Nein! Non! No! Thus Spoke Europe's Populists|

When JD Vance lectured Europe at the Munich Security Conference last year, did he foresee how, in under a year, the “patriotic parties” of the European far-right the Trump administration has chosen to patronise would be joining their mainstream archenemies in condemning Washington? The thing about nationalism is that nothing binds nationalists of one country to those of another.

There is no universal ideology on the right. The rightwing in one state ulti­mately comes to blows with its counterparts in a rival state. Here’s a sampling of what West Europe’s biggest rightwing populists said on Greenland. Nigel Farage: “a very hostile act”. Marine le Pen: “the sovereignty of states is non-negotiable”. Her protégé and possibly France’s next president, Jordan Bardella: “coercion”. Alice Weidel: “Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise.” It all be­gan with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni asking Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to “lower the temperature”. European populists are actu­ally in a quandary: they can’t push back too far and risk los­ing Trump’s goodwill. Yet they can’t ignore their voters seeing red on the subject of America. When more than 70 per cent German voters say the US is an enemy, even Weidel’s AfD has to agree because its voters do.