The Queen of Brussels? Photo by Horacio Villalobos Corbis via Getty Images.
As Ursula von der Leyen begins her second term as President of the European Commission, she does so as a colossus, enjoying sweeping authority over the European Union and its 450 million inhabitants. The Empress rules a bloc that’s undemocratic by design, and which puts immense authority in the hands of its rulers. And as seems clear, she intends to extend her technocratic revolution, transforming the EU from a collection of member-states into a single state.
With Macron floundering, and Scholz despised, von der Leyen’s continued tenure breaks with a global pattern of incumbency failure. Unlike mere politicians, though, von der Leyen doesn’t need to worry about what the voters think. To be sure, the President of the EU Commission must secure the support of the EU Parliament, but only after having been nominated by the government of each member state. In theory, that should reflect the outcome of European elections. In practice, however, the EU Parliament is a castrated legislature, constitutionally incapable of initiating law.
Von der Leyen is less the executive of an open democracy and more the chief officer of a Soviet politburo. That’s clear, certainly, if you glance at the titles of the President’s commissars. From the executive vice president for clean, just and competition transition, to the executive vice president for cohesion and reforms, her underlings preside over departments that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Seventies Moscow. And during her first term in office, from 2019 to 2024, she relentlessly consolidated authority, slowly tilting the EU’s balance of power towards supranational institutions like the Commission — and away from the Council of Ministers representing member states.
This state-building project looks set to ramp up during her second term; as she makes clear in her political guidelines for the next commission, her vision is infused with existential discourse, insisting that Europe has no future unless it continues to grind its way towards unity. With von der Leyen’s determination to pursue the proxy war in Ukraine at the expense of European economic wellbeing, and her reliance on Baltic politicians such as Kaja Kallas as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, she seems to be following the historic pattern of state-making through crisis.
Yet if Ursula is a modern Charlemagne in her vanity and ambition, the fact that her efforts are so remote from the popular will means they’ll inevitably founder. Though centralisation at the top will doubtless enhance her personal sway, that means little without bolstering the wider EU system. In fact, concentrating power in this non-sovereign model is likely to make it even more lopsided, with a top-heavy superstructure perched over a continent seething with popular discontent. No matter how many Russophobes von der Leyen stuffs into her bureaucracy, after all, the Ukraine war will ultimately be decided not in Brussels but Washington, when Donald Trump shortly re-enters the White House in January.
Thus the paradox of von der Leyen’s second term is that as the power of the EU centre grows, Europe itself becomes weaker. Nothing that von der Leyen does seems likely to reverse this decline. In fact, her plan to completely end the flow of Russian gas into Europe, in favour of expensive liquified natural gas from the US, speaks to her congenital inability to act in her continent’s best interests. That, in turn, reflects the fact that the EU is not a nation-state, and by design can’t have a national self-interest. While von der Leyen has therefore been promising to slash the regulation that supposedly stifles European business — plenty of which were brought in under her last term — the fact is that industry from Rioja to the Ruhr will continue to suffer without cheap energy.
How will this historic decline be disguised? This takes us to the second of von der Leyen’s transformations: appointing Raffaele Fitto, a minister from the Brothers of Italy party, as her executive vice president for cohesion and reforms. In so doing, von der Leyen has broken the liberal cordon sanitaire whereby the continent’s technocratic establishment sought to contain the electoral insurgencies of EU populists. Fitto’s new job has cost von der Leyen the support of certain natural allies, notably the Socialists and Democrats grouping in the EU Parliament. Yet Empress Ursula is cunning enough to realise that by appearing to be responsive to public demands, and drawing in electorally successful populists, she can easily recoup any losses sustained among squabbling centrists.
The nominal basis for this new political friendship is, of course, a shared commitment to pursuing the proxy war in Eastern Europe. Yet the basis for the Fitto alliance runs deeper than Ukraine. Rather, the alliance indicates that the continent’s hard-Right national populists are being carefully, and willingly, drawn into the court of the imperial centre. The reason? To help re-legitimise von der Leyen’s faltering clique of technocrats.
