Europe

Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement (M5S), appointed a new commissioner for the UN cultural organisation Unesco. He chose the dog--whistling, bum-slapping sex--comedy actor Lino Banfi, star of How to Seduce Your Teacher, Policewoman on the Porno Squad and other films. The M5S was launched online by the 1980s comedian Beppe Grillo. It is run on the basis of a private computer operating system called Rousseau. Most Italians look at the M5S as either a breath of fresh air, a necessary gesture of defiance, or a ridiculous episode that will pass. But you need a sense of humour for that. French President Emmanuel Macron has lately shown himself unable to take the Italian government in his stride.

In Paris in December, I sat with a journalist friend in a café on the Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui and listened to him explain to me why a no-deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for Britain. It had to do with an article his newspaper had published about the Mini. You might think they were typically British cars, he said, but the plant where they were made in Cowley belonged to BMW! The steering wheels were assembled in Romania! The tail lights came from Poland! So? I asked. Brexit was about leaving the EU, not making globalisation un-happen. Who do you think wants to close the Mini plant? Britain does not want to damage its export sector any more than Romania or Poland wants to shut down a factory that provides the livelihoods of thousands.

There has been much inconclusive speculation on the Queen’s views on Brexit. In 2016, the Sun asserted that she was in favour (later overruled by Ipso as ‘significantly misleading’). Last year, pro-EU commentators claimed that the blue hat with yellow stars she wore to open Parliament showed coded support for Remain. For now, we are none the wiser. What we do know, however, is that the monarch must be finding things a good deal easier on the way out than on the way in. Rewind to 1972 and a damp May evening at the Palace of Versailles.

A few months before he died in 2007, Bill Deedes asked if I would come to see him at his home in Kent and bring Boris Johnson along with me. I was writing a biography of Bill at the time, and I knew he was miserable because he had broken his hip and could no longer come up to London. Boris jumped at the idea and I remember our lunch as the last time I saw Bill exuberantly happy. Boris knew instinctively what a 93-year-old journalist who was struggling to write his weekly column needed, and filled him in hilariously on the London political and media gossip. The only slight awkwardness came when Bill stressed his admiration for David Cameron, and Boris’s impenetrable eyes momentarily turned just a little beady.

Theresa May’s Brexit dilemma is becoming more acute. Last week, she failed to garner the support of the Brexit inner cabinet for a so-called ‘new customs partnership’ with the European Union. Even so, May can’t and won’t drop the idea. She’s convinced that it is critical for solving the Irish border issue, and thus unlocking a deal. But the bad news for Mrs May is that opinion has hardened against her scheme (which would see the UK collecting tariff revenue for the EU even after Brexit). Boris Johnson has publicly attacked it as ‘crazy’ and in no way ‘taking back control’. Tellingly, Downing Street didn’t feel it could slap him down for this.

In this week’s episode, we talk about red London – just how badly will the Tories do in the upcoming local elections, and why do people love Sadiq Khan? We also talk about the end of Macron’s political honeymoon, and the death of the Grand Tour. As national headlines are dominated by Jeremy Corbyn, local Labour candidates are preparing for a sweeping victory through London’s upcoming local elections. Will Heaven, the Spectator’s Managing Editor, writes in this week’s cover that ‘the Tories are braced for disaster’. Why is London turning red?

The occasion was a central European conference on the subversive disinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia (which, incidentally, are real, subtle, and potentially effective). The speaker was an American warning that the central European democracies were in imminent danger of succumbing to the lures of authoritarian populism, even of abandoning democracy itself, under this influence. He cited the probable election of the media billionaire Andrej Babis as prime minister in Czech elections as one sign of this democratic collapse. A heavy sigh came from a European participant, standing next to me: ‘Why do Americans exaggerate so?