UKIP and French National Front storm European elections
The Guardian reports:
Nigel Farage unleashed his much promised political earthquake across British politics as Ukip easily topped the poll in the European elections, marking the first time in modern history that neither Labour nor theConservatives have won a British national election.
The Liberal Democrats have suffered a near total wipeout and are course to lose all but one of their 11 MEPs, placing serious pressure on Nick Clegg to justify his leadership of his party.
In a stunning warning to the established political parties, which lined up over the weekend to say they took the Ukip threat seriously, Farage’s party was expected to win about 28% of the national poll. This was a near doubling of the 16.5% it secured in the last European elections in 2009 when it came second to the Tories and took 13 seats. Just 20 years ago, in its first European parliamentary election, Ukip managed just 1% of the vote.
Labour predicted that, when all the final results were assembled, they would have polled 25.7%, with the Tories on 24.5 % and the Green partyin fourth place.
Farage said the result justified the description of an earthquake because “never before in the history of British politics has a party seen to be an insurgent party ever topped the polls in a national election”.
This makes the 2015 UK election very difficult to predict. UKIP take a lot of votes away from the Conservatives and this hurts them as they have FPP. But if they manage some sort of arrangement, then their combined vote will be higher than Labour, Greens and Lib Dems.
Ironically the UKIP may end up defeating the main thing they want – a referendum on Europe. If there is a change of Government, then there won’t be one.
Meanwhile in France:
France’s Front National won the election there with a projected 25% of the vote, while the governing socialists of President François Hollande collapsed to 14%, according to exit polls.
It is disturbing to see neo-Nazis getting elected in France, Germany, Austria, Greece etc.