Every once in a while, a vote reveals a corroded political system and points towards something new. Most observers portrayed last week’s EU election result as a far-right surge. But a closer look suggests it may have been an anti-establishment shift, with the European Parliament now home to 55 members from outside established parties, nearly double the 2019 total.
Leading the charge is the 24-year-old YouTuber who shocked Cyprus, coming out of nowhere to become its first independent to win an MEP seat. As in much of Europe, Cyprus’s most urgent issue has been immigration, which has surged due to the war in Gaza.
More than 2,000 migrants arrived by sea in the first three months of this year, a 25-fold rise from last year, prompting President Nikos Christodoulides to declare a “serious crisis” and urge the EU and Lebanon to help. Home to 1.2 million people, Cyprus now hosts more asylum-seekers per capita than any other European state.
With migrant camps beyond capacity, a few dozen new arrivals even set up tents in the UN-run buffer zone between the EU-member south and the Turkey-controlled north, known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and recognised only by Ankara.
Pre-vote polls showed the anti-immigrant Elam party coming in third and grabbing its first EU parliamentary seat, and possibly two of Cyprus’s six. Meanwhile, times have been tough for Cypriots, as the migrant wave, EU sanctions on Russia and the cost-of-living crisis have hurt the economy and raised concerns about the crucial summer tourist season.
Trump may have started the West’s protest vote trend. But the fracturing has apparently accelerated, pushing us into an apolitical age
Enter Fidias Panayiotou, whose claims to fame until this year were dodging train fares in Japan and a quest to hug 100 celebrities, culminating in a viral embrace with Elon Musk.
Raised in a conservative Greek Orthodox family in Meniko, 20km west of the capital Nicosia, he made videos with friends as a teen before serving his National Guard term in the UK. He built his social media celebrity on outlandish challenges: buried in a coffin with a snake; five days without sleep; a stint with Tanzanian hunter-gatherers.
Not the most impressive achievements, but they showed courage and conviction, qualities often in short supply among today’s leaders. Fidias amassed 2.6 million YouTube subscribers – more than double his country’s population – and seeing no politicians connecting with his demographic as the vote approached, decided to join the fray.
In boxer shorts, a sports coat and three ties, he announced his candidacy on a Cypriot morning show, embarking on one of the most unorthodox campaigns you’ll ever see. He said he’d never voted before and knew little of European politics but could no longer stand the “same nerds” in power in Brussels.
He makes more than €1 million (almost $1.1 million) a year, but eschewed billboards and TV and newspaper ads to focus on social media. He vowed to improve education, boost cryptocurrency and AI adoption, limit migration and advocate a bi-zonal, bi-communal solution for the island. But in true populist style, he avoided specifics, instead stressing vague change.
“If we don’t try we’ll remain stagnant, as we have been for so many years,” he said in April. When a leading green party invited him to join their ballot, he asked his followers what to do and accepted their vote to remain independent. This turned out to be a wise move, as the party ended up getting just 1 per cent, with Europe’s greens losing a third of their seats.
Submitting candidacy papers in April, Fidias said his goal was not to win, but to get young people more involved in politics. The day before, wearing a “Register Now” T-shirt, he livestreamed his 12-hour, 80km run from Kyrenia, on the north coast, to Larnaca, in the south-east, triggering a surge in voter registrations. [More than 100,000 Turkish Cypriots are able to vote in Cyprus’s EU elections, and most major parties usually include a Turkish Cypriot in their list of candidates.]
Yet with his wild style and political ignorance, he was widely seen as a joke candidate. Then in late May, he started to appear in polling data: at 2 per cent, then 4 and even 5 per cent. Analysts called his emergence “the Fidias Phenomenon” and argued that it showed an increasingly apolitical electorate.
In the end, the centre-right Disy party came in first and Fidias third with nearly 20 per cent, just two points behind second-place, progressive Akel. Disy retained its two seats, while Akel, Elam and Diko each got one. But “the Phenomenon” is all Cyprus can talk about.
“The self-satisfied, self-regarding, self-aggrandising class were given a kicking they will never forget by the TikTok kid,” declared the Cyprus Mail. “What is even more astonishing is that he achieved this without spending any money.”
Fidias was far from a one-off.
