The convenient immigrant …Parisian student

What is profoundly dishonest about the far right's gaze upon a young person in the streets of France? It sees a hood. It hears an accent it does not like. It finds a foreign surname somewhere in the family tree and suddenly imagines it has explained an entire political movement. The American vice-president does it. Donald Trump does it. Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis does it. Different countries, different politicians, same lazy recipe, when young people protest against the conditions of their lives, blame immigrants.

And in doing so they achieve two things at once. They expose their xenophobia and they erase the students. That second part deserves considerably more attention. France's student movement did not begin because somebody woke up one morning and decided that immigration was an exciting new political hobby. It began with students protesting school conditions, teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate facilities and the increasingly frightening prospect of entering adulthood with fewer opportunities and greater insecurity. The movement spread rapidly and developed into something much broader, with tens and then hundreds of thousands taking to the streets.

That is a youth movement. It belongs to them. But the far right cannot resist stealing it.

Suddenly, the discussion is no longer about classrooms, teachers, housing, living costs, inequality, employment or what kind of future today's young people are being handed. Suddenly, the student standing in the street becomes an immigrant. His politics disappear. Her anger disappears. Their demands disappear.

Their ethnicity becomes the story. It is an extraordinarily convenient trick. Trump has explicitly attempted to frame the French unrest as a consequence of mass migration and Islam rather than as a movement centred on schools and the future of French youth. JD Vance has similarly blamed immigration for the violence surrounding the demonstrations. Georgiadis, meanwhile, described the French unrest as the product of a mixture of immigrants from different generations and the far left, portraying the country's turmoil through the same immigration-centred lens.

The political convenience is almost obscene. If students are angry because their schools are failing, governments have to answer questions. If students are angry because they cannot see a secure future, governments have to answer questions. If young people believe public institutions have failed them, politicians have to answer questions.

But if the problem can simply be called "immigration", the questions disappear. Brilliant. The student becomes the immigrant. The grievance becomes the invasion. The protest becomes the riot. The political argument becomes a security problem.

And suddenly nobody has to discuss why an entire generation is angry. Of course, violence must be condemned. Burning buildings, attacking police officers, looting businesses and destroying public property are not somehow transformed into legitimate political expression because the perpetrators are young or angry. The violence that erupted in parts of France was real, serious and destructive, and those responsible should face the consequences of their actions. Hundreds of thousands, however, marched peacefully, while the government's own figures and reporting from the demonstrations distinguish the enormous peaceful mobilisation from the violent fringe.

That distinction is precisely what political opportunists do not want. Because once you separate the rioter from the student, you have to listen to the student. And that is much more uncomfortable. The young people marching are not props in somebody else's immigration debate. They are not disposable extras in a culture-war campaign manufactured by politicians thousands of kilometres away. They are citizens. They are the people who will inherit the consequences of today's political decisions long after today's ministers have retired, today's presidents have left office and today's social-media warriors have found another country to lecture.

They are asking a brutally simple question: What kind of country are you leaving us? And the answer from the far right seems to be: Stop complaining. Blame your neighbour.

It is intellectually pathetic. It also reveals something darker. The far right increasingly treats second-generation immigrants as permanently foreign. Born in France? Still an immigrant. Raised in France? Still an immigrant. French citizen? Still somehow an outsider. Protest against the government? Evidence of failed integration. Protest alongside others? Proof of an immigrant conspiracy.

At what point does a person finally become French? Apparently, never. This is the poison hidden inside the rhetoric. Second-generation immigrants are simultaneously told that they must integrate and then informed, whenever convenient, that they will never quite belong. Their Frenchness is conditional. Their citizenship is questioned culturally even when it is unquestionable legally.

And then politicians wonder why alienation grows. The students of France deserve better than this intellectual fraud. They deserve to have their arguments heard, even when those arguments are uncomfortable. They deserve classrooms that work, teachers who are there, institutions that listen and a future that does not feel like a punishment for being born at the wrong economic moment.

Most importantly, they deserve to own their movement. Not Trump. Not Vance. Not Georgiadis. Not Le Pen. Not Macron. Not the far left either. The students. Because the easiest way to defeat a young generation is not necessarily to silence it. Sometimes it is simply to convince everybody that nobody should listen to what it is saying.

