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      Ex-President Sarkozy Convicted for Campaign Spending Violations

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      Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally financing his 2012 presidential bid by exceeding France’s strict electoral rules and sentenced to a year of house arrest. He said he would appeal.PARIS — A French court on Thursday sentenced Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, to a year of house arrest for illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election campaign by wildly exceeding France’s strict electoral spending limits.Mr. Sarkozy, 66, was president from 2007 to 2012. Though he is no longer active in politics and continues to be dogged by multiple legal entanglements, he is still an influential voice on the French right. Shortly after the verdict, his lawyer announced that Mr. Sarkozy would appeal the conviction, which puts the sentence on hold and leaves him free.“President Sarkozy never asked to be treated better than anyone else, but there is no reason he should be treated any worse,” the lawyer, Thierry Herzog, told reporters outside the courtroom in Paris.It was the second of several legal cases pending for Mr. Sarkozy to end with a conviction in recent months, and the first time he was convicted for actions that he undertook while in office, further threatening to tarnish his legacy.In March, he became the first former president in France’s recent history to be sentenced to actual jail time after he was convicted on charges of corruption and influence peddling for trying to illegally obtain information from a judge on a legal case against him.Mr. Sarkozy has appealed that conviction as well, and he is unlikely to spend time behind bars in the near future. Appeals could take years to go through the courts, and even if Thursday’s sentence is upheld, the court that convicted Mr. Sarkozy said he would be able to serve it at home with an electronic monitoring bracelet.Still, Mr. Sarkozy is now only the second former president in France’s modern history to be convicted of a crime — Jacques Chirac was found guilty in 2011 of embezzling and misusing public funds when he was mayor of Paris.The verdict against Mr. Sarkozy on Thursday came after a yearslong investigation and a trial in May and June, both of which focused on his 2012 re-election campaign and on France’s stringent electoral rules.Under French law, spending on electoral campaigns is capped to ensure candidates compete on a level playing field. In 2012, the limit for presidential campaigns, per candidate, was about €16.8 million, or about $19.7 million, in the first round of the elections, and about €5.7 million, or about $6.7 million, on top of that in the second round for the two top vote-getters, who included Mr. Sarkozy.But suspicions that his campaign had exceeded those limits arose after the election. Prosecutors began an investigation in 2014, causing turmoil within Mr. Sarkozy’s political party.Ultimately, prosecutors determined that the campaign had spent at least €42 million, or about $50 million — almost twice the legal limit.The case became known as the Bygmalion affair, named for the public relations and event planning company suspected of issuing false invoices to Mr. Sarkozy’s political party for rallies that were actually for Mr. Sarkozy’s presidential campaign. Prosecutors argued that the goal of the fraud was to hide the overspending from the electoral authorities.The former head of the Bygmalion subsidiary Event & Cie, Franck Attal, at the Paris courthouse on Thursday.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sarkozy has denied being aware of any false billing, and he was not charged with wrongdoing in that regard. Instead, the charges of illegal campaign financing relate only to the overspending, for which he has already paid a fine.During the trial, Mr. Sarkozy rejected the prosecution’s portrayal of a lavish campaign, suggesting that the false invoices had been used instead to enrich Bygmalion — led at the time by close friends of Jean-François Copé, the president of Mr. Sarkozy’s party and one of the former leader’s political rivals.Mr. Sarkozy also claimed that in 2012 he had been extremely busy with his presidential duties and had barely been involved with the campaign’s budgeting and logistics.“I was president, head of the Group of 20, and in the campaign, I was directing political strategy,” Mr. Sarkozy told the court in June. “Organizing rallies, the sound systems, the lighting — I had better things to do.”But prosecutors asserted — and the court agreed — that Mr. Sarkozy had neglected warnings from his aides, especially over a profusion of campaign events, some of them expensive, large-scale rallies. As a veteran politician with years of experience, they argued, he could not have ignored signs that spending was out of control.“This was not his first electoral campaign,” the court noted in its ruling.Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy director of Mr. Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign, on Thursday at the courthouse in Paris.Stephane Mahe/ReutersThirteen other people were also accused of involvement in the fraud, including former campaign staff members, party officials, aides close to Mr. Sarkozy and former executives at Bygmalion.All were convicted on Thursday and handed prison sentences ranging from two years to three and a half years — some of that time suspended and some of it under house arrest. Several of the accused also received fines.But prosecutors concluded that there was not enough evidence to determine who had masterminded the false billing scheme in the first place.Mr. Sarkozy has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the web of legal cases that has plagued him since he left office. Some of them have been dropped, including one in which he was accused of manipulating the heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune into financing his 2007 presidential run.But Mr. Sarkozy is still dogged by accusations that his campaign received illegal financing from the government of the Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who died in 2011. The investigation into those accusations, the most serious one against him to date, is still continuing.Despite a failed comeback attempt in 2016, Mr. Sarkozy is still popular with the base of his conservative party, Les Républicains, which has yet to settle on a candidate for the 2022 presidential elections. Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement is coveted by many of those jockeying for the position.Christian Jacob, the head of Les Républicains, called the conviction “shocking” and said Mr. Sarkozy had his party’s full support.“I want to express, in my name and in the name of Les Républicains, our affection, our support for Nicolas Sarkozy and our immense pride of having had him as President of the Republic,” Mr. Jacob said on Twitter.Constant Méheut More

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      Who Is Fumio Kishida, Japan's Likely Next Prime Minister?