In Thracian Greece, a 76-year-old retired cattle breeder won an EU seat despite not campaigning, while in Italy an anti-fascism activist charged with attempted murder also won. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s dominant Fidesz party received its lowest voter support in 18 years. In Spain, The Party’s Over, which vowed to “destroy the system and rebuild”, won three seats, while a new German party led by half-Iranian rising star Sahra Wagenknecht won six.
Former US president Donald Trump may have started the West’s protest vote trend by winning on his 2016 vow to “drain the swamp”. But the fracturing has apparently accelerated, pushing us into an apolitical age.
Millennials surely rank among the more unfortunate generations: the 2008-2009 financial crisis; Brexit, Mr Trump and the migrant wave; the Covid-19 pandemic; and now rampant inflation, two major wars, and 100 million displaced. These disasters have further eroded already-low trust in leaders, institutions and political parties, spurring greater cynicism.
This extends to traditional media, undermined by fake news and disinformation, which points to the success of Fidias’s social media campaign. In fact, few places embody the anti-establishment shift better than Cyprus, where this summer marks 50 years since the island’s division following a Turkish invasion.
A vote for Fidias was surely an expression of frustration with political leaders who have delivered so much disappointment for so long. Yet it was also an expression of hope in the possibility of real change. Fidias won more than a third of the votes from voters under 35, which suggests some staying power if he’s able to deliver results.
He’ll become the youngest sitting MEP when he’s sworn in next month, and says he hopes to form a new party with like-minded colleagues. Days before the vote, a Greek Cypriot columnist described the island’s established politicians as having “superficial approaches which they often identify as revolutionary”.
To defeat them, Fidias flipped the script. He ran what he identified as a simple and superficial campaign, which may end up kicking off a quiet revolution.
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
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The%20Mother%20
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Classification of skills
A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation.
A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
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MATCH INFO
Mainz 0
RB Leipzig 5 (Werner 11', 48', 75', Poulsen 23', Sabitzer 36')
Man of the Match: Timo Werner (RB Leipzig)
Poacher
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ERichie%20Mehta%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Nimisha%20Sajayan%2C%20Roshan%20Mathew%2C%20Dibyendu%20Bhattacharya%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E3%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
White hydrogen: Naturally occurring hydrogen
Chromite: Hard, metallic mineral containing iron oxide and chromium oxide
Ultramafic rocks: Dark-coloured rocks rich in magnesium or iron with very low silica content
Ophiolite: A section of the earth’s crust, which is oceanic in nature that has since been uplifted and exposed on land
Olivine: A commonly occurring magnesium iron silicate mineral that derives its name for its olive-green yellow-green colour
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Babumoshai Bandookbaaz
Director: Kushan Nandy
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bidita Bag, Jatin Goswami
Three stars
Engine: 3.5-litre V6
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 290hp
Torque: 340Nm
Price: Dh155,800
On sale: now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
It's up to you to go green
Nils El Accad, chief executive and owner of Organic Foods and Café, says going green is about “lifestyle and attitude” rather than a “money change”; people need to plan ahead to fill water bottles in advance and take their own bags to the supermarket, he says.
“People always want someone else to do the work; it doesn’t work like that,” he adds. “The first step: you have to consciously make that decision and change.”
When he gets a takeaway, says Mr El Accad, he takes his own glass jars instead of accepting disposable aluminium containers, paper napkins and plastic tubs, cutlery and bags from restaurants.
He also plants his own crops and herbs at home and at the Sheikh Zayed store, from basil and rosemary to beans, squashes and papayas. “If you’re going to water anything, better it be tomatoes and cucumbers, something edible, than grass,” he says.
“All this throwaway plastic - cups, bottles, forks - has to go first,” says Mr El Accad, who has banned all disposable straws, whether plastic or even paper, from the café chain.
One of the latest changes he has implemented at his stores is to offer refills of liquid laundry detergent, to save plastic. The two brands Organic Foods stocks, Organic Larder and Sonnett, are both “triple-certified - you could eat the product”.
The Organic Larder detergent will soon be delivered in 200-litre metal oil drums before being decanted into 20-litre containers in-store.
