Ukraine faces decisive months ahead as key allies gear up for crunch elections. While early presidential campaigning in the US and a looming general election in Poland will grab the international headlines, a snap election in Slovakia on 30 September may prove every bit as consequential. 

With Robert Fico — Slovakia’s former prime minister and one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Ukrainian war effort — poised to win the vote, a change of government in Bratislava could have a profound effect on EU policymaking. Fico has promised that if his party makes it into government “we will not send a single bullet to Ukraine,” proudly proclaiming that “I allow myself to have a different opinion to that of the United States” on the war.  

Fico has also claimed on the campaign trail that “war always comes from the West and peace from the East,” and that “what is happening today is unnecessary killing, it is the emptying of warehouses to force countries to buy more American weapons.” Such statements have resulted in him being blacklisted by Kyiv as a spreader of Russian propaganda.  

Yet the former prime minister spearheads a new brand of Left-wing, anti-American populism that has become a powerful force in Central Europe since the war began. Perceptions that “the Americans occupy us” — as one MP in Fico’s Smer party evocatively put it — are shared with a similar groundswell of anti-Western opinion in the neighbouring Czech Republic.  

Yet Smer has been handed a chance to gain power thanks to the chaos which has engulfed Slovakia’s pro-EU, pro-Western forces. Personal grievances coupled with serious policy errors tore apart a four-party coalition formed after elections in 2020, leaving Fico to capitalise on heightened mistrust in establishment politics. Smer is expected to become the nation’s largest party after this month’s election, with an anticipated 20% of the vote.  

Whatever the specific makeup of the new government, if Smer is the largest party it will likely pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. A halt to until-now generous Slovak arms shipments to Ukraine is Fico’s central electoral pledge, while the arrival on the scene of another Orbán-style government prepared to obstruct EU aid efforts for Ukraine would create a serious headache. That is particularly the case as Brussels struggles to win support for both short and long-term war funding commitments. 

Victory for Fico would also amplify Orbán’s scepticism about the overall Western narrative on Ukraine — a scepticism which the Hungarian Prime Minister recently conveyed to Western conservatives during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Orbán portrayed Ukraine’s attempts to win back the territories taken by Russia as ultimately hopeless and claimed that Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly makes him “the man who can save the Western world”. 

Like Trump in America and Orbán in Europe, Fico is hated with a passion by establishment forces. But in Slovakia, the pro-Western establishment itself has become so mistrusted that power may soon pass to a man intent on shattering what’s left of European unity on Ukraine. 

Rachel Reeves finds herself trying to navigate a course between the Scylla of restive Labour MPs and the Charybdis of the bond and currency markets. But unlike in the ancient Greek myth, when successfully navigating the course entailed judging which of the two harms would be the lesser and then dealing with it, the Chancellor seems to repeatedly signal that tough decisions will be made — before rolling back on them. In the meantime, she seems to be treading water and making little progress towards her goal of restoring economic growth.

After heavily trailing that income tax rises were on the way, earlier this month she let slip that they weren’t. At the weekend, she indicated that some measures which are popular with her MPs — such as the lifting of the two-child benefit cap and an extension of the EV grant — are on the way. To pay for them, she’ll implement a hodgepodge of targeted taxes which ostensibly keep to the letter, though probably not the spirit, of her election pledge not to raise taxes on working people. In isolation, a case can be made for each of these measures. The problem is, they aren’t placed into any kind of systematic framework. Instead they look more like knee-jerk reactions to pressure from a parliamentary party over which she and Keir Starmer are losing their grip.

It would probably help if Reeves were to provide a clear map showing how she intends to take the country forward, which painful course she’ll take, and what smooth sea of rising economic growth and improved public services await on the other side of those sacrifices. Instead, she keeps dashing between one current and another: this minute raising income taxes, the next not; one moment ending the winter fuel allowance for some pensioners, the next not; here a lifting of the two-child benefit cap, then perhaps no. Well into her second year in office, it’s still not clear just where Reeves plans to take the country.

Amid this uncertainty, business confidence has fallen and investment decisions are being put on hold. Meanwhile, bond and currency investors are yet to be fully convinced that Reeves is putting the country’s finances on a sound long-term basis. She leaves herself narrow fiscal “headroom” and apparently hopes for a lucky break, which has yet to materialise. Her job was made even more difficult at the end of last month when the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) dramatically revised down the country’s estimated productivity for the next five years.

Bond prices have also drifted down this year, putting the UK in a league with some of Europe’s more free-spending governments. But the pound has not rallied in consequent response to higher interest rates, as the euro has done. Last week, the S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index estimated that growth wouldn’t budge past 0.1% in the final three months of this year.

The Chancellor needs to deliver a comprehensive Budget which puts Britain on a long-term path of fiscal sustainability, while coupling that to a clear vision for the economy and role the state will play in society. Failing that, the ancient myth to which we may have to reach will be that of Sisyphus, forever rolling a rock up a hill only to see it tumble back down.

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John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time between London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West (with Peter Heather, Penguin, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a Religion (Simon & Schuster, 2017).

jarapley

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