populist

With most votes tallied, Babis’s ANO party is ahead, but it appears set to fall short of a majority in parliament.

Billionaire Andrej Babis’s populist ANO party has taken a commanding lead in the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election, but is on track to fall short of a majority.

With ballots from more than 97 percent of polling stations counted on Saturday, ANO had 35 percent of the vote, according to the Czech Statistical Office. Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s centre-right Spolu (Together) alliance trailed with 23 percent.

Shortly after the preliminary results were announced, Fiala conceded defeat and offered congratulations to Babis.

Turnout reached 68 percent, the highest since 1998, with more than 4,400 candidates and 26 parties competing for seats in the 200-member lower house.

President Petr Pavel, who holds the power to appoint the next prime minister, is expected to open coalition talks with party leaders on Sunday once results are finalised. Officials have warned that the rollout of mail-in voting could slow the official confirmation.

Despite the strong showing, the failure to secure a majority means Babis cannot rule alone. Early signs suggest ANO may seek backing from the Motorists, a party opposing European Union green policies, and the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), which has campaigned against both NATO and the EU.

SPD deputy leader Radim Fiala told Czech television the party was ready to help topple the government. “We went into the election with the aim of ending the government of Petr Fiala and support even for a minority cabinet of ANO is important for us and it would meet the target we had for this election,” he said.

The partial results showed fringe pro-Russian parties underperforming. SPD managed 8 percent, while the far-left Stacilo! movement, centred on the Communist Party, failed to clear the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.

Babis, who led a centre-left government from 2017 to 2021, has shifted sharply to the right in recent years. Once supportive of adopting the euro, he now brands himself a eurosceptic and admirer of US President Donald Trump, even handing out “Strong Czechia” baseball caps styled after Trump’s MAGA slogan.

He has also forged close ties with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and aligned with far-right forces in the European Parliament.

While resisting SPD’s call for a referendum on leaving the EU and NATO, Babis has promised to end Prague’s arms procurement initiative for Ukraine, insisting military aid should be managed directly by NATO and the EU.

Self-described ‘Trumpist’ Andrej Babis has campaigned on pledges of welfare and halting military aid to Ukraine.

Czechs are casting their ballots in a two-day general election, in which the party of populist billionaire Andrej Babis is expected to garner the most votes but not secure a majority, raising concerns that Ukraine ally the Czech Republic may draw closer to pro-Russian European Union countries Hungary and Slovakia.

Polling stations opened at 12:00 GMT and will close at 20:00 GMT on Friday, before reopening from 06:00 to 12:00 GMT on Saturday, with the results expected on Saturday evening.

Even if Babis’s ANO (Yes) party tops the vote, it will almost certainly have to negotiate a coalition. Analysts say the likely contender is the far-right opposition SPD movement, which is backed by about 12 percent of voters.

Babis, 71, has campaigned in the EU and NATO member of about 11 million people on pledges of welfare and halting military aid to Ukraine.

The current centre-right coalition government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, 61, has provided extensive humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, but many voters blame it for ignoring problems at home.

“A change is necessary. The Czech Republic must be more autonomous, it must not be just a messenger boy for Brussels,” 68-year-old geographer Jaroslav Kolar told the AFP news agency.

But doctor Anna Stefanova, 41, told AFP she was afraid of a “sway towards Russia”.

Babis was critical of some EU policies while he was prime minister from 2017 to 2021, and is on good terms with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, who have maintained strong ties with Moscow despite its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

However, Babis has rejected any steps towards exiting the EU or NATO, including calls for referendums, countering accusations by the current government that he would drag the country off its democratic pro-Western course.

ANO tops opinion polls, suggesting support exceeding 30 percent, ahead of Fiala’s Together grouping with about 20 percent.

Describing himself as a “peacemonger” calling for a truce in Ukraine, Babis has promised a “Czechs first” approach – echoing United States President Donald Trump – and pledged “a better life” for all Czechs.

In 2024, Babis cofounded the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament, which also includes France’s National Rally among other parties.

Fiala said on X that voters would decide “whether we will continue on the path of freedom, high-quality democracy, security and prosperity, or whether we will go east”.

Some concerns about Russian propaganda being spread online over the course of the election period have emerged, though analysts say they cannot see a big shift in voter sentiment so far.

