Today citizens of the nations that make up the EU get to vote on the parties we want to send to the European Parliament. That's about 275 million possible voters in 27 countries--though word is that most will be lucky to get a 40 percent turnout.
It's my first opportunity to vote legally in an EU election so I've been wanting to find out more, and thought I would share what I'm learning with you while I wait for the early reports on results. The polls have just closed an hour ago here in the UK so some exit polling should be trickling out soon, even though final results won't be announced until Monday.
Details below the fold.
Here in the UK, the big news everyone expects is for Labour to take a beating, with votes going to smaller parties.
I decided to give my vote to the Greens, and predictive polling indicated that many other people who would normally vote Labour were planning to do the same.
Those same predictive polls did not think it was likely that the fascist British National Party (to whom I will not link) would manage to get an MEP seat, but I am not so sure. Certainly their bedfellows on the far right, UKIP, will probably at least hang on to the ones they have. UKIP favours all the usual idiotic right-wing tripe: a flat tax, workfare, mass deportation of immigrants. The only good thing that can be said about them is that they are run by a power-hungry moron whose only purpose seems to be digging into his piece of the MEP pie.
The Conservative Party won't gain any seats and may lose some. They have pulled out of the main centre-right coalition in the EU parliament to jump in bed with some frankly odd right-wing parties, such as Poland's xenophobic Law and Justice Party (which frequently spews Euro-skeptic, homophobic, racist and anti-socialist rhetoric).
Anti-EU, anti-EU expansion and outright racist parties look likely to gain in several countries. Most worrying is the Netherlands, where the anti-Muslim Party for Freedom, led by the odious Geert Wilders looks to be on track for almost 20 percent of the vote.
That said, left-wing parties like the Greens also look likely to gain. Danny Cohn-Bendit's Red-Green group Europe Ecologie in France may get 10 percent of that country's votes, likewise the two major far-left French parties (the NPA and LO).
The far right in France is split between several small parties, mainly because the Front National is running Martine LePen, who is not liked very well by her father's rabid fans.
Happily the Pirate Party of Sweden seem to be focusing traditional Viking sentiments and may get an MEP. I hope he or she finds something suitably swashbuckling to wear for a frontal attack on corporate copyright laws.
The election won't be over for three more days--Europe is huge and covers a lot of time zones. I'll try to post some analysis of the final results on Monday. It's worth mentioning that many cities in the UK also have local elections today, and the news is not looking good for Labour. To quote the Telegraph's predictive polls:
In the local elections, Labour could lose control of the last four major county councils it holds, all former strongholds in northern England. The party also risks losing half of the 445 council seats it is defending in what would be its worst election defeat since 1977.
Another Cabinet minister, James Purnell (Work and Pensions), just announced his resignation and word on the usually well-informed Radio 4 today was that the Labour "rebels"--the MPs seeking to force Brown to stand down--have gotten the 50 signatures they need to force a vote. If the local and EU results are truly dismal, they may get the 70+ they need to make Brown's departure a done deal... Opposition still seems to be coalescing around Alan Johnson.
One other thing to watch is whether if Brown falls, Brits and others in Europe will expand the anti-corruption and goldbricking campaign to the European Parliament itself, which is extraordinarily corrupt. Now that would be a fine result, no matter which parties are up or down!
UPDATE: It's 8am UK time and the local results are coming in. It really is a rout for Labour: They have lost 8 of their 10 races, with wins evenly divided between the Tories and LibDems. The LibDems now have a majority on Bristol council, the Tories have a supermajority in Lincolnshire.
In other news, Stuart "H'Angus the Monkey" Drummond won as Middlesbrough mayor again (for UK readers, elected mayors are a rarity here). I met Drummond after his first election and quite liked him. He was the local football team mascot, ran a joke campaign for mayor and won. After saying "oh sh*t!" he stepped up to it, taking an intensive course in governance at the local Uni and seeking advice from lots of people. An independent, he has turned out to be a fairly good egg.