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      Though Fumio Kishida, a ruling-party stalwart, has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, he’s struggled to connect with the public.Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, addressed supporters after being elected as the Liberal Democratic Party’s choice for Japan’s next prime minister. Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session next week to officially select the new prime minster.Kyodo News, via Associated PressThe man all but assured of becoming Japan’s next prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is an establishment pick who has sought to portray himself as more than just another colorless bureaucrat.Mr. Kishida, 64, has called for economic policies that would distribute more wealth to the middle class, and written that spending part of his childhood in the United States instilled in him the ideals of justice and diversity.His message has not resonated with much of the Japanese public, but it was enough to win him leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday, virtually guaranteeing that he will become Japan’s next prime minister, a role for which he has been preparing for decades.Mr. Kishida’s father and grandfather both served as members of Japan’s House of Representatives. In 1993, he successfully ran for the parliamentary seat from Hiroshima that his father had held.Fumio Kishida at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party. Next month, when Japan’s Parliament holds a special session to select the next prime minister, his appointment is essentially guaranteed.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiMr. Kishida would go on to become a stalwart of Japan’s ruling party and the longest-serving foreign minister in the country’s post-World War II history.He has been widely described as an uncontroversial moderate who holds the trust of party grandees. Still, in a political system that rewards conformity, Mr. Kishida has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.On the campaign trail, Mr. Kishida carried around a series of notebooks in which he said he wrote down notes and observations from people he met while traveling the country, calling the notebooks “my biggest treasures.”He has said that he feels a strong sense of justice, developed in part during a childhood stay in the United States.In 1963, his father, then a government trade official, was appointed to a post in New York. The family relocated, and Mr. Kishida, at age 6, enrolled at public schools, including P.S. 13 in the Elmhurst section of Queens, where he attended second and third grade. In a 1965 class photo, he is seen wearing a bow tie, standing in front of a giant American flag.Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in a class photo at the elementary school he attended in Elmhurst, Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.His classmates included children of many backgrounds — white, Korean, Indian and Native American — but he sometimes felt the sting of racial discrimination. In his book “Kishida Vision,” published last year, Mr. Kishida described a time in 1965 when a white classmate refused to hold his hand as instructed by a teacher on a field trip.Still, he came to admire the United States, finding it remarkable that students of varied backgrounds “respected the national flag and sang the anthem together in the morning.”“The U.S. was an enemy of Japan during the war and the nation that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima,” he wrote. “But I was young, and to me, the U.S. was nothing but a country that was generous-hearted and filled with diversity.”A baseball fan — he supports the Hiroshima Carp, his hometown team — he was an infielder on his high school team and an average student, failing a law school entrance exam three times. When he said he was interested in politics, his father tried to push him down another path, warning that “there’s nothing sweet about the political world.” But after a stint in banking, Mr. Kishida got his first political job, as his father’s secretary.Once in office, Mr. Kishida rose steadily, eventually being appointed foreign minister by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012. His term was defined by two notable achievements: helping to arrange then-President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in 2016, and finalizing an agreement with South Korea in which Japan compensated “comfort women,” the term for those taken as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World War II.He also courted his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, forging a bond over their shared fondness for whisky and sake as he sought to improve a relationship that has foundered on a territorial dispute over islands seized by the Soviet Union after World War II.Unlike the teetotal Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida is known inside the party as an enthusiastic drinker. One year, Mr. Kishida wrote, he planned a birthday party for Mr. Lavrov and presented the Russian diplomat with a bottle of 21-year-old Hibiki whisky. In return, Mr. Lavrov gave Mr. Kishida an ornately bound book. Mr. Kishida opened it to find a bottle of vodka inside.“If we’re drinking, we’re friends,” Mr. Kishida wrote. “The relationship in which both sides can talk straightforwardly is the first step to international peace.”But Mr. Kishida has struggled to connect with voters. Last year, during the race to succeed Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida suffered embarrassment when he tweeted a photo of his wife bringing him dinner at home. The image, which showed him seated in a suit and tie and his wife standing, wearing an apron, was widely mocked as out of touch and misogynistic.In this year’s race, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers. Neither the public nor rank-and-file party members had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, opted for a safe pair of hands.Makiko Inoue and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of vaccinations, left, with Mr. Kishida before a debate in Tokyo this month.Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko More

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      Who Is the New Leader of Japan's Ruling Party?

