Year of the Vanishing Middle

Here’s a Europe 2018 trivia question: What’s the common denominator between a Eurosceptic government in Italy, the UK chinuch crisis, and Poland’s death-camp law? The answer: It’s all about the shrinking middle.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair famously said that elections are won in the center, and that held true for two decades across much of Europe. Free markets, pro-immigration, and greater European integration became the liberal consensus on the center-left and right. But over the last year, the old left and right returned with a vengeance, and that consensus has now evaporated.
In the United Kingdom, the Conservatives have spent the year in bitter infighting over Brexit. Their self-destruction has only been matched by Labour’s civil war over Corbynite anti-Semitism. Both were unimaginable just a few years ago when the old consensus ruled. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s coalition woes this year were about voters punishing her for liberal immigration policies. Italy recently became the first founding EU member-state to elect a Eurosceptic government.
Things are no better to the east. Poland’s recent attempt to criminalize references to “Polish death camps” is again evidence of the vanishing of the “middle way.” Initiated by the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), it would have been an unimaginable attack on free speech just a few years ago. And the reelection this April of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s self-styled “illiberal democrat,” is enough to make European centrists despair.
But if part of Europe is shifting right, along comes the UK chinuch saga and proves that the left is getting leftier. For the last six months, Ofsted, the UK’schools inspectorate, has delivered a series of hostile inspections of chareidi schools, aiming to enforce the teaching of tolerance for lifestyles forbidden by the Torah. The intent, as Ofsted head Amanda Spielman said in a speech, is to move from a “passive to muscular liberalism.” In other words, out with religious rights, long live militant secularism — and there goes the middle ground.

Game Changer

Beyond doubt, this year’s breakthrough leader is French president Emmanuel Macron. At the ripe old age of 39 he stormed to a landslide election victory at the head of La République En Marche! (LREM), the party he founded less than a year before. In the process he shattered the decades-long dominance of France’s two main parties, the Republicans and Socialists.
Macron has used this mandate to push through long-overdue reforms to France’s labor market in a bid to jumpstart the stagnating economy. He has come under heavy criticism for an imperial style of presidency, seeming to compare himself to chief Roman deity Jupiter. But his strength has been a plus for France’s foreign policy: Macron is the only European leader to win Donald Trump’s respect.

Letdown

The year’s missed opportunity was the failure to end the reign of Turkey’s wannabe sultan and Israel-baiter, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A surprisingly strong campaign by Republican People’s Party leader Muharrem Ince threatened to unseat Erdogan, who has been in power since 2004. But the margin of victory — 53% to Ince’s 31% — seemed to persuade Turkey’s strongman that he had a mandate to pick fights with President Trump and ignore the free fall of the Turkish lira.

Fake News Item of the Year

The real news from the last year has been that finally fake news is being exposed. Facebook recently shut down many accounts used by the blandly named Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg–based troll farm that sought to disrupt the US election in 2016. Facebook itself was fined by UK regulators for failing to delete data on more than 80 million users obtained illegally by Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm.

Planet Earth

July was one of the hottest months on record in Europe. As the continent baked, ice cream vendors celebrated and Germany ran short of beer. The effect was even visible from space, as NASA satellites showed north-central Europe turning from green to brown.

Quote of the Year

“I was present when it was laid. I don’t think I was actually involved in it.”
Jeremy Corbyn was in a Tunis cemetery in 2014 when a wreath was laid at the graves of PLO terrorists, including those who murdered Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972. Trouble is, he doesn’t recall whether he was part of the ceremony or just happened to be passing by at the time. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be funny.

51%

Chareidi births as a percentage of total UK Jewish births in 2015. A report this year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research predicts a near future in which chareidim are the majority Jewish population in the UK. This demographic revolution is happening decades ahead of the US or Israel, making the UK the place to watch for how the chareidi community will manage its rise.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 726)