Why Europe gets America so wrong

And, with the collapse of Germany's government, what's in store for the EU

(This is an updated version of a piece I wrote for the Independent in the UK).

It took quite some time for the mood to darken, even though the prospect of a victory for Donald Trump had already become clear. Overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday, the great and the good of Berlin had gathered in festive mood for an event organised by the American Academy and Aspen Institute to watch the election.

In one of several presentations, pollsters from YouGov revealed the extent to which European voters had wanted Kamala Harris to win (the exception being Giorgia Meloni’s Italy). But it also showed that they had expected her to win, by an equally large margin. Based on what exactly? Hope springs eternal. The liberal disease. The European disease.

If anything good is to emanate from the return of Trump it will be the shattering of European illusions. His decisive victory this time, including in vote share, removes any lingering doubt about the resilience of the global populist movement that he leads. It cannot be put down to a fluke, threats, media manipulation or Vladimir Putin – even if they all played a role at the margins.

The effect on the political mainstream across Europe, at least that part that is still standing, will be seismic.

Wherever you look, parties of the centre-left to centre-right are floundering.

Germany’s bickering three-party government finally collapsed last night when Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor, sacked his Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, whose liberal party, the Free Democrats, have been holding the coalition hostage. Elections are expected to be brought forward to March, at which point the miserable three-year Scholz experiment will be over. But would his likely successor, the acerbic conservative, Friedrich Merz, be any more successful in showing leadership?

In France, Emmanuel Macron is eking out his final years in office while looking over his shoulder at Marine Le Pen, whose prospects for the next presidential elections are stronger than ever.

Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, struggling in a precarious administration, is furiously blamed for the terrible floods. Unlike his counterparts, Keir Starmer is under no such immediate threat, but the mood in the UK can hardly be described as cheerful.

Europe’s leaders have scrambled to congratulate Trump and to express their ‘ever closer friendship’. He will play them, as he wishes, sometimes smiling, other times snarling, seeing in these relations the opportunity for transactional gains.

The object of the new president’s affections will be Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Italy’s Meloni, true believers and executors of his wishes on the European continent. By unhappy coincidence, Europeans were gathering in Budapest this morning for a meeting of the European Political Community, chaired by none other than Orban, long a subversive force inside the EU and NATO.

In her two years as prime minister, Meloni has largely toed the line, particularly on support for Ukraine, in return for being given carte blanche to consolidate her power base at home with the usual populist strategy of undermining the independence of the media and judiciary, while pledging to clamp down on immigration (her Albania plan has been the object of intrigue rather than criticism). She will no longer feel constrained on any front.

Across Europe and beyond, populists on the far-right and far-left (and in the cases of some, such as Germany’s ascendant Sahra Wagenknecht combining the two), will be emboldened by Trump’s resounding success.

Where in office they will push their agendas harder; when in opposition, they will fight even more voraciously for power, using a similar playbook to Trump. Look for further gains for Le Pen’s RN, for the AfD and for Wagenknecht’s BSW in Germany and for Vox in Spain. In Poland, Donald Tusk already had the fight of his life to stave off a return of the far-right Peace and Justice party that used its most recent term in office to dismantle liberal freedoms.

The lesson Orban learnt was to use his time in opposition to further radicalise his programme for office. Trump has done the same. The 2016-era first wave of populism was often erratic and amateurish. Expect no such mistakes this time around.

As the extreme becomes the new mainstream, the old mainstream withers away, bereft of confidence and unclear what ground to occupy. On immigration, it is trying imitation. From Germany to Poland, radical restrictions are being imposed. Europe’s open borders are shutting fast.

Trump convinced a majority of Americans that Joe Biden had made them significantly worse off. Many were feeling the squeeze. Yet US growth was consistently above that of its European rivals (previously known as partners). The master communicator, Trump will shortly ride on the coattails of a recovery, and attribute that to his own hand.

Meantime, he will threaten China and all-comers with tariffs ranging from an extraordinary 60% to below. He will threaten, coerce and cajole. A divided and weak Europe will struggle to counter him and will bear the economic brunt. 

Trump will almost certainly pull out of the Paris climate accords again, but this time around he may meet less resistance. No matter the devastation wrought by climate change, the green movement is on the backfoot.

The most important known unknown, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, is Ukraine. What exactly does Trump’s fabled ‘peace in a day’ mantra mean? Across Europe, the word ‘peace’ has been appropriated by the far right to mean doing Putin’s bidding.

But does Trump really want Russia’s de facto borders to extend deep inside Ukraine in perpetuity, and at almost no cost to Putin? Would America benefit from a Russia extending its reach further into Europe, as it is doing successfully in Georgia and almost as successfully in Moldova? Is he content for North Korean soldiers to be fighting (and improving their training) on European soil? What message would that send to China? The answers to these points will remain unclear, until Trump suddenly decides.

Whatever he does, this is a time of grave danger, but also potential opportunity, for Europe. As Tusk said three days before the US elections, this should be the moment when ‘Europe finally grows up and believes in its own strength. Whatever the outcome, the era of geopolitical outsourcing is over’.

Will Europe do more to secure its own defence? Will it find its own distinctive voice and global strength? With the current generation of leaders, the chances of that happening are sadly extremely low. I, for one, will not be succumbing to wishful thinking.