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      TOKYO — In a triumph of elite power brokers over public sentiment, Japan’s governing party on Wednesday elected Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, as its choice for the next prime minister.By selecting Mr. Kishida, 64, a moderate party stalwart, in a runoff election for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the party’s elites appeared to disregard the public’s preferences and choose a candidate who offered little to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.Wednesday’s leadership election was the most hotly contested in years. While party leaders usually coalesce around a candidate, this time it was not clear that Mr. Kishida would prevail until the ballots were counted in a second round at a luxury hotel in Tokyo.Mr. Kishida defeated his chief rival, Taro Kono, an outspoken American-educated maverick, 257 to 170, in a runoff vote dominated by the party’s members of Parliament.Neither the public nor the rank-and-file members of the party had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, preferred Mr. Kishida to Mr. Kono, 58, the minister in charge of Japan’s vaccine rollout.Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session early next month to officially select the new prime minister. Given that the Liberal Democrats control the legislature, Mr. Kishida’s appointment is all but guaranteed. He will also lead the party in a general election that must be held no later than the end of November.By going with the safe pair of hands, the party seemed to demonstrate its confidence that it could win in the fall election despite choosing a leader with lackluster public support.After a year in which voters grew increasingly frustrated with the government’s handling of the pandemic and associated economic woes, the party seems to be counting on the opposition’s weakness and the public’s tolerance for the status quo.During the campaign, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers.In doing so, he is following a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.The party leadership election was notable in that it was the first time two women vied for the top post. Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative backed by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and Seiko Noda, 61, a left-leaning lawmaker who called for more rights for women, the elderly and those with disabilities, were eliminated in the first round. More

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      Who Is Fumio Kishida, the New Leader of Japan's Ruling Party?

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      TOKYO — In a triumph of elite power brokers over public sentiment, Japan’s governing party on Wednesday elected Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, as its choice for the next prime minister.By selecting Mr. Kishida, 64, a moderate party stalwart, in a runoff election for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the party’s elites appeared to disregard the public’s preferences and choose a candidate who offered little to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.Wednesday’s leadership election was the most hotly contested in years. While party leaders usually coalesce around a candidate, this time it was not clear that Mr. Kishida would prevail until the ballots were counted in a second round at a luxury hotel in Tokyo.Mr. Kishida defeated his chief rival, Taro Kono, an outspoken American-educated maverick, 257 to 170, in a runoff vote dominated by the party’s members of Parliament.Neither the public nor the rank-and-file members of the party had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, preferred Mr. Kishida to Mr. Kono, 58, the minister in charge of Japan’s vaccine rollout.Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session early next month to officially select the new prime minister. Given that the Liberal Democrats control the legislature, Mr. Kishida’s appointment is all but guaranteed. He will also lead the party in a general election that must be held no later than the end of November.By going with the safe pair of hands, the party seemed to demonstrate its confidence that it could win in the fall election despite choosing a leader with lackluster public support.After a year in which voters grew increasingly frustrated with the government’s handling of the pandemic and associated economic woes, the party seems to be counting on the opposition’s weakness and the public’s tolerance for the status quo.During the campaign, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers.In doing so, he is following a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.The party leadership election was notable in that it was the first time two women vied for the top post. Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative backed by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and Seiko Noda, 61, a left-leaning lawmaker who called for more rights for women, the elderly and those with disabilities, were eliminated in the first round. More

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      Japan Faces Big Problems. Its Next Leader Offers Few Bold Solutions.

