‘Privatising profits but socialising losses’. Three tales of Nordic ecological negligence

We look at three cases of environmental irresponsibility in Scandinavia: the Nordic Waste scandal and lack of preparedness for catastrophic oil spills in Denmark, and Norway’s potentially ecocidal decision to greenlight deep-sea mining. Our press review in collaboration with Display Europe.

Published on 14 February 2024 
Ciarán Lawless
 

Alex Falcó Chang | Cartoon Movement

Miranda Bryant in The Guardian calls it “one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history”: a landslide consisting of two million tonnes of contaminated soil is slowly advancing on the village of Ølst in Denmark’s Jutland region, threatening to devastate the local ecosystem, including the Alling Å river. Local residents fear that their village, as Rasmus Karkov puts it in Danish daily Berlingske, “risks being buried in sludge, slag, contaminated soil and sand, permeated with the rot of dead mink”. The landslide originated from a plant run by Nordic Waste, which, as The Local explains, processes waste coming “mainly from Denmark's mink farms, which were ordered to shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as some imported waste from Norway.”

So far, so scandalous, but what comes next is perhaps the real reason this affair has come to be known as “The Nordic Waste Scandal”. Following injunctions from the Ministry of the Environment in January, Nordic Waste promptly declared bankruptcy, leaving Danish taxpayers with an initial bill of around 27 million euro. The Danish consultancy firm COWI estimates that cleanup could in fact end up costing over two billion kroner (over 268 million euro). This has led British earth scientist Dave Petley to describe the affair as “a classic case of privatising profits but socialising losses”. It’s an even more bitter pill to swallow when we learn from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) that the landslide actually began back in 2021, but only started accelerating in recent months.
More : Lucas Chancel: ‘Those who are most affected are those who pollute the least’

The largest shareholder in Nordic Waste, Torben Ostergaard-Nielsen, is Denmark’s sixth richest man, with a net worth estimated at over 5.5 billion euro. As Lone Andersen and Jesper Høberg write In Finans, another Danish billionaire, Bent Jensen, is less than impressed with Ostergaard-Nielsen: "If you own so many billions, does it matter if you spend 2 billion kroner to clean up after yourself?” The sentiment is echoed by Denmark’s social-democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Asked about Nordic Waste’s bankruptcy while visiting the site of what she called an “ongoing disaster”, Frederiksen said to The Local Denmark that “I can't think of anything good to say about it. The bill could easily have been paid if [Nordic Waste] wanted to”.

Andersen and Høberg also reached out to the other nine richest people in Denmark (including the Lego family), and asked if they would see it as their “moral and social responsibility to contribute to cleanup and prevention”. Several of these billionaires responded that they didn’t want to answer the journalists’ questions, while the rest didn’t even bother to respond.
More : As poverty spreads in Europe, wealth is (still) tax-free

One final irony in all this is that Nordic Waste’s founder, David Peter York, was boasting on Amtsavisen of making the region affected by the landslide “Denmark's leader in sustainable environmental and waste businesses that focus on recyclability”, right when reports were already suggesting the imminent threat that his facility posed to the local environment. As Rasmus Karkov explains on Berlingske, York is fluent in all the “buzzwords” of ecological responsibility, and collaborated with several green companies in the area. In the end, a slick, greenwashed facade finally gave way to a torrent of filth.

The Nordic Waste scandal is not the only impending ecological disaster that Denmark has to worry about. Mads Lorenzen and Kresten Andersen in Finans discuss the “ticking environmental bomb that sails Danish waters every day”: namely, the so-called “shadow fleet” of Russian and Greek ships transporting sanctioned oil through the Danish straits. While many are concerned, Newsweek reports, with the fact that Russia is using a variety of tricks involving shell companies and tax havens to obfuscate the oil’s connection to Moscow (thereby circumventing sanctions), for others the primary concern is ecological.