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Athens Guilfoyle, Inc.

There was a time when becoming an American ambassador required something resembling diplomatic experience, international knowledge, political judgment, and the ability to represent the interests of the United States without turning an embassy into a personal clubhouse. Under Donald Trump, however, the appointment process increasingly resembles a family loyalty programme. Have you donated enough? Have you praised the boss sufficiently? Are you close enough to the family to know which doors open and which secrets must remain locked?

 

Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle apparently understood the importance of networking. The former Fox News personality, Republican fundraiser and former …fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. became America's ambassador to Greece. Her appointment raised questions about the increasingly blurred boundaries between political loyalty and diplomatic qualifications. However, on 13 October 2026, the curtain fell. Guilfoyle resigned after White House press secretary Katie Zacharia announced that the administration had asked her to step down.

The official farewell was predictably polite. Guilfoyle had been a wonderful asset, Zacharia said and the White House wished her well. Washington has a remarkable talent for turning political embarrassment into a farewell card.

But the departure is bigger than one ambassador's career. It raises a much more uncomfortable question, what exactly does Greece mean to Donald Trump's America if a position of such strategic importance can become entangled with personal connections to the presidential family?

That is the question Athens should be asking Washington. Greece is not a decorative Mediterranean postcard where an American political celebrity can spend a few years enjoying sunshine, receptions and expensive dinners. It occupies a strategically significant position connecting Europe, the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean with implications for NATO, regional security, energy infrastructure, maritime routes and relations with Turkey. Its proximity to the Middle East makes its diplomatic importance even more obvious.

This is serious business. It requires serious representation. Yet Trump's approach to public appointments has repeatedly suggested that proximity to the family can be more valuable than professional experience. Loyalty becomes a qualification, personal relationships become political currency and institutions are expected to accommodate the preferences of a president who often treats government as an extension of his own brand.

In this system, an ambassador risks becoming less a representative of the United States than a representative of the president's personal interests. The distinction is not academic. American diplomats are supposed to advance national interests, maintain relationships with host governments and protect their country's credibility. They are not supposed to create uncertainty about whether official meetings, diplomatic access, or political connections might serve private interests. Even the appearance of such conflicts can damage trust.

The allegations surrounding Guilfoyle were serious. Reports alleged that she sought a $100,000 payment from a political donor to cover a personal credit card bill, potentially in exchange for access to senior administration officials. Other allegations concerned her interactions with Greek business interests and the use of diplomatic influence. Her lawyers disputed the accusations and defended her conduct. These remain allegations, not established findings of guilt, and her resignation does not settle the questions surrounding them.

But the political consequences are already clear. An ambassador appointed amid questions about political connections has departed amid questions about conduct, leaving the administration to manage the damage.

And what does this tell us about the appointment process? If Guilfoyle's relationship with Trump Jr. helped make her politically attractive for the position, the problem extends beyond her individual qualifications. It concerns a system in which personal proximity to power can appear to count more than the professional demands of the job.

The White House's request for her resignation also exposes the fragility of political patronage. The same administration that entrusted her with a sensitive diplomatic position ultimately decided that the controversy had become too costly. Loyalty can open doors in Washington, but it does not guarantee that those doors will remain open when the headlines turn sour.

What an extraordinary way to run a foreign policy. If Guilfoyle's departure leads to a serious review of diplomatic appointments, ethics procedures, and accountability, something useful might yet emerge from this episode. If she is simply replaced by another politically connected loyalist, the nameplate will change while the machinery remains untouched.

Greece and in fact every other country, deserve better than to become collateral damage in Washington's family politics. Its government and public should be entitled to expect an American ambassador who understands the responsibilities of the office, respects Greek sovereignty and can conduct diplomacy without private controversies overshadowing official business.

Americans deserve better, too. Their diplomatic service is not a collection of reward positions for political loyalty, fundraising enthusiasm, or romantic proximity to the president's family. Guilfoyle's resignation closes one chapter, but it does not answer the most important question: who was responsible for deciding that she was the right person to represent American interests in Athens and what criteria mattered most in that decision?

