Ukraine faces decisive months ahead as key allies gear up for crunch elections. While early presidential campaigning in the US and a looming general election in Poland will grab the international headlines, a snap election in Slovakia on 30 September may prove every bit as consequential. 

With Robert Fico — Slovakia’s former prime minister and one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Ukrainian war effort — poised to win the vote, a change of government in Bratislava could have a profound effect on EU policymaking. Fico has promised that if his party makes it into government “we will not send a single bullet to Ukraine,” proudly proclaiming that “I allow myself to have a different opinion to that of the United States” on the war.  

Fico has also claimed on the campaign trail that “war always comes from the West and peace from the East,” and that “what is happening today is unnecessary killing, it is the emptying of warehouses to force countries to buy more American weapons.” Such statements have resulted in him being blacklisted by Kyiv as a spreader of Russian propaganda.  

Yet the former prime minister spearheads a new brand of Left-wing, anti-American populism that has become a powerful force in Central Europe since the war began. Perceptions that “the Americans occupy us” — as one MP in Fico’s Smer party evocatively put it — are shared with a similar groundswell of anti-Western opinion in the neighbouring Czech Republic.  

Yet Smer has been handed a chance to gain power thanks to the chaos which has engulfed Slovakia’s pro-EU, pro-Western forces. Personal grievances coupled with serious policy errors tore apart a four-party coalition formed after elections in 2020, leaving Fico to capitalise on heightened mistrust in establishment politics. Smer is expected to become the nation’s largest party after this month’s election, with an anticipated 20% of the vote.  

Whatever the specific makeup of the new government, if Smer is the largest party it will likely pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. A halt to until-now generous Slovak arms shipments to Ukraine is Fico’s central electoral pledge, while the arrival on the scene of another Orbán-style government prepared to obstruct EU aid efforts for Ukraine would create a serious headache. That is particularly the case as Brussels struggles to win support for both short and long-term war funding commitments. 

Victory for Fico would also amplify Orbán’s scepticism about the overall Western narrative on Ukraine — a scepticism which the Hungarian Prime Minister recently conveyed to Western conservatives during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Orbán portrayed Ukraine’s attempts to win back the territories taken by Russia as ultimately hopeless and claimed that Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly makes him “the man who can save the Western world”. 

Like Trump in America and Orbán in Europe, Fico is hated with a passion by establishment forces. But in Slovakia, the pro-Western establishment itself has become so mistrusted that power may soon pass to a man intent on shattering what’s left of European unity on Ukraine. 

The appointment last month of James Murray as Health Secretary caused alarm among women’s organizations. Murray, who was previously a vocal supporter of gender ideology, clearly realized he needed to engage in damage limitation, and in recent interviews has claimed that he no longer believes “trans women are women.” But now his commitment is being tested. Murray is reportedly refusing to honor a commitment made by his predecessor, Wes Streeting, to meet the Darlington nurses who won a landmark victory over their right to single-sex spaces in January. Bethany Hutchison, President of the Darlington Nursing Union, has confirmed that today’s scheduled meeting will not go ahead.

A pattern is emerging here. The Government says the right things about accepting the Supreme Court judgment on the primacy of biological sex, but ministers don’t seem keen on its implementation. The issue is particularly acute in the NHS, where many trusts still allow trans-identified males to use women’s changing rooms and toilets, in open breach of the law. Perhaps Murray isn’t taking these concerns seriously. The Darlington nurses experienced a “hostile, intimidating, humiliating and degrading environment”, but does anyone care?

The decision to snub the women may be related to events in Parliament, where the Labour benches are filled with supporters of trans activism. Almost 140 MPs from various parties have signed an early day motion tabled by a Labour MP, Nadia Whittome, demanding that guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission explaining the law on single-sex spaces “be disapproved”. This is gesture politics at its worst: the law is the law, regardless of whether MPs approve the guidance. But the fact that roughly half the signatories are Labour MPs demonstrates the grip that a thoroughly misogynist ideology still has on the party.

That has been especially true since the 2024 general election. Labour’s ranks are now full of activists rather than objective politicians who treat the notion that trans women are women as an undeniable fact. In 2022, Murray wriggled out of answering whether a biological man, Lia Thomas, should compete against women in swimming competitions in America. Murray is an ally of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has never retreated from his insistence that trans-identified men are women.

It was clear during the 2024 campaign that a Labour victory would strengthen support for trans demands within the parliamentary party. The number of MPs who are members of LGBT+ Labour — a group that lobbies for gay, lesbian and specifically trans rights — more than doubled after the election. The Labour MP Kate Osborne hosted a reception in Parliament for a trans organization, Translucent, last week.

This is the context in which Labour ministers have to operate: the law on one hand, confirmed by the Supreme Court, and colleagues in Parliament who blithely ignore it. What it means for people who work for organizations with blatantly illegal policies on single-sex spaces is disastrous. The rights of women and girls are being upheld by the courts time and again, and it’s clear they have public support. What they don’t have, however, is unequivocal support from Government ministers.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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