Europe Watch

Blurb:

Baroness Monckton’s amendment (424) to overturn the extreme abortion up to birth clause 208 was rejected by Peers who voted 185 to 148 against it; and Baroness Stroud’s amendment (425) to reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional prior to an abortion taking place at home was also rejected by Peers who voted 191 to 119 against it.

Amendment to overturn abortion up to birth clause rejected

Earlier this evening, Peers rejected amendment 424, which Baroness Monckton, along with other female Members of the House of Lords, tabled at Report Stage, that would have removed clause 208 from the Crime and Policing Bill.

Blurb:

Russia has dispatched two tankers carrying oil and gas to Cuba as the island grapples with a deepening energy crisis exacerbated by a U.S. oil blockade, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

The ships would be providing the Caribbean island nation with its first energy shipments in three months. Fuel shortages have pushed Cuba into one of its most severe economic crises in decades, with widespread blackouts and disruptions to basic services.

The Hong Kong-flagged tanker Sea Horse, which is believed to be loaded with around 27,000 tons of gas, is expected to arrive in Cuba in the coming days after diverting its course last month, Samir Madani, co-founder of maritime intelligence company TankerTrackers, told the FT.

A second vessel, the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin, is carrying between 725,000 and 728,000 barrels of oil and is due to reach Cuba in early April, he said.

Blurb:

The European Court of Human Rights has declined to hear a case brought by a Christian couple seeking the return of their two daughters, who were taken into state custody by Swedish authorities in 2022 following allegations of abuse and concerns about religious extremism.

Daniel and Bianca Samson have spent more than three years attempting to regain custody of their daughters, Sara, then 11, and Tiana, 10. According to the family’s legal representative, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the case was “inadmissible” because the parents had not exhausted all available legal remedies in Sweden. ADF International disputed that conclusion, saying in a statement that “there were no further options for domestic recourse.”

Blurb:

British Defence Minister Al Carns has warned “we live in very dangerous times” with soaring threats from Russia and the Middle East stretching from the “high north” to Iran. The alarm follows more than two weeks of the US-Israeli war on Iran, during which British troops have fought off drone and missile threats from Iran and its proxies.

Senior western officials have confirmed European militaries are increasingly concerned about the Strait and demands by America for countries such as the UK to become involved. A UK refusal to send ships to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz has caused huge tension from US President Donald Trump towards UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Blurb:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London on Tuesday for talks on peace and sanctions on Russia.

The meeting comes at a time when the Iran war has revived Russia’s ailing economy through increased oil revenue, robbed US-brokered talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine of momentum and could soon limit Kyiv’s access to vital Western air defence systems that are needed in the Middle East.

“We can’t lose focus on what’s going on in Ukraine and the need for our support,” Starmer said alongside Zelenskyy for talks at 10 Downing Street, which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also attended.

“Putin can’t be the one who benefits from the conflict in Iran, whether that’s oil prices or the dropping of sanctions,” Starmer said. “It is really important we keep our resolve in relation to supporting Ukraine, doing everything we can to weaken the hand of Putin.”

Blurb:

Keir Starmer is speaking at his press conference.

The war is entering its third week, he says.

He says he has been clear in his objectives.

First, we will protect our people in the region.

Second, while taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war.

And third, we will keep working towards a swift resolution that brings security and stability back to the region and stops the Iranian threat to its neighbours.

Blurb:

Cultural Defeat and Surrender.

This is a national disgrace and good example of how the West has come to hate itself and the people who made it great.

