The Philosopher Queens and Their Ruinous Rule – Watts Up With That?

From Tilak’s Substack

These two “politicians” have brought Europe to ruin. The left one is doubly guilty because she brought the right one to power. Open borders plus deindustrialization for the climate. Historians will, in a few hundred years, after the new Muslim Middle Ages, puzzle over what drove European civilization to suicide (An X post by Chris Veber https://x.com/ChrisVeber1/status/1940673113550659636 )

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faced two more challenges to her position in the European Parliament last week. She received support from just over half the members of the 720-seat European Parliament in both votes. Neither of the motions of no confidence had a chance of securing the two-thirds majority required to eject the President but still they served as the latest reminder of the increasingly fractured European Parliament and its growing populist factions.

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The Patriots for Europe group, a conservative-populist faction which participated in the parliamentary motion, includes lawmakers from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party and the Rassemblement National (RN) party of Marine Le Pen in France. It criticised the EC’s climate, migration and economic policies. The conservative faction in European politics parallels President Trump’s characteristically blunt address to the United Nations. He had described Europe as “going to hell” through its twin obsessions with mass migration and green energy.

In the same week as the challenging votes in the European parliament, one of Germany’s foremost energy experts, Fritz Vahrenholt, stated that Germany is in the grips of an “energy madness”. The country in his view is headed towards a supply crisis as early as 2030. With every coal or nuclear power plant shut down, supply security is crumbling as the federal Government continues with its disastrous Energiewende experiment.

Ms von der Leyen, alas, is not alone in her suicidal empathy, a condition which scholar Gad Saad defines as “excessive compassion that undermines societal cohesion, values and security when it lacks limits”. The objects of such “excessive compassion” could be polar bears that refuse to go extinct despite the repeated claims of climate alarmists or the economic migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere that falsely claim refugee status in Europe.

From Merkel’s Folly to Ursula’s Creed

In Plato’s Republic, the ideal state was ruled by philosopher kings — enlightened guardians who alone could perceive truth hidden from ordinary folk. Two millennia later, Europe’s fate lies not with kings but with philosopher queens — women of unimpeachable confidence, certain of their own virtue and contemptuous of dissent. Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, Annalena Baerbock and Kaja Kallas together form a sisterhood of hubris that has guided the continent into its gravest crisis since 1945. Their vision — green utopia, open borders, perpetual warmongering — has produced instead economic decay, social fragmentation and geopolitical irrelevance.

Germany’s – and by extension, Western Europe’s – long descent began under Merkel’s dual obsessions: shutting down nuclear and coal power in favour of windmills and solar panels and opening the borders to mass migration from the Middle East and North Africa. Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) promised a cleaner, safer future but delivered only intermittent electricity, astronomical energy prices and deindustrialisation. When Merkel welcomed over a million migrants in 2015, the ‘doctors and engineers’ she promised as an antidote to Western Europe’s low fertility rates failed to materialise. What Germany and the EU at large received was an influx of fighting-age, crime-prone males and their dependants, few employable, many hostile to assimilation and all eager clients of an already overstretched welfare state.

The social consequences were predictable: crime surges and parallel societies in the streets of Cologne and Berlin, as in many other cities of Europe ranging from Malmo in Sweden to Southport in England. The economic consequences were equally dire. As industry fled to the United States and Asia in search of affordable energy, Germany — once Europe’s workshop — now faces stagnation. Yet Merkel’s reward was canonisation by Brussels and the pliant media as the moral conscience of Europe.

In stepped Ursula von der Leyen, whose earlier career as Germany’s defence minister was a masterclass in incompetence. By 2018, the Bundeswehr possessed barely a handful of operational tanks and aircraft. What mattered, however, was not readiness but rectitude: gender quotas and diversity seminars counted for more than functioning tanks and helicopters. Her promotion to the presidency of the European Commission — unelected, unaccountable and serenely self-assured — was little surprise. In Brussels, failure is the ultimate credential.

Von der Leyen has since elevated the Energiewende to the continental scale. In her ‘State of the European Union‘ address delivered last month, she doubled down on the “green transformation” even as Europe’s industries collapse under electricity costs triple those in the United States. Germany’s deindustrialisation accelerates; Britain (under both Conservative and Labour governments) tethers itself to the EU’s climate and immigration policies and shutters steelworks, refineries and offshore oil and gas operations. Yet von der Leyen’s Orwellian sermonising continues, invoking economic competitiveness and energy security while throttling the very fossil fuels sector that would deliver economic growth and affordable energy. In effect, Europe has become a civilisation offering to sacrifice its productive capacity at the altar of Gaia.

