I sometimes like to fool myself that the worst has passed. It's reassuring, in a period where there's precious little reassurance to be found. I tell myself that we'll look back on these last few weeks, in the dead of winter, in the dark and the cold and the abject bloody horror, and wonder how we managed to keep hope alive before things improved.
This week, for the first time, it was possible to feel a sense of optimism while still being at least vaguely rational. You could finally see where resistance might come from - how it might proceed, what form it might take. Europe started to take decisive practical steps towards its future.
Keir Starmer's London summit on Sunday worked to entrench support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy after last week's disaster in the White House, bringing together European leaders and others in a show of solidarity. Later in the week, Emmanuel Macron's televised address was vivid, dynamic and strategic. His proposal for a French nuclear umbrella to cover its neighbours is finally being given the respect it deserves by countries like Poland and Lithuania. "This readiness of France," Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said, "this is something very promising."
Norway, which had failed to give Ukraine anything like the funding it was morally obliged to, finally changed its tune. The country has done well out of the war, earning billions by selling gas to European countries. But it stuck to fiscal rules that have kept its payments to Ukraine below those of its Scandinavian neighbours. This week, that changed. The Norwegian government announced it would more than double its support, from €3 billion to €7.2 billion.
Then there was the announcement that Germany's future coalition parties - the CDU and SPD - had agreed to reform the county's debt rules to fund rearmament. This development was so big it defeated language. The only word which really summarised the scale of the change was the one deployed by Reuters: 'Tectonic'. This vast country, this sleeping giant, was waking up, with a €500 billion infrastructure fund and no borrowing restrictions for defence.
The euro rose at its strongest level in months after the news. European defence company shares soared. European stock markets are suddenly performing strongly. And with that money came a new, slightly American can-do attitude. This week, shares of Eutelsat, a European rival to Elon Musk's Starlink, surged. As they did so, the company's CEO assured investors that it could match Starlink's terminals in "a couple of months, not years".
Yesterday, European leaders gathered in Brussels. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen put down a proposal for loans totalling €150 billion and a series of five options for defence funding. It's not enough money and some of the systems for securing it are problematic, but that’s OK. The summit was never going to solve everything. It's just a start.
The important thing is there has been a fundamental psychological change. US/Russian alignment has fixed European minds. This was an opening gambit involving national and EU budgets and EU borrowing mechanisms. In future, if things continue to deteriorate, it is likely to involve €200 billion in frozen Russian funds and a new €800 billion EU funding facility. They are not fucking about here. They are talking about seriously big measures. There is a sense of seriousness and clear-sightedness about Europe that has previously been completely absent.
Look at the way that decisions are being reached. At previous summits, Hungary's leader Viktor Orban, who functions as Putin's puppet in the EU, was able to sabotage proceedings. He’s been doing this for years now. This time, there was every indication he'd be able to do the same thing again, working alongside Slovakia's prime minister, the thug-faced cunt Robert Fico.
Some half-arsed language-tweaking bought him off, leaving Orban exposed. Instead of allowing him to derail procedures, the EU simply put out a separate statement without Hungarian backing. They isolated him. If Orban has any sense about him, he’ll pay careful attention to what happened to him yesterday and alter his behaviour accordingly. If not, he may find the EU tougher than it has been previously.
This is the latest example of a 'coalition of the willing'. Sidestep the existing structures if they restrict action. Proceed with what's possible.
Britain is obviously outside the EU, but it held the crucial summit last Sunday which reaffirmed the world's commitment to Ukraine. Who was invited? Many European states, but also the Turkish foreign minister, the Nato secretary general and Canada. Today, von der Leyen will be holding videoconference calls to debrief non-EU states Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey and the UK.
This is partly a result of the strange forum-disruption we've seen. Nato doesn’t work because the US is inside it. The EU doesn't quite work because the UK and other pertinent countries are outside it - and it's anyway not set up for this sort of thing. Quite how this will all proceed is currently unclear. But what is clear is that we are seeing a practical, fluid approach to decision-making. That is evidence of people who recognise the danger, who are finally behaving with the degree of urgency that is required by this historic moment.
What does all this mean for Britain?
