BERLIN — The center-left premier of the eastern German state of Brandenburg dissolved his coalition with the populist left Alliance for Social Justice and Economic Reason (BSW) on Tuesday after just over a year in office. Despite the collapse, the Social Democratic premier, Dietmar Woidke, said he intends to stay on as leader of a minority government, illustrating the fragile political conditions in Germany’s eastern states, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is particularly strong. “The governmental chaos in Brandenburg can only have one logical consequence: immediate new elections!” one of the leaders of the AfD, Alice Weidel, said in a post on X. Her party is currently polling at 35 percent in Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, far ahead of all other parties. The coalition collapse came as two lawmakers and the finance minister left the BSW parliamentary group over policy disagreements. That caused the coalition, which had only a two-vote surplus, to lose its majority in the state parliament.   “This breakdown means that the basis for cooperation in a coalition no longer exists,” Woidke told reporters on Tuesday. The workings within government had become “overshadowed by constant disputes within the BSW,” he added. The BSW was founded in 2024 by Sahra Wagenknecht, a longtime icon of hard-left politics in Germany. The party merges elements of hard-left and hard-right politics — an ideology Wagenknecht has dubbed “left conservatism.” Wagenknecht stepped down as the party’s leader at the end of last year, but remains an influential figure. She had come under increasing criticism for tailoring the party too much to her own persona, which also led to a name change — it was originally called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. In line with this criticism, the departure of members of parliament from the BSW in Brandenburg was largely due to individual politicians disagreeing with Wagenknecht on policy issues such as the reform of the state’s public broadcasters, while the party leadership did not allow them to take a different path. Woidke said he planned to hold coalition talks with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the future, with whom his Social Democrats would now have a majority. But for the time being, Woidke plans to govern Brandenburg in a minority government. Minority governments are relatively uncommon in Germany, but might become more frequent in the coming years as the increasing strength of the far right and far left has fractured the political landscape. In upcoming elections this year in other eastern states, namely Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the AfD aims to break through Germany’s so-called firewall that has been in place since the end of World War II to prevent a far-right party from coming to power again.

PARIS — Two polar opposite personalities from France’s fractured left are fighting to emerge as the candidate to stop the dominant far right under Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella from winning the presidency in 2027. It’s still about 17 months until an election that threatens to upend the European Union, but a very public battle is already raging between the old-school radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the polished pro-NATO more center-leaning Raphaël Glucksmann. It’s a bruising clash, and several observers tracking the presidential race predict the depth of animosity between the two men could further split the left — sapping the possibility of victory in 2027 — rather than establishing a consensus candidate for the crucial second round of the race for the Elysée. Unless one manages to completely overshadow the other, the left will be locked in a civil war for the coming year. “Past presidential elections have shown that two candidates can’t coexist on the left without causing trouble for each other,” said Erwan Lestrohan, research director at French polling institute Odoxa. The two men could hardly be more different. Mélenchon is a 74-year-old hardliner who has run for president three times, nearly making the runoff in 2022 with a campaign calling for hiking the minimum wage, lowering the retirement age to 60 and pulling out of NATO. Glucksmann, 46, is an MEP and staunch supporter of bolstering Europe’s military power. He is also open to billions of euros worth of spending cuts to bring France’s messy public finances into line and believes the country’s contentious pension system should be rebuilt. Given those ideological fault lines, the tone of the contest has unsurprisingly descended into mudslinging. On his preferred communication outlet — his blog — Mélenchon has described Glucksmann as a “fanatic warmonger” and “the darling child of media vacuity.” Punching back on social media and in interviews, Glucksmann has called Mélenchon “a phony patriot who prefers the Kremlin’s spin” and has framed their showdown as a struggle for “a vision of democracy,” accusing the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party of rose-tinted views of authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing. PERIL IN THE POLLS Over recent weeks, poll after poll has suggested the far right could well have to face a leftist in a run-off in the spring of 2027. “There’s a solid prospect of having a left-wing candidate make the second round,” Lestrohan said. For Mélenchon or Glucksmann, reaching the run-off would be a huge moment. They would have a shot not only at taking the Elysée, but also at shaping the future of the French left — joining the