It is rarely an auspicious occasion when a White House press secretary becomes the subject of headlines. But, by attempting the simple act of uttering words that is exactly what unfolded when Katie Zacharia stepped up to the podium on October 13 for her very first briefing. The appearance by the former conservative political commentator drew widespread ridicule, adding to the already existing charges that Zacharia’s resume was much too thin for someone occupying the president’s most visible communications’ role. But watching her take the podium, it was instantly evident that Zacharia had met the more unspoken but essential qualifications for landing a high-ranking position within the Trump administration. In other words, she had mastered the look: long barrel blond curls, severe makeup, aggressively high heels. Some on social media even marveled at how much Zacharia appeared to resemble the president’s daughter, Ivanka, with whom Trump has long appeared to be infatuated. > It’s against this trail of bad hair extensions, used-up Botox needles, and > crusty fake lashes that a familiar question returns to me: “What happens to > the self when surgery is embraced for the purpose of political conformity, > consciously or otherwise?” As with other members of Trump’s top brass, male and female alike, it is unclear if Zacharia has undergone the cosmetic procedures that have become central to the reigning aesthetics of Mar-a-Lago face. Her predecessor, Karoline Leavitt, certainly appeared to have done so in preparation for high-profile magazine shoots. Yet, one can easily imagine Zacharia strategically amplifying the MAGA aesthetic during the weeks of auditioning, when, in hopes of replacing Leavitt, she reportedly cross-referenced the president’s public schedule to book her TV spots, just to make sure that Trump would be watching. Clearly, it worked: On October 9, after weeks of these logistical gymnastics, Trump named Zacharia to the post. But the same White House briefing that exposed his new press secretary’s near-total incompetence also underscored the apparent limitations of this aesthetic in helping to keep one’s job. “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” Zacharia told reporters, referring to the embattled US ambassador to Greece amid an increasingly widening grifting scandal. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.” The unceremonious ouster marked quite the downfall, considering Guilfoyle’s MAGA credentials, and the fact that her erstwhile romance with Don Jr. meant that she almost became the president’s daughter-in-law. It also added to the growing list of women, once heralded by the right for “blazing a trail to empowerment” with their occupation of top roles, who have either been discarded or somehow convinced to leave the Trump administration: Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, just to name a few. Curiously, the men in Trump’s administration who have attracted the same, if not more, unflattering headlines of apparent corruption, drunkenness, and generally abhorrent conduct have remained effectively unscathed. All of which points to a major theme: Aesthetics may serve as a key entry point to power in the Trump administration. But they take a backseat to the inherent misogyny that animates every corner of the same administration—starting with the top. Against this trail of bad hair extensions, empty syringes, and crusty fake lashes, a familiar question returns to me: “What happens to the self when surgery is embraced, consciously or otherwise, for the purpose of political conformity?” Do the subjects register regret, or are they happy with what they see in the mirror? It’s impossible, of course, to know the inner lives of women like Guilfoyle and Noem. But last week, it seemed notable that, just as Guilfoyle’s ever-expanding scandals were seizing headlines, two older Republican women in Trump’s outer rings of orbit attracted their own derision for their apparent physical transformations. As I wrote in March of last year, I’m far from immune to what must be similar pressures when it comes to trying to maintain the look of youth. Still, it’s hard not to see the ridicule of these conservative women as a foreshadowing for the women who have adopted the look favored by a political movement to gain purchase in the president’s inner circle. As Zacharia stumbles, humiliating herself and the White House despite having won Trump’s gaze, it feels as though it is only a matter of time before we watch another MAGA woman get canned. In the end, the real winner in this group always seems to be pervasive misogyny.

DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe’s de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week. Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world’s biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks. But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers’ AI Counter Summit, as Ireland’s tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society. Ireland’s lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country’s fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future.   There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google.   “I do think what we will see is that parts of roles will be automated, which means that people will be competing more heavily for the same roles,” she said. “They won’t have the same labor power and therefore we’re going to see a drop in quality of work, we’re going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.” The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world’s tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI. RISE IN LAYOFFS Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023.   In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it’s jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO.  He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions. “The tech industry was founded on the idea that it would never have a union, because they’re making people rich, and treat them really well,” Bohan said.  “But post-Covid, workforce adjustments happened again and again, with layoffs and declining conditions in the sector. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.”   The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI.   Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country’s statistics institute. Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people.   Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.   A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers.   The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries.   Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net. One tech worker who used to work in trust and safety at a big tech firm told POLITICO that there used to be a feeling that as a “pampered” tech worker you “can’t ask for your rights, because you already have it so much better.”  But as layoffs continue and teams get leaner, workers in fields like trust and safety “now have to deal with these issues with fewer and fewer resources”, and face a “constant threat of being chopped,” the worker said.   That’s causing an “undoing of a certain perspective that we have of ourselves as tech sector workers,” they said, “because of undeniable experiences that now put us in situations where we clearly see our rights being violated, even if we may have it so much or somewhat better than most people.”  A different tech worker who currently works for Covalen told POLITICO that there is a sense that “if they believe they can replace you with AI, they will do that.”   “All these Big Tech firms only care about profit, and what I have realized is the Irish government protects that Big Tech capital [rather than workers],” the Covalen worker said. “But the question is, what’s the government going to do when the tech bros change their mind and move elsewhere?”   WORKERS AT THE CENTER The speaker list at this week’s AI summit was a flex of the country’s strength as a tech hub, as top names from the world’s biggest companies like Google and Microsoft took to the stage. Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, head of organizing and campaigning at Ireland’s Communications Workers’ Union (DATA’s parent union), was the only union voice on the line-up. “The fact that 36 executives and industry bosses featured on the program, compared with just one trade union speaker — invited at the last minute after attention was drawn to the absence of workers’ voices — says a lot about the value the Irish government places on AI’s impact on workers,” she told POLITICO. “The reality is that a meaningful conversation about AI’s future can only happen through genuine engagement with workers and collective bargaining,” Ní Bhrógáin added. “Without that voice, we risk deepening mistrust and resistance rather than creating the conditions for workers to shape these changes collectively.” DATA organized its counter-AI summit the previous weekend, to put “workers at the center of the debate about power, AI, technology and the future of work.”  The event cut through the “hype and futurism of politicians and industry figures to focus on the real present harms faced by ordinary workers and communities,” DATA’s Bohan said.   The union is pushing for stronger legal protections for tech workers caught up in AI-driven layoffs in Ireland, including making it mandatory for employers to recognize unions during collective bargaining. It is also calling for a ban on cooling-off clauses that prevent laid-off workers from moving between Big Tech subcontractors.   A spokesperson for Ireland’s department for enterprise told POLITICO in a written statement that the government is “committed to strengthening collective bargaining and industrial relations” and has published an action plan to do so between now and 2030.   They said that employers already have to comply with obligations under Irish employment law, including consultation and notification procedures for collective redundancies, and workers who feel those rules have been broken can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission.  Firefighting to future-proofing  Naoise Ó Cearúil, a center-right Fianna Fáil lawmaker who chairs the AI committee, pointed out that while there have been high-profile job cuts in Ireland’s tech sector, “the actual net is that there has been an increase [in jobs], particularly over the past year and even five years.”  According to Ireland’s central statistics office, total employment in tech and related sectors surpassed 177,000 in the second quarter of this year, up from around 144,000 at the same time in 2021.   Ó Cearúil pointed out that many job losses were in trust and safety jobs like content moderation that are “very difficult mentally,” and now tech firms are able to “utilize AI and software to be able to do a lot of detection, rather than using humans.”   He has called for a national program to be established, to support workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI and automation.   A spokesperson for Ireland’s department of enterprise acknowledged that the country’s tech sector has “experienced significant adjustment in recent years,” but said the changes were generally part of wider global restructuring “rather than reflecting any Ireland-specific weakness.”  They said the Irish government is currently focused on “ensuring workers and businesses are equipped to adapt to technological change through investment in education, training, lifelong learning and digital skills.”  

