Timothy Garton Ash is a professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
| It’s time to sound the alarm. Seven decades after the end of the Second World War on European soil, the Europe we have built since then is under attack.
| As the cathedral of Notre Dame burned, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National was polling neck and neck with Emmanuel Macron’s movement for what he calls a “European renaissance.” A right-wing populist party called the Finns, formerly the True Finns (to distinguish them from “false” Finns of different colour or religion), garnered almost as many votes as Finland’s Social Democrats in last month’s general election. In Britain, the European election vote this week can be seen as another referendum on Brexit, but the underlying struggle is the same as that of our fellow Europeans. Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage is a Le Pen in Wellington boots, a True Finn in a Barbour jacket. And Prime Minister Theresa May’s long-heralded departure is just another chapter in a very European story of nationalist populists radicalizing the agenda of mainstream conservatives.
|  | | | | Did you know? - We also have an Evening Update newsletter that is written by Globe editors to help you catch up on the most important news of the day. Sign up today. | | | | | | More stories below advertisement | | | The Canadian airline industry is suddenly in upheaval, thanks to two major deals. The one getting the most attention is the biggest: private-equity player Onex’s $3.5-billion purchase of WestJet, the country’s second-largest carrier. But it’s the smaller transaction – Air Canada’s proposed $520-million takeover of Transat – that could have a bigger impact.
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