likes of Jean Jaurès and François Mitterrand in the country’s pantheon of progressive icons. More likely for now, however, is the prospect of becoming the first presidential candidate in modern French history to lose to the far right. Neither looks on course to win a second round against the National Rally’s Bardella — seen as a probable runner because of a ban on Le Pen. . Mélenchon is a 74-year-old hardliner who has run for president three times, nearly making the runoff in 2022. | Jerome Gilles/Getty Images A year and a half ahead of the vote, Glucksmann appears to be a stronger second-round candidate. According to an Odoxa poll released last week he is seen as losing by a margin of 42 percent to 58 percent to Bardella, while Mélenchon is seen as losing in a 26 percent to 74 percent landslide. All prospective candidates from the center-right coalition currently in power look set to be wiped out in the first round, except for Édouard Philippe — President Emmanuel Macron’s first prime minister after his 2017 election — though his polling numbers have steadily declined over the past year. SUBSTANCE AND STRATEGY With radically different views come radically different strategies. Glucksmann is convinced the left can win by luring back moderates and former Socialists who ditched the party for Macron’s centrist movement in 2017. An Ipsos survey showed that Glucksmann managed to attract 17 percent of voters who had previously voted for Macron when he led a joint list with the center-left Socialist Party and finished a convincing third in the last European election in 2024. Mélenchon, meanwhile, believes the decisive votes lie in working-class urban areas where turnout is low, but where those who do cast ballots have rallied behind him en masse over the last several electoral cycles. True to his slow-and-steady philosophy — Mélenchon likes to call himself an “electoral turtle” and keeps figurines of the hard-shelled reptile in his office — he has increased his vote share in each Elysée run despite a cantankerous temper. Both approaches have their merits and shortcomings.  Mélenchon could be dragged down by his image as a divisive firebrand, Lestrohan said. “As for Raphaël Glucksmann, his vulnerability stems more from the fact that he is still relatively unknown, and that we do not yet know how capable he is of campaigning, promoting ideas, and, above all, asserting himself in the face of opposition,” said Lestrohan. That concern about Glucksmann has already begun to spread within the Socialist Party’s ranks. While the party backed the MEP in the last two European races, the idea of promoting a candidate from outside their party — Glucksmann leads his own political platform, Place Publique — has drawn skepticism from some Socialists. After a weeks-long media absence, Glucksmann reemerged into the public eye last month when he faced off in a debate with far-right former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. Glucksmann’s performance was widely viewed as a disappointment — including by Glucksmann himself, who acknowledged he “could have done better.” Raphael Glucksmann, 46, is an MEP and staunch supporter of bolstering Europe’s military power. | Laurent Coust/Getty Images “There’s a scenario in which this all turns into a nightmare,” a Socialist adviser opposed to Glucksmann’s candidacy, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “Glucksmann will get crushed by a political beast like Mélenchon. But there’s no chance Mélenchon can come out ahead against Bardella.” US VS. THEM Indeed, although Mélenchon enjoys the support of a loyal core, he garners the highest share of negative opinions of any French politician — even more than Macron — and is vilified by opponents, who accuse him of pushing antisemitic tropes in the context of his pro-Palestinian rhetoric and of defending extremist views. High-ranking members of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed have brushed off his weakness in recent polls, insisting their electorate only tends to mobilize later in campaigns and that the National Rally tends to lose support when the prospect of a far-right victory becomes concrete. “It is impossible to predict what will happen in the second round. Voters never want to decide on scenarios that do not suit them,” said France Unbowed lawmaker and national coordinator Manuel Bompard. “Only when the choice becomes mandatory” do actual voting intentions emerge, he added. Bompard and other party leaders point to last summer’s snap general election in France, which the National Rally was expected to win before finishing an underwhelming third as voters mobilized across party lines to block its path. Back in January 2012, when he launched his first presidential bid, Mélenchon predicted that “in the end, it’ll be between us and them,” with “them” being the far right. Danièle Obono, a prominent France Unbowed lawmaker, said that prophecy still looked likely to come true. “There’s an opposition between our left and the far right … it’s class warfare expressed through the ballot box. This is a moment when the people want a major shake-up that leaves space for either us [the hard left] or them [the far right],” Obono said. Glucksmann’s troops beg to differ. After the release of last week’s poll showing Bardella winning the presidential election, Aurélien Rousseau, a Place Publique lawmaker, took to X. “We knew it, but now it’s clear politically: the RN can win the presidential election,” he said. “On the left, the line held by [Glucksmann] is currently the only one capable of leading the fight.”