Besides the murkiness of their origin and ownership, the tankers in question are often old and not fully insured, and they often contain crews who have little experience with Denmark’s busy and turbulent waters. This has led Denmark’s National Audit Office to publish a report exposing the Ministry of Defence’s lack of preparedness in the event of an oil or chemical spill. With a darkly amusing example, Lorenzen and Andersen explain just how slow a cleanup operation can be: “three years ago it took 27 hours for a response vessel to reach the scene of an accident. Luckily, it was just a drunken captain on a relatively intact ship filled with fertiliser.” Less amusingly, the Ministry of Defence’s fleet of response vessels was already obsolete in 1996 (the National Audit Office had already issued such warnings back in 2016). Michelle Bockmann of Lloyd’s List Intelligence calls the situation “a disaster waiting to happen”.

The shadowy provenance and shaky insurance status of these ships is also a financial liability. In the case of catastrophe, Danes could very well end up (once again) footing the bill. Among other short and long term solutions, Danish author and centre-left politician Christian Friis Bach wants Denmark to abolish its opt-out so that European Union law can be used to fight environmental crime with stronger penalties, and help the country to pursue criminals across national borders, The Local Denmark reports. “It doesn't help much against Russians who are not in the EU, but it's a good start," Bach told Finans.

Further north, Norway is at risk of committing what environmentalists (and an increasing number of national and international institutions) call ecocide. Members of Seas at Risk and Ecocide Alliance, among others, warn in EUObserver that the Scandinavian country’s decision to allow deep-sea mining in the Arctic will cause “long-lasting disruption to climate stability and marine health.” For the authors, Norway’s decision meets the legal definition of ecocide: “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” On this basis, the authors argue that the European Union and the international community should demand that Norway reverse its decision.

In fact, as Reporterre reports, on 7 February the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding that Norway protect the Arctic ecosystems and call a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Greenpeace France have called the resolution a victory. It remains to be seen whether Norway cedes to international pressure. After all, they have already ignored the concerns of scientists, civil society, the Norwegian Environmental Agency, and a petition signed by over 500,000 people.


In partnership with Display Europe, cofunded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Argentina’s Javier Milei’s “Instant Democracy” and Neoliberalism

BY TOM MCDOWELL

 FEBRUARY 15, 2024

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Javier Milei, YouTube screen grab.

Self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” Javier Milei became the president of Argentina in December 2023 promising “drastic” measures to temper the inflation crisis that has gripped the country. In the weeks since his election, Milei has brought forward an ambitious neoliberal restructuring program encompassing almost every aspect of the government.

Milei’s agenda confronts considerable opposition in Congress, where his governing coalition, Libertad Avanza, holds only a fraction of the seats. To adjust to these circumstances, Milei has cultivated a strategy of “turbo-politics,” bypassing legislative processes that risk delaying the implementation of his state reorganization plans.

Milei’s approach to Congress is symbolic of a decades-old strategy I have elsewhere called “neoliberal parliamentarism.” This concept describes a pattern of deliberate efforts to reform or subvert legislative institutions as a means of facilitating neoliberal reforms that do not have sufficient popular support to be actualized through usual democratic channels. These changes, even when temporary, often leave long-term scars on institutions by weakening norms of institutional forbearance.

The Emergency Decree and the Omnibus Bill

Milei has followed this blueprint, insulating the core elements of his agenda from democratic influence. The dismantling of the Argentine state began in earnest in mid-December when the executive branch presented an 83 page Necessity and Urgency Decree (NDU) aimed at repealing over 300 various laws and regulations, facilitating the privatization of core public assets.

This “mega-decree,” Milei claimed, was necessary to “start to undo the huge number of regulations that have held back and prevented economic growth”. It includes sweeping economic deregulation, such as the elimination of regulations on Argentina’s supermarket laws, which required the guarantee of low prices on basic products. It also includes measures to eliminate rent controls. Suggested labour reforms to cut pregnancy leave and increase the job probation period were suspended by the courts in January 2024.

