Brexit: The Great British con trick by Jemma Norman

The most extraordinary thing about Brexit is not that Britain made a historic mistake. It is that, years later, the people who sold the mistake still expect the country to pretend it was a triumph.

Andy Burnham's willingness to talk about a possible British return to the European Union, or at least a softer relationship with it, has reopened a political wound that Westminster has desperately tried to cover with patriotic wallpaper. And look at the reaction. Not the hysterical national outrage that once accompanied even the suggestion of closer European integration, but something considerably more revealing: a relatively mild response, a political shrug, and an increasingly obvious willingness to discuss what was once treated as national treason.

That change matters. For years, Brexit's architects presented themselves as the fearless liberators of a nation supposedly imprisoned by Brussels. They promised sovereignty, prosperity, control of borders, economic renewal and a glorious restoration of Britain's international importance. They sold nostalgia as an economic programme and nationalism as a substitute for political intelligence. The British public was promised a land of opportunity, freed from European bureaucracy, where everything from trade to immigration would magically become easier.

What a magnificent collection of political rubbish. The country was told that leaving the EU would be straightforward, that trade agreements would fall into Britain's lap, that the NHS would receive imaginary weekly fortunes, that immigration would be controlled and that British sovereignty would somehow become more powerful simply by abandoning one of the world's largest economic and political partnerships.

And what happened? Years of economic uncertainty, bureaucratic complications, damaged commercial relationships, labour shortages in important sectors, reduced opportunities for younger generations and a country still struggling to explain what exactly it gained.

The greatest achievement of Brexit was making Britain smaller while convincing some of its politicians that it had become bigger.

Of course, one must be careful about interpreting public reaction. A mild response to Burnham's remarks does not, by itself, prove that every British voter regrets Brexit. Nor does it establish that a majority is ready to rejoin. But it does demonstrate something politically significant: the old emotional defences of Brexit are weakening. The subject can increasingly be discussed without triggering the familiar theatrical performance about sovereignty, traitors and Brussels dictators.

That is progress. The most poisonous aspect of Brexit was never simply the departure itself. It was the dishonesty surrounding it. Political opportunists transformed complicated economic and constitutional questions into a simplistic battle between supposedly patriotic Britons and imaginary foreign oppressors. They exploited genuine frustrations, ignored inconvenient facts and treated warnings as sabotage. When reality arrived, many of those responsible conveniently disappeared into political retirement, television studios or their next lucrative opportunity.

Meanwhile, ordinary people were left with the consequences. Britain does not need another referendum tomorrow, nor another round of political circus. It needs an honest national conversation about its future relationship with Europe, including the practical possibilities of rebuilding cooperation, restoring economic connections and eventually considering membership again.

And it needs politicians with enough courage to admit that a decision can be democratically made and still be disastrously wrong. There is no shame in reconsidering a mistake. There is considerable shame in defending it indefinitely because admitting the truth would embarrass the people who made it.

Brexit was marketed as Britain's liberation. It increasingly looks like an expensive lesson in what happens when a nation mistakes political propaganda for a national strategy. Perhaps the most British thing about the whole affair is that the country is now being asked to pay for the promises of people who never intended to pick up the bill. The European door has never been the problem. The British politicians who slammed it shut were.

Democracy's million-dollar hunger by Thanos Kalamidas

I know it sounds cliché, often written and even more often mentioned, but… what the hell? Why are there no laws stopping people like Elon Musk from spending millions to buy politicians who will serve them, and forcing them to pay their fair share of taxes to help a health system in ruins, fund pensions, and support the homeless, the hungry, and the millions of poor people suffering and literally dying in the USA today?

The money poured into US’ midterm elections from both political parties could literally save lives, settle thousands of desperate families, heal thousands of wounded and sick people and feed millions for years. And that is before counting the enormous sums already sitting in party coffers, patiently waiting for the next electoral circus. Apparently, the US political establishment has discovered a miraculous economic principle, money is practically unlimited when the objective is winning power, but mysteriously scarce when the objective is helping people survive.

This is not merely an argument about campaign finance. It is an indictment of political priorities, a particularly American contradiction in which wealth becomes a weapon of electoral competition while human suffering becomes an inconvenient background statistic.