Left-wing European politicians are celebrating Wednesday morning after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral election. British Labour Party politician and London Mayor Sadiq Khan was among the first to congratulate Mamdani, saying: “New Yorkers faced a clear choice — between hope and fear — and just like we’ve seen in London — hope won.” The co-chair of The Left group in the European Parliament, French MEP Manon Aubry, also reacted with jubilation. “Faced with the media, economic and political establishment that spent tens of millions of dollars to block his path, he managed to turn the tables with radically concrete proposals […] and without ever turning a blind eye to racism and Gaza,” she said. Aubry and other European left-wing representatives, including a delegation from Germany’s The Left party, traveled to New York to learn lesson from the socialist wunderkind, who collected more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday. Aubry added: “I saw the power of his campaign in action, led by our allies in the Democratic Socialists of America, which created a real popular momentum and doubled the voter turnout.” Mamdani will be the first Muslim mayor of New York City, and — like London’s Khan — he has been verbally attacked by U.S. President Donald Trump, who suffered a bad night Tuesday with a string of Democratic election victories around the country. Green Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, a frequent foe of Hungary’s populist-nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, also congratulated Mamdani. “How familiar it feels when the central government threatens a candidate it dislikes by saying they won’t receive central support, and instead backs another so-called ‘opposition’ candidate,” he wrote in an Instagram post, in reference to Trump’s late endorsement of independent challenger Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state. The leader of Germany’s The Left, Heidi Reichinnek, expressed her delight by reposting Mamdani’s winning announcement reel in an Instagram story, adding “Good morning” and a heart emoji. 

PARIS — Zohran Mamdani’s rise from little-known New York state assemblyman to front-runner in the New York mayoral election has sparked a newfound sense of optimism among left-wing politicians in Europe ahead of their own local elections next year. Party strategists from across Europe are making the trek across the Atlantic to learn from the millennial who skyrocketed from anonymity to the precipice of the most important city in the United States (or the world, if you ask a New Yorker). They want to see if Mamdani’s grassroots campaign, which has been laser-focused on affordability issues, will work in their cities and regions as well as it did for him in New York’s Democratic Party primary — and potentially in Tuesday’s general election. Manon Aubry, the French co-chair of The Left group in the European Parliament — which gathers Europe’s democratic socialist, left-wing populist and some communist lawmakers — traveled to New York last week where she took part alongside Mamdani canvassers in the campaign’s final stretch. Aubry and her party, France Unbowed, see Mamdani as an example of how to bring about “radical change” as they look to make a splash in the municipal elections that will take place across France in 2026. Germany’s anti-capitalist party, The Left, sent four officials to the Big Apple to meet with officials including the Mamdani campaign’s chief of strategy, Morris Katz. Party Co-Chair Ines Schwerdtner and Maximilian Schirmer, co-chair of The Left’s Berlin branch, also paid a visit. Liza Pflaum, parliamentary office manager for The Left’s other co-chair, Jan van Aken, said she believed her party had exceeded expectations in Germany’s February federal election by using the same playbook as Mamdani: focusing on cost-of-living issues, courting small donors, and investing heavily in door-to-door volunteer operations. Pflaum expects The Left to use Mamdani’s current campaign as a model for her party’s approach to Berlin’s state legislative election next September. “[He] offers a concrete vision of how people’s lives can actually be improved,” she said. “You can feel it right away here in New York: People have begun to feel hope again.” PUNCHY BEATS BORING French and British politicians say they are particularly impressed with how Mamdani’s team has employed a media strategy leveraging their candidate’s charisma — especially the use of short social media clips to hammer home the affordability message while making him seem relatable. “[Mamdani] winning the Democratic primary is already a major political event, both because of what he ran on and how he ran it: His comms strategy, his use of social media. There’s a lot of things we’ve found inspiring,” said Danièle Obono, a France Unbowed lawmaker who will be hosting a livestream watch party for the election results along with other party leaders on Tuesday. Mothin Ali, deputy leader of the United Kingdom’s Greens, said British politicians tend to make “boring and simple” videos and that the