Less than a week after issuing the NDU, the executive branch sent a massive omnibus bill titled Foundations and Starting Points for the Freedom of the Argentine People to Congress for consideration. The bill bundles the major elements of Milei’s neoliberal restructuring initiatives under the heading of a single piece of legislation with 664 articles. It will enable the government to carry out, in a matter of weeks, what would normally take years to achieve if these reforms were considered independently and subjected to the usual legislative scrutiny.

Reforms from the 351 page bill include an extraordinary provision declaring a state of public emergency on matters related to the economy, fiscal balance, social security, defence, health, and administration.

The emergency declaration delegates more than 1,000 extraordinary powers from the legislative to the executive until December 31, 2025, with the possibility of a two-year extension. This provision would enable Milei to make major reforms without having to consult Congress, thus eliminating a major hurdle to the implementation of neoliberal reforms.

Authors of the bill are attempting to facilitate the privatization of 41 state-owned companies across various sectors including energy, aviation, port administration, and agriculture. They also enable the reorganization of public administration, including embedding regulatory cuts from the NDU into law.

Additionally, the omnibus legislation proposes substantial reforms to environmental protection laws. These changes include the weakening of the Glacier Protection Law, allowing the mining of sensitive “periglacial” areas. The bill is presently being rushed through the legislative process by way of Extraordinary sessions of Congress, leading to marathon sittings during Argentina’s usual summer recess period.

“It’s impossible for people to have an idea of the enormous number of proposals Milei has sent,” said Ricardo Gil Laverda, a constitutional lawyer and former Argentine Justice Minister. “They cover dozens and dozens and dozens of laws, often on deep topics.”

To influence negotiations, Milei has threatened to put forward a non-binding referendum if the opposition parties do not agree to the main terms of his restructuring plan. Milei has also threatened to take away social welfare rights from protesters who block streets.

Despite these efforts, however, the reality of Milei’s lack of Congressional support has led him to compromise on some elements of his agenda as it makes its way through the legislative process. Although the structure of the bill remains, opposition politicians have made more than 100 changes to it, including curtailing the scope of the President’s emergency powers to one year rather than two, and retaining YPF, the national oil and gas company, in public hands, despite allowing most other state-owned companies to remain subject to privatization.

Neoliberalism and the Decline of the Legislature

Argentina is not unique. This most recent example of legislative subversion is a familiar tactic used to accommodate neoliberal restructuring, that has been utilized repeatedly by neoliberal reformers in recent decades, including the IMF-sanctioned omnibus bill rammed through Greece’s parliament in 2014.

This approach to the legislature is the consequence of the political limitations of neoliberal policy, which is opposed by considerable segments of society. A blueprint for this strategy is spelled out by former New Zealand Minister of Finance Roger Douglas in his 1993 book, Unfinished Business. The book recalls lessons from his experience implementing a neoliberal agenda dubbed ‘Rogernomics’ in the 1980s against the headwinds of widespread social and political opposition.

Douglas claimed it is “uncertainty, not speed, that endangers the success of structural reform programmes.” Neoliberal reforms should not be passed incrementally, but as a rupture, moving in “quantum leaps” to overcome popular opposition.

Democratic processes are typically slow and deliberate, designed to enable the legislative body to scrutinize the executive, foster compromise, and encourage debate. It was necessary, therefore, to streamline the democratic process to ensure that politicians could neither interfere with, nor demand meaningful changes to, neoliberal reorganization efforts.

Neoliberal governments should confront the legislature, not as an essential element of the process of democracy, but an instrument used by politicians and vested interests to interfere with the operations of the marketplace. “Speed is essential. It is almost impossible to go too fast,” Douglas said. “Once the programme begins to be implemented, don’t stop until you have completed it.”

This tactic did not occur in a vacuum, but emerged intrinsically from the content of a neoliberal theoretical framework that views democratic institutions as an additional layer of state administration to be overcome. Neoliberal thought is deeply skeptical in the capabilities of reason to infer or predict causality. Given the limitations of the mind, society should be governed, not by conscious modelling and careful planning, but according to spontaneous or “invisible hand” forms of social organization, which are the outcome of independent, unplanned individual decisions.