The real scandal is not simply that Kimberly Guilfoyle has left her post. It is that her appointment raised such fundamental questions about how the post was awarded in the first place. If family connections can become a route into diplomacy, then the problem extends far beyond one woman. It concerns a presidency in which personal loyalty risks becoming foreign policy and a country whose strategic interests deserve considerably more than a presidential favour.

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The price of Trump first

Volodymyr Zelenskyy dared to criticise Washington's diesel arrangement with Vladimir Putin, an arrangement that could replenish Russian revenues while Moscow continues its assault on Ukrainian cities and Trump's response is to suggest that Ukraine should get a new …president.

 

Apparently, in the magnificent new world of American deal-making, the victim is expected to remain grateful while the aggressor receives the invoice. Welcome to America First, where the slogan is simple, American interests come first, American political embarrassment comes second, and everybody else's survival is negotiable.

Trump's message to Zelenskyy could hardly be clearer. Stop attacking Russian oil refineries, stop questioning the American president's arrangements with Putin, and stop behaving as though the country being invaded has some independent say in how it defends itself. Otherwise, perhaps Ukrainians should find themselves a leader more agreeable to Washington.

This is not merely an argument about diesel. It is an argument about sovereignty, loyalty and the increasingly dangerous assumption that American assistance entitles the White House to dictate the political behaviour of an ally.

Ukraine did not ask Russia to invade. Ukrainians did not choose to have their homes destroyed, their power infrastructure attacked or their children grow up beneath the sound of incoming missiles. Yet, somehow, the diplomatic pressure keeps circling back to Kyiv, as though the principal obstacle to peace is the country refusing to surrender its leverage.

Putin must be watching this spectacle with considerable satisfaction. He has spent years trying to divide Western allies, weaken sanctions and convince the world that supporting Ukraine costs too much. Now he watches Washington offer Russian diesel an easier route to the market while publicly questioning the leadership of the country Russia invaded.

One could hardly design a more convenient propaganda gift for the Kremlin. The disturbing part is not that governments sometimes negotiate with adversaries. They must. Nor is it that energy prices matter. They matter enormously, particularly to farmers, truckers, workers and families struggling with the rising cost of living. Any serious government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from economic shocks.

The problem is the apparent willingness to treat the economic consequences of one crisis as a reason to weaken the response to another, without demonstrating what strategic benefits will follow. If easing sanctions helps stabilise fuel markets, Washington must explain how that benefit outweighs the risk of providing Moscow with additional revenue for its war. If a negotiated settlement is the objective, why should Ukraine be expected to halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure without securing a reciprocal commitment to protect Ukrainian energy facilities and civilians?

Peace cannot be a collection of instructions delivered to the weaker party while the stronger aggressor waits for concessions. Zelenskyy has his own political responsibilities, and no president should be beyond criticism. His decisions can be debated, his strategy examined and his government held accountable. But the legitimate question of Ukrainian leadership belongs to Ukrainians, not to an American president irritated because a foreign leader refuses to follow his preferred script.

Elections are not personnel changes in a corporation owned by the White House. That distinction matters because Ukraine's struggle is about more than territory. It is also about whether a sovereign country can determine its own future without a neighbouring power imposing its will through military force. To suggest that its president should be replaced because he resists an American diplomatic preference risks undermining the very principle Western governments claim to defend.

And what exactly is the lesson for America's other allies? If loyalty means accepting whatever arrangement Washington makes, even when that arrangement benefits an adversary threatening your national security, then the word has lost its meaning. Alliances cannot survive indefinitely as relationships in which one partner issues instructions and the other is expected to obey out of gratitude.

Europe should pay particular attention. Today, the pressure is on Ukraine to accommodate Washington's energy calculations. Tomorrow, another ally may discover that its security commitments are negotiable whenever American domestic politics demands a convenient headline.

A credible alliance requires consultation, consistency and mutual respect. Without those foundations, even the most impressive military partnership begins to resemble a temporary business contract whose terms can change with the next presidential mood.