left needed to perfect delivering sound bites in a “punchy” way like Mamdani. Manon Aubry and her party, France Unbowed, see Zohran Mamdani as an example of how to bring about “radical change” as they look to make a splash in the municipal elections that will take place across France in 2026. | Frederick Florin/Getty Images Mamdani’s likely triumph over the experienced but scandal-plagued Andrew Cuomo — the former New York governor who is running as an independent after being defeated by Mamdani in the Democratic primary — is also the latest example of more moderate parties being outflanked by more radical forces at both ends of the political spectrum. France Unbowed has established itself as a dominant force on the left in the decade after former Socialist President François Hollande’s single term ended in disappointment. But while France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has had strong showings in presidential races, the party has struggled to take control of local administrations and to prove it can govern on a radical platform — a gap it hopes to close in next year’s municipal elections. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls for the U.K. shows the Greens have climbed to 14 percent, just 4 percentage points behind Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. The latest Find Out Now poll, released last week, showed the Greens — boosted by new leader Zack Polanski’s brand of “eco-populism” — overtaking Labour for the first time. Germany’s The Left’s has continued to rise gradually since its surprise showing in February and the party is now in a stronger position, polling shows, to challenge its moderate rivals, the Greens and the Social Democrats. The Greens candidate for Paris mayor, David Belliard, said Mamdani’s success in appealing to voters worried about the cost of living, an issue plaguing Parisians as well as New Yorkers, had confirmed his suspicion that his party needed to run a more progressive campaign after spending more than two decades as a junior coalition partner to center-left mayors in the French capital who have done more to make the city greener than cheaper. “We’ve spent a lot of time fighting against the end of the world, but maybe not enough helping people make it to the end of the month,” Belliard said. Victor Goury-Laffont reported from Paris, Nette Nöstlinger from Berlin and Martin Alfonsin Larsen from London.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Ein Gespräch zwischen Beton, Brücke und Bundeskanzleramt: Gordon Repinski trifft Jens Spahn zum Spaziergang durch das Berliner Regierungsviertel und spricht mit dem Unions-Fraktionschef über das Koalitionsklima, den Kanzler und wie sich Deutschland in einer Moll-Stimmung befindet. Spahn erklärt, warum der „linke Empörungszirkus“ über die Stadtbilddebatte für ihn Symbol ist, wie Union und SPD gemeinsam das Land stabilisieren sollen und weshalb für ihn „Mitte rechts“ nicht dasselbe ist wie „rechts der Mitte“. Er spricht über Migration, Rentenpolitik, Wirtschaftswachstum – und darüber, warum das Land wieder Zuversicht braucht. Es geht zu dem um Spahns Verhältnis zu Friedrich Merz, den inneren Frieden mit alten Ambitionen, seine Sicht auf die AfD und seine Haltung zu Trump und den Republikanern. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music French President Emmanuel Macron has gone from “Mr. Europe” eight years ago to the solitary man by the Seine. At the same time, ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s legacy is also going through a sudden and sharp downgrade. How did these centrist pillars of Europe tank so quickly? With parties on the far right and far left rising up in their place, are citizens actually becoming more extreme — or are they just fed up? To discuss these questions, host Sarah Wheaton was joined by John Kampfner — an expert on Germany, Nick Vinocour — our chief foreign affairs correspondent, and Clea Caulcutt — our senior correspondent in Paris. Plus, we dive into the alleged espionage scandal facing Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi.

BRUSSELS ― The far-right Patriots for Europe is taking legal action after the European Parliament suspended access to millions of euros in public funds over alleged misspending. In two separate cases, the Patriots party is contesting rulings by the Parliament and the EU’s party watchdog that resulted in it losing access to more than €4 million in funds, arguing the decisions were illegitimate and the product of bias and lack of impartiality. The far-right political family, home to France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, has consistently complained of being sidelined from EU policymaking and key positions of power since the 2024 European elections, where it surged to become the third-largest group in Parliament. Mainstream politicians have kept the Patriots at arm’s length under the so-called cordon sanitaire — an informal pact to avoid cooperation with factions on the far right and far left. Now, the Patriots are also accusing EU officials of sabotaging their access to public cash earmarked