Underestimated dangers

In Great Britain, the conservative Tories suffered a defeat of historic proportions on Thursday – and they fully deserved it. The decline and destruction of prosperity for which the Tories and their five prime ministers have been responsible in Great Britain over the past 14 years are undoubtedly of historic proportions.

David Cameron, Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, will go down in history as the man who led Britain into Brexit, thereby depriving his proud island of the basis for prosperity and dealing a severe blow to Europe.

• Also read: Frustration with Tories helped Labour to landslide victory

During the 2015 election campaign, Cameron had promised the British a referendum on leaving the EU for domestic political reasons. He wanted to use this lure to secure his election victory – EU membership was a roulette bet. Cameron did not expect that supporters of leaving would actually achieve a majority in the vote held in June 2016.

But the matter got out of hand because, on the one hand, the EU supporters underestimated the referendum and, on the other hand, a vulgar exit campaign was unleashed, already fed by Russian trolls in digital channels and carried by political adventurers like Nigel Farage and parts of the Tories who were drunk on British national populism.

Billions would be saved if Britain no longer had to be in the EU, it was promised – and these billions would be invested in the British health system and made into the best in the world. Today, the British health system is in ruins, with no billions in sight, on the contrary – and that is just one example.

The hysteria surrounding Brexit has paralyzed Britain for years, overshadowing most other issues and allowing figures like Boris Johnson to become Prime Minister.

There is now a great deal of disillusionment, especially among young people. Brexit no longer has a majority in the polls. But the poison is still working.

Keir Starmer, Labour’s election winner and new Prime Minister, is facing a Herculean task. But he does not even dare to consider a return to the EU. The fear that this will give political extremists a boost is too great.

Great Britain is therefore also an example of what happens once the genie is out of the bottle and the unthinkable has happened.

It is fitting that in 2016 not only the British voted for Brexit, but also the USA elected Donald Trump as president. He seemed to be a misguided candidate in world history, made possible not least by an arrogant election campaign by Hillary Clinton.

But these days, the likelihood of Trump being re-elected in November this year has risen massively. Again, like Brexit, it is a story that has to do with negligence and underestimating a danger. Because a man like Trump is a danger.

After his defeat in 2020, he called on party colleagues on election committees to get him the votes he needed to win. He encouraged a fanatical mob to storm the Capitol and prevent Joe Biden from being elected president – actions that seemed unimaginable in our democratic reality and should have resulted in this candidate being ostracized.

At the very least, one would have expected that the Democrats would arm themselves for the 2024 election and dissuade their deserving President Joe Biden from running again in a timely and dignified manner. It was unfortunately no surprise that the 81-year-old Biden seemed confused and lost at times in the first TV debate with Trump. Now the Democrats can only choose between the risk of running with Biden on “Eyes-closed-and-through course” and the risk of sending a new candidate into the race without any warm-up four months before the election.

All this is happening in a world order in transition, in which Europe is being pressured by the neo-imperialist aggressor Russia and the new world power China, which is gradually expanding its sphere of influence economically and geopolitically.

Are we in the EU prepared for these challenges? Or do we have to hope that a minor miracle happens in the USA?

The answer is sobering.