This position is most clearly expressed by Friedrich Hayek, who claimed that parliamentary sovereignty was in fact the “root of the evil” in modern society, since it facilitated the growth of the state. Legislatures constituted one limb of what Milton Friedman called the “iron triangle” of politicians, bureaucrats, as well as corporate and individual special interests that were perpetually reliant upon the government for rents, and therefore had an interest in obstructing market reforms.

‘Instant Democracy’ and the Rise of ‘Neoliberal Populism’

What should we make of Milei’s approach to Congress, then? Is it reflective of a new pattern in neoliberal governance, or merely the extension of an old one? The answer is both. While Milei’s approach clearly shares categorial similarities with the neoliberal legislative blueprint built for speed, his blending of these ideas with a coarse, populist rhetoric grounded in anti-statism, signifies an intensification of these patterns.

Milei’s populist neoliberal worldview contributes to a rising trend among far-right governments around the world to use this rhetoric to rationalize the subversion of democracy. This kind of “neoliberal populism” conflates democratic institutions with political actors, claiming that they are instruments of obstruction for self-serving politicians and bureaucrats.

This is a view Milei has proudly declared. “For me, the state is an enemy, as are the politicians who live off it,” he said. “We will put an end to the parasitic, stupid, useless political caste that is sinking this country.”

Grounded in the same logic as neoliberalism’s conventional demand for freedom from the state, democratic institutions increasingly appear as impediments to the logic of the marketplace. The elimination of cumbersome legislative processes, then, removes the obstacles that restrain market forces, generating popular economic independence, and restoring common-sense. This inverts the logic of democracy, making it appear as though executive rule is necessary to protect the interests of “the People” from Friedman’s “iron triangle.”

The anti-parliamentarism at the core of the neoliberal theoretical outlook has increasingly transformed into a populist program that mobilizes a general dissatisfaction with politicians against democratic institutions as such. Neoliberal politicians, such as Milei, use this reasoning to manufacture the conditions for the ongoing use of emergency powers and the concentration of authority in the executive branch.

The global elite, sensing “the smell of a big privatization wave coming,” are said to be “infatuated” with his take-no-prisoners approach to Congress. Thus, although not a new phenomenon, Milei’s brand of “instant democracy,” which conceives of speed and flexibility as the essence of legislative governance, has the support of both the financial elite as well as a growing populist dimension, giving it the hallmarks of a burgeoning political movement of the most regressive kind.

As the institutional forbearance that restrained most neoliberal governments to stay within the confines of liberal democratic constitutional structures continues to give way to a logic that sees the legislature as subordinate to the market, it is likely that we will continue to see the erosion of democratic standards.

Tom McDowell is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Neoliberal Parliamentarism: The Decline of Parliament at the Ontario Legislature (University of Toronto Press, 2021).

Can Javier Milei really move Argentina's

 Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem?

Upon landing in Israel last week, President Javier Milei declared that Argentina’s diplomatic base in the Middle Eastern nation would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Critics, however, are already raising questions about the viability of such a move.

Arriving in Tel Aviv last week, President Javier Milei confirmed his promise to move the Argentina Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The announcement caused controversy since the legendary city – while controlled unilaterally by the country – has a special international status in line with the unresolved conflict with Palestinians.

The ultimate transfer of the Embassy to the Holy City would mean a drastic change to Argentine diplomatic tradition. The nation Milei now leads has remained neutral since the start of the conflict after the partition of Palestine, which gave rise to the State of Israel in 1948. United Nations Resolution 181 also gave special status to Jerusalem, under the premise that it would be an “international city” divided into two parts: the Western one, under Israeli orbit; and the Eastern one, ruled by the Arabs and considered the capital of the ultimate State of Palestine.

However, since 1967, Israel has ruled over the entire city, following its occupation after the Six-Day War. Back then, most countries remained “neutral” about the status of Jerusalem (the peak of the Arab-Israeli conflict).