Consider what political fundraising actually represents. It is not simply money spent on television advertisements, consultants, rallies, digital propaganda, opposition research and an army of professional persuaders. It is an enormous mobilisation of economic resources around a single question: who gets to occupy the corridors of power? Meanwhile, outside those corridors, millions of Americans confront medical bills capable of destroying a lifetime's savings, families struggling with housing costs, children experiencing food insecurity and communities still waiting for infrastructure, dignity and opportunity.

The grotesque irony is that both parties can recognise suffering perfectly well when it becomes electorally useful. Poverty becomes a campaign photograph. Healthcare becomes a slogan. Veterans become patriotic decorations. Working families become the protagonists of carefully rehearsed speeches. Then the fundraising machinery starts again, swallowing millions in the name of defending those very people.

Democrats and Republicans may disagree about taxation, immigration, healthcare, reproductive rights, climate policy and the proper size of government. Yet their dependence on enormous financial machinery increasingly resembles a shared political addiction. They compete fiercely for donations while the citizens supposedly represented by those donations compete for affordable medicine, decent housing and a future their children can believe in.

The problem is not that elections cost money. Elections require organisation, communication and the participation of citizens. The problem is the scale, the concentration of influence and the grotesque opportunity cost. When political survival demands an endless financial war, governing becomes secondary to fundraising, and public service increasingly resembles a business whose shareholders are wealthy donors.

Imagine redirecting even a fraction of this electoral expenditure towards emergency housing, food programmes, medical treatment, mental health services, refugee assistance and rebuilding devastated communities. Imagine the thousands of families rescued from homelessness, the children whose hunger would disappear, the patients receiving treatment before their conditions become irreversible. These are not abstract moral fantasies. They are measurable human possibilities.

Of course, campaign money cannot simply be transformed overnight into public welfare. Political expenditure and public budgets are different instruments, and private donations do not automatically become government revenue. But that distinction does not diminish the moral question. It sharpens it.

What kind of political culture celebrates billions spent persuading people to vote while treating billions required improving their lives as an ideological battlefield?

US' electoral machinery has become exceptionally efficient at manufacturing political urgency. Every election is presented as the last opportunity to rescue the republic from catastrophe. Every opponent is portrayed as an existential threat. Every donation becomes a patriotic obligation. Yet the catastrophe that rarely receives comparable urgency is the everyday destruction of human potential through poverty, preventable illness, homelessness and hunger.

Perhaps the most revealing feature of US elections is not how much money they consume but how little shame accompanies the consumption.

Democracy should be about the people, not the price of convincing them. If political parties genuinely believe their campaigns are about protecting American lives, perhaps they should occasionally examine what those lives might look like if even a modest portion of their electoral fortune were spent protecting people rather than purchasing power.

The tragedy is not that USA cannot afford to help. The tragedy is that USA can afford both the suffering and the spectacle and somehow keeps choosing the spectacle.

The search is dead. Long live the rumour! By Jiro Lambert

We used to search for information. Now we ask strangers, algorithms and artificial intelligence to tell us what we should think. Somewhere between Google's search box and ChatGPT's confident answer, the art of actually finding the truth is becoming an endangered species.

There was a time when searching for something meant searching for something. You typed a question, received a collection of websites, opened a few dozen tabs, compared information, became frustrated, discovered something unexpected and, occasionally, found the answer. It was messy, exhausting and wonderfully human. It also required one rather inconvenient activity: thinking.

That era is disappearing. Google Search, once the magnificent gateway to the world's information, increasingly resembles a commercial shopping centre where the shops are advertisements, the corridors are sponsored suggestions and the actual information is somewhere behind a security door. The search engine has not necessarily disappeared, but the relationship between people and searching has fundamentally changed. People are increasingly turning to Reddit, specialised forums, social communities and artificial intelligence for answers that traditional search engines struggle to deliver.

And there is a reason. People are tired of searching through ten pages of recycled articles, suspiciously similar product recommendations, search-engine-optimised nonsense and websites that seem to have been written by someone who has never actually experienced the subject. Want to know whether a particular washing machine survives five years of family abuse? A manufacturer's website will tell you it is revolutionary. A stranger on Reddit will tell you that the bloody thing started leaking after eleven months.

Guess which one people trust? Reddit has become an enormous informal knowledge warehouse, built from personal experiences, arguments, expertise, mistakes and occasionally spectacular stupidity. Its attraction is precisely what traditional search engines have struggled to reproduce: human context. People do not merely want information; they want somebody who has been there, done it and perhaps regretted buying the bloody T-shirt.

