By Jo Nova

The spell is broken

Thirty years of crafting a fantasy narrative was fine while countries floated on a cloud of endless easy money, but those days are over.

Counting is still underway in the EU elections, but the Greens appear to have lost around 20 seats, shrinking from 74 seats to 53. In Germany, the Green stranglehold of Europe, exit polls suggest the Green vote fell from 20.5% to 12%.

In a shock, Marine Le Pen’s party in France doubled Macron’s party vote achieving 30% of the vote to his 15%, whereupon Macron called an emergency election, hoping to save a few extra spots in France’s Parliament before the “Far Right” really wakes up.

The “Far-Right” of course, being any party which doubts that bicycles can stop storms:

Despite 242% of Nobel prize winning experts being certain that life on Earth will be destroyed by 2034*, climate action was not a priority for most Europeans.

Newspaper journalists though have different priorities to most voters. There go those climate ambitions…

The result comes amid a broader shift to the right and a green backlash — or “greenlash” — against policies designed to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment.

Some newspapers don’t just have different priorities, they speak a different language:

Who are these parties that deny that we have a climate?

Five years ago The Guardian called it a “Quiet Revolution Sweeping Europe” as the Greens went from fringe idealists to “potential kingmakers”. Instead it was a five year reckless experiment that trashed historic industries and threatens a lifestyle that took a thousand years to create.

The real Kingmakers in the EU who were panicking about climate change last week, are now suddenly non-committal about inviting the Greens to talks. It was always about power for Ursula Von der Leyen and sadly she is still there.

The wonderful Mark Steyn on the EU elections and the media massaging:

Indeed, between [Marine Le Pen’s] triumphant National Rally and M Zemour’s Reconquête (the Reconquest party), what the BBC and even the Telegraph insist on calling the “far right” got just shy of forty per cent of the vote. (M Zemour’s party is for those who think Mme Le Pen is no longer “far right” enough.) In Germany Olaf Scholz saw his party come third, behind the even more “far right” Alternative für Deutschland. Over a million of Scholz’s voters switched to the ooh-ever-so-far-right AfD.

So the “far right” are getting a lot nearer: maybe the Telegraph should try holding the telescope the right way round.

Instead, the media took consolation in finding the far-right rampage didn’t go quite as far as it might: in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has gone from zero seats to six to emerge as the largest single Dutch party in the European Parliament – but all the experts are agreed that for some reason this is a wee bit of an under-performance.

h/t Willie Soon, Krishna Gans, Old Ozzie, David Wojick, Kim, Stephen Neil.

*How many climate experts said Antonio-Guterres Mr-Boiling-Planet was wrong?

Far-Right-Bell curve original author unknown. Seen on this tweet.