Trump may believe that a new Ukrainian president would make a better deal. But a deal is not necessarily peace simply because somebody signs it. An agreement that rewards aggression, leaves Ukraine vulnerable to another invasion or sacrifices Ukrainian sovereignty for short-term economic relief would not resolve the conflict. It would postpone its consequences.

And Putin understands the value of postponement. The brutal irony is that Trump presents himself as the master negotiator, yet his approach risks teaching America's adversaries that persistence works and its allies that resistance carries a price. The more Washington pressures Kyiv while accommodating Moscow, the harder it becomes to persuade anyone that American commitments are guided by consistent principles rather than immediate convenience.

Zelenskyy has now received a lesson in what America First can mean when the interests of an ally collide with the priorities of the White House. It does not necessarily mean America stands first among the defenders of democracy. It can mean America stands first in the queue for whatever it wants, while its partners are told to wait patiently and behave themselves.

That is not leadership. It is transactional power masquerading as diplomacy. And if the price of American diesel is Ukrainian political obedience, then the world should ask who is really paying the bill.

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The rent revolt

For years, European governments have treated housing as an irritating technical problem for housing ministers, economists and property developers. Build a few thousand apartments, announce another investment programme, subsidise a mortgage, blame planning regulations and congratulate yourself on having done something.

 

Meanwhile, rents climb, house prices become obscene and an entire generation is being told that adulthood is apparently an unaffordable luxury. This is no longer a housing crisis. It is a political crisis wearing a mortgage. Spain is only one of the clearest warnings. When housing policy becomes powerful enough to destabilise governments and trigger political confrontation, the message should be screaming across every European capital: people do not riot over architecture. They riot when they believe the system has decided that their lives are less important than somebody else's balance sheet.

And politicians still don't get it. They keep talking about "the housing market" as if they are discussing potatoes. Housing is not just another market. A person can live without a new car. They can postpone buying a television. They can survive without the latest smartphone.

Try postponing the need for a roof. Housing is the foundation underneath employment, family life, education, health, security and dignity. Without it, the rest of society becomes a grotesque exercise in pretending that everything is functioning.

Europe has created cities where the people who actually keep those cities alive increasingly cannot afford to live in them. Nurses commute ridiculous distances. Teachers struggle to rent near schools. Young workers remain trapped with parents. Couples postpone children. Students compete for tiny rooms at absurd prices. Elderly people fear losing homes they have occupied for decades.

And then the political class produces another PowerPoint presentation about productivity. Enough. The European housing system has become a machine for transferring wealth upward while politicians stand beside it holding a microphone and explaining that market forces are complicated.

Of course they are complicated. So is poverty. So is homelessness. So is watching your salary disappear into rent while someone who already owns five apartments becomes richer without lifting a finger.

The most poisonous consequence is not even economic. It is democratic. People who cannot afford to participate in society eventually stop believing society belongs to them. When the young are told that ownership is for their parents' generation and stability is for people who already possess capital, democracy starts looking less like representation and more like an exclusive club with elections every four years.

That is political dynamite. And the far right is perfectly happy to pick it up. The extremists do not need to manufacture people's anger. Governments are manufacturing it for them. All they have to do is point at immigrants, refugees, Brussels, foreigners, environmental regulations, universities or whatever convenient enemy happens to fit the day's propaganda.

The tragedy is that the original grievance is often completely legitimate. A young European who cannot afford an apartment does not need a lecture about tolerance. They need an apartment. A family crushed by rent does not need another speech about competitiveness. They need security.

A nurse who cannot afford to live anywhere near the hospital does not need politicians praising essential workers. She needs somewhere to live. This is where Europe's supposedly sophisticated political establishment has become intellectually bankrupt. It has treated housing as an investment opportunity when it should have treated it as national infrastructure.

Nobody argues that roads should exist only where property developers can make money. Nobody suggests that hospitals should be built exclusively for the wealthy. Nobody tells soldiers that national defence should depend entirely on whether private investors find missiles sufficiently profitable.

Yet when it comes to housing, suddenly the sacred invisible hand must be protected from the vulgar demands of ordinary human beings. That is ideological nonsense. Markets have a role. Property owners have rights. Private construction matters. But when the market systematically produces a society where working people cannot afford to live where work exists, governments have a responsibility to intervene.

