The big winners in the European Union wide elections for the European Parliament (EP) are the Greens and Liberals. (The biggest loser appears to be Steve Bannon). These successes have broken the hold of the alliance between the Socialists and the center-right European Peoples Party that has been able to control the parliament.
Time for a quick primer on party groups in the EP. MEPs are elected in the 28 nations using their national party names however in order to get recognition as an EP party grouping, they have to join with other like minded parties to have at least 25 members from at least 7 member states. Party groups have advantages:
Groups can and do change their formation or name from time to time, and political parties can switch their affinities.
Being part of a political group gives parties access to funding to cover staff and administrative costs, as well as a greater chance of getting their MEPs elected as chairs of the Parliament's committees.
It will also give a party's MEPs more speaking time during debates, as the number and length of contributions during debates is determined by group size.
There are 751 seats in the “Hemicycle”. They are allocated according to national party popularity in muli-member constituencies by a system of proportional representation. MEPs sit in their party block in the chamber, not in a national grouping. A group can have more than one member party from a country. These can be divided by political perspective like the VVD and D66 in the Netherlands or geographically like the Alliance Party (Northern Ireland), the Liberal Democrats (Britain) and the Liberal Party of Gibraltar who fight for the UK’s seats. All of those parties are within the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) single party. Not part of the ALDE party but sitting with the EP group are two Romanian parties who fight their Euroelections jointly, the USR and PLUS.
Groups are seated in the Hemicycle from left to right, in both position and policy terms. On the extreme Left are the Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left and on the extreme Right, the Europe of Nations and Freedoms group.
From Left to Right (EP gradings) the groups are as follows with this year’s results and their standing in the last EP elections i.e 2019/2014. The latter do not include changes resuling in MEPs changing party since the last elections.
EUL/NG 39/52 (see above)
S&D 145/189 Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. Still referred to as the Socialists
Greens/EFA 69/51 Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
ALDE+ 109/68 Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe + Renaissance (President Macron’s new party) + USR PLUS
EPP 180/217 Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats),the mainstream center-right European conservative party.
ECR 59/74 European Conservatives and Reformists Group. The British Conservative party formed this group after leaving the EPP because they are not Euro-sceptic.
EFDD 54/45 Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group (This group had its largest membership from Nigel Farage’s UKIP and was expected to have disbanded after Brexit.)
ENF 58/37 Europe of Nations and Freedom Group
Some MEPs sit outside these Groups as independents and at the time of writing there are also some who have not been identified to the groups. There are also still some provisional results so I am using the official EU tallies and projections.
Some results are still outstanding. Northern Ireland for example elects its members by Single Transferable Vote rather than the party list system used in the rest of the UK. Latest reports indicate that Alliance may gain a seat, adding to the ALDE numbers. [Update, this has now been confirmed with the Alliance’s Naomi Long being elected as one of NI’s three MEPs, all of who are women]
There has been a small “green wave” across Europe however the Green Party’s success in the UK of going from 3 MEPs to 7 has also been influenced by a particular national factor: Brexit. The pattern here has been for those parties with a clear message on Europe have won and those with a record of failure and fudging (Conservatives and Labour) have lost, badly. The elections are organised and declare on a local authority by local authority area. The London constituency for example brings together results from the London boroughs, not on a Westminster parliamentary constituency basis.
This has much benefited the Brexit Party under Nigel Farage. One of his first actions in the new Parliament is likely to be a disciplinary hearing over his failure to declare substantial gifts-in-kind from Aaron Banks. Farage has already been disciplined by the EP for mispending EU funds on national elections for UKIP. Aaron Banks himself is under investigation by the National Crime Agency (sort of British FBI) into the source of his funding of one of the Brexit campaigns and possible links with Russia.
Other nationalist parties in France and Italy did progress too but Steve Bannon’s grand design to bring together Euro-sceptic parties to achieve Putin’s aim of destroying the EU does not seem to have worked (at least for him personally)
All week in Paris, Mr. Bannon was hissed at by enemies, dominated the airwaves and caused an eruption in the French political class for meddling in the country’s affairs. He was kept at arm’s length by allies, perhaps most surprisingly even by those from the far right whom he has tried for months to pound into a Europe-wide populist rebellion.