Certainly, Fitto’s appointment puts paid to the idea that populists defend national sovereignty against incursions from Brussels. It also suggests that the radicals are more than happy to collaborate with the technocrats to disguise the latter’s lack of real legitimacy. In many ways, then, Fitto represents a natural alliance, proving the point that both technocrats and populists ultimately despise national representative institutions. The technocrats dislike democracy because interest groups get in the way of the unfettered rule of experts. Populists, for their part, dislike it because, by their nature, institutionalised interests gnaw away at the demagogic charisma they so rely on.
In this way, then, both technocrats and populists are creatures from the void where national democracy should be. The fact that people such as Fitto have rushed to hide von der Leyen’s nakedness suggests that the age of European decline will be dominated by techno-populism, with both camps cooperating to accommodate each other’s weakness — even as they jointly rule over a deindustrialising continent. At any rate, that leaves space for Europe’s remaining democrats: what happens when voters realise the populists have betrayed them?
Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He is author or editor of nine books, including most recently, The National Interest: Politics after Globalization (2025).
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SubscribeThe UK has never focused on its army more than its navy, actually. The navy is poorly funded, but the army is even worse. Frankly, one wonders at this.
If the British people are willing to pay for Mr Starmer’s offer, I’m sure the World will gratefully accept. It’s an amazingly self-sacrificing offer.
Facade ‘politics’, deluded and ridiculous. Britain cannot defend its own border never mind Ukraine’s. Pathetic, shameful posturing.
Before we get into a war with Russia or any other country we would first have to ascertain our opponents preferred pronouns and whether any weapons should carry trigger warnings.
Good article. Now totally oppose the deployment of a weak and under equipped British force.
W
What it does sound is UNDEMOCRATIC. ‘Sir’ Keir has not even bothered with even the fiction that ‘the people’ have been consulted. This is the first step in the plan to reintroduce CONSCRIPTION. The Pay Off for all those years of cutting,cutting,cutting by successive political administrations. It won’t take many soldier deaths to seemingly make neccesary CONSCRIPTION. If you want the Death Sentence passed on your Grandkids then apathetically let this go ahead without a word of of objection. This so called War was NEVER about “winning’ over a megalomaniac despot (they are all still in power) it was about getting the Ukrainian people,the nation so deep in debt they will have to freely allow the rapacious theft of all their resources. ‘they have rare earths,they have oil”. Uncle Sam has declared its now Payback Time for ALL THAT MONEY they so freely GAVE Ukraine,now they want it all back. We only in recent years made the final payment back to USA of the money they GAVE US to help us win WW2. Nation of bloody Shylocks. And to get that help we had to send King George VI and Lizzie (Mom) over to America to Fanny Around Making Nice to FDR.
CONSCRIPTION? Seriously?
Why are so obsessed with conscription?
It isn’t going to happen, as the younger generation is not as committed to this country, that they would die for it, the idea of dying for the Ukraine is not going to inspire very many and there are too many alternative voices telling them not, unlike in World War 1 and 2, when there was overwhelming support for defending our country.
Lastly Starmer is making a political statement without committing anything which is all he ever does.
Nothing he says can be trusted!
Try fighting a war without the financial help from Uncle Samuel when your country is bust to see a true dose of reality…
They can’t afford to fix the roads or buy MRI machines for hospitals, they have huge budget holes they can’t patch, but they can afford to take thousands of working age men out of the workforce and feed them, clothe them, train them, equip them with weapons, and house them on the taxpayers’ money? Sure, let’s pretend that’s plausible.
Oh, for pity’s sake, the country that took three years to capture 20 per cent of Ukraine is not going to be parking its tanks on anyone’s Atlantic coast anytime soon even it wanted to, and that is not an aspiration that Russia has ever expressed by any means.
Not even Germany wants to send troops to Ukraine, and which British troops does Keir Starmer plan to put on the ground there? There barely are any. Cancelling Trident would make it possible to give each of the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force an additional £70 billion, but even that would not compel anyone to join them, as they were already perfectly free to do.
It is useful for the debate on conscription to be revisited from time to time. Ignore anyone who advocated a military intervention unless you could imagine that person as an 18-year-old in battle. The call for war always comes primarily from the liberal bourgeoisie. That is the class least likely to join the Armed Forces voluntarily, or to see combat even in periods of conscription. Operationally, that is of course just as well. But if there is not a strong enough case for conscription, then there is not a strong enough case for war. Unless a country needed to mobilise its entire healthy and able-bodied male population of fighting age, then it is not under sufficient threat to justify going to war at all.
