Sunday, May 25, 2014

Those results ....

1.23 Not sure I can be bothered to go on. Tomorrow or, rather later today, I shall do a kind of summing up but, on the whole, it would appear that the inevitable happened: as things started going wrong, people started to think that the EU is actively part of the problem. Well, some people. Not all and not even the majority, as it happens, either in the UK or across the EU. Even UKIP's success (if one can call it that, given that the overwhelming majority of the electorate stayed away) came after them ditching any talk about the EU and playing to general dissatisfaction. That is my final thought.

1.13 The BBC is recording 33.77% turn-out.

1.09 West Midlands MEPs: Philip Bradbourn (C), Anthea McIntyre (C), Neena Gill (Lab), Sion Simon (Lab), Jill Seymour (UKIP), James Carver (UKIP), Bill Etheridge (UKIP).

01.00 How are those votes stacking up? UKIP 3,988,791, Conservatives 3,300,166, Labour 3,244,352, Greens: 1,058,284, Lib-Dims 943,629, Plaid Cymru 111,864, SNP 386,193 though they have not yet got their MEPs sorted because of that peculiar Scottish problem of the Western Isles not declaring till tomorrow.

00.58 Best result for UKIP so far in the South-East, as expected:

UKIP - 32.3% (4) CON - 31.1% (3) LAB - 14.7% (1) GRN - 9.1% (1) LDEM - 7.6% (1) OTH - 5.2%.

Daniel Hannan (C), Nirj Deva (C), Richard Ashworth (C), Anneliese Dodds (Lab), Catherine Bearder (LD), Keith Taylor (Green), Nigel Farage (UKIP), Janice Atkinson (UKIP), Diane James (UKIP), Ray Finch (UKIP). I can see fireworks ahead.

00.55 Yes, it seems to be true: UKIP now has an MEP in Scotland. David Coburn is that historic personality. The calculations seems a little convoluted but it would appear that
After the first 31 declarations, the SNP had a 28.9% share of the vote, ahead of Labour with 25.9% and the Conservatives on 17.2%.

Ukip had 10.4%, ahead of the Greens on 8.1% and the LibDems on 7.1%.
00.52 UKIP now has 22 MEPs, Conservatives 16, Labour 14 (huh?), Greens 2, Lib-Dims and Plaid Cymru 1 each.

00.45 In Denmark: the EU-sceptic (used correctly by the Guardian) and thus described as far-Right Danish People's Party took the biggest share of the votes.
The DPP, which had campaigned to reclaim border controls and curb benefits to other EU citizens living in Denmark, won nearly 27% of the vote and doubled its number of MEPs from two to four.

00.39 In his Daily Telegraph column, Tim Stanley says that the UKIP revolution is broad, radical and worthy of respect. Even for an historian that is a bit steep. Exactly wherein lies the revolution and how broad is it, given that the majority of the country did not bother to vote?

00.37 West Midlands: UKIP 31%, Labour 27%, Conservatives 24%, Lib-Dems 6%, Greens 5%.

00.30 Additional news on Greece: Golden Dawn looks like winning 10% thus sending several members to the Toy Parliament. What fun it is all going to be.

00.28 North West: Labour 34%, UKIP 27%, Conservatives 20%, Greens 7%, Lib-Dims 6%.

00.25 According to the BBC, UKIP now has 15 MEPs with the Conservatives and Labour 11 each and Greens and Plaid Cymru 1 each. No Lib-Dims. Unfortunately, there seems to be no break-down by region.

00.18 I seem to have missed the South-West results earlier. ElectedAshley Fox (C), Julie Girling (C), Clare Moody (Lab), Molly Scott Cato (Green), William Dartmouth (UKIP), Julia Reid (UKIP).

Figures: UKIP 32.29% (484,184), Conservatives 28.89% (433,151), Labour 13.75% (206,124), Greens 11.10% (166,447).

00.12 Mind you, their neighbours and erstwhile union members didn't do much better with a turn-out of 18.2%.
The centrist ANO movement of Finance Minister Andrej Babis narrowly won European Parliament elections in the Czech Republic which was largely shunned by voters, final results showed on Sunday.

ANO won 16.13 percent of the vote, narrowly ahead of the opposition center-right TOP09 with 15.95 and Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka's center-left Social Democrats with 14.17 percent. All the three leading parties take largely pro-European stance on major policy issues.

Turnout dropped to a record low 18.2 percent, confirming polls that showed Czechs did not believe they could change much in Europe by taking part in the vote.

The Eurosceptic center-right Civic Democrats won 7.67 percent while the libertarian and anti- European Party of Free Citizens scored their first-ever election success with 5.24 percent of the vote, giving them one seat in European Parliament.

00.10 Slovakia beats all for low turn-out: 13%. We have some way to go. Prime Minister's centre-left Smer party won but it hardly matters.