BRUSSELS — France and Germany said Friday they had struck a deal to favor European-made cars under a landmark EU industry bill in exchange for weakening a 2035 vehicle emissions target, ending months of wrangling between the bloc’s two biggest economies. Under the agreement, Germany would accept stricter “Made in Europe” — or local content — requirements for the automotive industry in the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, a longstanding French demand, while France would back Berlin’s push to relax the EU’s plan to phase out new combustion-engine cars. The EU’s current target is for companies to reduce emissions from new vehicles by 100% from 2021 levels by 2035, with the possibility to “earn” 10% of emissions leeway through initiatives like offsets and investments. France and Germany now want to soften the 2035 target to 90% but without having  to offer investments in alternative fuels to compensate the remaining 10%, as proposed by the European Commission. “This balanced approach will enable the European Union to pursue its climate objectives while strengthening the technological sovereignty, industrial base and international competitiveness of its automotive industry,” the two countries said in a joint statement. The agreement, first reported by POLITICO in July, was due to have been announced Thursday, during a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. But it was held up at the last minute by disagreements within Germany’s governing coalition. “We hope that this Franco-German dynamic can swiftly lead to an agreement with our partners, for our jobs and our industry,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on social media. An Elysée official on Friday made clear that, under the Franco-German deal, the scope of Made in Europe for automotive can be extended to the U.K. and Switzerland under certain conditions. — addressing a key concern of Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government ahead of a Nov. 20 U.K.-EU summit in Brussels. The agreement was reached after the German Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, dropped its opposition. “This is a modern realignment of German industrial policy that places significantly greater emphasis on preserving jobs and production sites,” said German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, who is from the SPD. “The clear expectation for German companies is that they will use these new opportunities to make investments and guarantee jobs here in Germany,” he added. CORRECTION: This article was updated on Oct. 16 after an earlier version misrepresented the figures in the Franco-German proposal on the softening of 2035 targets.

Spain’s youth minister has intensified Madrid’s clash with Big Tech after suggesting the country may need to curb — or even ban — access to Elon Musk’s social media platform X due to the “flagrant violations of fundamental rights” taking place there. Speaking Wednesday at a digital activism event in Barcelona, Sira Rego, a United Left politician in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s governing coalition, said “the next battle would have to be oriented to limit and probably ban Twitter [X]” because the platform has become “a space in which we are seeing flagrant violations of fundamental rights.” Rego flagged controversies including sexual deepfake images generated by X’s AI chatbot Grok. Rego called the current digital space “undemocratic” and controlled by “a few digital strongmen,” framing possible limits on X as part of a broader push to reclaim sovereignty from powerful tech giants. Her push underscores how Europe’s struggle to police the digital public square is accelerating, with Spain increasingly at the center. The comments come as Sánchez advances plans to bar under-16s from social media, a proposal expected to reach the Council of Ministers next week. Big Tech isn’t happy. X boss Elon Musk has branded Sánchez a “tyrant,” while Telegram founder Pavel Durov warned that “Pedro Sánchez’s government is pushing dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms … [and] could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the guise of ‘protection’.” He added that the measures risk mass data collection and censorship. The clash lands amid a broader transatlantic fight over tech rules. U.S. lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday blasted Europe’s Digital Services Act as “draconian,” while several EU countries, including France, Greece, Denmark and Italy, are pursuing their own youth access restrictions. Australia has already enacted a ban.