for political parties. “There is a problem with certain agents of the administration of the Parliament,” said Belgian MEP Gerolf Annemans, honorary president of the Patriots party. The Patriots scored its first win on Wednesday when the European Court of Justice annulled a sanction by the party watchdog, the APPF, which had required the party to pay a €47,000 fine. The sanction came after the party wrongly referred to one of its lawmakers as being part of its board in a social media post, which the APPF took as a sign the party had lied in its entry to the authority’s register — a serious offense that could lead to all public funding for the party being withheld. The APPF ruling enabled the European Parliament to cut the Patriots party off from accessing €4 million of EU funding in 2023, documents obtained by POLITICO show. That meant a substantial cut to the party’s available budget for the 2024 elections — where other European political parties carried their 2023 funds over for the following year. Wednesday’s court ruling will allow the Patriots to try to claim part of these funds back — and will likely bolster the party’s claims of bias from the Parliament’s administration. EQUAL TREATMENT In a separate lawsuit filed mid-July, the Patriots accused the Parliament of bias and lack of impartiality after it ruled the party had misspent funds in a campaign in Czechia. The Parliament’s Bureau, composed of MEPs and tasked with taking decisions on administrative issues, ruled the Patriots should pay for that campaign with their own money and give back the EU funds spent on it, which came to €228,000. The decision violated “the principles of equal treatment and non-discrimination, as it deemed similar campaigns by other parties to be reimbursable,” the Patriot’s case document, seen by POLITICO, read. The far-right political family, home to France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, has consistently complained of being sidelined from EU policymaking and key positions of power since the 2024 European elections. | Wojtek Radwanski/Getty Images They also argue that the decision was not impartial, as the Bureau is composed mostly of center-right, liberal and left-wing lawmakers, with no far-right MEPs from the Patriots present to defend the case. On top of that, they contend the Parliament violated their rights to defense as it censored big chunks of the letter the Patriots had sent to the bureau to defend themselves. In the first version of the letter, the Patriots compared their campaign with that of another EU party. In the letter that the administration circulated in the bureau, the justification was redacted. ‘VERY GOOD LAWYERS’ The Parliament refused to comment on the ongoing judicial proceedings. The APPF “remains committed to protecting integrity of European democracy” in accordance with its obligations under EU law, it said after the ruling. These two lawsuits follow threats of a separate challenge from the Patriots group — a distinct legal entity from the Patriots party, which represents the far-right camp in Parliament. At the beginning of September, the Parliament’s budgetary control committee recommended the administration seek the reimbursement of €4.3 million from the group in reparations for alleged misspending by the now-defunct far-right Identity and Democracy. The ID group dissolved in the summer of 2024, with many of its members and staff joining the new Patriots. “We will fight it in court if necessary,” said a Patriots group official, granted anonymity to speak about sensitive matters. “We have very good lawyers, and we are sure we are right.”

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s escape route out of the political and economic crisis gripping France now looks almost impossibly narrow. On Monday, his key ally Prime Minister François Bayrou was toppled in a bloodbath of a no-confidence vote, with 364 lawmakers voting to oust him and only 194 coming out in support. Macron’s office promptly said he would move in “the next few days” to appoint the country’s fifth prime minister in less than two years, but there are grave doubts that the new appointee will prove any more successful than Bayrou in forcing through the tens of billions of euros of budget cuts needed to save the EU’s second-biggest economy from a ballooning debt crisis. Macron is now squarely in the line of public fire, ahead of threats of a national shutdown on Sept. 10 and major protests planned by trade unions on Sept. 18. The president’s popularity has dropped to an all-time low, with polls showing he is more unpopular today than at the peak of the Yellow Vest protests in 2018 and 2019, one of the gravest crises of his tenure. Ever confident in his ability to wriggle, Houdini-like, out of the worst of tangles, Macron is still holding out for a deal with the moderate left, the centrists and the conservative Les Républicains party to form a minority government that can finally reach an agreement over the budget. But Macron is almost certainly clutching at straws in a country that looks increasingly ungovernable. The scale of