Kamala Harris has an unfortunate track record of burning through senior staff, say Cleve Wootson Jr and Tyler Pager in The Washington Post. The US Vice President has lost four aides this month, including her communications director and press secretary. One former aide from before she became Veep has accused Harris of being a “bully” who constantly dished out “soul-destroying criticism” and wasn’t “willing to do the prep and the work”. Another compared her management style to that of Donald Trump. All this makes for a stark contrast with her boss: many of Joe Biden’s staff have worked with him for decades.
France is shifting to the right
French politics has shifted dramatically to the right, says Aris Roussinos in UnHerd. Left-wingers, from communists to social democrats, can barely make a combined 20% in the polls for next year’s presidential election. Emmanuel Macron, decried as a centrist, is more traditionally right-wing than any modern Tory, “railing against woke American cultural imperialism” and shutting down Islamist NGOs. As for Eric Zemmour, at a recent, very Trumpian rally, he ruminated over the labels applied to him. “‘Me, a fascist?’ he asked as the crowd roared in approval, ‘Well, let’s see.’”
Zemmour probably won’t win next year’s presidential election, but he’s certainly setting the tone, and someone like him will take power in France sooner rather than later. Our closest neighbour “shifting hard right” is a very different prospect to distant Poland or Hungary doing the same. One possibility is that leave and remain eventually swap geographic allegiances, with British conservatives backing right-wing Europe and the British left backing liberal America.