In 2017, then-US president Donald Trump set a precedent by making the United States the first global power to move its Embassy to Jerusalem, with the Republican leader disregarding criticism for going against international regulations.

Is it possible?

If Milei is to fulfil his promise, he will have to overcome a few local obstacles, some dating back to the time that then-leader Juan Domingo Perón recognised the State of Israel in 1951, making Argentina the first nation in the region to do so.

Recognition of the brand-new Jewish State was made official with Law 14,025 of June that year, following an exchange of notes signed by Argentina’s then-foreign minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia and his then-Israeli counterpart, Carlos Grunberg.

As for Jerusalem, the law provides that Argentina’s Embassy must be in Tel Aviv, as did most countries which signed the UN resolution on the partition of Palestine. Therefore, for Milei to actually physically move the Embassy, he must encourage the amendment of the regulation before Congress.

“It’s a law that reflects diplomatic negotiations over which both states decided that the Argentine Embassy has to be in Tel Aviv. For this to change, the law must be changed,” constitutional lawyer Andrés Gil Domínguez explained to Perfil. “There have to be new diplomatic negotiations, a new exchange of notes. If this law isn’t modified, the embassy cannot be moved.”

The La Libertad Avanza government must therefore present a bill to modify the law before Congress. Firmly in the minority in both chambers, with only 38 deputies and seven senators, this may pose a problem for the new head of state.

Yet President Milei has another option: issuing an emergency decree to repeal the law or clause that establishes the location of the seat of the Argentine Embassy in Israel.

According to the Constitution, the president may repeal laws by decree, provided that they do not govern expressly prohibited matters including criminal, tax, electoral, or political parties. However, if he chooses this route, Congress will still have the final say. By act or omission, it can green light or block the transfer of the diplomatic seat.

In the minority

Out of the 193 countries affiliated to the United Nations, a mere three recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel: the United States, which was then followed by Honduras and Guatemala. There is also Kosovo, a state which has not been fully recognised by the international community.

Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017 was questioned even by the leaders of allied nations, especially due to its implications for the stalled peace process in the Middle East. In an emergency meeting, 14 out of 15 members on the UN Security Council condemned the decision (which did not prosper given the US veto). The General Assembly, in turn, approved a resolution to ask its members not to follow Trump’s example and keep their embassies where they are.

Argentina has previously ratified its support to Jerusalem’s special status, as established by the UN resolution, and “regretted” unilateral measures to modify its status.

The ball is now in Milei’s court.


– TIMES/PERFIL

The U.K. Labour Party’s Worst Enemy Might Be Itself

The party has a large lead in the polls but recent missteps have led to questions about the management skills of its leader, Keir Starmer.

Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, delivering a speech this month at a business conference in London.

Credit...Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press

By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle
NEW YORK TIMES
Reporting from London
Feb. 14, 2024

These days, the only thing that can stop the Labour Party, it seems, is the Labour Party.

For more than a year, the leader of Britain’s main opposition party, Keir Starmer, has sat on a double-digit lead in the polls over the Conservative Party. But a pair of embarrassing suspensions of Labour parliamentary candidates for their comments about Israel, a week after a messy reversal on climate policy, have thrown Mr. Starmer on the defensive, raising questions about his management skills and taking the spotlight off the long-suffering Conservatives.

“Keir has had a really good, long run but he’s not Man City,” said John McTernan, a political strategist, referring to the Manchester soccer club that is a perennial champion of Britain’s Premier League. “The question is, can he come back next week fighting?”

Labour still holds a double-digit lead over the Conservatives in polls. It could swiftly regain its stride with victories in two parliamentary by-elections on Thursday, both of which it is expected to win. And the Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has committed his share of missteps.

But Labour’s setbacks are a reminder that with a general election still at least a few months away, Mr. Starmer cannot take anything for granted.