Donald Trump has aborted his threat to take Greenland by force but online the war is just getting started. The United States president in January shocked Europe with threats of tariffs to support his right to own Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Danish kingdom. While the intensity of those threats has subsided for now, Danish and European officials say the small island remains vulnerable to the power wielded by the U.S. administration online. With a population of under 60,000, the tiniest drop of misinformation can spread quickly and significantly affect public opinion — especially when the false narrative is coming not from anonymous Russian troll farms but from the most powerful politician in the Western world. “Greenland is a target of influence campaigns of various kinds,” Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told POLITICO, with one goal of such campaigns “to create division in the relationship between Denmark and Greenland.” In the last year disinformation has increased in Greenland, said Thomas Hedin, editor-in-chief of Danish fact-checker TjekDet. While the influx has lacked any “structured campaign,” including from Russia, Hedin cited as an example of disinformation the idea that the U.S. could buy Greenland — a message repeated by Trump but that is impossible under the Danish constitution, Hedin said. The fact that Greenland is not part of the EU means that the bloc’s social media law — which obliges platforms to consider and mitigate threats of misinformation to civic discourse — does not apply to Greenland, Denmark’s digital ministry told POLITICO.  While polls show that Greenlandic people still favor integration with Europe, German Greens lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky said the EU needs to prepare for a “new type of hybrid confrontation” over the island. “It’s no more combatting Russian trolls trying to hack the system. If pointed at the EU and Greenland, the disinformation campaigns on U.S. platforms become the system,” he said. RIPE FOR EXPLOITATION The relationship between Denmark and Greenland is particularly ripe for exploitation, said Signe Ravn-Højgaard, co-founder and CEO of Denmark-based Digital Infrastructure Think Tank, who conducted an analysis on the misinformation landscape in Greenland.   With a population the size of a Brussels municipality, news travels fast in Greenland and there are few media outlets that can debunk information. Most people rely on Facebook, said Ravn-Højgaard. With only a few shares, a fake news story can reach the entire population.   “It’s completely different from how it is in Denmark,” she said. If in a city of 20,000 people, 5,000 people believe something false, “it’s not a danger to the democracy of Denmark.” But in Greenland, “that would firstly, quickly spread to everyone, and secondly, it’s a large percentage of the population,” she said.   Organized foreign interference campaigns haven’t appeared in Greenland yet, according to two researchers that POLITICO spoke to, but misinformation has been spreading. Two members of the Greenlandic government, Fisheries Minister Peter Borg and Labour Minister Aqqaluaq Egede, pleaded with the public to “stand in unity” on social media in the face of threats from the U.S.   EU lawmakers have also sounded the alarm. Greens lawmaker Alexandra Geese said to “expect influence operations using state-of-the-art propaganda campaigns as well as hate and harassment campaigns against political figures in Greenland and Denmark.” TRANSPARENCY While Denmark said it has no legal obligation to enforce the bloc’s platform law, the Digital Services Act, on Greenland territory, several lawmakers say that should change. Geese said that the EU should enforce the law, “making sure algorithms respect users’ choices rather than acting in the interest of the same tech oligarchs who are investing in Greenland’s minerals.” That’s despite the fact that the EU has struggled to show tangible results elsewhere so far. The European Commission hasn’t concluded any of its investigations on risks to elections and civic discourse despite having probes open on four platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and X. As well as getting platforms to make changes to their systems, the DSA could also help bring transparency to the online ecosystem. The law requires platforms to be transparent about paid ads and data — something Greenland is lacking, said Ravn-Højgaard. Ravn-Højgaard cited paid ads that ran on Facebook ahead of the territory’s election in March 2025, which were not available on the platform’s transparency database. Lagodinsky said the EU should set up an “ad hoc expert group explicitly focused on Greenland.” Brussels should also increase support to fact-checking networks and civil society organizations, he said, similar to the support offered in countries like Moldova and Ukraine.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Tuesday his government will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. “Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” Sánchez said during an address to the plenary session of the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.” The proposed ban, which is set to be approved by the country’s Council of Ministers next week, will amend a draft bill currently being debated in the Spanish parliament. Whereas the current version of the legislation seeks to restrict access to social media to users aged 16 and older, the new amendment would expressly prohibit minors from registering on platforms. Spain joins a growing chorus of European countries hardening their approach to restricting kids online. Denmark announced plans for a ban on under-15’s last fall, and the French government is pushing to have a similar ban in place as soon as September. In Portugal, the governing center-right Social Democratic Party on Monday submitted draft legislation that would require under-16’s to obtain parental consent to access social media. Spain’s ban is included in a wider package of measures that Sánchez argued are necessary to “regain control” of the digital space. “Governments must stop turning a blind eye to the toxic content being shared,” he said. That includes a legislative proposal to hold social media executives legally accountable for the illegal content shared on their platforms, with a new tool to track the spread of disinformation, hate speech or child pornography on social networks. It also proposes criminalizing the manipulation of algorithms and amplification of illegal content. “We will investigate platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said, adding that “spreading hate must come at a cost — a legal cost, as well as an economic and ethical cost — that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.” The EU’s Digital Services Act requires platforms to mitigate risks from online content. The European Commission works “hand in hand” with EU countries on protections for kids online and the enforcement of these measures “towards the very large platforms is the responsibility of the Commission,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Tuesday when asked about Sánchez’s announcement. The EU executive in December imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with transparency obligations, and a probe into the platform’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and disinformation is ongoing.