But there is a catch. Reddit is not a university library. An experienced engineer and an enthusiastic idiot can occupy precisely the same digital space, sometimes with identical confidence. Upvotes are not academic qualifications, popularity is not evidence, and a thousand people repeating the same mistake do not transform it into scientific truth.

Then comes artificial intelligence. AI tools have changed the equation even more dramatically. Instead of searching for ten different explanations, users can ask one question and receive a coherent answer in seconds. They can demand clarification, challenge an argument, request comparisons and explore subjects without navigating an endless maze of hyperlinks.

It is convenient, extraordinarily powerful and potentially dangerous. The problem is not that artificial intelligence can make mistakes. Human beings have been producing mistakes professionally for centuries. The problem is that AI can package uncertainty in beautifully constructed sentences, delivering an answer with the confidence of a Supreme Court judge and occasionally the factual accuracy of a drunken pub philosopher.

The user receives an answer without necessarily seeing the process, the competing interpretations or the missing evidence. The intellectual labour of searching, comparing and questioning is quietly outsourced.

And that brings us to the real crisis: information literacy. Knowing how to use a search engine is not the same as knowing how to evaluate information. The next generation must learn something considerably more important than typing clever keywords into a box. They must recognise manipulation, identify unreliable sources, distinguish evidence from opinion, understand algorithmic incentives and question information even when it confirms everything they already believe.

This is particularly important in an age when misinformation is not simply an unfortunate by-product of the internet. It is an industry, a political instrument and, sometimes, a business model. The traditional search engine presented us with a distorted but relatively visible landscape of competing sources. AI increasingly offers us a destination. Reddit offers us a crowd. Neither guarantees truth.

There is also a commercial dimension that deserves considerably more attention. Search engines, social platforms and AI companies are competing to become the first and perhaps only place people visit when they need information. Whoever controls that first answer gains enormous influence over what people discover, what they ignore and eventually what they believe.

The old gatekeepers were journalists, editors, librarians and publishers. The new gatekeepers are algorithms, recommendation systems and privately controlled artificial intelligence models. The technology has changed; the concentration of informational power has not necessarily disappeared.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that humanity has never had greater access to knowledge and has never been so willing to surrender the responsibility of examining it.

I am not nostalgic for the days of endless searching, broken hyperlinks and websites demanding that we accept seventeen different cookies before reading three paragraphs. Progress is welcome. Better tools are welcome. AI can democratise access to knowledge in ways that previous generations could barely imagine.

But convenience must not become intellectual laziness. We should use Google, Reddit, specialist forums and AI. We should use libraries, newspapers, academic research and human expertise. We should compare, challenge and investigate. Most importantly, we should never confuse an answer with an understanding.

The death of Google Search, if that is what we are witnessing, is not necessarily the death of searching. It is the transformation of how we encounter knowledge.

The real danger is something much uglier: a generation that knows how to ask every possible question but has forgotten how to recognise a convincing lie.

And when the machines eventually become the librarians, the researchers and the interpreters of our collective knowledge, somebody should remind them of one very old human principle: Trust is earned. Truth is investigated. And neither comes with a convenient little button marked 'Generate Answer'.

Berserk Alert! #133 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Puppi & Caesar #55 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Another cartoon with a mean and know-all of a bully cat, Puppi and her intellectual, pompous companion categorically-I-know-all, Caesar the squirrel!  

For more Puppi & Caesar, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The Cockroach that won’t disappear by Avani Devi

When political empires begin to crack, the most dangerous thing for their masters is not necessarily an army, a revolution or even an angry electorate. Sometimes it is a survivor with a thousand political lives, crawling through the wreckage of a carefully constructed illusion.

Narendra Modi built his political empire on the promise of invincibility. The strongman of New Delhi, the self-appointed architect of a Hindu nationalist renaissance, the man who turned electoral victories into personal mythology, suddenly faces an uncomfortable question: what happens when the cockroach refuses to die?

Indian politics has always been a brutal ecosystem, but Modi's greatest achievement was convincing millions that he was not merely another politician surviving the jungle. He was the jungle's undisputed king. His machinery of propaganda, religious mobilisation, muscular nationalism and carefully choreographed public appearances manufactured the impression that opposition was obsolete and political alternatives were little more than historical curiosities.

Then reality intervened. The Indian electorate reminded Modi that democracy is not a private property deed issued to a charismatic leader. His party's reduced parliamentary strength in 2024 forced him into coalition dependence, exposing an uncomfortable vulnerability beneath the carefully polished armour. Suddenly, the supposedly invincible emperor needed allies, compromises and parliamentary arithmetic. The mythology of absolute dominance suffered a rather undignified collision with mathematics.