Analysts said the party’s decision to mothball its flagship climate initiative was potentially damaging because it plays into a Conservative narrative that Labour does not stand for anything. It pulled the policy after a lengthy internal debate that leaked into the public, because the price tag — 28 billion pounds, or $35 billion, a year — seemed untenable, given Britain’s big rise in borrowing costs since the policy was first announced in 2021.

In the case of the candidates, Labour arguably compounded its problems by acting too slowly. It stuck by one of them, Azhar Ali, for almost two days after a London tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, reported that he had claimed Israel “allowed” the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed.

More on BritainKing Charles’s Health: King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer and suspended his public engagements to undergo treatment, casting a shadow over a busy reign that began less than 18 months ago after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

A Victory Lap: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain celebrated a rare success in Northern Ireland with the return of the territory’s power-sharing government, which was restored after his ministers struck a deal that brought the North’s disaffected unionists back into the territory’s assembly.
A Squeeze on Businesses: More than 25,000 companies in Britain registered as insolvent in 2023, the most since 1993, according to government data.

Trump Dossier Case: The High Court in London decided to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump against Christopher Steele, a former British spy who compiled a dossier in 2016 detailing unproven claims of links between Trump and Russia.

Labour eventually revoked its support for Mr. Ali, even at the cost of losing the seat in the constituency of Rochdale, north of Manchester, for which he is still running. But the episode revived allegations of lingering anti-Jewish sentiment in the party’s ranks, despite Mr. Starmer’s concerted — and by most accounts, successful — campaign to root out systemic antisemitism.

Rochdale, in northwest England, will be the site of a by-election on Feb. 28.Credit...Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The outcry over Mr. Ali guaranteed that when another Labour candidate, Graham Jones, was accused on Tuesday of making anti-Israel remarks, the party quickly suspended him. Mr. Jones had been selected to compete in the general election for a seat he once held in Lancashire.

“I don’t think it symbolizes a great strand of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party,” said Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to a former Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. Under Mr. Starmer, he noted, Labour has maintained a pro-Israel position during the Israel-Gaza war. That would have been inconceivable under his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, when Labour was a hotbed of anti-Israel fervor.

Still, Mr. Powell said the party could face a recurring problem if the pro-Tory press unearthed and published problematic statements on a variety of issues by other Labour candidates. “If you’re going to rule out candidates for seats for saying anything silly in their lives,” he said, “you’re not going to have many candidates.”

However successful Mr. Starmer’s campaign against anti-Semitism has been, the episode shows how vital it is for the party to conduct due diligence on candidates. By the time Labour cut loose Mr. Ali, it was too late to replace him on the ballot for the by-election, which is scheduled for Feb. 28. If he manages to win anyway, he will not sit in Parliament as a Labour lawmaker.

In a strange twist, Mr. Ali will run against two former Labour lawmakers: George Galloway, who was expelled from the party in 2003 because of his opposition to the Iraq war and represents the Workers Party of Great Britain; and Simon Danczuk, who was suspended by Labour for sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl. He is the candidate of the right-wing Reform U.K. party.

The Israel-Gaza war has put Labour in a tricky position because — alongside its support for Israel, which it shares with the Conservative government — it wants to signal to voters in Muslim communities that it understands their anguish and outrage at the rising death toll among Palestinians.

Still, critics argued that the hesitation in abandoning Mr. Ali revealed a weakness in Mr. Starmer, a former public prosecutor who has not run a national campaign. Some pointed to the similarly dilatory debate over the future of Labour’s green policy, which analysts said became a tug of war between Mr. Starmer and the party’s fiscally conservative shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

RED TORIES

Mr. Starmer and the Shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, center, are determined to reassure voters that taxes will not rise under Labour.

Credit...Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“There is something in the operation that, when under pressure, seems to give a bit,” said Mr. McTernan, a onetime aide to Mr. Blair. “That is not an issue now because Labour is 20 points ahead in the polls. But it’s an issue to be sorted out now because in a general election, these things will happen once an hour, they won’t happen once a week.”

