International news has rarely been as grim as it has been over the last few months. That extends also to news concerning elections - and the last few weeks have not done anything to change the trend.

The election of Donald Trump in the United States on the back of a weak campaign by the Democratic Party but also on the back of a tide of misinformation backed by powerful individuals like Elon Musk and his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, was the first sign.

But there have been such signs in Europe, with the continent drifting further and further to the right and, in some places, further away from the principles of democracy.

This shift to the right has been a long time coming. First curtailed somewhat by the Covid-19 pandemic, this year saw a myriad of countries go to the polls - whether it was scheduled or not - and the results continuing the rightwards trend.

In the UK, the Conservative Party was voted out of power in favour of the Labour Party - so on paper it's a shift to the left: but when digging into the numbers it's clear that the Labour Party did not gain any votes ... if anything it lost some ... and the main beneficiary of people's discontent was the party of Nigel Farage, Reform.

Instability has also followed in the European superpowers that are France and Germany - the cornerstones of the European Union.

In France, President Emanuel Macron was rocked by the results of the European Parliament as Marine Le Pen's right-wing National Rally romped to victory. This prompted him to call a snap Parliamentary election - one which Le Pen emerged victorious in the first round, only to lose out in the second, as tactical voting and allegiances by other parties came into play.

It still left France in a delicate position politically: after protracted talks Macron decided to appoint Michel Barnier as Prime Minister in September. Fast forward three months to this week, and the French Government has collapsed, as Barnier lost a confidence vote over the Government's proposed Budget. It's the first time since 1962 that a Government has been brought down by a confidence vote.

There is a similar story in Germany: its own Budget was subject to wrangling and the governing coalition led by Olaf Scholz subsequently collapsed. Germany is expected to go to the polls at the start of next year - and the far-right AfD party is poised to capitalise, after registering big gains in the European Parliament elections in June.

More recently we have seen protests in Georgia as a pro-Russian and anti-EU Government introduces crackdowns on media freedom and measures which will effectively stop the country's plans to be admitted into the bloc in their tracks.

In Romania, last week there was an alarming situation in the elections for the country's President, as the candidate Calin Georgescu - a fringe nationalist politician who is widely seen to be backed by the Russian state - emerged as the shock victor in the first round of voting. Georgescu had pledged to end aid to Ukraine and is a NATO and EU-sceptic - although he has said that he would not be pushing to withdraw from the two blocs ... perhaps expectedly as it would be something difficult to achieve with no Parliamentary majority.

Yesterday, however, a top Romanian court annulled the first round of the country's presidential election. "The Constitutional Court's unprecedented decision - which is final - came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram", a report by the Associated Press read. A new date will now be set to rerun the first round. While the ruling is a blow to suspected outside interference in a country's elections, it also leaves the country in an unparalleled situation.

All of this says that Europe as we know it is at a crossroads. In a time where the continent needs to be more united than ever, the signs are that it may well be more divided than ever since the block was created. That does not bode well for the future.