In the end it really was Leave Vs. Remain and this was really expected for an election that wasn’t even supposed to happen, but due to a number of setbacks for the BREXIT deadline due to no agreement on a BREXIT deal being reached, the UK had to take part. As was expected Nigel Farage’s newly created BREXIT Party swept up all 24 UKIP MEP seats and also gained an extra 4 seats, leaving them with 29 MEPs, the most out of all of the other parties.
The Liberal Democrats and Green Party also had a good night in the EU elections, with the Lib Dems, originally only having one MEP, now having 16 MEPs, picking up 15 seats with the remain supporters making themselves heard amid the rise of the BREXIT Party. The Green Party gained 4 more MEPs, leaving them with 7 MEPs.
The Conservatives and Labour on the other hand, the two main parties, had an absolutely awful night, the Conservatives themselves were almost entirely wiped out by both the BREXIT Party and Liberal Democrats, losing 15 of their 19 MEP seats, an historically bad result. The Labour party faired a bit better, but still took a battering from mostly remain parties, with them losing 10 of their 20 MEP seats, in another historic setback, the Labour party were even beaten by Plaid Cymru in Wales, something like that has never happened before.
With the big winners of the night being both the BREXIT Party and the Liberal Democrats/Greens, the argument between what this means for the leavers and the remainers has already begun, with both sides arguing that they have the highest vote share in one way or another by selectively adding up the “remain” parties or the “brexit” parties. What it all really shows in the end is that absolutely nothing has changed, it has made nothing clearer and the country is still more divided than ever over the prospect of BREXIT.
But as well as that, a clear outcome would never really have been able to have been made from these elections, considering the often-dismal turnout compared to other elections, although turnout was slightly up compared to previous UK EU elections, it still isn’t really enough to make a close result definitive of much.
So, what does this outcome mean? In short, it means nothing, as I said earlier, nothing has changed. We still have the BREXITEERs, we still have the remainers and both sides are arguing in different ways in how this is better for them and worse for their opponents and so on so forth. It is of little surprise that this didn’t give any clear answers. It is likely Labour will continue going further towards a 2nd referendum supporting route, while the Conservative will harden their stance on leaving the EU, possibly without a deal, if that is what it comes to. One of the top Conservative leadership contenders, Boris Johnson, has already said he is willing to leave the EU without a deal on 31st October, if nothing has been agreed by that point. The new ChangeUK party, that made no MEP gains, will likely end up merging with the Liberal Democrats, to make a more formidable remain party.
Whatever happens, I believe we are still heading for an early General Election, because the deadlock is simply just too great. But again, will it actually change anything? Frankly, I feel like it will just lead to an even more divided parliament, especially if the new BREXIT Party manages to chip a bunch of seats off of the Conservatives, which is very possible. So yet again—NOTHING CHANGES. Who knows how we are going to get out of this mess. On a side note, make sure to check out the latest on the Peterborough by-election on 6th June, the first real electoral test for the BREXIT Party, that could give an indication of where things can go for them in a General Election. Considering Peterborough was a strong Leave supporting area, it could hand the BREXIT Party their first MP seat in the House of Commons.
Wider EU Elections outcome
And now let’s move away from the steaming mess of the UK results, and look at the general outcome of EU results. All in all, establishment parties took a hit, losing MEPs to Green Parties, which made some of the surprising gains in the EU wide elections and also to the Liberals and nationalist Eurosceptic parties, who made good gains, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, that managed to just about beat Macron’s LREM party and also the Alternative for Germany party making some gains, but the rise of these Eurosceptic parties were rather muted to what some had expected, the biggest gains for eurosceptic parties (outside of the UK) was seen in Italy where Salvini’s Lega and his coalition partner, 5 Star, made big gains in the EU parliament.
The results in Greece for Tsipras’s Syriza party, ended up leading to a snap election being called after the Conservative New Democracy party made the most gains.
The overall results have led to the two main blocs in the EU, the Centre-right and Centre-left parties lose seats to the smaller blocs, with the Liberals, Greens and Nationalists being blocs that absorbed these seats. You can say it was still a form of populism for both the further left and further right all in all. There was already no clear majority in the EU parliament after the 2014 elections and so this further fragmentation will make coalition building even more of a challenge. It is suspected that the Centre-right European People’s bloc will make a so-called grand coalition with the Centre-left Socialists and Democrats bloc, but alone, unlike before, they do not have a majority this time and so it is likely they will seek help from both the Liberal bloc and the Greens bloc, who made big gains, meaning overall it will be a pro-EU leading majority, once those parties agree to work together.
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