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      The country’s governing party, with a stranglehold on power, bucked the wishes of the public to select a moderate mainstay.TOKYO — With the world’s oldest population, rapidly declining births, gargantuan public debt and increasingly damaging natural disasters fueled by climate change, Japan faces deep-rooted challenges that the longstanding governing party has failed to tackle.Yet in choosing a new prime minister on Wednesday, the Liberal Democratic Party elected the candidate least likely to offer bold solutions.The party’s elite power brokers chose Fumio Kishida, 64, a stalwart moderate, in a runoff election for the leadership, seeming to disregard the public’s preference for a maverick challenger. In doing so, they anointed a politician with little to distinguish him from the unpopular departing leader, Yoshihide Suga, or his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.Elders in the party, which has had a near monopoly on power in the decades since World War II, made their choice confident that, with a weak political opposition and low voter turnout, they would face little chance of losing a general election later this year. So, largely insulated from voter pressure, they opted for a predictable former foreign minister who has learned to control any impulse to stray from the mainstream party platform.“In a sense, you are ignoring the voice of the rank and file in order to get somebody the party bosses are more comfortable with,” said Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo.The final results of the leadership runoff election between Mr. Kishida and Taro Kono on Wednesday.Pool photo by Carl CourtBut choosing a leader who lacks popular support carries the risk of a backlash that leaves the party weaker after the election and makes Mr. Kishida’s job harder as the country slowly emerges from six months of pandemic restrictions that have battered the economy.Mr. Kishida will need to win the public’s trust to show that he is not just a party insider, said Kristi Govella, the deputy director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.“If challenges start to arise,” she said, “we could see his approval ratings decrease very quickly because he is starting from a point of relatively modest support.”Mr. Kishida was one of four candidates who vied for the leadership post in an unusually close race that went to a runoff between him and Taro Kono, an outspoken nonconformist whose common touch has made him popular with the public and with rank-and-file party members. Mr. Kishida prevailed in the second round of voting, in which ballots cast by members of Parliament held greater weight.He will become prime minister when Parliament holds a special session next week, and will then lead the party into the general election, which must be held by November.In his victory speech on Wednesday, Mr. Kishida acknowledged the challenges he faces. “We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” he said.They loom both at home and abroad. Mr. Kishida faces mounting tensions in the region as China has grown increasingly aggressive and North Korea has started testing ballistic missiles again. Taiwan is seeking membership in a multilateral trade pact that Japan helped negotiate, and Mr. Kishida may have to help finesse a decision on how to accept the self-governed island into the group without angering China.As a former foreign minister, Mr. Kishida may have an easier time managing his international portfolio. Most analysts expect that he will maintain a strong relationship with the United States and continue to build on alliances with Australia and India to create a bulwark against China.“We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” Mr. Kishida said after his election on Wednesday.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiBut on the domestic front, he is mostly offering a continuation of Mr. Abe’s economic policies, which have failed to cure the country’s stagnation. Income inequality is rising as fewer workers benefit from Japan’s vaunted system of lifetime employment — a reality reflected in Mr. Kishida’s campaign promise of a “new capitalism” that encourages companies to share more profits with middle-class workers.“Japan’s accumulated debt is growing, and the gap between rich and poor is growing,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “I don’t think even a genius can tackle this.”On the pandemic, Mr. Kishida may initially escape some of the pressures that felled Mr. Suga, as the vaccine rollout has gathered momentum and close to 60 percent of the public is now inoculated. But Mr. Kishida has offered few concrete policies to address other issues like aging, population decline or climate change.In a magazine questionnaire, he said that he needed “scientific verification” that human activities were causing global warming, saying, “I think that’s the case to some extent.”Given the enduring power of the right flank of the Liberal Democratic Party, despite its minority standing in the party, Mr. Kishida closed what daylight he had with these power brokers during the campaign.He had previously gained a reputation as being more dovish than the influential right wing led by Mr. Abe, but during the leadership race, he expressed a hawkish stance toward China. As a parliamentary representative from Hiroshima, Mr. Kishida has opposed nuclear weapons, but he has made clear his support for restarting Japan’s nuclear power plants, which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago.And he toned down his support for overhauling a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes and declared that he would not endorse same-sex marriage, going against public sentiment but hewing to the views of the party’s conservative elite.“I think Kishida knows how he won, and it was not by appealing to the general public, it was not by running as a liberal, but courting support to his right,” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “So what that’s going to mean for the composition of his cabinet and his priorities, and what his party’s platform ends up looking like, means he could end up being pulled in a few different directions.”Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in 1965 at the elementary school he attended in Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.In many respects, Wednesday’s election represented a referendum on the lasting clout of Mr. Abe, who resigned last fall because of ill health. He had led the party for eight consecutive years, a remarkable stint given Japan’s history of revolving-door prime ministers. When he stepped down, the party chose Mr. Suga, who had served as Mr. Abe’s chief cabinet secretary, to extend his boss’s legacy.But over the past year, the public grew increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Suga, who lacked charisma and failed to connect with average voters. Although Mr. Abe backed Sanae Takaichi — a hard-line conservative who was seeking to become Japan’s first female prime minister — to revitalize his base in the party’s far right, analysts and other lawmakers said he helped steer support to Mr. Kishida in the runoff.As a result, Mr. Kishida may end up beholden to his predecessor.“Kishida cannot go against what Abe wants,” said Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister who challenged Mr. Abe for the party leadership twice and withdrew from running in the leadership election this month to support Mr. Kono.“I am not sure I would use the word ‘puppet,’ but maybe he is a puppet?” Mr. Ishiba added. “What is clear is he depends on Abe’s influence.”The Japan News printed an extra edition on Wednesday after the election of Mr. Kishida.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDuring the campaign for the party leadership, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some dissatisfaction with the Abe era with his talk of a “new capitalism.” In doing so, he followed a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.“That’s one of the reasons why they have maintained such longevity as a party,” said Saori N. Katada, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. “Kishida is definitely taking that card and running with it.”Makiko Inoue More

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      Do Germany’s Election Results Signal a Left Turn for Europe?

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      It is too early to tell, but the results certainly illustrate a fragmentation in politics and the growing influence of personalities.Sunday’s election in Germany ended in victory for the country’s Social Democratic Party and its candidate, Olaf Scholz. It was a remarkable comeback for a center-left party, which like many of its counterparts across Europe has been bleeding support at the ballot box for the past decade or more.So the question immediately arises whether Mr. Scholz’s victory in Germany may be a harbinger of revival more broadly for the center-left parties that were once mainstays of the continent’s politics.Inside Germany, Mr. Scholz is preparing for negotiations to form a left-leaning coalition government with the Greens and the libertarian Free Democrats. After his centrist campaign, just how left-leaning remains an open question. And nothing is guaranteed: His conservative rival, who lost by just 1.6 percentage points, has not conceded and also wants to try to form a coalition.Though the results have thrown Mr. Scholz’s conservative opponents into disarray, the landscape for the center left also remains challenging. Elsewhere in Europe, many center-left parties have watched their share of votes erode as their traditional base among unionized, industrial workers disappears and as political blocs splinter into an array of smaller parties.But after a surge among right-wing populists in recent years, there are some signs that the political pendulum may be poised to swing back. Here is a look at the factors that will influence whether a center-left revival is possible.Big-tent parties on both sides have shrunk.The German elections have cast in sharp relief the continuation of a trend that was already visible across the continent: fragmentation and volatility in political support.Only three decades ago, Germany’s two leading parties garnered over 80 percent of the vote in a national election. On Sunday, the Social Democrats received just 25.7 percent, while the Christian Democrats, together with their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, received 24.1 percent — calling into question their legitimacy as “Volkspartei” or big-tent parties that represent all elements of society.Inside a polling station, a gym at a secondary school in Berlin Neukölln, on Sunday.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThe votes being lost by the once-dominant parties are going to parties with more narrowly defined positions — whether the Greens, animated by environmental issues, or the libertarian Free Democratic Party. If the German vote were broken down by traditional notions of “right” and “left,” it would be nearly evenly divided, with some 45 percent on each side.On the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of 14 European Union countries in 2019 by the Pew Research Center found that few voters expressed positive views of political parties. Only six out of nearly 60 were seen favorably by more than 50 percent of the populations in their countries. Populist parties across Europe also received largely poor reviews.The left has a lot of recovering to do.It remains to be seen whether the Social Democrats in Germany will be able to lead a governing coalition. But if they do, they will join a relatively small club.Of the 27 member states in the European Union, only Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Malta have distinctly center-left governments.The old voting coalitions that empowered the center-left across the continent after 1945 included industrial workers, public sector employees and urban professionals. But those groups, driven primarily by class and economic needs, have fragmented.Two decades ago, Tony Blair’s Labour Party cruised to re-election in Britain, promoting center-left policies similar to those of President Bill Clinton. Now, Labour has been out of power for more than a decade, and in recent elections it has suffered stinging losses in working-class parts of England where its support once ran deep.In France, the center-left Socialist Party has never recovered from the unpopular presidency of François Hollande and its disastrous performance in the subsequent elections. Since then, France has moved increasingly to the right, with support for the Socialists and other left-leaning parties shrinking.With an eye toward presidential elections next April, President Emmanuel Macron, who ran as a centrist in 2017, has been courting voters on the right. Polls show that he and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, are the two favorites to make it out of the first round and meet in a runoff.President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking at a police academy in Roubaix this month.