Entangled Alliances

Welcome to Entangled Alliances’ liveblog of the EU elections results. We’ll be reporting and discussing the results this evening.

02:13 (Edward) The UK picture in summary: Great night for fans of fascism. Great night for UKIP.  Fairly good night for the conservatives – though more from Labour’s downfall rather than their gains.  Average night for Lib Dems. Terrible night for Labour. Bad night for Gordon Brown. 16% of the vote might be enough for Labour rebels to take on the Prime Minister. Or it might not.

Europe picture in summary: Socialists can’t use near-depressions to their advantage. Centre-right parties can – at least in the big countries of Europe. Italians are mental. Berlusconi is scandal-proof. Sarkozy is happy. The Netherlands needs to lose its love affair with the xenophobic Geert Wilders.  That is all.

02:11 (Edward) The North-West just elected the leader of the racist British National Party, Nick Griffin, to the European Parliament. He’s celebrating right now in Manchester Town Hall. I was so convinced this would not happen. Jesus. As a Mancunian, I would like to apologise to rest of the country. The blame, however, should not go to Manchester itself. It should go to the town of Burnley. Which, clearly, is full of racists. Also to Labour, who helped this to happen. Although that shouldn’t deflect from the fact that if you vote for the BNP, you’re a racist. There really shouldn’t be any debate about that. And you probably live in Burnley.

This result shouldn’t, however, make anyone defy democratic systems in order to halt the spread of the BNP. How do you defeat the BNP? You let them speak, as much as possible. Then you speak against them. Finally, as Polly Toynbee is noting now on the BBC, this should really make the Conservatives think twice before joining a bloc in Europe – the EUN I talked about earlier – which is full of people like the BNP.

1:48 (Edward) Here’s a real theme from tonight: Across Europe, centre-right parties that are in government in some of Europe’s heavy hitters – Germany, France, Italy, Poland – did well,  while socialist opposition floundered. This means that the centre right grouping in the European Parliament, the EPP, has done extremely well and will remain the largest bloc. The Socialists have done poorly, and not offered a real challenge to the EPP.

What’s curious is that the big centre-right parties in government, which should have suffered – not just for being in charge at a time of terrible economic recession, but for being pro-free market, anti-regulation and thus being partly responsible for the crisis itself – haven’t suffered at all. This might be because they have impressed the electorates of Europe with their sudden U-turn in favour of regulation of the financial markets. Or it might be because everyone in mainland Europe feels that the economic crisis was a result of Anglo-Saxon banking follies alone.

In The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey informed us that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Well, tonight it looks like the greatest trick the centre-right in Europe ever played was convincing the electorate it wasn’t their fault.

1.17: (Edward) Via twitter, good quote from EU blogger Nosemonkey, r.e. the BNP:

funny how the BNP preach racial purity when they all look like piggly eyed, saggy jawed troglodytes isn’t it?

00:58 (Edward) Good point from Mark B there, but this begs the question which is more important – complete proportionality, or a local connection? Would a national top up of MPs – Lucas’ suggestion – be better? Or even worse? Also, should concerns about the BNP  affect the implementation of a fair electoral system? A battle of principle versus pragmatism there…

00:57 (Bailey) Of course Ed, if you went with Caroline Lucas’ idea and ditched the regional tie, then the BNP would end up with a sizeable bloc (more than the Greens?).  As she pointed out, you’d also lose the constituent link.

In other news, Le Monde has described Labour’s fate as “la débâcle” – a word normally reserved for France’s annihilation by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.  Great historical parallels, then.

00:47 (Edward) Caroline Lucas, head of the UK Green Party, made the excellent point just now on the BBC that the reason the Green party probably won’t get any more MEPs despite getting a much larger share of the vote is that, even though the UK’s European elections use a system of proportional representation – which normally benefits smaller parties – the fact that this is regionally based means that it’s hard for the Greens to make gains – since in some areas the vote has to be shared out between as little as three MEP slots. The case, therefore, is very strong for a system where the entire country is treated as one region. If this makes no sense, then have a read tomorrow of my upcoming post  on proportional representation.

00:37 (Edward) Following on from Geert Wilders success below, some more on the success of far right parties in Europe: In Austria, eurosceptic and far-right movements made significant gains, winning collectively more than a third of votes cast for the European Parliament. Anti-immigration parties also did well in Denmark and Italy. However, such gains were partly offset by heavy losses suffered by the eurosceptic party in Poland. Now, many of these nationalist, often fascist parties are members of a party in the European Parliament called the “union for Europe of Nations”, or UEN. The UEN happens to be the party that the UK’s Conservatives are leaving the EPP to join. Why they want to leave no one really understands. Soemthing to do with federalism. And pleasing their base. What tonight’s results prove once again is that, despite a few successes by nationalist parties, there still aren’t many options for new recruits to join the UEN. At least ones that aren’t openly fascist. Will the Conservatives rethink their bizarre decision?

0:24 (Edward) Here’s something to think about: It looks like the party that comes second tonight in the UK european elections may well be a party (UKIP) who wants Britian to pull out of Europe and tries to further this aim by getting their members elected to the European Parliament. Okay…

0:20 (Edward) Projected vote for Labour overall is now 16%, behind the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Nothing short of disastrous.

