Connor Allen

Most of the world will not mourn the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash near Varzaqan in Iran, this week. Dubbed the ‘Butcher of Tehran’, Raisi was responsible for the deaths of thousands in a purge of political dissent in the 1980s. Since becoming president he has overseen the brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting against the regime’s punitive morality police. And he has led a country which is a key supplier of drones and weapons to Vladimir Putin, causing countless civilian deaths. Why was it obvious to democratic countries that commemorating Raisi would be morally contemptuous, but not to the bureaucrats in Brussels?

To this day, many Remainers see the vote to leave the EU as an entirely self-inflicted wound. But is that truly the case? Senior European politicians are starting to reflect and acknowledge Europe’s own hand in Brexit – and the damage Brussels may have caused after the referendum result. During my time working in the European Parliament in the Brexit period, for two different Remain-leaning MEPs in the ECR and Renew Europe groups, I saw this darker side of Brussels first hand. Friedrich Merz, leader of the German CDU, stated this week that he ‘remember[s] that David Cameron asked for changes to EU social policy and came back to London empty-handed. The continental Europeans were not entirely blameless when it comes to Brexit’.