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Nathan Akehurst is a writer and campaigner working in political communications and advocacy.
The seizure of two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil is a further escalation of Donald Trump’s war policy. While British prime minister Keir Starmer denied involvement in the earlier attack on Caracas, this time Britain actively joined the operation.
The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is a crude act of Trumpian aggression. Yet it also illustrates the US leadership’s weakness, as it moves to lock down control of the Western Hemisphere.
Keir Starmer wants to weaken the European Convention on Human Rights, hoping that this will win back voters from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. In the name of fighting right-wing politics, he’s handing more powers to a future Farage-led government.
On Sunday, the migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking was attacked by armed men in international waters. The assailants: the Libyan Coast Guard, sponsored by the European Union to police the Mediterranean.
If a designated enemy country attacked shipping just outside the coastal waters of a European Union member state, Western leaders would be outraged. When Israel did it off Malta this month, they said nothing.
As Washington scales down its US defense commitment to Europe, many of the continent’s leaders are talking of making the EU a military superpower. It’s an unrealistic prospect, but it risks becoming the key focus of EU spending.
Anti-immigration politicians around Europe have increasingly outsourced border policing to authoritarian states in Africa. Britain’s Labour Party has followed the same approach.
Visiting Rome this week, Keir Starmer might have been expected to signal political differences with Giorgia Meloni. Instead he endorsed her approach to repressing migration, showing how much liberals have swallowed the far right’s agenda.
Analysis of June’s European elections widely highlighted the rise of far-right parties. But the campaign also capped a much deeper shift: an EU trapped in a mood of decline and able to offer few forward-looking projects other than militarizing its borders.
The head of the British Army and Germany’s defense minister have each recently called for their countries to prepare to be on a war footing. Their call for mass mobilization is deeply unpopular — and at odds with the realities of modern warfare.
Last week, several leading European politicians visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, presented as a symbol of a continent overwhelmed by immigrants. But there is no “migrant crisis” — just a political failure to create safe routes for people on the move.
EU leaders fearmonger about immigration while neglecting the real and deadly threats posed by climate change. The entire Euro-Mediterranean region should collaborate on behalf of displaced persons, against fossil fuel giants, and toward decarbonization.
Corporate consulting firms like McKinsey attribute their industry’s success to its capacity to increase efficiency and add value to the economy. In fact, there isn’t a single major act of state or corporate malevolence in our lifetime free of the big consultancies’ fingerprints.
A special EU summit in Brussels last week committed to increasing funds for border surveillance and the deportation of refugees. It’s the latest in Europe’s ongoing project of hardening its borders in flagrant disregard for human life.
Liz Truss has accelerated the UK’s decline faster than many thought possible. She’s been swiftly disposed of by her own party, but the long-run meltdown of British politics shows little sign of easing.
In recent years, European coastguards have illegally pushed tens of thousands of people back across the EU’s sea borders. Now, a court challenge is exposing EU border agency Frontex’s conduct — and an immigration regime that deliberately drowns people.
As energy bills soar, Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, proposes short-term measures to prop up suppliers with public money. But we won’t be “back to normal” anytime soon — and it’s working-class Britons who will suffer.
A trial in Italy threatens volunteers who rescued people at sea with up to two decades in jail. The case shows how Fortress Europe is cracking down on even basic, lifesaving solidarity with migrants.
Mimmo Lucano made the southern Italian town of Riace into a model of refugee integration — only to become the target of politically motivated criminal charges. His legal appeal, launched this week, will decide if he has to spend 13 years behind bars.
In Europe, the volunteers welcoming Ukrainian refugees are often the same people attacked for aiding refugees in the Mediterranean. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s inhumane — we should welcome all migrants fleeing war and terror.