Cultural collapse can’t be too far off. What’s next, remove Nelson from atop his column and replace him with a sheep? That shouldn’t cause any divisiveness and it would serve as a reminder of what is in charge of the Bank of England. (Paul Schnee)

If you want something emblematic of cultural and civilizational decline, it would be hard to think of an exhibit more revealing than this. GB News: The Bank of England has confirmed Sir Winston Churchill will be scrapped from banknotes and replaced with images of wildlife. The central bank will soon ask the public which animals they want to appear on the next set of £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes – but confirmed the wartime hero Prime Minister would not be staying. The move to replace historical figures with animals was described as “significant” and “overdue” by celebrity bird-watcher Nadeem Perera, who sits on the bank’s panel of wildlife experts who will choose which English species will appear on the next set of banknotes…. While the monarch will remain on the notes’ front, the decision will remove historical figures including Sir Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, JMW Turner, and Alan Turing (GB News).

Blurb:

The leaders of Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia have long touted their loyalty to President Donald Trump, courting Washington’s conservative wing. But when Trump launched his war with Iran, the mask came off.

Trump has backed Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the hilt as the Hungarian strongman seeks to cling to power in an upcoming election. But that didn’t stop Orban from quickly raising concerns about Trump’s war. Within hours, he raised Hungary’s terrorist threat level, warning that a prolonged Middle East conflict could trigger new waves of migration from Iran through Turkey and the Balkans. “Hungary must prepare and make sure the dam holds,” Orban emphasized.

Blurb:

The United States has proposed another round of Russia-Ukraine talks next week, mediated by Washington, on ending four years of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday.

Two rounds of trilateral talks failed to reach a breakthrough to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, launched by Moscow in 2022.

Zelensky said in an audio message sent to reporters, including AFP, that talks — initially planned for last week in the United Arab Emirates — had been postponed until next week by the U.S.

Blurb:

To the despair of the European establishment, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the most hated political force in Germany, keeps showing robust signs of life, whether in its impressive showing in a state election on Sunday or in a recent courtroom victory. On Sunday, the AfD more than doubled its previous vote share for the parliament of Baden-Württemberg, a key industrial state in western Germany. On February 26, a German court enjoined the country’s domestic spy agency from classifying Germany’s second most popular political party as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization. The “confirmed right-wing extremist” designation has been a key tool in the campaign among establishment and left-wing politicians to ban the AfD entirely.

The AfD’s fate should not be a matter of indifference to American conservatives. The globalist elites must be broken everywhere if they are to be permanently broken at all.

Growing numbers of the German public defy their overseers and welcome the AfD as an antidote to the EU-Davos philosophy of open borders and the deindustrialization and immiseration that go under the banner of climate-friendly energy policy. The AfD polls second nationally to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The CDU was once the cornerstone of postwar conservatism, but its leaders have pulled it to the left in order to marginalize the AfD. In February 2025, Chancellor (and CDU party head) Friedrich Merz cobbled together an ideologically incoherent governing coalition whose sole purpose is to shut the AfD out of power, despite the AfD’s receiving the second largest share of the German vote. The establishment proudly refers to this exclusionary strategy as the “firewall,” which allegedly protects German democracy from falling into the hands of purported neo-Nazis.

Blurb:

The Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party has dropped his support of the Scottish assisted suicide Bill, vowing that he will now vote against it as “the risks are too great”.

Russell Findlay MSP previously supported the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, which, as written, would legalise assisted suicide for adults resident in Scotland with no prognosis requirement specified; however, he now opposes the Bill due to numerous concerns with it.

This now means that the leaders of the three largest parties in Holyrood are opposed to the assisted suicide Bill.

Findlay is the third MSP who supported the Bill last year to now oppose it, meaning that if only four more MSPs change their minds and commit to voting against the Bill, it will fail.

Blurb:

A chilling new signal believed to be tied to Iran has begun appearing across the radio spectrum in Europe, with shortwave listeners in the United Kingdom reporting mysterious encrypted broadcasts shortly after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Amateur radio enthusiasts say the transmissions resemble a classic “numbers station,” a type of coded broadcast historically associated with espionage and covert intelligence operations.

The signal has been designated “V32” by the monitoring group ENIGMA2000, which tracks suspected intelligence transmissions around the world.