And lurking in this political mess is the cockroach: India's surviving opposition, particularly the Congress-led alliance, and the stubborn democratic instinct that refuses to surrender the country to one political personality.

The cockroach, after all, is not beautiful, respectable or particularly welcome in the kitchen. It survives. It adapts. It appears precisely when somebody believes the room has been thoroughly disinfected. India's opposition has demonstrated something Modi's political theatre desperately wanted to conceal: survival is itself a political weapon.

But the danger for Modi extends beyond parliamentary numbers. His political project depends on permanent mobilisation, permanent enemies and permanent emotional intoxication. Hindu nationalism provides the fuel, but economic frustrations, unemployment, inequality and the ordinary indignities of everyday existence cannot indefinitely be buried beneath religious spectacle. A temple inauguration does not create employment. A nationalist slogan does not fill a stomach. And another televised declaration of greatness cannot magically transform political disappointment into prosperity.

The irony is delicious. A leader who cultivated the image of a political exterminator now discovers that democratic competition possesses extraordinary reproductive capacity. Eliminate one opponent and another emerges. Marginalise one institution and another becomes troublesome. Silence one criticism and ten more crawl out from beneath the furniture.

This does not mean Modi's departure is imminent, nor that India's opposition has suddenly become competent, united or morally immaculate. The opposition has its own failures, dynastic baggage and political parasites. Modi remains powerful, his organisation formidable, and his ideological project deeply rooted. But power without vulnerability is an illusion, and the illusion has been punctured.

The real question is whether India can recover something more valuable than the humiliation of one political heavyweight: the democratic space in which disagreement is not treason, minorities are not permanent suspects, journalists are not enemies, and citizenship does not require ideological obedience.

Modi may yet survive another political season. The cockroach certainly will. And perhaps that is the most irritating lesson for every aspiring authoritarian: democracy does not need to be magnificent to survive. Sometimes it only needs to be stubborn, ugly, inconvenient and impossible to kill. In India, the political insect has survived the spraying. Now the exterminator has a problem.

Joan of Arc in Marine’s armour …again by Nadine Moreau

France does not need another saint. It needs a political movement that stops confusing national pride with national paranoia. Marine Le Pen launching her presidential campaign in Orléans, wrapping herself in the symbolic armour of Joan of Arc. When politicians begin borrowing their legitimacy from medieval saints, one should immediately check what they are trying to smuggle into the present.

Joan of Arc liberated Orléans from English occupation. She became a symbol of resistance, sacrifice and French national identity. Her story belongs to a complicated history of faith, courage, tragedy and national mythology. Marine Le Pen, however, has discovered something considerably more convenient in this historical inheritance: a magnificent political costume.

The symbolism is not accidental. Joan of Arc has long occupied the French nationalist imagination, offering an emotionally irresistible combination of patriotism, victimhood and heroic resistance against foreign domination. For Le Pen, this is political gold. Why bother constructing a convincing vision of France's future when you can borrow the emotional machinery of its past?

The problem is that France in 2027 is not medieval Orléans, and the enemies of contemporary French society cannot simply be assembled into a convenient procession of foreign invaders.

Le Pen's political project has spent decades transforming anxiety into electoral capital. Immigration becomes an existential threat. European integration becomes an assault on sovereignty. Cultural diversity becomes evidence of national decline. The familiar promise is that France can recover its greatness by recovering its supposed purity.

This is nationalism with an enormous rear-view mirror and remarkably little imagination. The strategy is particularly cynical because Joan of Arc's historical significance cannot be reduced to the ideological property of the French far right. She belongs to French history, certainly, but her courage and sacrifice are not exclusive possessions of any political party. Turning her into a campaign mascot is less an act of historical reverence than an attempt to monopolise patriotism.

And that is precisely where the danger begins. When the far right claims exclusive ownership of the nation, everybody else becomes a questionable guest in their own country. Citizens with different origins, different religions, different political convictions or different interpretations of French identity are gradually pushed towards the margins of an increasingly narrow national definition.

The genius of this political theatre is that it makes exclusion appear patriotic and prejudice sound like historical responsibility. France deserves better than this theatrical resurrection of medieval nationalism. It deserves a serious discussion about immigration, economic inequality, public services, security, secularism and the future of European democracy. It deserves political leadership capable of addressing contemporary problems without manufacturing imaginary civilisational wars.

