The UK's European Parliament Results.

Having started counting on Thursday (22/5/14) evening and using the simple first past the post method the UK has been the first European Union (EU) nation to declare its results in the election for the European Parliament (EP). These results pretty much reflect the trends shown in the English local council elections that were held alongside the European vote.

The big winner has been the UK Independence Party who saw their share of the vote in an election with a 34.19% turnout increase by 10.99% to 27.49%. They translated this into a gain of 11 Parliamentary seats increasing their total from 13 to 24. A significant part of UKIP's success seems to have come from all directions but they do seem to have attracted voters away from the Conservative Party who saw their share of the vote fall by 3.8% and lost 7 seats bring their total down from 26 to 19. As with the local elections the UKIP/Conservative split has helped the Labour Party whose share of the vote increased by 10% and they gained 7 seats increasing their total from 13 to 20.

The big losers of the election though were the Liberal Democrat (LibDem) Party who crashed to 6th place behind the Green Party who gained 1 seat despite a 0.75% drop in vote share and the Scottish National Party (SNP) who retained their 2 seats and saw their share of the vote increase by 0.34%. The LibDems share of the vote dropped by 6.87% but were hit particularly hard in terms of seats losing 10 seats reducing their total from 11 to just 1. If UKIP gained support from all quarters then the LibDems lost support to all quarters with their left-wing transferring to Labour and their more liberal, environmentally aware supporters switching to the Greens.

Being an election with a low turnout that was only really contested by core supporters this was an unmitigated disaster for the LibDems and it took their leader Nick Clegg some 16 hours after the results began to be announced to comment publicly and even then his main message was to deny that he is going to resign. In fact the result was so poor and Clegg remained hidden for so long you started to think journalists were only trying to speak to him to make sure he hadn't committed suicide.

Of course one of the main complaints that Euro-sceptic parties such as UKIP have is that due to the way the European Parliament works the wishes of voters in one country are immediately diluted by the wishes of voters in all the other countries. As a consequence I can't really say what effect the UK's results will have on the European Parliament and therefore the EU until results start coming in from other member states. A large proportion of those only held their votes on Sunday (25/4/15) and many of them use very complex proportional representation systems where rather than being one count and a couple of smaller re-counts over questionable ballots there can be dozens of rounds of counting each involving smaller recounts. As a result rather then something that I can give you an answer about now it is going to take around a week for a clear picture to emerge.

However one big thing that everyone will be looking at is the progress of France's fascist and Euro-sceptic National Front (NF/FN). Their leader Marine Le Pen has made it quite clear that she intends to form a bloc of like minded parties in the European Parliament which will then be able to propose legislation reflecting their nasty world view and block legislation that challenges it. In fact Le Pen has made no secret of the fact that she intends to use this bloc to disrupt the running of the European Parliament in order to force it to grind to a halt.

Based on exit polls which in France tend to be rather reliable rather then actual results the NF seem very much on course to achieve their aim. Despite having under performed by only winning around 25% of the vote rather than a predicted 28% the NF seem to have been very effective in translating those votes into seats exceeding their maximum target of 20 by 5 leaving them with potentially 25 seats. This means that the NF will be able to meet the 25 seat minimum needed to form a bloc using only their own MP's. However rather than being evidence that France has suddenly become a fascist country the NF's success seems more to reflect the way they have been able to disguise their fascist ideology to the extent that they are able to pick up protest votes amongst people frustrated at France's significant economic problems (unemployment at a 17 year high of 11% etc) that have been brought about in part by the very left-wing economic policies of the Socialist government.

Fortunately in order to form a formal bloc the NF not only need 25 MP's but they also need to have the support of like minded parties from at least 6 other member states. I think that the NF are pretty much guaranteed the support of Italy's Northern League and Greece's Golden Dawn who don't even attempt to disguise their fascism anymore. However UKIP has already indicated that it won't work with the NF due to their anti-Semitic views meaning that UKIP replacing the British National Party (BNP) in the European Parliament looks very much like a step in the right direction. Also more sophisticated far-right parties such as the Danish People's Party (DPP) have indicated that rather then exposing their fascism by joining a formal bloc they intend to disguise it in order join the centre-right bloc as it gives them a better chance of forcing through extremist legislation.

Anyway as Britain's TV election coverage grinds on with nothing to say may I suggest that they spend some time talking about the other elections that accompanied the European vote. After all although not directly connected the General Election in Ukraine is likely to have some impact on EU politics, the government of Belgium has fallen (again) and after the Gerry Adams arrest I think we're all quite interested in how Sinn Fein did in local council elections in the Irish Republic.

15:45 on 26/5/14 (UK date).