2025-12-16
9 分钟The Economist Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is Editor's Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist, read aloud.
Enjoy.
For the respectable men running Western Europe's three biggest countries,
misery is heaped upon misery.
All are presiding over stagnant living standards and declining global influence.
In Britain and France, their rivals from the populist right are itching to take power.
Even the alternative for Germany or the AFD may win a couple of state elections next year.
And America, their key ally,
has just accused them of hastening Europe towards what it calls civilisational erasure.
Those three leaders also warn of a catastrophe if the parties of the populist right should triumph.
Friedrich Metz, Germanist chancellor, describes his government as centrism's last chance.
After his coalition lost European elections last year, Emmanuel Macron,
the French president, spoke about the danger of civil war.
This month, Britain's Prime Minister, Saquille Stammer,
told the Economist that reform UK was a challenge to the very essence of who we are as a nation.
The doctrines of the populist right do indeed contain much to condemn.
Yet talking about them in apocalyptic terms is doomed to fail.