Joan of Arc fought for a France that did not yet exist in its modern form. Marine Le Pen campaigns for a France that exists largely as an ideological fantasy, populated by nostalgic certainties and conveniently selected enemies.

The difference matters. A nation is not a museum exhibit, a bloodline or a religious monument. It is a living political community, constantly negotiating its identity through democracy, citizenship and shared responsibilities.

If Marine Le Pen wants to invoke Joan of Arc, she should remember that history is considerably more complicated than a campaign poster. France does not need another political saint. It needs fewer political exorcists.

The Nobel Is not a mandate by Mia Rodríguez

Venezuela has welcomed back its most celebrated opposition leader. But a Nobel medal is not a presidential mandate and Washington's military intervention is not democracy delivered by helicopter.

María Corina Machado is back. Venezuela has its Nobel laureate on home soil again, after ten months abroad, several failed attempts to return and a political journey that has taken her from clandestine opposition leader to international celebrity. The reception was emotional, the symbolism powerful and the political implications enormous. Yet beneath the applause lies an uncomfortable question: does Machado actually command the Venezuela she claims to represent, or has she become another political personality inflated by international admiration?

Machado's courage against Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian machinery deserves recognition. Her movement helped expose the grotesque manipulation of Venezuela's electoral process, while millions of citizens demonstrated that chavismo had exhausted much of its popular legitimacy. But courage is not political invincibility, and suffering under dictatorship does not automatically transform somebody into an unquestionable democratic leader.

Then came the American intervention. Maduro was removed by US forces, and suddenly Venezuela's political future became a peculiar mixture of Washington's strategic calculations, Delcy Rodríguez's interim authority and Machado's ambitions. The opposition leader welcomed the operation, praised Donald Trump and expected the removal of her principal adversary to open the road towards democratic power.

Instead, Washington discovered that removing Maduro did not necessarily mean installing Machado. That humiliation matters. Trump has demonstrated little sentimental attachment to democratic principles when they conflict with American interests. His administration has worked with Rodríguez while leaving Machado outside crucial negotiations. The Nobel laureate has consequently found herself in the absurd position of celebrating American intervention while discovering that the Americans might prefer another Venezuelan political arrangement.

The Nobel Peace Prize, meanwhile, has become both an asset and a political complication. Machado's international recognition elevated her struggle, but the medal cannot substitute for political organisation, institutional reconstruction or negotiations with a society exhausted by decades of economic collapse, repression and mass emigration.

Nor should the Venezuelan people be reduced to a cheering crowd waiting for a saviour. They have already endured enough messianic politics. Maduro promised revolutionary salvation; his opponents must not promise a democratic salvation requiring unquestioning loyalty to another personality.

Machado's return is important precisely because it restores her to the political arena where legitimacy must be earned, tested and renewed. She must convince not only her enthusiastic supporters but also sceptical citizens, exhausted workers, impoverished families and those who fear that another transition will merely replace one elite with another.

Her challenge is not simply to defeat chavismo's remaining structures. It is to demonstrate that Venezuela can become a democracy rather than an American-managed political experiment with Venezuelan scenery.

And here lies the uncomfortable truth: Machado may have won international recognition, Maduro may have lost his throne, and Washington may congratulate itself on liberation. But Venezuela has still not won democracy.

That victory requires elections, accountable institutions, political freedoms and a government answerable to Venezuelans rather than foreign patrons. The Nobel medal opened doors. The American operation removed a dictator. Machado has returned. Now comes the difficult part: proving that the future belongs to the Venezuelan people, not to another political messiah.

2nd opinion! 26#19 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Seriously, a human hater self-centred agoraphobic in quarantine!
I think you’ll need a second opinion after this.

For more 2nd opinion, quarantined!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The blue tsunami and the Trumpian hangover by Thanos Kalamidas

The blue wave has arrived. Trump has been slapped, his political invincibility punctured, and his administration humiliated. But American democracy has an unfortunate habit of celebrating victories before discovering the size of the disaster left behind. The Democrats may have won the battle, but the war against Trumpism is nowhere near over.

The Democrats' blue tsunami in the US midterm elections is more than an electoral embarrassment for Donald Trump; it is a political warning, a public rejection of his governing style and potentially the beginning of the most uncomfortable chapter of his presidency. For a man who has confused electoral victory with personal ownership of the United States, the message must be particularly unpleasant, America is not his private corporation and its citizens are not employees required to applaud the boss.