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor and Socialist presidential hopeful, has been losing support since declaring her candidacy early this month. According to a poll released last Thursday, only 4 percent of potential voters said they would support her in the first round next April.And ‘left’ is not what it used to be.In the aftermath of World War II, as money flooded into Europe through the Marshall Plan and industry boomed, those who opposed Communism but were worried that capitalism could stoke instability and inequality came together under a broad umbrella of center-left parties.They favored strong trade unions and welfare states with generous education and health care systems.In Germany, as in other countries, the lines between the center left and the center right began to fade some time ago.But if there is one animating issue for many voters on the left and the right, it is the role that the European Union should play in the governance of nations.Many far-right parties have won support by casting Brussels as a regulatory overlord stripping sovereignty from the union’s member states. Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, by contrast, are very pro-European Union — yet have been wary of deepening some fiscal ties inside the bloc. Many Social Democrats argue, however, that the European Union must be strengthened through deeper integration.Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the top E.U. official Ursula von der Leyen and Mr. Macron during economic rescue discussions in Brussels in 2020.Pool photo by Francisco SecoEurope’s bonds were tested in the pandemic, and that process may have ultimately helped the Social Democrats as Germany set aside its traditional abhorrence of shared E.U. debt to unleash emergency spending.It was a plan that Mr. Scholz, who is Germany’s finance minister, drew up with his French counterpart. Ms. Merkel, who approved the deal, has since repeatedly pointed out was a one-off.Mr. Scholz’s central role in crafting the deal put him squarely on the side of Germans in favor of ever-tighter connections with their European neighbors.Personality counts for more than ever.Another common denominator in the fragmented European political landscape is that personalities seem to be far more important to voters than traditional parties and the issues they represent.There have always been outsized personalities on the European political stage. But whether it was Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl or Willy Brandt, they were more often than not guided by a set of ideological principles.The failure of the leading political parties to address the problems confronting voters has led to a new generation of leaders who position themselves as iconoclasts. Mr. Macron in France and Boris Johnson in Britain could hardly be more different. But both are opportunistic, flout convention and have crafted larger-than-life personas to command public attention. So far, voters have rewarded them.Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.Pool photo by Eduardo MunozAngela Merkel was their polar opposite, a study in staid reticence who transcended ideological differences by exuding stability. Her party’s candidate, Armin Laschet, couldn’t convince voters that he was her natural heir, which opened the door to Mr. Scholz, who managed to cast himself as the most Merkel-like candidate — despite being in another party.Norimitsu Onishi More

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      The I.R.S. Can Register Voters Just as Well as the D.M.V.

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      Income tax forms are notoriously complicated, but there is one simple question that is missing: “Would you like to register to vote in your home state?” With over 150 million American households filing federal income tax returns each year, our annual ritual of tax filing is a missed opportunity for voter registration.While Americans are filling out their 1040s and Schedule Cs, they should also be asked if they would like to complete a voter registration form. The form, let’s call it a Schedule VR, would be separate from tax information, and would be available to all citizens, regardless of the amount of taxes paid or refunded. A Schedule VR would be the simplest way to create a national and nearly universal registration system.There is good evidence that tax-time voter registration would work. In Canada, annual income tax forms already offer voter registration. Overall, 96 percent of eligible voters appear on the Canadian voter registry, thanks in substantial part to the work of the Canada Revenue Agency. Elections Canada suggests that citizens “tick the box” every year on their income tax form to keep their address information up-to-date. By contrast, more than one in five eligible voters in the United States is not on the voter rolls. These unregistered voters are disproportionately likely to be young, to have lower incomes, and to be members of racial and ethnic minority groups.Adding a voter registration option to tax filing has three major advantages: breadth, accuracy and convenience. Americans are conscientious taxpayers who see tax filing as an important civic responsibility; a Schedule VR would help ensure our voter rolls are correct and secure, with less paperwork for the citizenry.Tax-time voter registration would build on the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which brought easy registration to departments of motor vehicles and other