While newsrooms across Europe, including ours, scramble to report on the fallout between right-wing parties and analyze what the shake-ups in political groupings might mean for the next European Parliament, we should not forget that the Right has an historic opportunity to make an impact in the larger battle for Europe. It should not be wasted on internal power-struggles and infighting.
Ordinary Europeans do not care about comings and goings in Brussels-based political groupings. “Will they stay in ECR? Will there be a split in ID? Will there be a new faction?” While we will certainly report on these questions, the truth is that nobody in the real world really votes on the basis of whether their party of choice is in the European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) or in Identity & Democracy (ID). We must be careful not to get so drawn into parliamentary machinations that we lose sight of the big picture.