Yet elections, especially US midterms, are strange beasts. They deliver dramatic headlines, emotional celebrations and endless declarations of political resurrection. What they do not necessarily deliver is immediate political power. The Democrats may have captured the momentum but the institutional consequences of their victory will become considerably more complicated.

The new Congress does not begin its work until January 2027. Between election night and the transfer of congressional power lies a dangerous political vacuum, a period in which Trump and his increasingly desperate entourage will retain the machinery of government while knowing that their parliamentary protection is about to disappear.

That is precisely where the danger begins. A wounded Trump is not necessarily a restrained Trump. A politically cornered president may become more reckless, more vindictive and more determined to transform temporary executive authority into permanent political advantage. His administration could attempt to accelerate controversial policies, impose new institutional realities, consolidate executive power and leave the incoming Democratic majority with a mountain of legal, administrative and political wreckage. The question is not simply what Trump has already done. It is what he might still do before January.

For Europe, the consequences of the blue tsunami may initially appear peripheral. European governments have spent enough time discovering the unreliability of US political commitments to understand that Washington cannot remain the unquestioned foundation of European security. NATO, Ukraine, defence spending and strategic autonomy are no longer theoretical discussions conducted by diplomats over expensive dinners. They have become urgent political necessities.

Nevertheless, US politics still matters enormously. A Democratic-controlled Congress could complicate Trump's attempts to abandon Ukraine, restrict presidential freedom over military assistance, challenge certain tariff policies and introduce greater scrutiny into his international adventures. Congress cannot magically reverse every presidential decision, but it can become an uncomfortable obstacle to presidential improvisation. For Kyiv, that distinction could prove existential.

For Brussels, it is another reminder that European independence cannot be built on the assumption that US political weather will always remain favourable.

But the most important consequences of this election are domestic. Trump has inflicted damage across institutions that Democrats will eventually have to repair, immigration enforcement increasingly resembling political intimidation, the ideological contamination of federal administration, attacks on educational institutions, scientific hostility, weakened public confidence and the continuing assault on healthcare affordability and accessibility.

ICE has become an emblem of the administration's coercive politics. The defence establishment embarrassingly has been dragged into ideological and cultural battles. Universities and schools have become targets in a cultural war that treats intellectual independence as suspicious and historical complexity as an enemy.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans continue to confront healthcare costs, economic insecurity and the absurd spectacle of a government preaching national greatness while making everyday life increasingly difficult for millions.

The Democrats therefore face something considerably more demanding than defeating Trump at the ballot box. They must demonstrate that democratic government can actually function, that institutions can be repaired, that accountability is not merely a campaign slogan and that political opposition does not mean permanent national paralysis.

And they must do it before 2028. This is where the Democratic victory could become its own trap. Electoral enthusiasm is not political competence. Anger against Trump is not a governing programme. The party cannot survive another cycle merely presenting itself as the respectable alternative to an increasingly dysfunctional Republican leadership.

It needs reconstruction, not revenge; legislation, not theatrical investigations; institutional restoration, not another round of political performances designed for television. Trump's America has exposed the fragility of democratic safeguards when a president treats constitutional limits as inconveniences. The Democrats now have an opportunity to prove that those safeguards can still work.

The blue tsunami has shaken the Trumpian fortress. But the fortress still has a president, an administration, executive powers and several months before the new congressional majority takes office. And perhaps that is the most uncomfortable lesson of this election.

The real test begins in January, when the Democrats must decide whether they are prepared to govern a damaged democracy or merely celebrate having inherited the opportunity to repair one.

Because by 2028 Americans will not simply ask whether the Democrats stopped Trump. They will ask whether they managed to stop the damage.

Securing Europe Without Sacrificing Regulatory Certainty by Dr Mayelinne De Lara

Europe’s Security Imperative:
Protecting Critical Infrastructure Without Undermining Regulatory Certainty

Cybersecurity and geopolitical security measures must not undermine regulatory certainty, technical standards, and investment confidence. When Geopolitics Enters Technical Rules: Europe Needs Security—and Must Preserve Certainty and Its Standards Advantage

Geopolitical tensions are increasingly reshaping global trade, technology and industrial cooperation. For the European Union, growing supply-chain dependencies, foreign interference and cyber threats have made the security of critical infrastructure a strategic priority. Europe therefore has legitimate reasons to strengthen its ability to identify and address risks that extend beyond the technical security of individual products and systems.