Bayrou’s defeat in parliament on Monday and the signals emerging from lawmakers already suggest his efforts are doomed from the outset. MACRON TRIES TO HOLD THE CENTER During a day of high drama in parliament, opposition parties rounded on Macron as the protagonist responsible for the stalemate engulfing France. “There is only one person responsible for the crisis, for the fiasco and instability, it’s the president of the Republic,” said Boris Vallaud, the Socialist Party’s parliamentary leader. Communist parliamentary leader Stéphane Peu likened the crisis to “Saving Private Ryan” with Bayrou being “the fourth prime minister to fall to save President Macron.” After the vote, many called for Macron to step down. “The president doesn’t want to change his policies? Well, we’ll have to change president,” said Mathilde Panot, parliamentary head of the far-left France Unbowed party. Macron faces an intense challenge in keeping the center together, while the far-right National Rally — the party that tops the polls — and the far left are on an anti-establishment blitz, threatening to bring down any future administrations that slash public spending. Consolidating the middle ground is difficult because the center-left Socialists and center-right Les Républicains disagree fundamentally on economic policy aims, despite growing fears that France’s inability to put its books in order could ultimately put a strain on the EU’s finances. ALL EYES ON THE SOCIALISTS In his valedictory speech before the National Assembly, Bayrou warned against complacency about the depths of France’s financial mess, saying the nation suffers from a “life-threatening” level of debt. “You have the power to overthrow the government” but not “to erase reality,” he told lawmakers. In his valedictory speech before the National Assembly, François Bayrou warned against complacency about the depths of France’s financial mess, saying the nation suffers from a “life-threatening” level of debt. | Yoan Valat/EPA But very quickly, opposition leaders were already looking to the post-Bayrou scenarios. Sensing an opportunity for the left, the Socialist Vallaud called on the liberal President Macron to “do his duty” and appoint a prime minister from their ranks. “We are ready, come and get us,” he said. He touted “another path” for France that would include what he described as a fairer tax policy, and said the Socialists would row back on Bayrou’s proposed cancellation of two bank holidays. By Monday evening, all sorts of scenarios involving the Socialist Party were being floated. These included a grand coalition running from the conservatives to the Socialists (which is the least likely) and a non-aggression pact that would see the Socialists refraining from toppling a center-right government, led by a left-leaning centrist, in exchange for budget concessions. Also being discussed is a similar arrangement with Les Républicains, which would see the latter refrain from toppling a government from the left in return for concessions on the budget. THE LEFT-RIGHT TIGHTROPE Theoretically, a government backed by both the Socialists and Les Républicains would have wider support in parliament than Bayrou’s outgoing center-right government. But why would the Socialists and Les Républicains — generally at daggers drawn — actually work together? There is a glimmer of a chance that they might see it makes sense to compromise now to keep their parliamentary seats rather than push France into more chaos and risk losing them in a snap election. In reality, though, the risks of failure are high. Laurent Wauquiez, Les Républicains’ parliamentary leader, warned on Monday his party would not support a Socialist government that is too deeply inspired by other more radical left-wing parties with which they stood in last year’s election, as part of a pan-leftist grouping called the New Popular Front. “We would never accept the nefarious political platform of the New Popular Front,” said Wauquiez. “And that obviously applies to any Socialist government that carries the ideas of the New Popular Front.” Additionally, with local elections set for March 2026, no opposition parties will really want to ally themselves with a president surround by an aura of fin de règne. And even if the party top brass in the center parties agreed to cooperate on a budget, there is no guarantee the rank and file lawmakers would follow. Take the Bayrou vote as an example. On Monday, Les Républicains, were conspicuously divided on the no-confidence vote, with 27 voting to support Bayrou and 13 against, despite calls from Les Républicains’ head and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to back the government. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen also cast doubt on Macron’s ability to hold the center, and to get any left-right alliance to agree on a budget. The only option, as she saw it, was to call an election. “Dissolving parliament will not be option, but an obligation,” she said. But that election would also probably do little to heal the divisions at the heart of the crippling national impasse.

