The British government is wondering whether promises of closer links to Europe may help woo largely hostile voters. Meanwhile, a right-wing newspaper is touting Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic for his tenacity in standing up to the EU.
Marcus Tanner
Hello from London and “Good evening EUROPE!” as the national hosts on Eurovision often bellow before reading out their scores.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but it’s only countries on the edge of Europe, whose European identity is somehow questioned, like Moldova or Armenia, that follow the “Good evening EUROPE!” routine on Eurovision. Core EU states like France and Germany don’t feel much need to remind anyone of their European credentials. Their hosts just read out the results.
In the UK, we are also in European identity-crisis mode, and also shouting “Good evening EUROPE!” – as our struggling Labour government, confronting doom in the May local elections, tries to pull some kind of EU-shaped rabbit out of the hat.
Long-promised economic growth clearly is out of the question now, since our close ally, America, and its even closer ally, Israel, started bombing Iran and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Petrol prices are rocketing, inflation is rising and growth forecasts have been downgraded to virtually zero. To cap our woes, Easter eggs have gone up in price because of a global cocoa shortage, according to the Daily Mail.
So, forget growth by May, or even by the time of the next general election. Might playing the Europe card turn something around? Chancellor Rachel Reeves clearly hopes so, which is why her massively trailed speech in Brussels a few weeks ago was startlingly and unprecedentedly pro-European in tone.