Whether we admit it or not, we are experiencing a fundamental change in our relationship with Europe. Starmer will not say it out loud. He will insist that there is no choice to be made about America and Europe. He might even believe that. You still hear reports of figures in the Foreign Office who intend to hold America tight until the bitter end, no matter how overwhelming the evidence becomes of its moral and operational collapse. But the basic dynamics are clear for all to see and they point towards Europe.
A new page is being turned in British-European relations. It is blank. There is no writing on it. And there is nothing in all the world more exciting and full of possibility than a blank piece of paper with no writing on it.
For decades our relationship with Europe - our entire sense of our place in the world - has been pulled in two directions. Churchill encapsulated it. On the one hand, he recognised that Europe must be "united in the sharing of its common inheritance" and that this would require the "gradual assumption by all the nations concerned of that larger sovereignty which can alone protect their diverse and distinctive customs". On the other, as he told ministers on the day of his resignation, his core foreign policy belief was that we must "never be separated from the Americans".
This is the same binary which Starmer now insists doesn't exist. In practical terms, he's usually right. But psychologically, these two visions tore us apart. The American vision corresponded to the Second World War story we told ourselves as if it were an origin myth - saving Europe with the last-minute help of our plucky English-speaking allies. But the European vision offered a cooperative, collegiate, egalitarian arrangement which was obviously much better suited to us than a distant relationship with a far more mighty partner which had no need to take our views into account and consequently rarely did so.
All the big moments of breakage with Europe have been about a dream of our relationship with America. Thatcher was raised with precisely that Chruchillian story of the Second World War. She treated the US president like an emperor who radiated light and the Europeans as meddling bureaucrats to be browbeaten into submission. In her third term, all lingering elements of sanity and good sense gone, she developed a kind of madcap Star Wars goodies-and-baddies rhetoric about Europe in which it was trying to "extinguish democracy" and "dissolve our national identities". Unbelievably, this language took hold of the imagination of the British right. In 2016, after decades of ensuing cognitive deterioration, it ruined us.
We now have the chance to write a new story. We have the chance to end this pathology. It's not just that the case for Europe is easier. It's that the case for the US is harder.
Atlanticists are now having to grapple with a ruinous series of refutations of their position: The attempted humiliation of Zelenskyy. JD Vance's dismissive ignorance of the British war dead. Trump's insistence yesterday that Europeans would not come "protect us" under Nato's Article 5 clause, despite the fact that the only time that clause was triggered it specifically involved Europeans coming to America's defence.
Britain has done well from the American alliance - intelligence sharing, cheap storage for nuclear missiles, participation in the Lockheed Martin F-35. It has locked us into the American orbit in a way that will be hard - although not impossible - to change. But the way we are currently spoken about in Washington reveals the deep imbalance of power which defines the relationship. Even if none of the practical geopolitical changes we see today were taking place, the emotional quality of the conversation makes it almost impossible to maintain a pro-American position.
There are no guarantees here. So many things could go wrong. The British foreign policy establishment could be too narrow-minded to act. Starmer might really mean the nonsense he's saying about there being no choice between America and Europe. The Europeans might lose their sense of momentum. Things could collapse so quickly in Ukraine that we simply do not have the time to defend it. Pro-Putin populists on the continent could benefit from benefit cuts or tax rises introduced to assist rearmament.
But then, it's not exactly hard to spot the dangers at a moment like this. God help us we've done enough of that already. There is also hope, even if it is tentative and vulnerable.
Everything has started to move in one direction: the politics, the dynamics, the money, the connections, the personal relationships, the forums, the momentum, the markets. From the London summit on Sunday to the Brussels summit on Thursday, something new is beginning to take hold. It is a vision of a Europe that is prepared to do whatever it takes to defend the West, one which is prepared to work ambitiously and practically to protect its values. One which needs Britain and which Britain would necessarily need to be involved in.
It's a new world out there, constructing itself in real time right outside your window. Fucking terrifying, to be honest. Full of dangers and horrors and monstrous things lurking in the shadows. But there is hope there too. You don't even need to look that hard for it anymore.
Your reporting kept me sane during Brexit and now you happen to be doing it again. Thanks :)
What an outstanding article!