Oct 21, 2026
BLAMING outside agitators for popular unrest is the oldest trick in the book — and EU regulators are now investigating alleged pro-Kremlin “influencers” supposedly whipping up riots in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere.
Another version of the narrative — which has rightly earned US President Donald Trump a rebuke from French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, but is also promoted by Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar and Poland’s Donald Tusk — is that immigrants are responsible.
Both approaches evade a reckoning with a Europe-wide crisis of confidence in the system. Both encourage repression, either of free speech online or of entire communities. And both are relevant to us in Britain.
The issues raised on the continent are our issues too. The immediate cause of the French protests was underfunded schools: dilapidated buildings and staff shortages, with related grievances around stress and workloads.
Over here we’ve had the scandals over collapsing school buildings, the backlog of repairs and upgrades due to the Tories scrapping Building Schools for the Future. We have a teacher recruitment and retention crisis that will be exacerbated by underfunded pay rises. We have a hated inspection system implicated in suicides and an exam-factory educational model placing irresponsible pressure on children even in primary school.
In Spain, it’s housing that lit the touch paper. Inadequate tenants’ rights combine with the sheer cost of housing to fuel an explosion of public anger.
In Britain millions are trapped in an extortionate private rented sector, including many now approaching retirement who will have no guarantee of somewhere they can afford to live once they stop earning. The cost of housing in major cities, with London the most extreme, has risen out of all proportion with incomes, so even above-average wages are often inadequate to cover it. The system is every bit as unsustainable as in Spain.
Protesters in Italy have also raised the huge diversion of resources to rearmament, part of the same war drive that in Germany has provoked a mass school-student movement against conscription. Again, in Britain our government pleads poverty on public-sector wages, green transition and infrastructure investment while promising staggering rises in military budgets.
Europe’s moribund political elites cannot accept that something quite fundamental needs to give. The causes of popular anger, whether at crumbling services or the cost of living, are rooted deep in an economic model they are committed to — indeed, one the EU treaties enshrine with the force of a constitution.
Blaming Russia ticks several boxes. It outsources responsibility. It provides an excuse for further state repression, suppressing liberties that might be used to call it to account. And it amplifies the Russia threat, justifying the arms spending increases that are worsening the crisis.
We know, from Andy Burnham’s bid to blame Russia for Brexit, that the same temptation exists here. One reason spurious claims of Russian puppetmasters need forthright rejection is because they are a get-out clause politicians use to duck addressing real problems.
Social media is a powerful tool, and those who own and control its biggest platforms have political influence as a result: but here the elephant in the room is obviously the United States, Meta, X Corp, Google and their closeness to the far-right government of Donald Trump.
And even then they need a tinder box to ignite. Europe’s omnicrisis will only be resolved by a political and economic alternative: investment in the industries and jobs of the future, public ownership of strategic assets and an end to the plundering of the commons by parasitical profiteers.
Luckily, our Prime Minister promised something of the sort when he declared an end to 40 years of neoliberalism. But his announced policies to date are rather less ambitious.
Next week’s Budget is a chance to show he’s for real. If not, the mystery will not be why the French are on the streets but why we aren’t.
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