government agencies across the country. Taxes are filed annually, far more frequently than most people’s trips to the DMV. About 90 percent of the U.S. population appears on an income tax return each year, and 99.5 percent of us are estimated to appear on at least one federal tax document (like a W2 or a 1099), which is higher than the declining fraction of Americans who hold driver’s licenses. The tax system has played a vital role in Covid relief delivery precisely because few agencies can match the reach of the Internal Revenue Service.Yes, adding voter registration to the tax filing process would represent a substantial increase in responsibility for the I.R.S. But there are precedents for the I.R.S. assisting tax filers in participating in important civic endeavors. In 1972, 1975 and 1980, Form 1040 included questions on behalf of the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, Form 1040 still has a check box allowing tax filers to donate three dollars to public campaign finance via the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. As Congress considers adding $80 billion to the I.R.S. budget, it should not overlook the full potential of tax filing to help shore up our democracy.Voter registration at tax filing would also conform to President Biden’s mandate for new federal action to promote voter registration and turnout. Mr. Biden’s Executive Order 14019 calls upon the heads of each federal agency to produce a comprehensive plan for how they can “provide access to voter registration services and vote-by-mail ballot applications in the course of activities or services that directly engage with the public.”For the I.R.S. to collect voter registration information and work with the states to update the voter rolls would require legislative action. But there are still immediate steps that can be taken. Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, and Charles Rettig, the I.R.S. commissioner, can mandate that voter registration services be provided at the nonprofit Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites that work with the I.R.S. to provide free tax preparation to over one million households a year.We already know that a program like this would reach underrepresented voters. In an experiment one of us conducted in 2018, tax filers at five sites in Dallas and Cleveland were offered voter registration forms. The participants were predominantly Black and Hispanic tax filers with an average household income of less than $30,000. The program doubled the likelihood that an unregistered person would get onto the voter rolls.In an appalling echo of Jim Crow, some states are weaponizing their voting laws to exclude voters, and especially voters of color, from participating in our democracy. Historically, federal intervention has been essential to the protection of voting rights; now is the time to use tax policy to increase voter access.Along with other legislation, like the urgently needed John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a Schedule VR would help counteract state efforts to restrict access to the ballot box. But even beyond the current political situation, we shouldn’t overlook a powerful tool we already have in hand to ensure that Americans have a reliable way to register to vote.Jeremy Bearer-Friend (@bearerfriend) is an associate professor at George Washington University Law School; Vanessa Williamson (@V_Williamson) is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Taro Kono, Japan's Most Popular Prime Minister Candidate, Far From a Shoo-In

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      Taro Kono has by far the highest poll numbers of any candidate to lead the governing Liberal Democrats. But party elders don’t think so highly of him.TOKYO — If popularity were the deciding factor, there would be a clear front-runner to become the next prime minister of Japan.Polls have found that the public favors Taro Kono, the cabinet minister overseeing Japan’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, by at least two to one in the race to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party — which, in effect, is the race to become prime minister. His Twitter following of 2.4 million dwarfs those of his three rivals combined.But in the back rooms where Japanese political decisions are made, Mr. Kono, 58, is not nearly as well liked. His reputation as the Liberal Democrats’ most outspoken nonconformist and his left-leaning views on social issues put him out of step with the party’s conservative elders.Those people will have considerable sway on Wednesday as the Liberal Democrats choose a successor to Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular current prime minister and party leader, who said this month that he would step aside. Whoever takes his place will lead the party into a general election that must be held by the end of November.In past party leadership elections, unity has made the winner a foregone conclusion. But this time, the political horse trading has sometimes seemed at odds with popular sentiment, even as the public has expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s leadership on the pandemic and the economy. That disconnect partly reflects complacency among the Liberal Democrats, who have been in power for all but a few years since 1955 and seem confident that they will win the general election no matter who they choose.“Right now, their thinking is that they can’t lose to the opposition,” said Masato Kamikubo, a professor of political science at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Yoshihide Suga, center, said this month that he would step aside as prime minister and the Liberal Democrats’ leader.Pool photo by Kim Kyung-HoonMr. Kono differs from his rivals in style as well as substance. Unlike a long string of stodgy Liberal Democratic politicians who seemed to have little interest in inspiring the public, he assiduously courts popular opinion.After Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, made him foreign minister in 2017, Mr. Kono developed an avid Twitter following in both Japanese and English, with playful posts about food, his prowess with Japanese children’s toys and meetings with cartoon mascots.As the minister in charge of vaccines, he has sometimes responded personally to Twitter users’ questions. Fumie Sakamoto, an infection control manager at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, said she believed his personal touch may have helped ease public fears about the vaccines.