BERLIN — A highly emotional clash over the appointment of a judge to Germany’s top court has exposed widening fissures inside conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s young coalition government. The spat, involving a questionable plagiarism allegation and a passionate debate on abortion, threatens to undermine Merz’s centrist coalition just two months after the chancellor took office. “It is not a good day for democracy in our country,” Dirk Wiese, deputy leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party parliamentary group, said on Friday regarding the clash. Merz’s conservative bloc refused to support Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a judge nominated by his coalition partners, the SPD, citing a fresh accusation that she plagiarized her doctoral dissertation in 1997. Left-wing politicians say the plagiarism accusation is spurious, and the real reason for conservative opposition to the judge is her relatively progressive stance on abortion. A parliamentary vote on Brosius-Gersdorf’s appointment, planned for Friday, was postponed after conservatives asked the SPD to withdraw the judge from consideration. SPD politicians reacted with outrage. “We are witnessing how a highly qualified candidate with an impeccable career and broad professional recognition is the victim of a smear campaign that is unfounded,” Wiese, the SPD lawmaker, said. Six conservative politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity this week, told POLITICO they were among two or three dozen lawmakers that planned to oppose Brosius-Gersdorf because of her views on abortion. Leading figures in Merz’s conservative bloc attempted to convince these lawmakers to drop their opposition in recent days, but failed, according to the parliamentarians. The conflict underscores not only emerging divides inside the coalition, but its relative fragility given the government’s weak parliamentary majority and the rise of radical parties. The popularity of far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the second-biggest party in Germany’s Bundestag, means Merz’s centrist coalition controls only 52 percent of parliamentary seats, making it particularly vulnerable to even small disputes and defections within the rank-and-file. Because the appointment of constitutional court judges requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority in a secret ballot, it also means the coalition needs to rely on votes from the AfD or The Left, a far-left party popular among many young voters, to appoint new judges to the top court. ‘PLAGIARISM HUNTER’ While the parliament was set to vote on three judges today, it was the dispute over SPD nominee Brosius-Gersdorf that deeply divided the coalition. Abortion in Germany is technically illegal, but is tolerated within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy on the condition that women seek counseling. Brosius-Gersdorf had developed a legal framework for decriminalizing abortion, leading some conservatives to oppose her nomination. Still, conservatives speaking publicly suggested the true reason is the plagiarism accusation. “The election of a judge to the federal constitutional court should not be the subject of a heated political debate,” Steffen Bilger, a member of the conservatives’ parliamentary leadership, said Friday. “An essential prerequisite for calming such a situation is that the respective candidates for the office … are beyond any professional doubt. In our view, this is no longer completely the case.” The plagiarism allegation, however, is also drawing intense scrutiny. The allegation surfaced the night before the planned vote on Brosius-Gersdorf, appearing on the website of Stefan Weber, who is referred to in Germany as the “plagiarism hunter.” In the past, Weber made similar plagiarism accusations against prominent Green politicians Annalena Baerbock, the former foreign minister, and Robert Habeck, the former economy minister. In this case, Weber admitted that he wasn’t exactly sure whether the plagiarism allegation involved the dissertation of judge, Brosius-Gersdorf, or that of her husband, who finished his dissertation the same year. “We don’t know that yet,” Weber told German tabloid Bild. “That’s the sticking point. Both works were completed almost simultaneously in 1997.” Asked why he published the allegation the night before the parliamentary vote on the judge, Weber replied: “Since Baerbock in 2021, we have always done this before elections when we scrutinize candidates. This is the first time that it is not a voter election, but a vote by politicians.”

LONDON — A headache for Labour, a “nightmare” for the Greens — and an open goal for Nigel Farage. Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana may be about to hand Reform UK the gift it’s been waiting for. Last week, Sultana, a suspended left-wing Labour member of parliament with a huge online following, dropped the news on social platform X that she plans to co-lead a new party with the former Labour leader, pitching themselves on full-blooded socialism and opposition to the war in Gaza. When the announcement was made, Reform figures were spotted cheering at a Westminster party — arguing it would slice 10 percent off Labour’s vote share.  They don’t appear to be wrong. Nine percent of Labour’s current supporters say they would vote for this new party if an election were held tomorrow and the pair were on the ballot, according to polling for More in Common shared with POLITICO. The data for the progressive polling think tank shows the new party could earn 8 percent of the vote, with Labour’s vote share subsequently dropping by 3 points — from 25 to 22 percent. “Reform are crowing about it, because they are assuming that this kind of party could be the sort of flip side to what they did to the Conservatives,” said Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “Now they’re assuming that a party like this would split the Labour vote and let them in.”  