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“My only purpose is to save Europe”

Voice of Europe, 29 Mar 2019:

When Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini spoke at a press conference at Lega’s historic headquarters at Via Bellerio 41 in Milan he was radiant with joy. His party tripled its number of votes in the regional elections in Basilicata (in just one year, it grew from 6.2% to 19%).

In a short interview Sputnik News asked Salvini about his predictions for the elections to the European Parliament, about how he and Lega see the fate of Europe, given that, according to the recently presented Confcommercio Report, Italy is the most “Eurosceptical” country, along with the Czech Republic, and is seemingly ready for an “Italexit”.

“Neither I, nor our government, has any plans to leave the European Union, but there is a conviction that it is necessary to change its laws and regulations in order to remain a member of the European community with a sense of self-respect and dignity”, Salvini said.

“Obviously, the reality is stronger than propaganda. You can hang EU flags on the balconies, but what kind of Europe is that?”

“One that with the Bolkestein directive (the Internal Market Directive 2006/123/EC on the laws of the single market) jeopardises 300,000 jobs, and with the European standards for agriculture and fishery – millions of jobs?”

“One that is imposed on us by the Fornero law (2011 pension law, extremely unpopular in Italy), one that tells us that Italy cannot reduce taxes, one that did nothing to help us with the migration issue?”, he continued.

“I recall that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has asked for a review of the existing norms established in the Dublin Regulation on the distribution of migrants since June last year – and nothing…”

“Therefore, Italians, as the EU continues hitting them on the head, are asking themselves: “Why do we have to keep on paying for all this?””

“My main goal is to save Europe, a renewed Europe, and Lega will do that.”

“We are being called Eurosceptics, sovereigntists, populists, Nazis, fascists, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, and so on and so forth.”

“But it is we who will pour healthy blood into Europe’s arteries again.”

“Today, I have scheduled the first week of April for the first public conference to discuss what our idea of Europe is for the next 40 years. We will discuss these ideas with those of our allies with whom we plan to meet in Parliament in Brussels in July”, he concluded.

Blackened School Bus, where 51 European children were bound-up in an attempt to burn them to death.

Jared Taylor and Paul Kersey have called attention to this story again, which has been under-emphasized, even by The Drudge Report:

An African immigrant to Italy, referred to as an “Italian” by mainstream media, apparently didn’t identify as “Italian” in his most radical concern. Actually, he was about to kill 51 indigenous Italian children in “protest” over Africans being turned away at sea rather than their being allowed to disembark into Europe. In a liberal world where people are supposed to be colorblind and value all lives the same, apparently this man was more concerned with fellow African lives, particularly those who died in the Mediterranean hazarding the voyage - and was quite willing to sacrifice European/Italian lives in priority of concern.

Amren Radio, “Africa Rise!”, 21 Mar 2019:

Paul Kersey:

This story was one that could have been a disaster of biblical proportions. ...in Italy where at first, it didn’t seem real.

On the heels of what had just happened in New Zealand that something like this would happen…what nearly happened in Italy, is a reminder of the true evil of open borders.

What happened was a Senegalese - an African - bus driver, he abducted 51 Italian children and their chaperones, threatening them over a forty minute ordeal before setting the vehicle on fire. Now officers were able to break the glass windows into the bus…and were luckily, as the fire is beginning to rage, they were able to get all the passengers to safety.

This African did this because he was upset, he was protesting the migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.

And, Mr. Taylor, one of the most important aspects of this story, is that this whole story has kind of gone away. It was in the news for a cup of coffee. Matt Drudge, to his discredit, did not highlight this story, but here’s one of the major reasons why this took place, and if I may read from a Washington Times story, the black African:

sent a video to friends in Italy and Senegal indicating plans for a bold action, with the message, “Africa Rise Up!”

Jared Taylor: Well yes, his bold action was going to be to burn to death 51 children if he could. That’s pretty bold, and here’s a guy who’s protesting the fact that these people from Africa and North Africa are trying to come across the Mediterranean to live in Europe and they’re not making it across. Well, now this will encourage people to let them across, won’t it? We want more of these guys!