Von der Leyen’s climate fundamentalism is matched only by her zeal for moral policing. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is denounced as an “ally of Russia” for daring to continue importing affordable gas supplies and to reject mass immigration in defence of Christian traditions of family and nation. Slovakia’s Robert Fico earns similar scorn. Their refusal to embrace unvetted mass migration and the latest ‘woke’ gender dogmas while not supporting the EU’s escalating war rhetoric marks them as heretics to the European creed.

In remarks to the EU parliament delivered on Wednesday, a clearly exasperated Mr. Orbán said:

So unity [in the EU] does not mean that I as a Hungarian President should “shut up” always. … It is not written anywhere. I am here to represent the national interest of Hungary. And on that basis, I would like to make deals, agreements, compromises, whatever with the other country leaders who represent their own national interests. So I don’t represent the globalist elite here or the European bureaucrats. … I am standing firmly on the basis of national interest. … Hungary first, I suppose for you Germany first. That’s right. So lets sit down and understand what is good for Germans, what is [good] for the Hungarians. You are big, we are smaller. Let’s make a deal on how to cooperate. That’s European politics. Not to say that ‘you should follow the Unity, shut up’. That’s what you are saying. It’s impossible.

The globalist intolerance for national interests extends beyond rhetoric. Brussels seeks ever-greater control over national politics, nullifying elections in Romania and meddling in Moldova under the pretext of ‘Russian interference’, providing remarkable parallels to the Russian collusion hoax operation run by Presidents Obama and Biden to undermine President Trump during his first term in the US. The Commission now flirts with rules granting government access to private internet communications, effectively outlawing encrypted speech — the “right to whisper”, as one commentator called it. The self-anointed defenders of democracy have become its most efficient undertakers.

Meanwhile, von der Leyen lectures Beijing about state subsidies even as the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy remains the world’s largest distortionary scheme adversely affecting farmers everywhere. She admonishes China for trading with Russia while her own member states import record volumes of Russian LNG via intermediaries. In Moscow, the hypocrisy provokes derision; in Beijing, it elicits contempt. As the Wall Street Journal noted some time ago, the EU is long used to “punching well below its weight” in global affairs.

Kaja Kallas – former prime minister of Estonia, newly anointed as the EU’s foreign-policy chief – brings ideological zeal to match Ursula’s sanctimony. She openly advocates the dismemberment of Russia, oblivious to the historical resonance of such fantasies. Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s former Green foreign minister and now President of the UN General Assembly, even declared that her commitment to Ukraine outweighed her duty to German voters — a statement revealing the mindset of Europe’s managerial class. Democratic accountability to constituents and their material needs is a nuisance when one possesses ‘noble intentions’.

Decline by Design

Europe’s malaise is not merely policy error; it is civilisational. For decades, the continent has elevated sentiment over reason, appearance over substance. The same impulse that replaces engineers with activists in energy ministries now promotes failed ministers to international office. Baerbock moves from Berlin to New York; Kallas becomes the face of EU diplomacy. Incompetence is no obstacle.

The economic cost of this virtue signalling is catastrophic. Europe’s electricity and gas prices remain among the highest in the world, crippling its manufacturing base. Automakers, fertiliser plants, aluminium smelters and chemical giants relocate to China, the Middle East and the United States where energy remains abundant and policy rational. Europe’s share of global industrial output shrinks yearly; its debt-laden welfare states consume ever more of the shrinking pie.

Source: UN and World Bank; projections from 2023 onwards based on Oxford Economics outlook

In geopolitics, the EU supported the US strategy of expanding NATO eastward following the collapse of the USSR and the reunification of Germany. This was against the advice of figures of America’s own analysts such as George Kennan — hailed as among the greatest US diplomats in the post-war era. As an astute Russia observer, he described NATO expansion as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era”.

John Mearsheimer – an international relations scholar of repute – observed in 2015 that Western policymakers led Ukraine “down the primrose path” to self-destruction. Now, as Ukraine heads to inexorable defeat, Europe faces the consequences of its own delusions. Yet the unhinged rhetoric in Brussels grows only shriller — contradictorily warning of imminent Russian invasions into East Europe and beyond while casting the Russian economy as simultaneously weak and about to collapse and President Putin facing regime change.