Speaking to POLITICO, Reform’s former chairman and new government efficiency chief, Zia Yusuf, was in a bullish mood. “What’s happened to the Tories between the years 2018 to 2024 is now happening to Labour on five times fast-forward,” he said. The timing is awkward for Labour. Keir Starmer’s government is still reeling from its most bruising few weeks in office: a full-scale backbench mutiny leading to a gutted welfare bill and a fresh black hole in the party’s spending plans. “Keir Starmer has flip-flopped all over the place,” said Yusuf. “He doesn’t really stand for anything. One cannot reasonably argue that Jeremy Corbyn does not believe in the things that he’s saying, and in the modern age of politics, I don’t think that has ever been more important.”  THE MAN DOES HAVE FANS While he led Labour to a catastrophic election defeat in 2019, Corbyn’s cult status is hard to dispute. As leader, the lifelong left-winger’s name echoed from student bars to festival stages — chanted to the tune of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Today, he’s amassed 222,500 followers on TikTok. Sultana has racked up around 477,800 — both comfortably outpacing Starmer’s ghost-town social media presence — if still far behind right-wing populist Farage’s 1.3 million-strong online army.  “If you were to ask the average voter in the street to name three politicians, they probably would name Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn, and one other,” said Ford. “So he’s a big name.” Yusuf is no fan of Corbyn’s “socialist bordering on communist” policies — but Reform are rubbing their hands with glee at a potential split on the left. The former Reform chairman said Corbyn in charge is “a horrendous idea for Britain.”  “But the man does have fans,” Yusuf added. “He’s a formidable politician — far more formidable than Keir Starmer.”  It all adds up to another “organizational headache” for Labour said Ford, because the government party will have to defend flanks on both sides. Whereas Reform might be winning over disillusioned Red Wall voters in smaller towns, the Corbyn-Sultana duo could pick off the young, urban left —including students, ethnic minorities and Gaza independents.  To hold that coalition together, Starmer may need to move left on foreign policy or go big on wealth redistribution — but at the risk of driving moderate swing voters straight into Farage’s arms. Keir Starmer’s government is still reeling from its most bruising few weeks in office. | Pool Photo by Carlos Jasso via EPA “The party in government is going to be yanked in three or four directions at once,” he explained. “Of course, that’s delightful for Nigel Farage, because he isn’t facing a similar problem. He knows which bit of the space he’s trying to occupy.” But those on Labour’s moderate wing believe Starmer’s government will hold the line — and has no intention of repeating past mistakes. Luke Akehurst, MP for North Durham and a prominent Corbyn critic, said appealing to the far left would be “madness” and “the quick route to electoral oblivion.” “You can’t win a general election on a manifesto that’s about being responsible and center-left and then go, ‘Oh, just because this ex-leader you all hated who then lost us a general election disastrously and we’ve announced as persona non grata because of their proximity to the antisemitism scandal — because he’s got 10 percent of the vote — we’re therefore going to totally change positioning,'” he told POLITICO. Instead, he argued, Labour’s best bet is to keep reaching those “sat to our right, who are generally distributed a lot more in the marginal seats that we need to win a general election.” THUNDER STOLEN  If Labour’s pain is real, spare a thought for the Greens.  More in Common’s polling found the leftist party would likely see the biggest losses, with 26 percent of their current voters saying they would vote for Sultana and Corbyn’s new party.  “Many of the voters most likely to be drawn to a Corbyn-led party have already made the jump to the Greens,” explained Louis O’Geran, research associate at More in Common. “That’s why, in this scenario, the Greens — not Labour — would likely lose the most ground.” “It’s a bloody nightmare for the Greens,” said Ford. The party just chalked up its best-ever general election result and received a series of strong local election results. Although they have capitalized on Labour’s drift to the center, suddenly they’re staring down a big-name rival for that same disaffected left. “It’s like you were some sort of indie rock band and you were about to get your first big stadium gig — and then Oasis announced they’re going to play the same night right next door,” said Ford. “Corbyn is the big name — he’s the stadium rock act of the progressive left.”  Reform’s Yusuf added that “most people in this country couldn’t name who the party leader of the Green Party is, with all due respect to them, but most people can obviously name Jeremy Corbyn.” The Greens’ current co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, is sounding up for the fight. | Tolga Akmen/EPA The Greens’ current co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, is sounding up for the fight. He dismisses Corbyn and Sultana’s project as “an idea” that might go nowhere.  “It’s very hard to build a new party from scratch, and the Green Party has got a well-established infrastructure, which we’ve built up over a long period of time,” he said. Ramsay took the opportunity to pitch to Labour deserters, saying “come behind the Green Party, because we’re the ones challenging Labour.”  Still, some see room for a pact. Ford suggested that Corbyn and Sultana could cover the more populist end of the left, leaving the Greens to mop up the rest. “There’s no particular reason why they can’t work out their differences and divide the cake up between them,” he said.  Zack Polanski, who running in the Greens leadership race, seemed to indicate he’s open to such an idea, posting on X that “anyone who wants to take on the Tories, Reform and this failing Labour government is a friend of mine.”  Speaking to POLITICO, Polanski said he’s open to working “with anyone who shares [his] values and the Green Party’s values of environmental, social, racial and economic justice” — but said the party does not have “time for steering groups and management meetings and governance processes of new parties — the Green Party exists and is growing.”