Paul Kersey: This is one of the reasons why we talked about last week, Salvini’s (statement that) the Italian Navy is no longer going to be a taxi service. They basically shut down Mediterranean there’s no more illegal migrants coming from Africa. And yet this guy was ready to curate a terror attack to ensure that pipe-line stay open so that…we already know, we’ve seen that most important graphic from Steve Sailer that shows the projected growth rate for the African population:

It’s catastrophic.

He wants them to be able to come over, unmolested to this land of milk and honey that is Italy. This is a guy, again, this black gentleman from Senegal….

Jared Taylor: “Gentleman”..now, you…. Kersey: I do use that word, you said it was a fun week? Jared Taylor: No. Not a fun week Paul Kersey: No, you’re right, you’re right.

Paul Kersey: This was not a gentleman, this was an African terrorist ready to kill White Italians, let’s put it that way.

Jared Taylor: Yes. That’s better.

Paul Kersey: He took all their phones and he ordered the chaperones to bind the students hands with cable ties!

Jared Taylor: He had apparently a little supply of cable-ties, yes.

Paul Kersey: Threatening to spill gas and set the bus ablaze. Now luckily, it was reported, one of the chaperones was only loosely bound, he only loosely bound, he only loosely bound several students hands, so that enabled one of the students to escape…the bus was intercepted on the outskirts of the lawn.

Jared Taylor: No, what happened was that they managed to call the police.

Paul Kersey: Yes.

Jared Taylor: And the Police intercepted the bus.

Paul Kersey: The crisis that nearly happened on Monday, March 20th, is the reason why we are seeing [ethnonationalism win election after election, in places where we’d never seen ethnonationalism win elections before].

Jared Taylor: Well, exactly. This guy became an Italian citizen in 2004. Now, he hasn’t exactly been a model citizen. He’s been convicted in 2007 and 2011 of drunken driving. And, sexual molestation of a minor! What’s this guy doing driving a bus!

Paul Kersey: Yet, he’s been a bus driver for the company of fifteen years. So that means that he had both of those convictions for drunken driving while he was employed as a bus driver!

Jared Taylor: That’s right, that’s right, it makes no sense, does it.

I think more and more Italians are saying, “we don’t need guys like Ousseynou Sy” ...you know, these things don’t get talked about very much in The United States, and they are probably somewhat downplayed in Italy, but this will remain in people’s minds:

Somebody who tried to burn children to death. He told them - “no one will survive today!”

That was his warning, that was his intention.

“Africa Rise-Up!”

Boy oh, boy, if that’s the way Africa rises up, no thanks!

Paul Kersey: Africa, comma, “Rise-up!”

Jared Taylor: Yes, he’s addressing Africa.

Now it wasn’t just these Senegalese man who wanted to barbecue 51 Italian children. We had another deadly terror attack in Utrecht, in The Netherlands…this was just on Monday....a 37 year old of Turkish descent was under investigation for rape…

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Russia’s Connection To Brexit Is ‘Opaque And Complicated,’ Journalist Says, NPR, 21 Mar 2019:

     
      Katya Banks

While there are entirely legitimate interests for Britain to leave the E.U., The Russian Federation has had an interest and potential significant influence on the leave campaign as well.

Bitchute File Part 1 Audio

                              Part 2a Audio                  Part 2b Audio

                      Part 2c Audio                                Part 2d Audio

      Part 3a Audio          Part 3b Audio        Part 4a Audio  Part 4b Audio

Netanyahu: Border Wall Saved Israel as a “Jewish State”

New Observer, 8 Mar 2019:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu touted the success of Israel’s security barrier on its border with Egypt Thursday, calling the fence a “phenomenal” success, arguing its construction “saved” the Jewish nature of the state of Israel by preventing non-Jewish immigration into that country.

According to a report on the Israeli Arutz Sheva news service, Netanyahu toured the Israel-Egypt border Thursday, and met with southern front army commanders, who provided updates regarding Israel’s security situation in the area.

Netanyahu called Israel’s security fence on the border with Egypt a “phenomenal” success in stopping illegal immigration into Israel from eastern Africa.

“I was just updated now by officers in the field, here along the Sinai frontier. This fence saved the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state.

“This fence has been a phenomenal success. It completely stopped the hundreds of thousands of African infiltrators, as well as the entry of terrorists into Israel from the Sinai. Zero. That is a huge success, and I would say, one even of international dimensions–no other state has had this kind of success.”

