haakon VII, a royal yacht. The Norge remains in service to this day, funded by an uncomplaining nation. Compare that with Britain’s royal family, who had to wave farewell to their yacht Britannia back in 1997 after a long and toxic political squabble.

Just under a month after three drones were discovered in quick succession at Leipzig airport, the German government took the unexpected step of publicly naming the country behind the incidents. Standing alongside foreign minister Johann Wadephul on Tuesday afternoon, the German minister of the interior, Alexander Dobrindt, announced: “The German government has concluded that Russia is responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig on 4 August.” According to Dobrindt, the German government was able to conclusively determine Russia’s involvement thanks both to a police investigation and findings made by the intelligence services.

This summer, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, bluntly told the American Council on Foreign Relations think tank that Europe was trapped in a high-tax, ultra-regulation model. “When Mark Carney said, 'The middle powers should get together' – it's a fantasy. They did that, it’s called Europe,” Dimon said. “The GDP of Europe has gone from 90 percent of America to 70 percent. And in our view, it will probably continue to erode over time because of high taxes.” The 27-country European Union’s response to such criticism has been to double down on its bad policies and try to enlarge its membership. On Sunday, their latest attempt came crashing to earth as Iceland’s electorate voted 53 percent to 47 percent not to even begin talks on becoming an EU member.

Donald Trump’s bloviation about Greenland has been near-constant since he became president elect in November 2024. In the intervening period, the demands for the territory's acquisition have varied in tone and substance, from menacing statements to social media memes that are best thought of as bizarre. The response from both elected governments of Denmark and Greenland has been a consistent rejection of Trump’s demands. Meanwhile, European NATO allies have rallied around the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, who came through a hard-fought election in March this year. Frederiksen used last month's NATO summit in Ankara to reiterate that Copenhagen was ready and willing to defend the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The fight for France is underway. The 2027 presidential campaign began last night as the leading candidates clashed in a live debate on the center court of Roland Garros. Yesterday's confrontation came on the same day a poll confirmed that Marine Le Pen is streets ahead of her rivals in the court of public opinion. The leader of the National Rally boasts an approval rating of 33 percent, more than twice that of the left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon. He is on 16 percent with the centrist former prime minister Edouard Philippe 2 percent behind. Fourth, on 11 percent, is Raphael Glucksmann, the leader of the center-left Place Publique.

When a law student from Co. Kildare was stopped this summer on suspicion of transporting a bomb across the Irish border for use by dissident republicans, her solicitor said she had not been aware of what was in the bag and that she had been “manipulated.” Yet the 25-year-old’s arrest highlighted an alarming revival in Irish republicanism – and the role being played by a younger, well-educated, middle-class generation. During the Troubles, much of Ireland mercifully avoided the pull of radicalism. There was always a certain degree of quiet sympathy for the IRA in predictable sections of the media and academia, but popular support for Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican party, in the 26-county Republic remained negligible throughout the worst years of terrorism.

If poor Jason Arday killed himself, it will be necessary to work out why. To do so, it will help to know why he resigned his professorship. It seems highly unlikely he resigned if Cambridge University did not want him to. It had defended him in public throughout, after all. Yet if he had been confident of Cambridge’s continuing support, why did he sacrifice the benefit of its protection? If Cambridge suggested to him that its protection would, for whatever reason, shortly cease, what caused its change of mind? What a terrible shock for him if the institution which had raised him so high was now ready to cast him out. Is the institutional attack on the press over this matter a deflection from the truth?

I don’t know how familiar readers are with the term “accelerationism.” It is generally used to describe a tendency on the left, though is increasingly heard on the right too. The basic idea of accelerationism is that there are certain flaws in the societal structure which if pushed could bring things to their inevitable conclusion more quickly. It is why there are so many people on the left of politics who say that sustainable government spending should be discouraged. It is not just because they are economically illiterate. What they really hope is that a speeded-up financial disaster will expose the “underlying contradictions of capitalism,” and we’ll all realize that Karl Marx was right and promptly vote for Zack Polanski or similar at the next election.

France’s under-15s can carry on using social media after a parliamentary ban was struck down by the Republic’s constitutional council on Friday. The ruling is a humiliating blow for Emmanuel Macron, who had championed the legislation from the beginning. It had won the backing of both parliament and the Senate last month but the Council had other ideas. In rejecting the Bill, France’s highest constitutional authority judged that it “places a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication.” Macron heard the news as he enjoyed the surf at his seaside retreat on the Riveria, a break that has already provoked the ire of many. Should the President be gallivanting on a jet-ski when so much of the country is ravaged by destructive wildfires?

After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University. We can reveal that a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now banned as a terror group, has been appointed assistant research professor of education at Cambridge, in the same faculty as Arday. Farah Ahmed has explicitly attacked “western education” as a “threat” to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticized British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.