French authorities searched Elon Musk’s social media platform X’s French offices on Tuesday as part of a criminal investigation into its Grok AI chatbot, the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a post on X. France opened an investigation last month following the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok on X, following up on a previous probe into the chatbot’s antisemitic outbursts over the summer. Owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned for “voluntary interviews” on Apr. 20, the prosecutor’s office said in a press release. “At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, insofar as it operates within the national territory,” it said. A recent study estimated that Grok could have produced up to three million sexualized images in 11 days in January, including 23,000 of children. The European Commission has also opened a new probe under the EU’s online platforms rulebook, and has said it is exploring a ban on apps under the AI law. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office said Tuesday’s search was conducted by its cybercrime unit, together with the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol. The investigations range from sexually explicit deepfakes, aiding the distribution of child sexual abuse material to the dissemination of Holocaust-denial content, the office said. X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Millions of people are forming emotional bonds with artificial intelligence chatbots — a problem that politicians need to take seriously, according to top scientists. The warning of a rise in AI bots designed to develop a relationship with users comes in an assessment released Tuesday on the progress and risks of artificial intelligence. “AI companions have grown rapidly in popularity, with some applications reaching tens of millions of users,” according to the assessment from dozens of experts, mostly academics — completed for the second time under a global effort launched by world leaders in 2023. Specialized companion services such as Replika and Character.ai have user numbers in the tens of millions — with users citing a variety of reasons including fun and curiosity, as well as to alleviate loneliness, the report says. But people can also seek companionship from general-purpose tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude. “Even the ordinary chatbots can become companions,” said Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal and lead author of the International AI Safety report. Bengio is considered one of the world’s leading voices on AI. “In the right context and with enough interactions between the user and the AI, a relationship can develop,” he said. While the assessment acknowledges that evidence regarding the psychological effects of companions is mixed, “some studies report patterns such as increased loneliness and reduced social interaction among frequent users,” the report says. The warning lands two weeks after dozens of European Parliament lawmakers pressed the European Commission to look into the possibility of restricting companion services under the EU’s AI law amid concerns over their impact on mental health. “I can see in political circles that the effect of these AI companions on children, especially adolescents, is something that is raising a lot of eyebrows and attention,” said Bengio. The worries are fueled by the sycophantic nature of chatbots, which aim to be helpful for their users and please them as much as possible. “The AI is trying to make us, in the immediate moment, feel good, but that isn’t always in our interest,” Bengio said. In that sense, the technology has similar pitfalls to social media platforms, he argued. Bengio said to expect that new regulations will be introduced to address the phenomenon. He pushed back, however, against the idea of introducing specific rules for AI companions and argued that the risk should be addressed through horizontal legislation which addresses several risks simultaneously. The International AI Safety report lands ahead of a global summit starting Feb. 16, an annual gathering for countries to discuss governance of the technology that this year is held in India. Tuesday’s report lists the full series of risks that policymakers will have to address, including AI-fueled cyberattacks, AI-generated sexually explicit deepfakes and AI systems that provide information on how to design bioweapons. Bengio urged governments and the European Commission to enhance their internal AI expertise to address the long list of potential risks. World leaders first gave a mandate for the annual assessment at the 2023 AI Safety Summit in the United Kingdom. Some of the advisers are well-known figures in the Brussels tech policy world, including former European Parliament lawmaker Marietje Schaake.