“Of course this saved the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Israel built the barrier on the border with Sinai from 2010 to 2013, following a massive wave of illegal immigration from east Africa into Israel, via Sinai.

Following modifications to the fence in 2014, illegal immigration plummeted, falling from an average of roughly 10,000 a year to just over a dozen in 2016, with zero illegal entries in 2017.

“Ex-Mercenary CEO Erik Prince Admits To Trump Tower Meet With Don Jr., Saudi Emissary”

9 Mar 2019: Erik Prince, former head of mercenary business Blackwater, revealed in a bombshell interview Friday that he attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and a representative of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “Iran policy” during the presidential campaign.

The interview marked the first time Prince has publicly acknowledged such a meeting. Prince said in congressional testimony in 2017 that he had no “official” or “unofficial” role in the campaign — other than a “yard sign” and writing “papers” — according to the transcript of his testimony before the House intelligence committee. Nor did he mention the meeting in his testimony, according to transcripts.

The New York Times reported last year that Prince organized the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump’s eldest son and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. Nader revealed at the meeting that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to aid Trump in his bid for the presidency, according to the newspaper.

The meeting also reportedly included now-top White House aide Stephen Miller and Israeli social media expert Joel Zamel.

The August meeting is yet another secret huddle with a representative of foreign governments that may have provided illegal international aid to sway the American election. Just months earlier Donald Jr. and the president’s son-in-law and now senior White House aide Jared Kushner met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin.

Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, acknowledged the meeting in an on-camera interview on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head” aired Friday (above).

Asked by host Mehdi Hasan why he didn’t reveal the meeting in his congressional testimony, Prince insisted he had. When his actual response was read back to him, he suggested the transcript was “wrong,” drawing titters from the interview audience.

He later also insisted that “not all of the discussion that day was transcribed.”

Head to Head@AJHeadtoHead
Erik Prince responds that the U.S. Congress “got the transcript wrong”  when asked why he didn’t tell the House Intel Committee about an Aug 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower.  @Mehdirhasan goes ‘head to head’ with Erik Prince NOW @AJEnglish.

9:25 PM - Mar 8, 2019

A lawyer for Trump’s son confirmed to the Times after its story that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel.”

The Trump administration later harshly cracked down on Iran, terminating American participation in the international nuclear pact with the nation over the strenuous objections of Europe and Iran — and pleasing the Saudis and gulf allies.

The existence of the Trump Tower meeting — and what may have been discussed or promised — raises questions about the president’s confounding lack of action against Saudi Arabia after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials determined was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner met with the crown prince and other officials in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Against all protocol, American embassy staffers told The Daily Beast that they were shut out of meetings and were not provided details of what had been discussed. The private huddles followed revelations that the president ordered Kushner to be given top-level security clearance over the objections of the FBI.

Hasan also challenged Prince’s description of Iraqis in his memoir as “barbarians.” Prince responded that he had no problem calling terrorists barbarians. But Hasan pointed out Prince’s team had not been sent to “liberate” terrorists but Iraqi civilians.

Mehdi Hasan@mehdirhasan

I asked Blackwater founder Erik Prince about calling Iraqis “barbarians” and about the murder & manslaughter that happened on his watch in Iraq.

You should really listen to his replies. (Watch the whole @AJHeadtoHead with him this Friday on @AJEnglish)

Blackwater employees opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding 20 others. Three guards were convicted in 2014 of 14 manslaughter charges, and another of murder in an American court.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Nation Revisited # 149 March 2019, by Bill Baillie:

Cameron’s Chaos

Dave Cameron has gone off to write his memoirs, leaving our country in a state of chaos. He was one of the worst prime ministers in British history. He picked a fight with the EU to appease the right wing of the Tory Party, but he got nowhere with Brussels so he called a referendum. ‘The People’, led by the popular press and pissed-off by ten years of austerity, voted to leave the EU, but there was no plan for such a decision and after years of argument we are due to leave the EU on 31st March unless Brexit is delayed or abandoned.

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg predict a Brexit boom but the Governor of the Bank of England is less optimistic, and to add to the confusion the our withdrawal is led by Theresa May who voted to remain in the EU.