The male counterparts of Europe’s philosopher queens are no less absurd. Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, is famous for having referred to Donald Trump as “daddy” in an episode of cringing obsequiousness. Emmanuel Macron – who began his presidency comparing himself to the Roman king of gods Jupiter – now presides over a nation wracked by debt, riots, industrial unrest and a fourth prime minister in under two years. Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor who is equally unpopular, issues belligerent warnings of war with Russia with a puny German army and a rapidly shrinking economy. Things are as bad if not worse across the English Channel as the UK’s Keir Starmer faces humiliation as the ‘least popular PM of all time’ since records began; the same ignominy holds for the country’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves. The European stage resembles an operetta – all pomp, no power.

Hubris, however, always meets its nemesis in reality. The laws of physics do not entertain Europe’s green fantasies. Wind and solar cannot power a continent; hydrogen remains an expensive chimera; carbon-capture projects collapse one after another. There are increasing signs of Brussels retreating on several fronts in its quest for green utopia.

It was only just over two weeks ago that von der Leyen boasted at the Global Renewables Summit in New York about the EU’s green agenda: “The momentum in Europe is real… with our Clean Industrial Deal we are helping industries innovate and adapt.” But last week, the EU’s Net Zero agenda suffered a major blow when the centre-Right political parties in the European Parliament agreed to roll back a range of green mandates and regulations on businesses.

According to Politico, there is an “emerging rightward rupture that is reshaping European policymaking”. The European People’s Party lead negotiator on climate issues declared that “It is very clear for all the political groups that the majorities have changed in the Parliament, and all the political groups have to adapt to the new reality”. The EU will now pare back sustainability reporting and supply chain due diligence obligations for businesses after pressure from industry and foreign investors. As Bloomberg reported, lawmakers voted to “drastically curtail” ESG directives once trumpeted as non-negotiable.

As the ideological façade cracks in Germany, the AfD surges in the polls despite Government attempts to outlaw it. In France, Marine Le Pen has been disqualified to hold office, yet her party gains ground. In Britain, the Reform Party has been surging in popularity and threatens the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives. Across Europe, the populist Right articulates what the Establishment will not: that policy choices over energy security, mass immigration and escalating war efforts are bankrupting the continent both morally and financially.

Europe’s decline is not inevitable, but it is self-inflicted. A civilisation that once charted the seas, mapped the heavens and electrified the world now cannot keep its lights on without imported gas. It lectures Africa on solar panels while burning imported American wood pellets in place of coal. It decries nationalism while erecting bureaucratic fortresses devoted to globalism in Brussels.

Behind the rhetoric of progress lies an ancient impulse — the search for moral purity through sacrifice. The Aztecs tore out human hearts to appease the sun; modern Europe sacrifices its industries, borders and freedoms to sustain the illusion of environmental virtue. The climate cult functions as an ‘oligarchic strategy‘ — a mechanism through which elites amass power under the guise of planetary salvation. The victims are the working and middle classes who pay Europe’s highest energy bills and the future generations who inherit spiralling debts.

Von der Leyen recently urged multilateral development banks to focus on climate change rather than poverty despite US opposition — a statement that perfectly encapsulates the inversion of priorities. For Europe’s elites, the problem with the poor is not lack of opportunity but insufficient decarbonisation. Yet as empirical evidence shows, economic growth — not emissions cuts — remains the most reliable path to environmental improvement and human welfare.

The Coming Reckoning

The geopolitical humiliation of Europe is already manifest. The continent once balanced the world’s powers; it is now a mere appendage of American strategy. Its energy policy is dictated by Washington’s sanctions; its foreign policy by NATO’s dictates. Even as the BRICS bloc expands, embracing Gulf monarchies and Asian economic giants, Western Europe clings to a worldview in which moral posturing substitutes for realpolitik.

As President Trump ends US financing of the Ukraine war, Brussels faces an existential test. Without American financial support, the façade of unity will crumble. Energy shortages, fiscal crises and social unrest will expose the fragility of Europe’s post-Christian, post-industrial experiment.

Plato’s philosopher kings were to rule by reason; Europe’s philosopher queens rule by emotion. They conflate compassion with competence, signalling with substance. The result is a polity unfit for purpose — moralistic, militarily impotent, economically stagnant and socially fractured. One hopes that the physics and economics of energy, the arithmetic of national debt and the instincts of ordinary people will, in time, reassert themselves. If that were so, Europe may rediscover the virtues it once taught the world in its Age of Enlightenment.

A version of this article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/19/europes-terminal-decline-the-philosopher-queens-and-their-ruinous-rule/)

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.