Complaining about not being invited to the table is by definition something that only unimportant countries do. If they mattered, then the situation would never arise. As for nonsense about Britain as an Atlantic Bridge, even today’s funny little event was held in Paris. And what of a European Army? While Reform UK sells itself as the way to vote for Donald Trump in Britain, Nigel Farage still wants Ukraine in NATO, and this is what that would mean. The former husband of Dame Andrea Jenkyns, and father of her child, Jack Lopresti, himself a former Conservative MP and Deputy Chairman, is already in that Army. Alas, then, Dame Andrea is unlikely to represent us in the revived Intervision Song Contest. But someone should.
This is TOTALLY about creating a JUSTIFICATION for CONSCRIPTION and there seems to be a huge tranche of men my age 70 years who assume that it’ll be like cosy Dad’s Army (for them) and (on radio phone ins) are strongly in favour (from the safety of their armchairs).I’m supposing they don’t have any grandchildren or maybe any brain cells.
The country with the world’s most expensive industrial energy is not in a position to fight a World War, and nor is the country that is desperately scouring the world for anyone to rescue its steel industry.
Employees of the arms companies, and beneficiaries of their munificence, should be asked about it by interviewers, and so should those with expectations, meaning military top brass and the luminaries of the Ministry of Defence, including Ministers and their Shadows.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s constitutional term of office expired quite some time ago, but fresh elections in Ukraine would approve of peace on condition of the loss of the territory that Russia had already captured, and of the promise that Ukraine would never join NATO.
With a ruling element to which anything with a young male following had to be destroyed, and which had spent nearly 50 years organising the State towards the persecution of working-class men, the meat grinder would be no more popular here than it was there.
None of Tony Blair’s three sons has ever joined up, and Euan and Nicky are getting on a bit now, but Leo is 24. Keir Starmer has said on air that he had two sons (Lady Starmer has one), and they would both easily attain fighting age during a war to dissolve the Russian Federation into 20 or more vassal states, since that war would never end. But it need never start. Starmer wants British “peacekeepers” in Ukraine as the tripwire that British troops already were in the Baltic States, so that any or everything might be used as an excuse for war. Say no now.
Cancelling Trident is the worst thing Britain could do! If the US is going to withdraw its “nuclear umbrella”, Europe needs more nukes, not less!
Cancelling Trident would be a good first move saving as you say 70 billion, in the long term. The next step would be to sell those aircraft carriers to somebody who actually needs them such as the Chinese. All recent firing tests of the Trident missiles have been a fiasco. We are up against the Russians with 6000 nuclear missilespointing in our direction, plus the oreshnik supersonic missile which we haven’t got the ability to interecept. So focus on building up the British Army , get rid of all overseas bases, make peace with Russia and start trading with them and let the rest of The EU fight the Russians if that is what they want to do.
You can knock 2TK all you like but I saw the pictures of him all kitted out ready to lead from the front.
I suspect there will be no holding him back. I expect he is just itching to get onto the frontline together with all our new Britons to show us all the true meaning of sacrifice
Of course there are loads of ppl in this country (GB) willing to make sacrifices for the nation (sarcasm). The old conservative (small c) backbone of the forces has largely given up on a woke Britain which resembles an international hostel rather than national home, lefty types and most of the more recent citizenry were never interested anyway. I was in the army for a bit, certainly wouldn’t join up now, for the reasons J D Vance spelled out ie the country I would have fought for no longer exists. Short of getting mercenaries from overseas with our relatively attractive wages, I can’t see how the forces will attract recruits.
Which is why CONSCRIPTION will be an absolute necessity as Tugenhat and Ellwood have,by jingo,been advocating for some time now.
It won’t work because most young white men of fighting age will likely refuse. No doubt many will claim a disability. They could even identify as women or trans. No doubt 2TK’s human rights lawyer chums will make a packet representing them.
Conscripted soldiers are not very effective soldiers though, will counts for a lot.
Teddy Roosevelt said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. British pols the last 30 years have done the opposite. They talk like big tough guys and bluster while they’ve cut and cut the military and destroyed the industrial base of the country.
To make logical and seemingly acceptable the reintroduction of conscription. So you don’t love your grandchildren. So that’s alright the
Calm yourself, Jane.