Leaving the EU is a momentous decision but whatever happens, we will still have an unbalanced economy, a divided society, a housing crisis, a staggering national debt, cash-strapped armed forces, a National Health Service dependant on foreign labour, and an educational system that impoverishes students. None of these problems will be helped by Brexit, they all require the sort of political action that our politicians are incapable of delivering.

Impossible Dreams?

Fascism today is just a political insult but in 1922 it was a populist revolution that swept Benito Mussolini to power in Italy. At first, the regime was content to govern but by the time of the Italian Social Republic, it had developed a full range of progressive policies; a guaranteed minimum wage,, workers’ partnership, free education, and social security from the cradle to the grave. These ideals were enshrined in the constitution of the RSI. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.

The post-war Labour government introduced the National Health Service but by the time of the Korean War, it dropped some services to save money. That’s why opticians, chiropodists, and most dentists are outside of the system. The present Tory government loudly proclaims its support for the NHS but suspicions remain that they want to sell it off to the private health care providers and insurance companies. At present, the NHS is protected by legislation but the Tory desire for a trade deal with the United States could open the door to American competition.

The Welfare State costs money that the Tories would rather spend on royal weddings, aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles. But the rise in homelessness and the use of food banks is a national disgrace. The main parties have acknowledged the problem but at the moment they are preoccupied with Brexit. Perhaps the splits now tearing the old parties apart are the start of a realignment of politics. We can only hope so because social justice is not an impossible dream.

Donald Trump equates health care with Communism. He thinks that everybody should pay for their own doctors. But the sick and the unemployed can’t afford expensive medical insurance. As fair-minded Europeans, we must reject Trump’s selfishness and defend our NHS.

Oil

It is fashionable to criticise the banks but the oil companies are just as bad. In his autobiography, ‘Pantaraxia’, Nubar Gulbenkian tells how his oil billionaire father took him to lunch in New York while he was on holiday. The first day they were treated royally, and as they left the restaurant Calouste told his son, “I’ve got a million dollars in that bank.” The second day was just as good and as they left daddy told him that he had a million dollars in that bank. And so it went on with all the major American banks. On the last day, after a sumptuous lunch his father said nothing, so Nulbar asked him: “how much have you got in their bank daddy?”, he replied: “not a cent, I owe them a million dollars.”
 

Debtors without collateral are written off but those with assets are treated as valued customers. And its the same with countries. Venezuela is bankrupt and its people are starving but they are sitting on one of the world’s biggest oilfields. It’s only a matter of time before a consortium of banks and oil companies takes over the country. Venezuela tried to install a socialist system under Hugo Chavez but the experiment was ruined by the collapse of oil prices.

But Venezuela is not the first state to be taken over by the oil companies. Britain controlled Iran through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and when prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (pictured) tried to nationalise it in 1953 he was ousted in a coup mounted by the CIA. The Shah was installed as a Western puppet but when he showed signs of independence in 1979, he was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini who had been given refuge by France. Currently, Iran is being strangled by American sanctions.

President Trump has reneged on his agreement to lift sanctions against Iran in return for them scrapping nuclear weapons. Iran is no threat to the US but her armed forces are engaged in Syria and Yemen.

Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr Ten Percent because creamed-off 10% of all the oil traded in the British Empire. Today, more countries are producing oil and Britain and America no longer dominate the market. Oil will run out one day but the producers are already investing in alternative energy. People all over the world think that their fates are decided by the illiterate crosses they put on ballot papers, but the important decisions are made in the boardrooms of the big oil corporations.

Oil dominates the economies of the Western nations and influences their foreign policies. Russia is accused of being too authoritarian and aggressive but her real crime is to be a major oil producer. 

Jimmy Miller

I first met my friend Jimmy Miller in 1983 when I moved back to South London. He was living in a council flat awarded to him by Lambeth Council. But a highly organised gang of middle-class squatters was occupying all the vacant flats in the area and forcing out the working-class tenants. They only wanted their own kind to be housed. Jimmy was having none of that and he defended himself vigorously, only to be arrested and evicted for his bravery.

Jimmy was born in Liverpool in the Thirties. I don’t know exactly how old he was but he was older than me. He served in the Royal Corps of Signals and he took part in the defence of Kuwait in 1961. General Qasim of Iraq massed his forces on the Kuwaiti border ready to invade The British rushed 7,000 troops to Kuwait and broadcast bogus messages indicating a massive military build-up. Qasim fell for the deception and promptly withdrew his forces.