Shortwave listeners say the station broadcasts strings of encrypted numbers late at night and early in the evening.

The transmissions have reportedly been heard clearly across the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, with signals bouncing off the ionosphere and appearing on the frequency 7910 kHz (7.910 MHz) in Upper Sideband mode.

Monitors have described the broadcast as a male voice, possibly synthetic, speaking in Farsi while reading out sequences of numbers.

Blurb:

Russia has reportedly provided Iran with information that could help the regime target U.S. military assets across the Middle East, a development that adds a dangerous new layer to a war that is already widening by the day.

U.S. intelligence officials believe Moscow passed along information that could be used against American warships, aircraft and other military positions in the region. The officials told The Associated Press there is no indication Russia is directly ordering Tehran how to use the information, but the disclosure still marks the clearest sign yet that Moscow may be trying to assist Iran as the conflict intensifies.

The report lands as U.S. and Israeli forces continue pounding Iranian targets and as Tehran keeps launching retaliatory attacks against American positions and U.S. partners in the Gulf.

The White House believes the United States is “well on its way” toward controlling Iranian airspace and expects its core military objectives could be completed within four to six weeks. President Donald Trump has also taken a harder public line, demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” as the campaign moves deeper into its second week.

Blurb:

… Keir Starmer is expected to promise to protect the British public from the economic impact of the war after oil prices surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022.

“No matter the headwinds, supporting working people and their families with the cost of living is always top of my mind,” the prime minister said ahead of a visit on Monday to a community centre in London.

Starmer added:

People are also rightly worrying what this means for life at home – their bills, their jobs, their communities.

I want to address those concerns head on. I will always be guided by what is best for the British public. And no matter the headwinds, supporting working people and their families with the cost of living is always top of my mind.

Blurb:

BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party has made a disappointing start to a year packed with German state elections, suffering a narrow defeat in an important industrial region after a prominent candidate powered the environmentalist Greens to a come-from-behind victory.

Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union was long confident of winning back the governor’s office in Baden-Württemberg, a region of more than 11 million people in southwestern Germany that is home to automakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, among many other companies. The country’s first and so far only Green governor, Winfried Kretschmann, is retiring after 15 years in charge of a traditional conservative heartland.

A CDU victory long looked likely despite the unpopularity of Merz’s 10-month-old federal government, which has struggled to get Germany’s stagnant economy moving. But the party’s poll lead shrank ahead of Sunday’s election thanks to a Green campaign focused on Cem Özdemir, a longtime federal lawmaker and former German agriculture minister.

Blurb:

The UK has decided to spend resources on policing kids aged 13-17 on whether they are posting politically incorrect material online. Throughout this campaign, they hope to instill fear in the younger generation that what you retweet or like might get you convicted under the Terrorism Act.

According to Action Counters Terrorism:

Terrorist-related offending can include:
displaying the signs, symbols and slogans of terrorist groups
creating extremist content that celebrates terrorists or terrorist groups
sharing extremist content that celebrates terrorists or terrorist groups
encouraging other people to commit terrorist crimes
threatening acts of violence for terrorist causes online.

Blurb:

Defence secretary John Healey has twice declined to rule out Britain joining strikes on Iran, when asked by Sky News.

He also said he’d had the option of deploying HMS Dragon to the Mediterranean for weeks.

Interviewed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, the minister was asked by Sky’s Europe correspondent Ali Bunkall if he could rule out Britain joining the conflict in an offensive capacity.

Blurb:

 

The U.K.’s Finance Minister Rachel Reeves has delivered her latest update on the state of the U.K. economy and public finances, with the chancellor having to concede that growth will be lower than previously expected this year.

Addressing the House of Commons on Tuesday, Reeves said “the government has the right economic plan for the country,” which was met by immediate jeers from opposition lawmakers.

A plan, she said, that was “even more important in a world that, over the last few days, has become yet more uncertain,” amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.