At the moment, the offer of UK troops for a peacekeeping force is Starmer’s bid for a seat at the negotiating table. Other than that, unless Washington complies with Starmer’s insistence that the USA provides a ‘backstop’, it’s meaningless, having already been described as premature by Germany.
It’s premature simply because the Kremlin’s terms are a manifesto for continuing the war. Consequently, Starmer and the other European ‘leaders’ are going to have to match it by offering Ukraine justifications to continue the conflict. Given the Kremlin’s terms, the Europeans can offer nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Neither their own nor that of your grandchildren.
ConservativeHome is using Starmer’s offer as a stick to chastise his government. It’s all about what the Tories would have done. Vance dropped a brick into the fish tank and the European minnows are still floating dazed on the surface.
It won’t work because most young white men of fighting age will likely refuse. No doubt many will claim a disability. They could even identify as women or trans. No doubt 2TK’s human rights lawyer chums will make a packet representing them.
I really hope Starmer sends whatever is left of the British military to fight the Russians. They could fill the ranks with pro-ukraine keyboard warriors, of which there seems to be an endless supply (I’m looking at you maverick).
Its a win-win; the Ukraine boosters could show us how weak the Russians really are and the rest of us could enjoy comment sections without brainwashed warmongering dimwits.
There’s no suggestion of fighting anyone
They aren’t going to fight. That implies a two sided affair, would be more like the Russians clubbing baby seals.
And not because of the soldiers, mind you. The Brit “poor bloody infantry” is still the best and scariest in the world, but in modern war you also need weapons, generals and bureaucrats who are not fully useless.
We can only hope it’s an empty promise – getting suckered into a ground war with Russian troops is incredibly risky. The first risk is, you will lose, and the UK looks like a lemon hereafter – you will never recover your military reputation. The even bigger risk is that you start winning against a depleted Russia running on empty, and this forces Putin to escalate – towards the big red button. And all this for what? I feel incredibly sorry for Ukraine, they have been attacked by the bear on their doorstep, but we are not in a treaty with them, they wouldn’t have come to our aid if we had been attacked by Russia, so why are we getting involved to this extent?
you say we are not in a treaty with them, but we did guarantee their security when they gave up the nukes.
the problem here, like so many conflicts, is at the time we thought Ukraine was a corrupt feckless state and we thought it a better idea if the Ruskies had the nukes and Ukraine didn’t.
Our friends change over time, we were once friends with Assad and indeed Sadam until it became unfashionable
so the wheel turns again … all very tragic
There’s no suggestion of fighting anyone!
So if Putin decides to test the waters? By pressuring the forces in the buffer zone with, um, ‘excursions’? Will the British troops go around with flack jackets labelled with “Decoration Only” in big bright red letters?
Biden,Trump,Putin,Johnson,Sunak,Starmer not opposing Enemies at all. All equals in that Big Club we ain’t in. People,stop thinking like six year olds in the playground. (I know you wont). Between them they have engineered a situation in which they can all rape and carve up Ukraine and take all the mineral wealth,everything and you lot are all too stupid to see it.
They’ll for same as every other peace keeping force. Get out the way and report to the UN, or whoever claims to be in charge, who will at best denounce the incursion but more likely wring their hands and offer to sit down and talk to see how they can further appease the bully. We don’t need ‘peace keepers’. NATO gave Ukraine security guarantees when they scrapped their nuclear arsenal after the fall of the USSR; we totally reneged.
It’ll happen by default. It’s the plan. In order to make conscription seem logical and acceptable. And since 85% of the British Electorate seem to have any brains theyve up their arse it’ll work.
It will make conscription seem logical. And there’s a lot of my generation male Boomers who think itll be (for them) like Dads Army and from the supposed safety of their armchairs are only too enthusiastic to send other peoples children.
Conscription is a thing of the past. You honestly believe today’s young people would agree to be sent to die in Ukraine, or that older people would support that en masse?
Crank up the Nudge Units again. Judging by recent past history they’ll be joining their droves and older people waving them off with flags.
You are probably right that young men today are not going to volunteer for a country that so openly holds them in contempt .
I still would like to see them try though. The reason being, I am genuinely rather curious to see how many women demand gender equality, women can do what men can etc.
Just for the comedy value really. We already know the answer from Ukraine (home to radical feminist groups such as femen who decided to switch to making sandwiches barefoot in the kitchen in 2022).