A Whaleoil reader felt that our coverage of EU elections could have been better. Here is his take on the results.
Overall the balance between left and right is the same in the EU parliament. However because some centre-right parties that were pro-EU have been gutted, there is a swing to Euroscepticism on the right.
However in the UK, although BREXIT is the largest party, the Remain camp easily won the majority. This is true whether you count actual seats won or percentage of the vote (and it remains true even if you assign all seats/percentage from divided parties: Conservatives to Brexit camp and Labour to Remain camp).
So Remainers are right to claim a swing to them on actual results.
(A poster on WOBH said he had heard this and thought it was MSM fake news, which shows WO hasn’t done a good job of explaining the results.)
While Farage is to be commended on the BREXIT party result (considering the timeframe), and this is the best result ever for an explicitly Eurosceptic party in the U.K., they have only gained 4 or 5 seats over what the UKIP already held (UKIP was already the largest British party in Euro parliament). Mostly his result is achieved by destroying UKIP who now have no seats. So there is only a 4/5 seat gain. Most Conservative party voters who switched, switched to a Remain party.
The geographically based Map of the Day the other day, while true gives a misleading impression as most of the population in a few cities (notably the non-urban population), is almost entirely ethnic European while London is dominated by the foreign-born.
This doesn’t really tell you about U.K. support for Brexit since it is not a general election or a clear yes/no referendum. A lot of people don’t bother to vote in E.U. elections, as it doesn’t change much. I suspect that the result is full strength for Remain and only partial strength for Brexit.
Due to the FPP system the best the BREXIT Party can achieve is to decimate the Cons (which would result in a Lab/Lib-Dem government). If the Cons get destroyed in one election, the BREXIT Party might be able to get in at a subsequent election. (If the UK had a preferential voting system BREXIT could get in without necessarily effecting a Labour/LD takeover). I know that is rather depressing but that is what it is.
Overall in Europe, the right/left balance is the same. But on the Left voters moved to either Greens or centre-left parties. On the right voters moved from centre-right to actual conservative/populist /nationalist parties. Overall a move to the right (even on the Left!)
There is one potentially disturbing aspect to the destruction of UKIP. Although it has mainly focused on getting out of the EU, opposition to militant Islam in the UK was one of its founding principles. This isn’t new, although Batten highlighted it recently. It has been part of their charter for as long as I can remember. Certainly the entire time Farage was the leader.
Farage chose to focus only on the Euroscepticism angle, which was what he was comfortable with. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be merely strategic as Farage has parroted the ‘religion of peace’ mantra re Islam. So the only mainstream UK party you could vote for that opposed Islamisation is probably destroyed now. Given Farage’s views, you can bet opposition to Islam isn’t in the BREXIT party’s founding documents.
