Ten years ago, ‘Project Fear’ was at the heart of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s inept efforts to persuade Britons not to vote to leave the EU.
Voting for Brexit, according to David Cameron’s government Doomsday forecasts, would cost every household £4,300 (€5,000) per year from 2030, lead to an immediate recession and mean lower house prices.
It was a huge mistake. That all the pro-EU camp could say about being members of the club was that it would be very expensive to leave was a jarring admission of failure. And the promised economic apocalypse of instant recession and house price warnings didn’t happen. Most people simply didn’t believe the figures or that the politicians behind them were being honest about them. The result, as we know, is that more than 17m Brits gave the ‘establishment’ – or what they perceived it to be – a big kick up the arse.
Fast forward to 2026 and newly-minted UK prime minister Andy Burnham has put all options for UK-EU relations – including rejoining – back on the table.
The UK Treasury, which drew up the prophecies of doom, is now expected to publish a study analysing the potential economic benefits of Britain moving closer to the EU ahead of November’s EU-UK summit.
Personally, I think Brexit and the piecemeal trade and cooperation agreement that governs EU-UK trade has resulted in a small but significant economic hit.
The hope is that the treasury won’t promise milk, honey and gold-paved streets if the UK rejoins the EU or its single market.
If over-promising increases the speed at which voters get disappointed with governments, the Brexit vote is proof that trying to frighten people is the fastest way to lose an election.
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Battle for Dobropillia — huge Russian losses and the brutal destruction of the city.
A possible explanation for inaccuracies in Russian maps — they are lying to improve their position in ceasefire negotiations.
The Wall Street Journal said Elon Musk came up with the idea of cutting off Ukraine’s military Starlink.
How the Starshield restriction has affected the front line.
Maps of the day — a Russian death field between Rodynske and Dobropillia, plus an overall view of the front.
Videos of the day — the funeral of five children killed by Russian bombing; a driver in Kyiv burned alive after a drone strike; war criminal and liar Sergei Lavrov speaks about the bombing of Ukraine; a cat alerted an operator to approaching Russians; an interceptor drone shot down a Geran.
The battle for Dobropillia in images and maps — huge Russian losses and the brutal destruction of the city. The heaviest fighting is currently taking place on this section of the front. Following its defeat in the north near Lyman, the Russian command is now trying here, in the south, to bypass the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, since a direct attack from the east has also failed.
The Kremlin has currently deployed its largest forces to the area north-east of Pokrovsk, where it is trying to break through Ukrainian defences.
Described this way, it sounds highly technical. People can detach emotionally from information written in this manner and follow events merely as arrows on maps.
In reality, however, the arrows conceal tragedies that are very difficult to imagine. This week, visual evidence emerged that may better convey the scale of human suffering and losses on both sides.
The first shows the city of Dobropillia itself from the air after Russian bombardment that is slowly consuming it.
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As protests continue to ripple across European cities, the Italian Green MEP Benedetta Scuderi reflects on her own experiences of police repression, from holding a peace flag near a Brussels protest to facing the fury that followed the flotilla to Gaza. She spoke to EUobserver about the EU’s housing priorities, Italy’s elections, and how the far-right has captured freedom of expression for its own use.
You were detained by police in July, a few hundred meters from a far-right protest calling for “re-migration”. How has the rise of the far-right stalled some key areas, like freedom of speech?
The rise of the far-right is really threatening European democracy as we know it. It has never been perfect, but it allowed people to protest. Now, we only let certain people express their dissent.
In the European Parliament, people can discriminate and use hate speech because of their freedom of expression, but as you go out of parliament with a Palestinian flag, then you’re a terrorist. So, how is it possible that last Strasbourg plenary, I could hear my colleagues saying that Muslims are a threat, and there are no consequences? And then I go out and I say, “Free Palestine,” and I’ll be arrested.
This double standard is extremely problematic. The fact that not allowing fascist symbols within the parliament also meaning that no other symbol can be shown, is not okay. Because we need to be fine to say that certain things are discriminatory and against European values, without having to say that everything else is not allowed.
We also need to be able to accept dissent. What is happening all over Europe, with violence increasing towards activists, we’re seeing it target only a certain kind of activists. In Italy, fascist protests are ignored by police. Farmers can come to the parliament with tractors, and that’s completely fine. And then we have 20 people doing a sit-in for Palestine in front of the parliament, and getting their heads smashed.
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Measures would remove some penalties for those helping women access abortion but are ‘small-scale step’, say campaigners
Poland’s lower house of parliament has approved two bills aimed at loosening a near-total ban on abortions, in what campaigners have described as a “small-scale step” ahead of protests calling on the government to fulfil its promises to overhaul the country’s laws.