ROME — Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini faces a battle to save his far-right League party from electoral oblivion. The party’s internal crisis exploded into public view last week after Salvini’s maverick deputy, Roberto Vannacci, an ex-general and defender of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, threatened to form a splinter party to the right of the League called National Future. Salvini seeks to play down the split with his No. 2, but Vannacci’s move revealed starkly how the League — a key part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing ruling coalition — risks disintegrating as a political force before next year’s elections. Current and former party members told POLITICO that Salvini’s rift with Vannacci had exposed a deeper and potentially devastating factional struggle at the heart of the party — between moderates and extremists, and over whether the League should return to its roots ad seek northern autonomy from Rome. In the short term, weakness in the League could bring some relief to the Atlanticist, pro-NATO Meloni, who is prone to irritation at the anti-Ukrainian, Kremlin-aligned outbursts of Salvini and Vannacci, who are supposed to be her allies. In the longer term, however, the party’s full implosion would potentially make it harder for her to build coalitions and to maintain Italy’s unusually stable government. PUBLIC FEUD The tensions between Salvini and Vannacci became impossible to disguise last month. On Jan. 24 Vannacci registered a trademark for his new National Future party. He later distanced himself from an Instagram account announcing the party’s launch, but hinted on X that he could still turn to social media to launch a party when the time was ripe. “If I decide to open such channels, I will be sure to inform you,” he said. By Jan. 29 Salvini was in full firefighting mode. Speaking before the stately tapestries of the Sala della Regina in Italy’s parliament, he insisted there was “no problem.” “There is space for different sensibilities in the League … we want to build and grow, not fight,” he added, vowing to hold a meeting with Vannacci to set the relationship back on course. Many in the League are more hostile to Vannacci, however, particularly those alarmed by the former paratrooper’s placatory language about Mussolini and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. A powerful bloc in the League that is more socially moderate — and deeply committed to northern autonomy — is pressing for Salvini to take the initiative and fire Vannacci, according to two people involved in the party discussions. Daniele Albertazzi, a politics professor and expert on populism at the University of Surrey, said a schism looked imminent. “[Vannacci] is not going to spend years building someone else’s party,” Albertazzi said. “It’s clear he doesn’t want to play second fiddle to Salvini.” FROM ASSET TO LIABILITY Vannacci emerged from obscurity in 2023 with a self-published bestseller “The World Back to Front.” It espoused the Great Replacement Theory — a conspiracy that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-whites — and branded gay people “not normal.” More recently he has stated he prefers Putin to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Vannacci emerged from obscurity in 2023, with a self-published bestseller “The World Back to Front.” | Nicola Ciancaglini/Ciancaphoto Studio/Getty Images Albertazzi said Vannacci was positioning himself on the extreme right. “You can see it even in the typography of his symbol [for National Future], which evokes the fascist era,” he said. Salvini originally identified the military veteran as a lifeline who could reverse the League’s flagging fortunes. Salvini had early success in transforming the League from a regional party “of the north” into a national force, and it won a record 34 percent of the Italian vote in the 2019 European elections. But by 2022 things were souring, and support collapsed to about 8 percent in the general election. Vannacci was brought in to broaden the party’s appeal and shore up his own leadership. The gamble initially paid off. In the 2024 European elections, Vannacci personally received more than 500,000 preference votes — roughly 1.5 percent of the national total —validating Salvini’s strategy. But Vannacci has since become a liability. He was responsible for a failed regional campaign in his native Tuscany in October and has flouted party discipline, building his own internal group, opening local branches and organizing rallies outside the League’s control, operating as “a party within a party.” In recent interviews Vannacci has increasingly flirted with the idea of going solo with his own party. For the traditional northern separatist camp in the League, Vannacci has gone too far. Luca Zaia, head of the Veneto regional assembly, a towering figure in northern politics, and three other major northern leaders are now demanding privately that he be expelled, according to two League insiders.  “His ideas are nationalist and fascist, and have never been compatible with the League,” said a party member, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal disputes. “The writing is on the page. Since the first provocation it has been clear that it is only a matter of when, not if, he starts his own party.”  An elected League official added: “Now if he gets votes it’s Salvini’s fault for giving him a ton of publicity. No one had heard of him before. He basically won the lottery.” Attilio Fontana, a senior League official who is president of the Lombardy region, said Vannacci’s actions raised questions for Salvini. “I think that if inside the party there are differences, that can enrich the party. But creating local branches, holding demonstrations outside the party, registering a new logo and website, this is an anomaly … these are issues that [Salvini] will be looking at,” he told reporters in Milan on Friday.  EVERY VOTE COUNTS There’s no guarantee any party Vannacci launches will be a success. Three leaders in his “World Back to Front” movement — seen as a precursor to his National Future party — quit on Friday, issuing a statement that described a lack of leadership and “permanent chaos.” But his party could upset the political landscape, even if he only peels off relatively minor support from the League. Meloni will have a close eye on the arithmetic of potential alliances in the run-up to next year’s election, particularly if left-wing parties team up against her. Giorgia Meloni will have a close eye on the arithmetic of potential alliances in the run-up to next year’s election. | Simona Granati/Corbis via Getty Images Polling expert Lorenzo Pregliasco of You Trend, which is canvassing a potential new party led by Vannacci, said it had a potential electorate on the right of the coalition of about 2 per cent,  among voters who had supported [Meloni’s] Brothers of Italy, League voters and non-voters with an anti immigrant, anti-political correctness stance, who are attracted by Vannacci’s outspokenness.  The potential party “poses some risks for Meloni and the coalition … It’s not a huge electorate but in national elections two points could make the difference between winning and not winning, or winning but with a very narrow majority that could mean you were not able to form a government.”  Vannacci “has been clever in putting himself forward as a provocative opinion leader and converted this into electoral success … He has the potential to be a strong media presence and central to political debate.” The northern separatist Pact for the North movement, led by former League MP Paolo Grimoldi, said Salvini’s reputation was now damaged because of the faith he put in Vannacci. While Salvini could resign and support an alternative figure such Zaia as League leader, this was extremely unlikely, Grimoldi told POLITICO. “If not, there aren’t tools to get rid of him before the next election,” he added.  “The result will be political irrelevance and electoral defeat [for the League].”

LONDON — Britain’s pubs are in distress. The beer-loving Nigel Farage has spied an opening. The Reform UK leader and his chief whip Lee Anderson are set to unveil a raft of new policies Tuesday meant to support struggling publicans — and punch a Labour bruise. It comes days after Chancellor Rachel Reeves — under pressure from a highly-organized pubs industry — was forced to U-turn on plans from her budget and announce a three-year relief package for the U.K.’s ailing hospitality sector. Farage isn’t alone — the government’s other rivals are setting out pub-friendly policies too, and are helping to push the plight of the British boozer up the political agenda.  But it’s the latest populist move by the right-wing outfit, whose leader often posts pictures from the pub on social media and has carefully cultivated an ale-drinking man-of-the people persona, to capture the attention of an electorate increasingly soured on Labour’s domestic efforts. ‘GENUINE PISS ARTIST’ Reform will on Tuesday lift the lid on a five-point plan to “save Britain’s pubs,” promising a slew of tax cuts for the sector — including slashing sales tax VAT to 10 percent, scrapping the employer National Insurance increase for the hospitality sector, cutting beer duty by 10 percent, and phasing out business rates for pubs altogether. The party will also pledge to change “beer orders” regulation, which sees large pub companies lock landlords into contracts that force them to buy beer from approved suppliers at much higher prices than the open market. Reform says the plan would be funded through social security changes — reinstating a two-child cap on universal credit, a move the party claims would save around £3 billion by 2029-30. “Labour has no connection to how real life works,” Farage said earlier this month as he lambasted government plans to lower the drink drive limit. One of