After the army Jimmy worked as a painter at the giant Cammell Laird shipyard. There he was elected as a shop steward representing the painters. Most of the union officials were communists who put up posters of Marx and Lenin on their office walls. Not to be outdone Jimmy put up a poster of Adolf Hitler and defied anyone to touch it.

After leaving Liverpool, he worked all over the country renovating Woolworth’s stores and eventually got a job as a maintenance man at Bon Marche in Brixton. For all his National Socialist convictions Jimmy got on well with the West Indian community. He always used to say that its the politicians who are to blame not the immigrants.

He moved back to Liverpool when he retired but he always sent me a Christmas card and a calendar. He was suffering from Parkinson’s and his handwriting grew more erratic each year, but this year his package did not arrive at all and I guess that he has passed away.

Jimmy Miller was a brave, intelligent, and generous man. He was raised as a Catholic but in later life, he was attracted to the Salvation Army. And that’s how I picture him, to the words of the anthem, “Onward Christian Soldiers marching on to war.”

Assassination

Government agents and terrorists regularly kill each other. Recent murders by the Russians and the Saudis have been roundly condemned by the West but we have a long and distinguished history of political assassination. Britain’s most famous hit happened on 4th June 1942 when two Special Operations Executive officers, Josef Cabcik and Jan Kubis, shot dead Richard Heydrich the Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi reprisals were expected but the British government did not know that the town of Lidice would be destroyed together with thousands of civilians.

The Nazi reaction was as cruel as the British treatment of dissidents in India. In April 1919, following days of rioting in which four Europeans were killed, Brig Gen Dyer (pictured) ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd of protesters, 379 were killed and 1,200 wounded. The Amritsar atrocity was more mass murder than assassination but it showed the world who was in charge of India; at least, for the next thirty years.

Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, IRA terrorists were shot by Protestant paramilitaries on information supplied by MI5. Sometimes the government acted in the other direction. Lenny Murphy, the Protestant terrorists known as the Shankhill Butcher, was killed because he had become an embarrassment. 

Our fictitious national hero, James Bond has a licence to kill. Commander Bond 007 was an invention but his creator, Ian Fleming, was a British agent who understood how these things are done.

Our American allies shot dead Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. American Special Forces killed him and dumped his body in the sea. His death was announced by President Obama who welcomed the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda.

It seems that bumping off political opponents is not necessarily a crime. When we kill our enemies we are fulfilling the will of the people, but when authoritarian foreign governments kill their opponents they are acting like savages.The truth is that all governments conduct under-cover operations and no individual government has the right to give lectures on good behaviour.

Mosley on Race, from “Union” May 1948

When Oswald Mosley wrote this article in 1948 it would have been possible to send back recently-arrived West Indian workers. Today things are different. We can enforce our rules of entry and deport foreign criminals but a mass round up of immigrants is out of the question.

Race is the first reality of European Unity. This unique stock of men in Europe has, in fact, produced the culture, the values and the achievements of the West. This race, in their family of Europe, has produced most things that matter on this globe. This achievement has been the result of their character, which in turn was the result of their race.

Horses go further and faster than donkeys because they are horses and not donkeys. We cannot avoid the basic facts of nature, even if we would. Nor can we drown them beneath a verbiage of words. If we are to build then surely we must build on real foundations, and I know that we do.

Therefore, I affirm the fact that the first reality and rock foundation of European Union is Race! Who are our nearest kindred? The answer is the German people. The British and the Germans are the most closely related of all European peoples. The Northern French also belong to this close circle of Race or Family and were united with the Germans under Charlemagne.

Near in blood to us, and the Germans, are the whole Northern block of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A related stock is also the great family of the Latin nations, whose culture has adorned the illuminated pages of European history.

You cannot deny nature; you cannot create in defiance of reality.

