World

Marine Le Pen has promised to ban women wearing Muslim headscarves if she becomes president next year. The leader of the National Rally declared on X: “I will submit to the French people, by referendum, a bill to combat Islamist ideologies with numerous powerful measures, including the banning of the Islamist headscarf in public spaces.” Le Pen may be out of step with the rest of the political class but she is speaking for a majority of the people France has led the way among European countries on the issue of conservative Islamic dress. In 2004, for example, a law was passed prohibiting the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools. It applied to Christians, Jews and Muslims, but France was accused of using the bill to persecute Islam.

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.

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has accused social media networks linked to Israel and Russia of spreading misinformation that helped fuel the crisis culminating in the sudden mass arrival of approximately 80,000 mostly Moroccan and sub-Saharan African migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta (population 83,000) on 30 and 31 July. Madrid says some 5,000 remain in the city on the North African coast, although other estimates put the number considerably higher. Like other EU leaders, Sánchez has consistently opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine. But he has gone much further than most in his criticism of Israel, repeatedly describing its actions in Gaza as “genocide.