The challenge, however, is to ensure that stronger security measures do not come at the expense of the regulatory certainty that underpins the Single Market. In recent years, Member States have adopted different approaches to non-technical supply-chain risks and high-risk suppliers, creating the risk of fragmentation. The European Commission's proposed revision of the Cybersecurity Act—CSA 2.0—in January 2026—seeks to address this through a common EU framework for trusted ICT supply chains.

Alongside strengthening ENISA and reforming the European Cybersecurity Certification Framework, the proposal adds a binding “trusted ICT supply chain framework”. This would bring factors such as third-country legislation, foreign influence, ownership and control structures into EU cybersecurity governance.

The regulatory question would therefore no longer be limited to whether a product is technically secure. It would also encompass whether a supplier is considered trustworthy from a geopolitical and institutional perspective.

That shift responds to genuine concerns. Critical infrastructure cannot be protected solely by addressing software vulnerabilities and product performance. Europe must also consider the risks of foreign interference, malicious control and systemic supply-chain dependency.

Yet security policy must answer more than one question. It must define the risks Europe seeks to prevent—but it must also allow European businesses to know whether the technologies they select, the equipment they purchase and the investments they make today will remain lawful, usable and valuable ten years from now.

The key question is therefore not whether Europe should strengthen security, but how it can do so while preserving the clarity, predictability and standards-based system on which long-term investment and the competitiveness of the Single Market depend.

How would CSA 2.0 work?

CSA 2.0 would establish a common EU mechanism for assessing and mitigating ICT supply-chain risks.

The Commission, or a group of at least three Member States, could trigger a coordinated EU-level supply-chain security assessment. The Commission could subsequently designate “third countries posing cybersecurity concerns”, identify “key ICT assets” used across the 18 sectors covered by NIS2, and determine high-risk suppliers on the basis of factors including establishment, ownership and control.

The Commission could then require relevant entities to implement measures such as audits, restrictions on data transfers and contractual relationships, and supplier diversification. It could also prohibit the use of components from specified suppliers in key ICT assets and, in certain circumstances, require the phase-out of components already deployed. European Commission proposal for CSA 2.0

The objective is legitimate: to prevent fragmented national responses and build a more resilient Single Market. But the current design raises a fundamental concern:

The proposal creates a potentially powerful decision-making mechanism without providing businesses with equally clear decision-making standards.

The greatest industrial risk is an inability to price the future

The proposal contains criteria for concepts such as “key ICT assets”, “significant cybersecurity risks” and “serious and structural non-technical risks”. Yet these criteria do not currently provide sufficiently granular or measurable thresholds for businesses operating across very different sectors.

Which components will ultimately be considered key? Which suppliers may face restrictions? What level of risk will trigger an audit, diversification requirement, procurement restriction or outright prohibition? Much of this would be determined later through risk assessments and implementing acts.

Consequently, even a product that complies with European technical standards and has obtained cybersecurity certification may not remain eligible for use in critical infrastructure. Market access could depend not only on the product’s technical characteristics, but also on its supplier’s ownership, the legal environment of its home country and an evolving geopolitical assessment.

The costliest regulatory burden is not the price of compliance. It is the inability to know whether compliance will still secure access to the market.

Critical infrastructure is normally planned over ten- or twenty-year investment cycles. If companies cannot assess the long-term eligibility of suppliers, installed equipment or entire technology pathways, they will respond before any formal restriction is imposed. They may freeze procurement, shorten contracts, reduce research spending, redesign systems or relocate factories, data centres and R&D programmes to jurisdictions offering greater regulatory predictability.

Uncertainty itself creates a regulatory overhang. Corporate boards will avoid technologies that might be restricted in the future. Banks will price additional risk into financing. Insurers will reassess exposure, while smaller suppliers will follow the location decisions of major investors.

The eventual cost is not limited to replacing equipment. It includes stranded assets, factories that are never built, research centres that are located elsewhere, and the talent and supply-chain ecosystems that move with them.

Capital can absorb risk. It cannot price discretion whose boundaries continue to move.