00.01 In the Netherlands Geert Wilders's party did better than some many predicted. From Reuters
The pro-European Christian Democratic party topped the Dutch vote for the European Parliament in the Netherlands, with the far-right Freedom Party of Eurosceptic politician Geert Wilders in equal second place, news agency ANP reported.

According to a preliminary count, the Christian Democrats will have 5 of the 26 Dutch seats in the European Parliament, while Wilders' party and the centrist pro-European Democrats 66 party will each have four seats.

The electoral commission will not publish the definitive result until later this week.
23.59 From the BBC

Support for Eurosceptic parties must be heard "loud & clear" across EU, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says.

I always said the man was a waste of space.

23.58 In Spain:
The centre-right People's Party narrowly beat the Socialists in Spain's European elections, writes Ashifa Kassam in Madrid, in a result Spanish media called a "punishment" for Spain's two dominant political parties. The two mainstream parties together lost more than 5m votes against the 2009 election results, with the governing People's Party winning 16 EP seats, eight fewer than 2009, and the Socialists 14, down nine.
Small parties appear to be doing very well.

23.54 Tim Montgomerie still dreaming on Twitter:

UKIP surge and resilience of Tory vote points to a good night for Eurosceptics. Now the small matter of uniting that vote for 2015...

Not to mention the small matter of understanding what he is talking about.  But, I suppose, now that UKIP has abandoned any talk of Brexit, there really is no difference between them and the Tories as far as the EU goes.

23.52 In Wales the seats remain the same: one each for Labour, UKIP, Conservatives and Plaid Cymru. Kay Swinburne (C), Derek Vaughan (Lab), Jill Evans (PC), Nathan Gill (UKIP)

23.46 In Hungary, the ruling Fidesz party wins again: 51.5% of the vote and 12 of the 21 seats. Jobbik stay at 14.8% with 3 seats. Not clear whether the remaining seats all go to the Socialists or not.

23.43  South West Result UKIP 484,184 Conservative 433,151 Lib Dem 160,376 so MEPs 2UKIP, 2 Conservative, 1 Green, 1 Labour. LibDem wipeout. They do seem to be doing worse in the euros than in the locals. Odd.

23.41 In Greece it's the radical left that seems to be doing well. That means not liking austerity measures, in Greek terms but, like everywhere else, the government party will live to fight another day.

23.39 Just saw on Twitter:

Spain COLLAPSE - in 2009 two main centre-right and left parties had 80% of vote, tonight after #EP2014 they have less than 50%

23.35 German results as projected by Deutsche Welle
German projections showed Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU party leading in the European elections with 36.1 percent of the vote, ahead of their center-left junior coalition partners the SPD at 27.6 percent.

Germany elects 96 members of parliament.

The Green party was at 10.9 percent, the Left party at 7.8 percent and the euroskeptic AfD at 6.5 percent - giving the party seats in parliament for the first time. "The AfD has been put firmly on the political map here. Germany does have now a Euroskeptic party, but it should not be confused with a far right party," said DW's political analyst Melinda Crane.

"Exactly what direction they would like to change things, that is not quite clear. They have backed off some of their radical pronouncements. They are not saying that Germany should return to the Deutsche Mark, but clearly they want changes in the constellation of the Eurozone."

Martin Schulz, EU parliament president and Social Democrat top candidate, was triumphant in the face of his party's 7 percent increase.
23.28 This is what the Guardian said at 23.04 in answer to the question of what the European Parliament might look like:

As expected, the mainstream, pro-European Social Democrats and Christian Democrats maintain their comfortable majority – but the anti-federalists, Eurosceptics and far right have made major advances. 
At least, they have separated the anti-federalists, Eurosceptics and far right. For this we must be thankful.

23.20 Just seen that UKIP comes top and gets two seats in East Midlands, two seats for Tories and one for Labour. The Guardian says turn-out is 36%, higher than in previous euro-elections but they may be confusing matters with the local ones. Still well under 40%. They also continue predictions for FN victory on basis of exit polls in France. Roger Helmer and Margot Parker are in from UKIP and Bill Newton Dunn (Lib Dim) is out.

23.12 The first thing that strikes me is that the BBC website is very hard to get information from. I shall have to look to others as well. Then again, they are doing the right thing and looking at groups not parties.The turn-out for the euro vote was, according to the BBC, and I think they must have got that right, 33.81 per cent. The indifference party wins again.

As I mentioned before, I am having severe computer problems and may not be able to get very far in this posting. The Boss is following events, needless to say and so are various other bloggers such as Guido, all of whom have discovered that there are other member states in the EU and a number of them might elect MEPs from vaguely eurosceptic parties though the notion that this will change anything is slightly ridiculous. As the Boss said even if UKIP gets those 27 seats they will have 3.7% of the vote in the Toy Parliament.

I think I may be able to continue, having fiddled about with my internet connection and computer during which time we have had a few results so I have much to catch up on.

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