“He’s always been willing to communicate about vaccination in a positive and easy-to-understand manner,” Ms. Sakamoto said. After a slow start in the first half of the year, more than half of the population in Japan is now fully vaccinated, putting it ahead of the United States and many other countries around the Pacific Rim.But other issues have put Mr. Kono on the wrong side of his party’s power brokers.He has repeatedly voiced his opposition to nuclear power, a sacred cow for the Liberal Democrats. He now supports same-sex marriage and a proposal to change a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes — positions that are popular with the public but opposed by the party’s influential right wing.Mr. Kono, center left, at a Tokyo vaccination site. As the minister overseeing Japan’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, he has engaged directly with Twitter users.Yuri Kageyama/Associated PressMr. Abe, who resigned last year because of ill health, has backed Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative, for the leadership. Ms. Takaichi, who would be Japan’s first female prime minister, has strong backing from the right wing of the party, but her poll numbers are low. Another woman in the leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has little support from either the public or the party.Many Liberal Democratic members of Parliament consider Fumio Kishida, 64, a moderate with tepid support in the polls, to be the safest choice, according to media tallies of lawmakers.Mr. Kono, whose father and grandfather were both Liberal Democratic lawmakers, has long made it clear that he wants to be prime minister. But he did not follow a traditional route to power. He left a place at one of Japan’s most prestigious private universities, Keio, to study at Georgetown in Washington instead.Mr. Kono’s polished English and extensive travel experience as foreign minister would make him a welcome choice for prime minister among Japan’s allies, political analysts said. “For Washington, he would be the most comfortable person,” said Shihoko Goto, a senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington.On China, Mr. Kono does not invoke the kind of hawkish rhetoric that Ms. Takaichi and Mr. Kishida have been using during the campaign, but he would be likely to maintain the party’s policies on military cooperation with the United States, Australia and India. Sanae Takaichi has low poll numbers, but former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other conservatives support her for the leadership.Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGiven his work on diplomatic and military issues — Mr. Kono also served as Mr. Abe’s defense minister — he is “probably the best-prepared person for the prime ministership in that sense,” said Narushige Michishita, vice president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. But some say his confidence has led to arrogance and even impetuosity. Last year, as defense minister, he decided with little consultation to cancel a plan to buy an American missile defense system, angering Japanese military leaders who heard about the decision after the fact.“Maybe he’s too American,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former diplomat who has been an adviser to Mr. Suga. “He’s very direct, honest, sometimes blunt,” Mr. Miyake added. “And sometimes so self-righteous that nobody can catch up or nobody feels willing to help.”Mr. Kono, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has a reputation for being short-tempered with Japanese bureaucrats. He recently crusaded against the fax machines that are still used in government offices, making waves by taking on one of the shibboleths of the bureaucracy.In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, Mr. Kono acknowledged that he might need to speak more carefully. “However, I do not intend to mince words when it comes to pointing out the fallacies of bureaucratic thinking that is not attuned to reality,” he said.On Twitter, he has also become rather notorious as the Japanese politician most likely to block his critics — so much so that he spawned a hashtag, #IwasblockedbyKonoTaro, in Japanese. When asked about the practice in an interview with TBS, a broadcaster, he defended it.“I don’t feel the need to have a conversation with people I don’t know who slander me,” he said.A nuclear plant in Mihama, Japan. Mr. Kono has spoken out against nuclear power, but he supports restarting long-idled plants as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions.Kyodo News, via Associated PressMasahiko Abe, a professor of English and American literature at the University of Tokyo, said he was blocked by Mr. Kono after suggesting that the minister did not understand the government’s policy on university entrance exams.“I don’t mind that he’s sometimes aggressive and even arrogant from time to time,” Mr. Abe said. But, he added, “If he says anything wrong, I think we have the right to correct him.”People who have worked with Mr. Kono said he believed that policy debates were more productive if they were rigorous. “The reason why he understands the discussion is because he is demanding,” said Mika Ohbayashi, a director at the Renewable Energy Institute, a research and advocacy group, who served on a climate change advisory panel with Mr. Kono.As a candidate for the leadership, Mr. Kono has calibrated some of his past positions. Despite his opposition to nuclear power, he said he supported the restart of Japan’s nuclear plants — the vast majority of which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago — as part of a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.“He is looking at his liabilities and he is trying to figure out how he can cement support within the party,” said Mireya Solís, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Hikari Hida contributed reporting. More