An Alternative View - Bernard Franklyn

Since the early 1950s, every aspect of our once great country has been destroyed. Only old age pensioners in their seventies, like myself, are aware of the changes that have been made. When we are gone there will be no one left to explain what we have lost to the younger generation. I feel that we need to urge OAP’s to become vocal, but that is hard work. Still, I am going to urge more of my generation to explain the situation to their children and grandchildren. My daughter and her husband both work but are unable to keep up with the bills. In the 1950s wives didn’t work, the families were able to survive and pay all the bills on the husband’s wage. In the 1950s and ‘60s, virtually everyone could afford a mortgage so long as you were a regular saver. In 1958 a terraced house in the suburbs of London would have sold for £10,000; today it would be £500,000. The house would not be worth any more, that is how our fraudulent governments have reduced the value of money by just creating it out of thin air. Parliament is run by our enemies and has been throughout my life. The time is long overdue to find our own BRITISH candidates who have the knowledge and skills to run the country. You need no qualifications to or knowledge a prime or cabinet minister. You only have to be subservient to political Mafia that really rules our country, nay the world.

The people of Europe have no control over the EU. It is an ever growing nightmare with even more power over its people than the Soviet Union had. If the public had elected the National Front in the 1960s we wouldn’t have joined the EEC which became the EU, we could have saved what was left of our manufacturing industry, we wouldn’t have allowed the standard of education to be lowered through the introduction of the comprehensive system, there would have been no mass immigration programme, anti-British Jews wouldn’t have been appointed to the senior positions of the judiciary, proper sentencing of murderers and criminals would have continued, the drug problem would not have escalated like it has, there would be no national debt as we would have created interest free banking which the EU would never allow.

Britain was extremely successful at managing its own affairs long before the EU was thought of. We will manage again, so long as we have a government that doesn’t want to keep us tied to the United States, Israel and the EU. If you are not sure, watch RT news on channel 234 and see how often these three work in instantaneous harmony whenever they want to do something diabolical.

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Nation Revisited

All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. This blog is protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people.

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Lega and Five Star ties to Russia invokes a specter that haunts Kaczyński

Euractive, “Trans-Europe Express – Friends won’t be friends” 22 Feb 2019:

By Gerardo Fortuna with Alexandra Brzozowski
   
First official projections of seats in the new European Parliament have shown two right-wing ruling parties, Italy’s Lega and Poland’s PiS, as the second and third-biggest single party in the next Parliament, but the highly anticipated ‘Italo-Polish axis’ doesn’t seem to pan out.

Earlier this week (18 February), the European Parliament released the first survey on what the next European chamber could look like, based on a cross-section of national polls ahead of the European elections in May.

Updated projections will be presented to the public in the coming weeks, but at the current stage, the most significant starting point for analysis is that Matteo Salvini and Jarosław Kaczyński appear to be two top dogs ahead the election night.

Lega and PiS are expected to win 27 and 22 seats, respectively, becoming the second and the third-biggest party within the hemicycle. The first, as usual, will be Germany’s conservative CDU.

A pact between the two right-wing parties is looking more and more lucrative for both and initial contact was already made by Salvini himself, who flew to Warsaw in January to meet Kaczyński, who essentially leads PiS from the background, without being its formal chairman, and test the waters for a possible Eurosceptic alliance.

During the visit, Salvini hailed a new ‘Italo-Polish axis’ to replace the dominant French-German one, sparking a “European spring”. At the time, this looked like the beginning of a political earthquake but, as it turns out, the Warsaw talks seemed more like a one-time thing.

There was no follow up in the weeks after and the settlement of an Italo-Polish axis now seems to be dead in the water, or at least postponed for after the elections.

There’s a red flag that shows that the parties have come to a standstill. In Poland, Salvini was asked if he was thinking about running for the European elections together with his current government’s ally in Italy, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He said that there was no need to run together with them and some observers noted that it was because, with Kaczyński, Salvini wouldn’t need Di Maio.

But according to the Italian press, this week Lega proposed Five Star Movement to join them, even in a political group within the European Parliament, but got nyiet as an answer.

If Lega is considering getting someone else on board, distances with the European conservatives on certain topics – above all Russia –  are turning out to be unbridgeable.

At the current stage, conservatives need Salvini to replace the Tories, rather than the other way around, as good performance is expected also for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National.

Background:

“The League, for example, has regularly protested European Union sanctions against Russia. In March 2017, League chief Matteo Salvini even signed a cooperation agreement with United Russia.”

“Evidence of the 5 Star Movement’s friendly ties with Russia is also abundant. Both former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have identified 5 Star as a conduit for Russian electoral interference, e.g. in Italy’s December 2016.”

The Hill, “Putin is the real winner of the Italian elections”, 3 March 2018:

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