One wonders how Likud's partners are doing these days, and not the partners within the right-wing camp or a possible right-wing government in Israel, but overseas – mainly in Europe. Yes, Likud has partners there, and quite successful ones.
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For too long, the traditional conservative parties in European Union countries refused to recognize Likud as a sister faction, having been impacted by the Israeli Left. And so, an absurd situation developed where Israeli left-wing parties – mainly Labor and Meretz – participated in many European political forums, while the Likud was excluded.
It was only invited to participate as a guest or observer, but never as a sister party. To put this into perspective: Germany's ruling parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, consider PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party a sister faction, a recognition they have so far denied the Likud.
The year 2016 saw a shift in Benjamin Netanyahu's faction with Europe when the European Parliament's European Conservatives and Reformists decided to recognize the Likud as a sister faction.
The ECR was founded at the behest of the British Conservative Party, which was still in opposition and at a time when Britain was still part of the EU. Even then, 11 years before the country would vote for Brexit, the conservative parties were too pro-EU for David Cameron and his friends' taste, who wanted an EU that was more like the single market than the "America of Europe."
The British conservatives, it turned out, were not alone: they were gradually joined by conservative parties from other European countries.
By 2022, the ECR included 19 parties from 15 EU countries, including four ruling factions: Poland's Law and Justice, which came to power in 2015, Czechia's Civic Democratic Party, which came to power in 2021, Brothers of Italy led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was sworn in October as the head of a right-wing government of the country's first right-wing government in 11 years, and Sweden Democrats.
Thanks to the external support they gave to the conservatives, a right-wing government was established last week in Sweden, after eight years of opposition.
Some of the faction's founders, the British "unionist" conservatives who support the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland, now have the same official status as Likud, a sister party, as well as the Republicans in the USA.
Hungary's ruling party, Fidesz, which withdrew from the organizations of traditional conservative parties, refuses for the time being to join the ECR, and moreover, is seen by some members as too problematic of a faction.
The Left and its propagandists in the media, including the Israeli one, define ECR as a "far right-wing" group since, in their opinion, any party that is to the right of the Center-Right parties or the traditional conservative factions is extreme. But the correct definition of these parties is "sovereign right".
Unlike the European Union and other globalization entities, these parties wish to return sovereign power to the nation-states. They do not want the decisions that will determine their fate to be made by unknown officials of a foreign administration, who were not elected, and therefore are not obligated to serve the national interests of the countries in which those parties are active.
The factions of the sovereign Right want economic and immigration policy to be determined in Warsaw, Rome, Stockholm, or Prague, and not in Brussels. They want a legal system that serves the people and controls law and order, not a legal system that works to promote the interests and ideologies of elitist minority groups.
They want to promote the original idea of democracy, the rule of the people, and not electocracy. Given the concentration of the traditional conservative Right in most EU countries, the ECR sees itself as keeping the original conservatism embers burning. Their reform is a return to the roots.
The ECR is part of a wider trend of the resurgence of the national Right across Europe. One can observe this in France, Austria, and Spain.
Denmark, where general elections are scheduled for Nov. 1, is the only one where the Left, led by the Social Democratic Party, is clearly ahead of the Right. This is because they adopted a strong right-wing policy of closing the country's borders against legal immigration, transferring asylum seekers to Rwanda, and enforcing law and order.
The Left gets stronger whenever it acts like the Right. And the opposite is true: when the Right acts like the Left, it gets weaker. Even when it is unsure of what it wants, as is the case with the never-ending leadership change saga of Britain's Conservative Party.
David Cameron, who spearheaded the establishment of the ECR, also initiated the Brexit referendum, thinking the public would reject it. Theresa May was elected to implement the withdrawal, but sought to soften it and was "let go" by her party.
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In 2019, Boris Johnson led the conservatives to the biggest victory since the Margaret Thatcher era and completed Brexit, but his irresponsible personal conduct and stalls at times of serious crises angered his faction and the Brits.
Liz Truss sought to introduce an immediate Thatcherian economic policy disconnected from contemporary reality. Rishi Sunak, the fifth Conservative prime minister in the past dozen years, must now stabilize the party and the country after a period of never-ending upheavals. He has two years to prove his abilities, provided the faction succeeds in overcoming the paralyzing self-destruction mechanism that has characterized it for 12 years.
Brexit was a choice, the people's choice. The coronavirus epidemic was beyond the conservative's control and the Ukraine war was the result of an external force. And yet, one cannot help but feel that too much time in power damaged the party's ability to rule and govern.
The main opposition party, Labour, has no better solution to what plagues Britain, but it is keen to return to power. And however does not want to rule, loses. Unless the infighting within the Conservative Party ends, it is expected to lose power perhaps even before the next election in 2024.
