Does Europe need it's own Trump?

An obviously provocative title but Trump can be seen as a wrecking ball that shattered the previous political status quo.

I’ve written about the ‘Elite over-population’ theory before, Elite overproduction is a concept developed by Peter Turchin that describes the condition of a society that is producing too many potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure. A somewhat similar idea was put forward by the political scientist Samuel Huntington. He maintained that people want to advance their careers but the so-called higher levels become saturated and unable to absorb new members. This leads to socio-political decay.

Eventually someone comes along, usually from the elite, recruits followers from the ‘ordinary’ people and breaks the status quo.

Trump was born into the financial elite and has kicked his way into the political elite. This time he has been accompanied by Musk, another member of the wealthy elite who seems to want a place in the political elite.

In the end, it’s all about social status and little about public welfare. Musk is often described as the ‘world’s wealthiest man’, perhaps he looks across the ocean and sees someone who, in all probability, is wealthier than he. Musk also sees that this person has enormous ‘power’, an army, for example, and isn’t afraid to use it. Maybe what Musk sees is wealth and ‘power’ held by the same person, he then uses Trump, as so many others have done, to piggyback his way into the political elite.

No Europe doesn’t need a Trump but we need to shake up the moribund, expensive, and ineffective European Union.

Let’s have a quick look at the situation in Europe:

In 2023, 94.6 million people in the EU were at risk of poverty or social exclusion; this was equivalent to 21.4 % of the EU population.

At least 895,000 people were homeless in Europe in 2023.

8.6% of people in the EU were unable to afford proper meal in 2020.

13.249 million persons in the EU, of whom 11.102 million in the euro area, were unemployed in February 2024.

Billionaires are ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ linked to €3bn of EU farming subsidies. The CAP accounts for 33% of the entire EU budget and researchers from the Centre for European Policy Studies (Ceps) found that it is “currently de facto impossible” to identify the largest ultimate beneficiaries of EU funding with full confidence.

50%-80% of EU farming subsidies go toward animal agriculture.

Ok, that’ll do for now or we’ll be here all day.

Political institutions and their accompanying elites quickly become stagnant, moribund, and unfit for purpose. The current EU system seems designed to be unrepresentative and to create an abundance of high social status roles. We can marvel at the seven principal decision-making bodies of the European Union and Euratom and at the complicatedness of the whole thing. We can admire how the elite has managed to create an institution that is so detached from the popular vote. At the top of it all we have the European Commission headed once again by Ursula von der Leyen. The EU Commission decides what legislation to propose to the EU Council and Parliament, in fact only the EU Commission can do this. 27 other Commissioners are working under Ursula, who was put into office, not by popular vote, but by a secret ballot of MEPs.

EU citizens get the chance to vote for people who want to become MEPs, there’s 720 of the fluffy bunnies. That’s about as far as the general public get a say in what the EU does and how it spends its budget. Yes, you might be wondering … The EU had a long-term budget of €1,082.5 billion for the period 2014–2020, a whole lot of wad. Yet despite this budget and the skills and competencies of the elected and non-elected members of the EU institutions there all those citizens going hungry, unhoused, unemployed, and worse. Perhaps Ursula feels that she is worth the 28,026 EUR she earns per month (plus a whole range of benefits). As a benchmark, the average monthly wage across the EU is around 2176 EUR. Perhaps she’ll feel happy to get the 14,138 EUR monthly pension and feel she did a good job. Personally, I would be ashamed but one can understand why people are attracted to these kinds of jobs, high incomes, high social status, flying around the world, and hanging out with other members of the global wealth and political elites. Cool stuff.

We can identify another trait of the ‘working’ EU elite. They seem to be relatively incompetent. Despite a huge budget, and tens of thousands of civil servants, a wide range of socio-economic and environmental problems across the EU zone have been getting worse.

The Green Deal has changed focus and now puts economic prosperity competitiveness front and foremost while continuing to pay lipservice to environmental issues. The European border force, Frontex, is going to be expanded to counter the ‘flood’ of imigrants and refugees. Von der Leyen herself has changed her style and now uses words like ‘values’, ‘culture’, ‘our European way of life’, ‘our homeland’ and suchlike. These mirror the vocabulary used be far-right politicians.

They say that Ursula is sometimes referred to as ‘Queen Ursula’. The reason being is that apparently she is notoriously secretive, she rarely consults with the team of 27 commissioners that she leads. People working in the EU commission criticise Ursula for over-stepping her defined role and for her tendency to ‘forget’ to consult with national governments.

In Europe we have a President who isn’t elected by ‘the people’ and who is increasingly drawing power to the role of President. Said person has become the ‘face’ of Europe, again, something that we didn’t vote for. Many of the founding ideas behind the EU are laudable, the administrative monstrosity that it has become is definitely not. Expensive, top-heavy, only partially democratic it’s time to keep the best and get rid of the rest. We don’t need a Trump wrecking ball to do this but, speaking for the 94.6 million people living in poverty, we need to transform the current setup into one that actually helps people. Speaking for the European environment and the degraded and unhealthy farmland which makes up 70% of of EU agricultural land we need to radically change the Common agricultural policy. In fact it would be quite nice to know who is getting the money, like many things in the EU system it’s a bit obscure.

I’m not a Euro-sceptic per se. I appreciate the lack of borders and single currency. But … institutions tend to slide bit by bit to become increasingly non-democratic and led by ‘personalities’. This is as true of local associations as it is of the EU institutions. Create a structure that gives power, influence and an elevated social status to charismatic individuals and you will attract people who seek that elevated status. Whether they are competent or not to do the job is, for them, not even a question that needs asking. We know that it definitely is.