It will be nowhere near as consequential, but the next battle in the war between the Right and the Left that started with the French Revolution won’t be the US presidential election in November, but next week’s election of 720 members of the European Parliament.

In many ways it will be a better reflection of which side is winning because the two leaders of the European far Right, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni and France’s Marine Le Pen, are far more appealing and electable than their American counterpart, Donald Trump, especially now that he’s a convicted felon.

And the signs are that the candidates backed by Meloni and Le Pen will do very well next week, and that the far Right will do better in this European election than it has ever done before, and possibly even gain a majority.

The European Parliament has long been dominated by a coalition of the centre left (the social democrats) and the centre right (the Christian democrats), and although its power as a transnational body is limited, it has always been a key institutional asset of the global Left.

With the rise of popular right-wing parties in Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands, something similar is now expected to happen in Brussels.

If the centrist parties lose this election, or even come close to losing, it will be an earthquake for internationalism generally, including the International Court of Justice and the United Nations.

Actually, it’s probably better to replace the terms Right and Left with Nationalist and Globalist: Nationalism and globalism have become the defining distinction of global politics over the past two decades, with the rise of the internet, global warming, China and uncontrolled immigration.

2016 was a big year for the nationalists with the Brexit vote in the UK in June and the election of Donald Trump in November, but........

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