The new measures, which are likely to be vetoed by Poland’s nationalist president, would remove some of the criminal penalties for those who help women to access abortion care and allow terminations in cases of foetal abnormalities.
Yield on 10-year government bonds passes 5% amid failure to pass budget and fallout from violent street protests
France’s borrowing costs have climbed above 5% for the first time in 24 years as political concerns and the government’s failure to agree a much-delayed budget spook the financial markets.
With some civic buildings still smouldering from recent riots, a fresh bout of selling pushed up the yield – or interest rate – on bonds issued by the second largest economy in the eurozone.
Guardian Europe columnists Rokhaya Diallo and Alexander Hurst answered your questions about the recent protests in France, the role of the French police, foreign influence and the upcoming presidential election.
Michael Wolfcarius asks: I cannot understand why the Guardian is selecting dots instead of joining them. France may have developed into the big story for many reasons, many of which have yet to be discussed, but it is not the only place where seemingly small incidents grew into massive protests, some also quite violent; Spain, Italy, Serbia and Albania come to mind. The crystallising reason may be different but the conditions leading up to it are quite similar. Can you put all these events into perspective, context and relation? There are obviously underlying currents making it difficult for people to refrain from making themselves ‘heard’.
Rokhaya: I agree that these movements deserve to be considered together, while at the same time, recognising their different specific national contexts. Housing in Spain, living costs and public services in Italy and France, and corruption in Serbia and Albania are bringing people onto the streets. These concerns touch the foundations of a decent life and people’s ability to shape their future.
What connects them, in my view, is the widening gap between what people need and what political institutions seem willing to deliver. These incidents that have led to protests are not “small .” Serbia’s movement began after a deadly railway-station canopy collapse, which became a focus for anger over corruption and accountability. My reading is that these protests express a crisis of political responsiveness.
Alexander: I think people in all these places – Albania, Spain, France – feel that the political systems that exist aren’t capable of dealing with the sheer scale and nature of the crises facing us, and they’re responding to a sense of ‘loss of control’ (the Brexit campaign really did strike upon a brilliant slogan) over where their societies are headed. There is a general social sense that has flipped from “this is broken, but things can and will get better”, which gives people a stake in the institutions around them, to “this is broken and things can and will get worse”.
The impact of the arrival of AI has been understated. Not just on labour markets, or on the environment, but ontologically. The investment pitch of the most powerful companies in the world, the ones amassing trillion dollar valuations, isn’t just that X-subset of jobs are replaceable, it’s that human beings themselves are replaceable. That the things we do fundamentally don’t matter, and that their goal is to bring this into being. I think that feeling is there even if we don’t immediately put our finger on it in those terms.
Student protests across Europe are a desperate cry for help, an appeal to governments to build a brighter, hope-filled future. Instead of paying attention, European politicians have decided to manhandle the protesters, misrepresent their demands and manipulate public opinion.
Different narratives are now competing to explain what the protests are really about.
They want to be taught properly. They want more teachers, an end to overcrowded classes, dilapidated buildings and inadequate school meals and an admissions system that sorts young people by class and postcode.
In Belgium, students have protested education cuts and fees. Greek students occupied Syntagma Square over rents, student housing and energy bills. Italian students demanded money for schools rather than war.
But politicians seem intent on telling a different story.
For many EU leaders it is – yet again – all about migration.
Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar has decided that the chaos in French cities makes it “clear to everyone why Hungary advocates the strictest possible approach to migration.”
Poland’s Donald Tusk, who insists he will not repeat the mistakes of other European countries, joined the leaders of Denmark and Italy at the EU leaders’ meeting in Brussels last week to push for an even tougher Fortress Europe.
Together, they almost succeeded in getting others in the EU to agree to a statement linking crime and “irregular” migration.
On the other side of the Atlantic, US president Donald Trump instructed Europe to “close your borders and take control, before it is too late!” while his deputy JD Vance criticised Western liberals for bringing the “third world” to France.
Parts of the media focused on the violence, particularly the looting and destruction carried out by those who have joined the protests to create chaos, rather than on the demands that brought students onto the streets in the first place.
In France, meanwhile, it was the presidential campaign that shaped the political response, with Marine Le Pen from the National Rally calling for law and order and blaming “decades of immigration” for the violence while her protégé, Jordan Bardella, said the police should have more weapons and greater powers.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Insoumise, Le Pen’s leading rival in the elections next year, was accused of fuelling student anger. French centrists struggled to find their footing and their voice. President Emmanuel Macron made an angry television appearance before heading to the Middle East with a delegation of business leaders.
So far, very predictable.
High school students and members of French Unions march during a national day of protest on 13 October 2026 (Source: EPA/FIRAS ABDULLAH)
Old playbook: one enemy, no solution
Divert, distract, dehumanise and scapegoat are the oldest tricks in wily politicians’ playbook. The well-worn recipe is simple: take a social crisis, remove its economic content, replace it with a face, a religion, a border. Then offer an enemy, not a solution.
