Hello and

welcome to the spike podcast I'm Fraser Myers and with me in the studio this week we have

Spikes editor Tom Slater and editor of the Jewish Chronicle Jake Wallace

Simons.

Nice to have you and coming up on today's show plenty to talk about we'll be talking about the

EU elections the war in Gaza and the UK elections as well the latest from that.

So there's been something of an earthquake in Europe over this past week. The EU elections resulted in a massive surge for populist and right-wing parties, especially in the major EU powers.

In France you had a national rally scoring double the vote share of President Macron's

Renaissance, prompting him to call domestic snap elections.

In Germany, the alternative for Germany outpold all of the governing parties in Italy, Georgia Maloney's party came in comfortably first.

I mean Tom this is just a massive shock to the system isn't it?

I think it's a real blow against the complacency of the EU elites essentially.

They were really convinced that they were able to kind of contain the sort of

restive spirit in various different countries and yet it's come bursting back to the surface.

I think the fact that Macron called that election is so fascinating.

I think that's surely one of the first times that you've had such direct national domestic

political consequences from a European election, which are often seen as something

which might give you a bit of a weather vein as to public opinion, but not necessarily being

that decisive.

And also a real clear picture that whilst it's not uniform across the continent, the fact that in the three main powers of the European Union, France, Germany and Italy, as you say, you have had these right-wing and populist parties of various different kinds.

Even making significant gains or coming top is really just a huge rattling of

what was presented as the very firm consensus within Brussels

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