These elections, taking place from Thursday to Sunday, were the big moment when Mr. Bannon predicted that his assembled forces would storm the barricades of the European Union bureaucracy — except that now that it has arrived, many of them seemed to have moved on without him.
A lot of this movement in the Movement seems to be an anti-Trump reaction. There also has been a change in tactics from “destroy” to “reform”. The exception of course is Nigel Farage’s one man party which topped the British polls. (I say “one man party” because that is exactly what the Brexit Party is in reality. Look at how hard “leavers” changed their votes from UKIP in 2014 with him as leader to the BP on Thursday.
The Brexit Party’s topping the poll in the UK also conceals another underlying factor — parties advocating a “no deal” Brexit were beaten by those overtly calling for a confirmatory referendum and a Remain vote. (Note, this discounts the two main parties which are divided although Labour officially endorses a second referendum, even if Corbyn is still fudging.)
The breakdown of the two sides are
“No deal” Brexiteer parties — 34.6%
UKIP: 3.3%
Brexit 31.6%
No Brexit parties — 40.4%
LibDems 20.3%
Greens 12.1%
Plaid 1%
SNP 3.6%
ChangeUK 3.4%
If you add in the 14.4% for Labour, there is a clear majority for parties that advocate that any deal should be put to the country.[The Northern Ireland results are excluded from this but both Sinn Fein and Alliance promoted Remain so another @2% can be added to the UK wide percentage] This is also a similar figure to those polled recently who would vote Remain in another referendum. It should be noted that not all Labour voters, including Corbyn, would be sure to vote Remain. Conservatives would also be split with the schism in Government fast becoming a chasm.
The European elections also do not predict UK General Election outcomes in large part because of the PR verses “first past the post” electoral systems. Despite winning the largest number of MEPs at the last elections, UKIP returned no MPs to Westminster at the following General Election. The results do have some portents for the Government and official Opposition parties. For Labour it is basically a “get your act together” message. The waffle answers to whether they are a Remain party indicate this. They KNOW large numbers of their supporters in traditional Labour areas are pro-Leave, hence the fudge. The BBC has done a lot of number crunching of the results including by local authority area. To understand their dilema, look at their map of the electoral results showing the leading party.
There are extremely few local authorities where Labour come out top. In their stronghold of London, it is only in outer London boroughs to the East, very south and NW where they lead. Instead there is a very solid wedge of Liberal Democrat orange, including my own borough where at last year’s council elections, no Liberal Democrats were elected, the entire council was Labour.
The London EP constituency was also significant for the Tories. No Conservative MEP was elected despite the proportional system. Their only 4 MEPs were elected from the South East, East of England, Scotland and West Midlands Euro-constituences. Looking at that result by local authority map, there is not a single blue area where Conservatives came first in any local authority. Nationally, they were the 5th party with 9% of the vote. That is their worst electoral result since the 1830s when they were founded. With the current total chaos, there is a real risk of the Conservative Party splitting or even disappearing.
For Labour the map makes similarly gloomy reading with few scattered red areas among the sea of taupe (for Brexit Party) over England and Wales. Scotland is solid yellow and gold for the SNP and Liberal Democrats. Nationally they came third with 14% of the vote, third behind the LibDems.
The BBC’s analysis also shows the corelation betwen the Brexit vote and the votes in the EP elections. The Brexit Party’s vote increased in line with the votes cast for Leave in the referendum. Conversely the Liberal Democrat and Green votes increased the higher Remain vote. Labour performed slightly better in strong Remain areas but still polled under 20%. The Conservatives were consistently poor but worse in strong Remain areas. Turnout in strong Remain areas was also up higher. The combined “big two” vote in Euroelections has gone from 80% in 1979 to under 25% this year.
The challenge for converting these EP election results into success in Westminster seats for the Farage party, Greens and Lib Dems is the electoral system. In a 3, 4, 5 or 6 party environment the number of seats you get depends on how granular or “clumpy” your votes are. Labour and Conservatives (and the nationalist parties) have strong “heartland” areas but come virtually nowhere in other areas — much like the red and blue states in the USA. It is perfectly possible to get 30% of the whole vote but no MPs if your support is very evenly spread.