One of the smartest things I've seen written about the EU parliamentary elections held over the weekend is this assessment of the record high voter turnout, attributed to Bruno Waterfield, Brussels correspondent for The Times.
The EU’s governing consensus has been sustained largely by voter apathy. As turnout in European elections has increased, so has the vote share of parties that reject the EU oligarchy.
Two further thoughts by Spiked deputy editor Fraser Myers:
The EU Green Deal, which includes a vast array of costly and authoritarian measures aimed at bringing down carbon emissions, has infuriated voters across the continent. (snip) In the eyes of the European public, ‘green’ has become a byword for bureaucratic interference and deindustrialisation.
European voters have effectively been given a choice between a mainstream that despises them, a left that has abandoned them (and also despises them), and a right that is promising to give the other two a bloody nose. Are we really surprised by the option they took?
