This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Pieter Cleppe and Anthony Gilland to review 2025 – the populist surge, the elite fightback on speech and elections, and Europe’s growing weakness from Washington to Ukraine.
Populists surge – and the public stops whispering
The conversation opens on the mood-shift of 2025: farmer protests across Europe, citizens stepping in where the state won’t (including border pressure), and parents scrutinising what schools are teaching. They run through the electoral and polling picture – from anti-centralisation politics in Czechia to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, and a Germany where broken promises and a spending splurge fuel a protest mood and push the AfD higher in the polls.
The elite fightback – Democracy Shield, “pre-bunking”, lawfare
As pressure rises, the panel argues Brussels reaches for control: the Democracy Shield’s language of “safeguarding” and “protecting” elections, and a wider push to police online discourse. They dig into “pre-bunking” as proactive narrative management (AI plus NGO fact-checkers), link it to the Digital Services Act, and discuss headline-grabbing interventions – including a major fine on X and the pattern of legal-institutional moves around high-stakes elections (from France to Romania).
US–EU reality check – then the Brussels scandals pile up
On the global stage, they frame EU–US relations as a clash over regulation and values – with America increasingly hostile to Europe’s speech regime and Europe looking strategically irrelevant. Ukraine exposes that weakness: arguments over sanctions, Russian assets, and the EU’s limited leverage. Then the year’s “unmasking” theme returns via scandals – NGO funding and influence operations, Jean Monnet-style academic patronage, PfizerGate, and the College of Europe affair.
[00:00] Populists surge – the 2025 mood shift
[06:10] Elections, polls, and the protest vote (Germany, UK, Czechia)
[12:10] The elite fightback – centralisation and “safeguarding” elections
[16:40] Democracy Shield, “pre-bunking”, and the DSA
[21:30] US–EU relations, von der Leyen–Trump, and Europe’s weakness
[25:40] Ukraine, sanctions, Russian assets – plus the year’s big scandals
Credit to : MCC Brussels