Annual business investment in the EU is roughly €2.4 trillion. An ECB study estimates that a typical economic policy uncertainty shock reduces euro-area business investment by around 1.2% at its trough, with the impact persisting for some time. This is not an estimate of the cost of CSA 2.0. It does, however, demonstrate that even a small uncertainty effect across 18 critical sectors could place tens of billions of euros of investment at risk. European Central Bank

Global evidence also shows how quickly investment reacts to geopolitical signals. IMF research finds that, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of announced FDI projects between geopolitically distant blocs has declined by roughly 20% relative to investment within the same bloc. Investment losses often occur before formal restrictions are adopted—and once an industrial ecosystem has been established elsewhere, attracting it back is difficult. International Monetary Fund

Nor does excluding suppliers automatically create new European capacity. In markets already characterised by a limited number of specialised vendors, exclusion may further concentrate supply, raise prices, reduce innovation and increase dependence on the remaining suppliers.

A policy designed to strengthen resilience may, if it reduces choice, competition and investment, remove one risk only to create a larger one.

Standards are a foundation of Europe’s global competitiveness

Europe competes globally not only through the size of its Single Market, but through its ability to turn technical excellence into common rules.

Over several decades, common technical standards, certification and mutual recognition have helped build the Single Market. Through organisations such as ISO, IEC, ITU and ETSI, Europe has also shaped global industrial development. For European companies, early participation in standard-setting can create technological leadership, facilitate market access and support entire industrial ecosystems.

Standards may be Europe’s most successful invisible export.

Studies cited by the European Commission have estimated the macroeconomic contribution of standardisation at around 0.8% in France and 1% in Germany. In Germany alone, standardisation has been estimated to generate annual economic benefits of up to €17 billion. European Commission material on the economic role of standards

The value of standards, however, cannot be measured only in direct economic gains. Their deeper value lies in the expectation they create: comparable risks should be subject to comparable requirements, and products meeting those requirements should receive broadly consistent treatment in the market.

The authority of a standard does not rest simply on the rule-maker’s power to demand compliance. It rests on the rule-maker’s willingness to be bound by the same rule.

If products that comply with European standards and pass European certification can nevertheless be excluded through non-technical assessments whose boundaries are not clearly defined, technical compliance will no longer provide a predictable route to market.

Once compliance and market access become disconnected, standards cease to function as a common market passport. They risk becoming technical reference documents that can be overridden by political decisions at any time.

The consequences would extend well beyond individual suppliers. Companies would have less incentive to invest in shared standards and certification. Other regions would accelerate the development of their own standards, assurance regimes and supply-chain ecosystems. The global market could fragment into parallel technical systems that duplicate research, testing and certification while trusting one another less.

European exporters would face the same duplication abroad—and potentially reciprocal restrictions justified by other governments on geopolitical and national-security grounds.

A standard can be overridden by a single political decision. Rebuilding trust in the standards system may take a generation.

When rule-makers begin to bypass the rules they have built, the first casualty is not a particular product or supplier. It is the credibility of the rules themselves. If Europe weakens technical standards to gain short-term political discretion, it risks consuming one of its most valuable—and least easily replicated—sources of global competitiveness.

Making security and certainty mutually reinforcing

CSA 2.0 does not need to disregard non-technical risk. It does, however, need clearer limits.

Technical assessment should come first, with non-technical factors serving as a complementary layer. Intervention should focus on the highest-risk scenarios capable of producing systemic consequences. A transparent risk-to-measure framework should distinguish between risks that justify monitoring, auditing or diversification and those exceptional cases that warrant prohibition or phase-out. Clear thresholds, proportionality requirements and realistic transition periods should provide businesses with the greatest possible degree of certainty.

Europe does not need unlimited security discretion. It needs a bounded security capacity capable of addressing the most serious risks with precision.

Geopolitical judgement may be necessary to manage exceptional cases. It should not replace technical rules as the normal basis of market governance. Europe must de-risk—but it must not de-rule.

If regulatory certainty and technical standards lose credibility, Europe will lose far more than individual investments or suppliers. It will weaken one of the deepest foundations of the Single Market—and one of the Union’s most valuable sources of influence and competitiveness in the global economy.

By adressingnon-technicalcriteria in the CSA2 the cybersecurity act that originally was based on technical security standards, by design, can become a trade instrument. Whether this was intently or not is not relevant. It deviates significantly from its main objective, reinforcing Europe’s cybersecurity.

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Dr Mayelinne De Lara is the Publisher and Founder of Diplomat Magazine Netherlands, an independent publication dedicated to diplomacy, international relations, and the work of diplomatic missions and international organisations. Based in The Hague, she has been connecting the diplomatic community, policymakers, and international institutions through journalism and editorial initiatives since 2013.