the British pub industry’s biggest names thinks Farage could have a genuine opening with voters on this front. The Reform boss has “got the massive advantage in that he’s a genuine piss artist,” Tim Martin, the outspoken owner of the British pub chain JD Wetherspoons, said. “He genuinely likes a sherbet, which, when it comes to pubs, people can tell that, whereas I don’t think [they do] with the other party leaders,” he said. The pub boss recounted watching as Farage “whacked down two pints and had two cigarettes” ahead of an appearance on BBC Question Time in which Martin also featured, as other politicians hovered over their briefing notes. The dangers of upsetting the pub industry have not been lost on Labour’s political opponents. | Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images Green MP Siân Berry is less impressed with Farage’s pub shtick, however. She accuses him of “playing into a stereotype of pubs as spaces for older white men to sit and drink.” “Most people who run a pub business these days know that it needs to be a family space,” she said. SHOW US THE POLICY Either way, Farage is exploiting an opening left by Labour, which riled up some pubs with its planned shake-up of business rates. “When the Labour government came in, the pub industry was already weak — and they piled on more costs,” said Wetherspoons’ boss Martin. Since Labour won power in 2024 Reeves has also hiked the minimum wage employers must pay their staff, increased employer national insurance contributions, and raised beer duties. While the industry cautiously welcomed Reeves’ business rate U-turn last month, they say there’s still more to do. “This will make a significant difference, as three quarters of pubs are now going to see their bills staying the same or going down,” Andy Tighe, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA)’s strategy and policy director, said of the U-turn — but “it doesn’t solve everything,” he added. “For most operators, it’s those big sorts of taxes around business rates, VAT, duty, employment-related taxes that make the real difference, ultimately, to how they think about the future,” he said.  A U.K. Treasury spokesperson said: “We are backing Britain’s pubs — cutting April’s business rates bills by 15 percent followed by a two year freeze, extending World Cup opening hours and increasing the Hospitality Support Fund to £10 million to help venues. “This comes on top of capping corporation tax, cutting alcohol duty on draught pints and six cuts in interest rates, benefiting businesses in every part of Britain,” they added. ALSO PITCHING The dangers of upsetting the pub industry have not been lost on Labour’s political opponents. Politicians of all stripes are keen to engage with the industry, Tighe says. “Pubs matter to people and that’s why I think political parties increasingly want to ensure that the policies that they’re putting forward are pub-friendly,” he said.  Polling found that nearly half (48 percent) of Farage’s supporters in 2024 think pubs in their local area have deteriorated in recent years. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images The Tories say they will abolish business rates for pubs, while the Liberal Democrats have pledged to cut their VAT by 5 percent. The Greens’ Berry also wants to tackle alcohol advertising which she says pushes people to drink at home. “A pub is a different thing in a lot of ways, it is more part of the community — drinking second,” the left-wing party’s representative said. “I think the evidence base for us is not to be anti-pub, but it might be against advertising alcohol.” Industry bigwigs like Martin have consistently argued that pubs are being asked to compete with supermarkets on a playing field tilted against them.  “They must have tax equality with supermarkets, because they can’t compete with supermarkets, which are much stronger financial institutions than pubs,” he said, citing the 20 percent VAT rate on food served in pubs — and the wider tax burden pubs face.  GLOOMY OUTLOOK The plight of the local boozer appears to be occupying British voters too. Polling from the think tank More in Common conducted in August 2025 found almost half of Brits (44 percent) go to the pub at least once a month — and among people who voted Labour in 2024 that rises to 60 percent. The same polling found nearly half (48 percent) of Farage’s supporters in 2024 think pubs in their local area have deteriorated in recent years — compared to 31 percent of Labour voters. “Reform voters are more likely than any other voter group to believe that their local area is neglected,” Louis O’Geran, research associate at More in Common, said. “These tangible signs of decline — like boarded up pubs and shops — often come up in focus groups as evidence of ‘broken Britain’ and drive support for Reform,” he added.  The job now for Farage, and his political rivals, is to convince voters their local watering hole is safe in their hands.