00:08(Edward): Over in the Netherlands, the far-right, anti-muslim Freedom Party has become the second largest Dutch party in the European Parliament. It’s headed by Geert Widlers, who, you may remember, was banned from entering the UK to show his vicioulsy anit-Islamic film “Fitna”. Dangerous times in Holland…

00:00 (Edward) Interesting pattern emerging in the UK: Labour’s vote share crashing, but the Conservative’s vote share not really changing – lots of Labour’s vote going to parties like UKIP and smaller parties (and, of course, the BNP). Still, the result in Wales – The Conservatives topping the vote for the first time since, er, around 1918 – is nothing short of amazing. Devastating for Labour.

23:46 (Edward) Nick Griffin, head of the BNP, just defended his party’s  white-only membership policies by noting that it allowed them to stop their members being sacked by their employers, thanks to the Race Relations Act. To which, as a law graduate, I say haha, I think not. Idiot.

23:33 (Edward): Obviously it’s a tragedy that the BNP have been elected to Europe, but as Nick Robinson just pointed out, their vote total actually went down; but due to the effect of postal voting in Yorkshire, their vote share went up. Or something.

23:28 (Edward): In the UK, Yorkshire and Humberside have just sent a member of the racist British National Party to the European Parliament, for the first time ever. A British fascist will now sit in Strasbourg. The BNP received 11%, only 2 behind Labour. Well done, Yorkshire!

23:25 (Edward): Has the BNP won a seat in Leeds? Will I have to eat my words from earlier?

23:13 (Edward) From the Press Association’s Europe editor, (hat/tip Guardian blog)

Only 43% bothered to go to the polls, according to official European parliament figures, continuing a consistent decline in interest since the first direct elections for MEPs 30 years ago.
In 1979, nearly 62% of voters in the then nine EU countries voted – at a time when Euro-MPs had virtually no powers.
Now, when MEPs have significant influence over EU legislation – recently delivering cut-price mobile phone charges which appealed to millions of people – recognition of the role of MEPs is actually falling.
The turn-out is another dent in European parliament standing, and a reflection of the European Union’s perceived lack of impact on citizens.

Ah, apathy…

23:03 (Mark Bailey): Looks like constitutional expert Richard Corbett’s lost his seat in Yorkshire.  Really big loss for Europe.

23:00  Edward- Focusing on the UK, things are not doing well for the government. Labour are rumoured to be running at around 16/17% in the vote, which would be an absolutely disastrous result. Meanwhile in Wales the Conservatives are apparently running ahead in the popular vote; if that held up then it would be the first
time since 1931 that the Tories won the popular vote in Wales. Which would clearly be amazing. Finally, in Scotland the provisional results look, again, terrible for Labour – only three points ahead of the Tories at 20% . UK Chancellor Alistair Darling would lose his seat if they held up in the General election…

22:44 (Mark) The big question: will EPP/ED get a majority? Also Eric Pickles: what??

22:33 (Edward) Two good blogs to follow, where you can get raw data to compliment the random observations here: the BBC’s blog & the Guardian’s blog.

22:32 (Edward) Early exit polls in Italy show that Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party will win around 40% of the vote. Are Italians insane? Yes, I think they may be. The Berlusconi madness continues unabated…

22:27 (Edward) Related point: How rubbish are European socialists if they can’t do well from the GREATEST FAILURE OF CAPITALISM SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION? Pretty rubbish, I suspect…

22:20 (Edward) Mark Mardell on the BBC makes the point that the reason socialist parties are doing badly across Europe while the centre-right ones have done okay is because the socialists are in dissaray, and more to the point the centre-right rulers of France, Germany etc have made a strong stance in favour of regulating the financial sector. This makes sense – after all Nicolas Sarkozy made a big pro-regulation stance at the G20 summit in April.

22:10 (Edward) Tony Barber on his EU blog over at the Financial Times thinks that the results tonight will show a drubbing for the ruling domestic parties of Europe as a result of anger over the economic crisis . Maybe, but that’s not happened in France and Germany, where the ruling parties have done quite well.

22.03 (Edward) In France, Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party have done very well. Socialists, not so much. This sounds more like a failure of Socialist leadership than anything else, (leader Martin Aubry will be facing some tough questions) though I can’t help feeling that centre-left parties in opposition across Europe should have made more of, you know, the complete failure of centre-right free trade philosophy that led to the economic crisis. At any rate, Sarko will be sleeping well tonight.

21:52 (Edward) – Lots of overhyping on the BBC – and online – of the possibility that the racist British National Party have a chance of winning a  seat in the European Parliament. The BNP’s best chance is in Manchester. Will the BNP win a European seat in Manchester? No, they won’t. We’re not all racists here, you know.

21:37 (Edward) - From the results across Europe so far, the main centre-right party of Europe, the EPP, seem to be doing well, while the main centre-left party, the Socialists, have seen some pretty disappointing results. While this might seem pretty weird – what with the economic crisis showing the complete failure of the kind of deregulated market policies the EPP have supported – it may simply be a reflection of the fact that voters have gone to the polls and judged their domestic parties, not the European ones they belong to. It’s not  just Britiains who use Europe as a way to send a message to their government…

21:25 (MARK) – On BBC News, William Hague says he is not certain that the new conservative UEN grouping will gain enough seats to qualify as a Group in the European Parliament. In response to the suggestion that Law and Justice are unfortunate bedfellows, he suggests unconvincingly that politics are different in Poland…