Europe needs to fight an “Islamist invasion”, “climatic terrorism” and “woke ideology”, the leader of Vox, Spain’s fastest-growing political party, told a Patriots for Europe rally this week.

The “enthusiastic reception” to Santiago Abascal’s words from his supporters “reflects a national trend” in which Vox is “on the march”, said The Times.

Who are Vox?
Vox – Latin for voice – is Spain’s party of the populist-nationalist right. It “initially grew” out of “alarm that Catalonia’s drive for independence would break up Spain”, said The Economist. “As that threat has receded”, the focus has turned to illegal immigration and “waging a culture war against feminism, trans and animal rights”.

Vox is currently the third-largest party in the nation’s parliament: at the last general election, in 2023, it won 12.4% of the national vote, taking 33 seats in the 350-seat house. Abascal wants to reclaim Spain’s history, and told The Wall Street Journal that the nation has “been ashamed of its past” for too long.

Why is Vox becoming more popular?
The party is “doggedly focused on immigration”, which puts it “outside the bounds of the political mainstream, whose parties are too squeamish to address the subject head-on”, said The Wall Street Journal.

Corruption scandals dogging the governing Socialist Party have been a gift to Vox. Abascal has described the government as a “pool of corruption, a stinking swamp, a mafia group and a gang of criminals”. 

Vox has also capitalised on the “catastrophic mismanagement” of floods and mudslides in Valencia last year, said The Economist. The party sent volunteers to “stricken towns” under the “catchy slogan” of “only the people will save the people”.

This charm offensive appears to be working. Spain’s younger citizens, who are “disillusioned with politics as usual”, are “increasingly drawn” to Vox, said The Wall Street Journal. In a recent poll, 27.9% of 18- to 24-year-olds, and 26% of those aged 25 to 34, said they would vote for the party at the next election.

However, the party’s “international alignments could hurt it”, said The Economist; not least its support for Donald Trump, which “may backfire on Vox if American tariffs hurt Spanish exports”. 

A Wetherspoons pub that made customers queue in line for a pint has scrapped the rule following complaints. The chain trialled a single-file queueing system at its Surrey Docks pub in Rotherhithe, southeast London, with notices telling customers to form an orderly line at a designated spot to “ensure fair service”. But while those rules have been ditched, the debate about how punters should behave at the bar continues.

‘Slithery reptiles’
Brits are “fantastic at forming orderly lines for the loo” or queueing “to get into a popular restaurant”, said Metro, but “there’s one place where standing one behind the other just isn’t right: the pub”. Our traditional and “slightly chaotic ordering system is under threat”, however. Instead of “standing their ground at the bar, chests puffed out like proud lions”, pubgoers are increasingly “snaking their way around the venue like slithery reptiles in single file queues”.

Drinkers are “generally fairly decent”, said former barman Josh Barrie in London’s The Standard. They “know who’s next” and will “wave their hand or nod in that very British way to acknowledge the fact” – the “embodiment of pints culture”. But “pub queueing does away with all of that” and with “everything good about a pub: community spirit, a little bit of edge” and “a light freneticism that rises like a tide” when “the British psyche needs nurturing”.

‘Ensures fairness’
Pub queueing started during the Covid pandemic, when “lining up a few feet apart was a temporary requirement taken to protect pubgoers”, said The Wall Street Journal. And “single-file queues still form” in many venues, because “younger pubgoers say it ensures fairness, instead of the old informal system where bar staff must keep tabs on who has been waiting longer”.

This all began before Covid, said Ryan Coogan in The Independent. “I first observed it in 2015” in student bars, “so I assumed it was a case of younger people not really understanding pub etiquette”. But “as time went by”, I started to see it in “more traditional pubs” and, eventually, it “seemed to be the norm”. But if you don’t like the system, it’s “up to you” to change it.

“Next time you’re in the pub” and you see a queue, “confidently stroll past it and cosy up to the bar like a normal person”. You “might get some looks”, but you might also “start a trend”.

Málaga: Coín
Characterful 16th century mill converted into a finca. 3 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, media room, 1-bed guest house, swimming pool, garden, parking. €990,000; Knight Frank

Málaga: Casarabonela
A handsome hilltop finca with long views over the surrounding countryside. Mature gardens include olive groves and a fruit orchard. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, garden, swimming pool, parking, garage. €995,000; Villas & Fincas

Málaga: Marbella
A modern villa in a spectacular setting surrounded by olive trees and boasting breathtaking views. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, terrace, sauna, swimming pool, garden, parking. €795,000; Kyero

Asturias: Aller 
This magnificent 19th century rectory is nestled within the mountains of Asturias. 5 beds, 4 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, cellar, outbuildings, garden, parking. €575,000; Noelia Alonso

Starmer should have conference in his hands – instead, power is slipping through his fingers
Frances Ryan in The Guardian
Little more than a year after Labour’s election landslide, and “with the Conservatives flatlining”, Keir Starmer “should be riding into” his party’s conference as a “leader in his prime”, writes Frances Ryan. But his premiership is a “lesson in lost potential, where if a poor decision can be made, it will be”. If he “wishes to turn things around”, Starmer must “grasp” that it’s “not only his career or even the Labour party at stake – it is the country”.

Vaccination and the price of forgetting
Lucy Ward in the Financial Times 
“Imagine a world” where “folk medicine governed infectious diseases”, writes Lucy Ward. When an inoculation for smallpox, “one of history’s biggest killers”, first arrived in Britain and America, “critics blustered from pulpits that the preventive technique challenged God’s power to use disease to punish sin”. Smallpox claimed “half a billion unvaccinated lives” in the 100 years before it was eradicated. Yet “when it comes to disease, human memory is fallible”, so “it is up to leaders to remember and to learn”.

Eating swan is a great British tradition (sort of)
Sean Thomas in The Telegraph
My reaction to claims of migrants eating swans is “not so much ‘Oh my God how awful’”, writes Sean Thomas, “and more a ‘Well yes, this isn’t brilliant, but we Britons used to happily eat swans’”. Our long “history of swan eating” is “one of the reasons swans have this esteemed, near-spiritual status in our culture”; “they were regarded as a delicious, prestigious meat”. Now, it “may be only a matter of time before cygnet appears on the menu at Claridge’s”.