Customers can refill their bottles at least 30 times before they start to degrade, he says. Organic Larder costs Dh35.75 for one litre and Dh62 for 2.75 litres and refills will cost 15 to 20 per cent less, Mr El Accad says.
But while there are savings to be had, going green tends to come with upfront costs and extra work and planning. Are we ready to refill bottles rather than throw them away? “You have to change,” says Mr El Accad. “I can only make it available.”
SPEC%20SHEET
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UK’s AI plan
- AI ambassadors such as MIT economist Simon Johnson, Monzo cofounder Tom Blomfield and Google DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell
- £10bn AI growth zone in South Wales to create 5,000 jobs
- £100m of government support for startups building AI hardware products
- £250m to train new AI models
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
WHAT FANS WILL LOVE ABOUT RUSSIA
FANS WILL LOVE
Uber is ridiculously cheap and, as Diego Saez discovered, mush safer. A 45-minute taxi from Pulova airport to Saint Petersburg’s Nevsky Prospect can cost as little as 500 roubles (Dh30).
FANS WILL LOATHE
Uber policy in Russia is that they can start the fare as soon as they arrive at the pick-up point — and oftentimes they start it even before arriving, or worse never arrive yet charge you anyway.
FANS WILL LOVE
It’s amazing how active Russians are on social media and your accounts will surge should you post while in the country. Throw in a few Cyrillic hashtags and watch your account numbers rocket.
FANS WILL LOATHE
With cold soups, bland dumplings and dried fish, Russian cuisine is not to everybody’s tastebuds. Fortunately, there are plenty Georgian restaurants to choose from, which are both excellent and economical.
FANS WILL LOVE
The World Cup will take place during St Petersburg's White Nights Festival, which means perpetual daylight in a city that genuinely never sleeps. (Think toddlers walking the streets with their grandmothers at 4am.)
FANS WILL LOATHE
The walk from Krestovsky Ostrov metro station to Saint Petersburg Arena on a rainy day makes you wonder why some of the $1.7 billion was not spent on a weather-protected walkway.
THE BIO:
Sabri Razouk, 74
Athlete and fitness trainer
Married, father of six
Favourite exercise: Bench press
Must-eat weekly meal: Steak with beans, carrots, broccoli, crust and corn
Power drink: A glass of yoghurt
Role model: Any good man
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
Results
4.30pm Jebel Jais – Maiden (PA) Dh60,000 (Turf) 1,000m; Winner: MM Al Balqaa, Bernardo Pinheiro (jockey), Qaiss Aboud (trainer)
5pm: Jabel Faya – Maiden (PA) Dh60,000 (T) 1,000m; Winner: AF Rasam, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
5.30pm: Al Wathba Stallions Cup – Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (T) 2,200m; Winner: AF Mukhrej, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
6pm: The President’s Cup Prep – Conditions (PA) Dh100,000 (T) 2,200m; Winner: Mujeeb, Richard Mullen, Salem Al Ketbi
6.30pm: Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club – Prestige (PA) Dh125,000 (T) 1,600m; Winner: Jawal Al Reef, Antonio Fresu, Abubakar Daud
7pm: Al Ruwais – Group 3 (PA) Dh300,000 (T) 1,200m; Winner: Ashton Tourettes, Pat Dobbs, Ibrahim Aseel
7.30pm: Jebel Hafeet – Maiden (TB) Dh80,000 (T) 1,400m; Winner: Nibraas, Richard Mullen, Nicholas Bachalard
Our House, Louise Candlish,
Simon & Schuster
Trump v Khan
2016: Feud begins after Khan criticised Trump’s proposed Muslim travel ban to US
2017: Trump criticises Khan’s ‘no reason to be alarmed’ response to London Bridge terror attacks
2019: Trump calls Khan a “stone cold loser” before first state visit
2019: Trump tweets about “Khan’s Londonistan”, calling him “a national disgrace”
2022: Khan’s office attributes rise in Islamophobic abuse against the major to hostility stoked during Trump’s presidency
July 2025 During a golfing trip to Scotland, Trump calls Khan “a nasty person”
Sept 2025 Trump blames Khan for London’s “stabbings and the dirt and the filth”.
Dec 2025 Trump suggests migrants got Khan elected, calls him a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor”