A group of analysts said last week that Czech TikTok accounts reaching millions of viewers “systematically spread pro-Russian propaganda and support anti-system parties through manipulated engagement”.

Last week, Moldova’s pro-Western governing party decisively won a parliamentary election plagued by claims of Russian interference and was widely seen as a definitive choice between staying in Europe’s orbit or lurching into Moscow’s.

Both Babis and Fiala have also seen scandals tarnish their reputations.

Fiala’s government is under fire over the justice ministry’s decision to accept $44m in bitcoins from a convicted criminal.

Babis, Slovak-born and the seventh-wealthiest Czech according to Forbes magazine, is due to stand trial for EU subsidy fraud worth more than $2m.

He has rejected all allegations of wrongdoing as “a smear campaign”.

The scheme, which government says will curb undocumented immigration, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum.

The United Kingdom has announced plans to introduce a digital ID scheme in a bid to curb undocumented immigration.

Announced by the government on Friday, the scheme will see the digital ID of British citizens and residents held on phones. The government said there will be no requirement for individuals to carry their ID or be asked to produce it, but that it will be “mandatory” for workers.

The UK has long resisted the idea of Identity cards, which were abolished after World War II, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is under pressure to tackle immigration that populist forces claim is uncontrolled.

The free digital ID would include a person’s name, date of birth, and photo, as well as information on their nationality and residency status.

It will be “mandatory as a means of proving your right to work”, a government statement said.

“This will stop those with no right to be here from being able to find work, curbing their prospect of earning money, one of the key ‘pull factors’ for people who come to the UK illegally,” it added.

The digital ID will also make it simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare, while streamlining access to tax records, the statement said.

“Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK… It will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits,” Starmer said. “It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

‘Digitally excluded’

The plans, which the government had previously said it was considering, drew criticism from across the political spectrum.

The centrist Liberal Democrats said they would not support mandatory digital ID where people are “forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives”.

Liberal Democrats cannot support mandatory digital IDs. People shouldn’t be criminalised just because they don’t want to hand over their private data. pic.twitter.com/mEzV7s9vUf

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) September 25, 2025

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, wrote on X that her party “will oppose any push by this organisation or the government to impose mandatory ID cards on law-abiding citizens”.

“We will not support any system that is mandatory for British people or excludes those of us who choose not to use it from any of the rights of our citizenship,” she added.

The far-right Reform UK party called the plans a “cynical ploy” designed to “fool” voters into thinking something is being done about immigration.

It also sought to tap into longstanding British suspicions regarding national ID schemes, which are common in most of Europe.

“It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us,” said Reform leader Nigel Farage.

I am firmly opposed to @Keir_Starmer’s digital ID cards.

It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us.

The state should never have this much power.

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) September 25, 2025

In the 2000s, the Labour Party, then led by Tony Blair, attempted to introduce an identity card, but the plan was eventually dropped by Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, after opposition called it an infringement of civil liberties.

However, with populist narratives regarding immigration now rife, the government appears to be betting that such concerns will override the longstanding opposition.

The timing of the announcement appears no coincidence, coming as Labour prepares to hold its annual conference.

A petition demanding that ID cards not be introduced had collected 575,000 signatures by early Friday, but recent polling suggests majority support for the move.

June 2 (UPI) — Karol Nawrocki, a populist conservative backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has won Poland’s presidential runoff election, according to official results released Monday.

Eyes across the country, Europe and even North America were watching the race in Poland, where the presidency is a somewhat symbolic position — especially compared to the prime minister and their executive powers — but one that does come with veto authority.

The election of Nawrocki also suggests a political shift in the deeply divided nation.

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Kazimierz Trzaskowski — of Prime Minister Donald Tusk‘s Civic Platform party — had narrowly beaten Nawrocki, a conservative historian who ran as an independent, in the first round of voting on May 18, but failed to gain a majority of the votes to win the presidency outright.

In Sunday’s runoff, the roles were reversed, and it was Nawrocki who secured the narrow victory. According to official results, Nawrocki, 42, won 50.89% of the vote. Trzaskowski, 53, received 49.11%.

Of the 20.8 million cast votes — representing 71.6% of Poland’s population — nearly 37,000 votes separated the two candidates.

Nawrocki was backed by the nationalist opposition Law and Justice party.

This is a developing story.