Not with another committee. Not with another glossy strategy. Build homes. Public housing. Social housing. Affordable rental housing. Cooperative housing. Serious long-term planning. Land policies that stop cities becoming casinos for property speculation. And policies that recognise housing as infrastructure rather than another playground for wealth accumulation.

Because this is no longer about whether Europeans can buy their dream home. It is about whether Europeans can afford to remain Europeans in their own cities. Ignore that question and the consequences will not arrive politely through parliamentary procedure. They will arrive through elections, protests, rage and political extremism. The European political establishment should understand one brutally simple fact: People can tolerate many things.

They can tolerate bad governments. They can tolerate bureaucracy. They can even tolerate politicians lying to them. But when you take away the possibility of having a home, you are no longer asking them to tolerate bad policy. You are asking them to tolerate humiliation. And humiliation is where democratic patience goes to die.

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The Balkans running dry

Brussels likes its Balkans in chapters. Chapter 23: judiciary. Chapter 24: justice, freedom, and security. Chapter 27: environment. Chapter 35: other issues. Tick the boxes, reform the institutions, pass the laws, appoint the committees, produce the paperwork and Europe will eventually open the door.

 

Meanwhile, the water is disappearing. That is the absurdity at the heart of the European Union’s enlargement conversation in 2026. Ursula von der Leyen is touring the Western Balkans again, talking about accession, reforms, integration and the €6 billion Growth Plan. The language is familiar: momentum, movement, membership. And yes, democratic institutions, functioning courts, and accountable governments matter. But there is something rather more primitive that tends to escape bureaucratic Brussels: people need water to live.

Look at Lake Koroneia in northern Greece. Once a major wetland, a refuge for migratory birds, and a source of livelihoods, it has collapsed to less than a tenth of its former size after years of declining rainfall, rising temperatures, and excessive irrigation. The lake is not presenting Brussels with a legal problem; it is presenting Europe with a warning.

And that warning is screaming. The Balkans are one of Europe’s climate pressure points. Droughts, wildfires, floods, soil degradation, water scarcity, and agricultural disruption do not respect borders, accession chapters, or the Schengen timetable. A river does not stop at a customs post because one country is an EU member and the other is waiting outside. A wildfire does not ask whether a government has completed its judicial reforms.

Yet European policy still too often treats the environment as another technical chapter to be closed rather than as the infrastructure of political survival. That is dangerously backward. What happens when farmers cannot reliably irrigate their fields? When hydropower becomes unpredictable? When forests burn repeatedly? When drinking-water systems become inadequate? When villages lose agricultural income and young people leave? When people begin moving because the land can no longer support them?

That is not some distant climate scenario. It is the beginning of political instability. The EU cannot seriously discuss enlargement while treating green infrastructure as a decorative attachment to accession. If Brussels wants a stable Western Balkans, it must invest in reservoirs, modern irrigation, wastewater treatment, cross-border river management, drought-resistant agriculture, renewable energy, forest restoration, and resilient cities. It must finance adaptation with the same political urgency it applies to roads, railways, and border systems.

Otherwise, Europe will build excellent transport corridors through increasingly uninhabitable landscapes.

There is also an uncomfortable hypocrisy here. Brussels demands that Balkan governments strengthen institutions, fight corruption, and improve governance. Fine. But environmental collapse itself exposes the weakness of governance. When water becomes scarce, every broken institution becomes more dangerous. Illegal extraction, political patronage, uncontrolled construction, agricultural overuse, and environmental corruption can turn a drought into a social crisis.

Climate policy, therefore, is not separate from enlargement policy. It is enlargement policy. The EU should stop imagining the Western Balkans as a collection of candidates waiting patiently outside Europe's bureaucratic door. These countries are already part of Europe's ecological system. Their rivers, forests, mountains, farms, and coastlines are European assets and European vulnerabilities.

If the European project means anything beyond moving paperwork from one desk to another, it must understand that security begins with water, food, functioning ecosystems, and communities capable of surviving the next summer.

Brussels can count accession chapters until the paperwork catches fire. The Balkans cannot afford to wait. The lake is disappearing. The question is whether Europe will notice before the people start disappearing with it.

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