When public services fail, blame the outsider. When wages stagnate, blame the foreigner. When housing becomes impossible, blame the newcomer rather than the landlord, the investor or the government that stopped building.
And when young people take to the streets, describe them as manipulated, criminal, alien or dangerous. Treat their anger as a threat to public order rather than a warning that something is profoundly wrong. Say there has been foreign manipulation and disinformation.
Then turn the full force of the state against the symptoms of the crisis while leaving its causes untouched and change the the subject from justice to fear, from schools to borders, from the future to the past.
Meanwhile, the money goes elsewhere.
Europe is pouring resources into defence and rearmament. Governments speak endlessly of competitiveness, productivity and strategic autonomy. But these questions cannot become excuses for neglecting the social foundations on which Europe’s future depends.
Seriously, who is going to make an ageing Europe competitive if the people expected to build its future cannot afford to have one? Who will run Europe’s basic services if migrants go “home”? What does strategic autonomy even mean if young Europeans cannot get a decent education, find secure employment or afford a home?
Contradictions
We should know by now that security cannot be measured in weapons alone. It also depends on how secure citizens feel, and whether they believe they have something worth protecting. Security demands that people have politicians they can trust and institutions which work for them.
A Europe that invests in its military capabilities while allowing its schools, housing systems and public services to deteriorate risks hollowing out its own strength.
Believe me: I know. I was born in Pakistan, a country which thrives on war and conflict and neglects the well being of its citizens.
There is another contradiction. As young people struggle to make their voices heard, the EU is planning cuts to funding for civil society organisations that defend rights, support communities, hold power to account and help turn public anger into democratic participation.
The EU has always – rightly – backed citizens’ calls for democratic participation, equality and inclusion when it happens in Tunisia, Egypt or Hongkong. How can our leaders close down such calls for participation when they are made at home?
Sadly, politicians and parts of the media have lost young peoples’ trust – and when that faith goes, so does democracy.
The EU can and must offer young Europeans a story of hope, inclusion and progress towards equality. Leaders who prefer to hallucinate about migrants should spend more time living up to the EU’s values by investing in education, affordable housing, decent jobs and public services.
We must give our young people a meaningful voice in decisions that will shape their lives. Our collective future quite literally depends on it.
This article was first published on Shada’s Substack. You can subscribe for free to receive new posts and support her work here.
In France, it was the piles of wheelie bins stacked up against school entrances that first hinted at the scale of student anger over crumbling classrooms and teacher shortages. In Spain, it was a tent camp that steadily grew in the heart of the capital as residents railed against soaring housing costs.
Similar scenes have since sprung up in Belgium, Italy and Portugal, and clashes have convulsed Albania’s capital of Tirana, hinting at an autumn of protests across Europe.
Student activists seem set to defeat Aleksandar Vučić at the ballot box this Sunday. The EU should never have written off Serbian democracy
History may not be about to repeat itself in Serbia, but it is beginning to rhyme. Just over a quarter of a century ago, Serbian citizens turned out to vote in large numbers to inflict a historic defeat on the then strongman in Belgrade, Slobodan Milošević, who was seeking re-election as president. He lost despite his extensive control over the media, the judiciary and the security forces. When he was reluctant to leave office, Serbs poured on to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, finally forcing him to go.
On Sunday, a new generation could have the decisive voice in an equally fateful election, this time for the national parliament. Today’s strongman, Aleksandar Vučić, recently resigned as president to fight the election with the aim of swapping the locus of power from the presidency to the prime minister’s office.
As glaciers melt and permafrost thaws, Longyearbyen, on the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, faces climate-induced problems from tap water to housebuilding to landslides
On a rugged mountain plateau of snow-dusted rocks, in the remote archipelago of Svalbard, a glaciologist, Andy Hodson, points out the “ears” of ice, white against the rock, that gave Foxfonna glacier its name, after the arctic fox.
The small glacier, on a mountain 8 miles (15km) outside the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen, is a popular summer hike for tourists who come here seeking the Arctic experience.
Serbia’s authoritarian president personally intervened to remove the protection of a historic landmark – then came protests and prosecutions. Tom Burgis on the murky tale of Trump Tower Belgrade
In the heart of Belgrade, near the banks of the Danube, stands the General Staff building. Built in the 1960s, it embodies the difficult history of Serbia. It was designed to resemble a canyon of the Sutjeska River, where one of the most significant battles of the second world war was fought.
Then suddenly, in November 2024, it was announced that the building was no longer protected from development. Instead, a tower with Donald Trump’s name on it would go up in its place.
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