The drama over the green policy allowed the Conservatives to paint Labour as a party of U-turns and flip-flops. But Labour allies said that was a reasonable price to pay to avoid being tarred as fiscally irresponsible. Mr. Starmer and Ms. Reeves are determined to reassure voters that taxes will not rise under Labour and that the party can be trusted with the public finances.

“There are some really serious considerations about the country’s fiscal position, Labour’s policy priorities, and how they match what they want to do in government with the reality they are going to face,” said Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer.

“I am not surprised if that took some weeks, if not months, for there to be proper conversations,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.

Some of Labour’s troubles, analysts said, are merely a function of having held a lead in the polls for so long that the British press now treats the party as a government in waiting. That means, among other things, that journalists subject Labour to closer scrutiny than an ordinary opposition party.

“A big stable lead for one political party is a very boring story,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, noting that the polls had barely budged for six months. “A lot of this reflects a much higher level of scrutiny and a desire for conflict and drama.”

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades. More about Mark Landler

Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe. More about Stephen Castle

Viktor Orban’s ‘family values’ under threat


A row over a presidential pardon for a man who helped to cover up sexual abuse in a children’s home risks damaging the core appeal of the ruling party of Hungary’s Viktor Orban: its commitment to family and Christian values.

Veteran conservative Prime Minister Orban has sought to defuse the scandal that brought down two of his key political allies - the president and former justice minister - in a week. But the most challenging period of his 14-year premiership is not over, with the scandal dominating domestic media and popular influencers planning a street protest.

While the turmoil poses no immediate threat to his rule, with 2026 elections still far off, it comes ahead of European parliament elections in June where his party is hoping to gain from a rise in far-right support across Europe, according to Reuters.

“It has served to demonstrate the ideological veneer of his presupposed family values and conservative purity,” said Roger Hilton, a research fellow at the independent think tank GLOBSEC.

Orban’s party Fidesz tried to win back the narrative after President Katalin Novak’s resignation on Saturday, saying mistakes on its side had consequences unlike those made by the opposition. But the media and opposition have not let go and are now digging into the motives behind the presidential pardon made in April 2023 but first reported by news site 444.hu on Feb. 2.

Orban has not spoken publicly since Thursday, and has made no comment on the two resignations. He is due to hold his state of the nation speech on Saturday, setting out his policy agenda for 2024.

“The Prime Minister has already expressed his views on the pardon issue. The government continues its work as normal,” his press chief Bertalan Havasi said.

In a bid to contain the political fallout, Orban submitted a constitutional amendment to parliament last week, depriving the president of the right to pardon crimes committed against children. That was interpreted by political analysts as a clear message to Novak – who resigned two days later.

Judit Varga, a former justice minister who signed off on Novak’s pardon, stepped down as a Fidesz MP and “resigned from public life”.

Orban loyalist Varga was expected to lead Fidesz’s list for the European parliament elections and it was not clear who would step into her shoes.

Orban has cast himself as a protector of Christian values against Western liberalism. His campaigns to protect children from what he has described as LGBTQ activists roaming the nation’s schools is one of several issues over which he has clashed with the European Commission.

The uncovering of the pardon has triggered a public outcry and nine online influencers, among them hugely popular singer Azahriah, have called for a protest on Friday.

“Irrespective of the (political) sides, we believe it is important for us to speak out in support of a protection of the victims (of abuse), transparency, human dignity and honest public dialogue,” the influencers wrote in a Facebook post. “How many more similar issues there are that we don’t know about, and that have been covered up?”

To complicate Orban’s task, Peter Magyar, Varga’s former husband and a businessman close to Fidesz circles, has unleashed incendiary comments about the inner workings of the government, accusing Antal Rogan, the minister who leads Orban’s office, of running a centralised propaganda machine.

Magyar clocked up 1.3 million views for an interview he gave to the website Partizan.hu.

On Tuesday Magyar took aim at Orban’s son-in-law, businessman Istvan Tiborcz, questioning in a Facebook post how he had accumulated his wealth. Tiborcz told news television RTL Klub he did not want to take part in “political battles”.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Whose Family Values?