The Tories will get hammered in the EU elections. That much is well understood. But recriminations against Labour are far more bitter according to the Guardian Live Blog.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston, Labour MEP, John Howarth, said: “Had Labour’s ‘high command’ set out to lose an election they could not have gone about it in a more convincing way”.
Labour MEP @JohnHowarth1958 launches furious attack on way Labour’s leaders conducted campaign for EU elections. See attached extracts from an email he sent. “Had Labour’s ‘high command’ set out to lose an election they could not have gone about it in a more convincing way” pic.twitter.com/n3cGqWhoEv
— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 26, 2019
Result Announcement Shortly
- National estimates are expected to start coming from 5 pm.
- European Parliament-wide results projection will be released at 10.15 pm this evening after the last polling station on the continent has closed.
- Provisional results for Britain will be released around 11 pm. This and the final Europe-wide results will be updated through the night.
What to Watch
The New York Times comments What to Watch For in the European Parliament Election Results.
With more than 400 million Europeans across the 28 countries of the European Union entitled to vote in the European Parliament elections that end on Sunday, the poll is, next to India, the largest democratic exercise in the world.
But since these elections began 40 years ago, when the bloc was only 15 countries, turnout to vote for the Parliament — the bloc’s only directly elected branch — has decreased every five years.
Populists
There are varying strains of populists in Europe, and they do not all agree with one another.
But they are united for the most part in opposing immigration, strengthening Europe’s borders, hammering “the elites” and increasing the power of national governments against “Brussels,” a generic word for the European Union’s technocratic bureaucracy.
Key Items
- Brexit Party Results: Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is expected to win the most UK seats
- Turnout: Will it decline below the 42.6 percent of 2014, or will Europeans respond to calls from both populists and mainstream politicians who suggest that this election is important for the future of Europe?
- Populists in France: Marine Le Pen’s results may top that of French president Emmanuel Macron
- Populists in Italy: How well will eurosceptic Italian leader Matteo Salvini do?
What to Expect
Anything.
European polls are notoriously inaccurate. Anything from 28% to 42% for the Brexit party would hardly be surprising. I will take a shot at 38%.
The battle between Macron and Le Pen is amusing but it’s somewhat of a side show. Both are expected to get about 23%.
Does it really matter if it 23% vs 22% as opposed to 22% to 23% the other way? I fail to see how, but that is how the French newspapers portray it.
I will go out on a limb and suggest 24% for Le Pen and 22% for Macron. But I would not be surprised at all with a range of 20% to 26% for Le Pen.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
It is the Brexit party and EU elections in Britain that are the side show. The percentage of people voting is dismal. Nobody expected the British to be involved in this election, the MEP’s will likely not be sitting for much of their term. The fact that the few people who bothered to vote are fueling the Brexit party means little — of course there are a lot of people who find the idea of participating in a European election at this point tiresome. Nobody is thinking about what policies the British representatives should or shouldn’t be backing in their short-lived to be aborted term.
The Macron/Le Pen battle is much more important to the future of the EU, because it is emblematic for the struggle between elitist globalist “progressive” politics and a more nationalist populist wave for the future, and perhaps even a push to make the EU more representative.
Hmmmm…. I’ve a lot to learn about the EU and Britain’s relation to it.
Can someone tell me, is this the equivalent of Texas succeeding from the Union?
From what little I have learned, I don’t see a road to the EU being ultimately successful. Anything meaningful has to be approved by all 28 countries. That’s like having a constitutional convention in this county every time you want a major change in international relations.
The Euro doesn’t allow poor countries (Greece, Italy, etc.) to inflate their way out of economic downturns like the US. These seem to be formidable headwinds.
Am I missing something?
It’s not at all the same as Texas seceding. European countries are independant, and the British have their own currency. Whether Whales, Scotland, and Ireleand remain part of the UK will be the next question, and would involve more a real secession.
Greece and Italy cannot inflate their way out of the union. In the States there is a fiscal union which somewhat evens out regional differences in growth and economic cycles, but in the USA there is also a problem between harmonizing economic policy for California on the one hand and Tennessee or Mississippi on the other. Note that the federal government has increasingly arrogated more and more power and prerogatives at the cost of State level policy-setting as a result.
By the way, inflating/devaluing your way out of economic problems is no “golden” highway. Italy and Greece were not in economic heaven before the currency union, and Greece only got in because everybody committed fraud with the entry requirements. There is also serious disagreement about whether floating currencies do actually adjust automatically to balance trade deficits and export surpluses and disequilibrium in the current account balances, as the economic theorists propose.
There is a problem here.
Like some weird sadists there were people knowing there would be major pain and dislocation in some populations but any price paid was considered worth it.
Look into Lord David Owens comments on Trichet.
The “project” is like a cult religion in some circles and people don’t matter.
Italy was growing faster than Germany for whatever reason. Once the Euro was signed up for it has been quite a different case.
It needs Germany to spend massively across the community and push it’s industrials to set-up in southern Europe. Solidarity, increased spending.
What they did to integrate East Germany needs to be done for Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc.
Only Germany can do it.
AvidRemainer, the odds strongly favor no deal. A wishy-washy deal is second. A referendum is a very distant third, and it might not even pass.
Of course, the EU, led by France might not even wait if the UK decides to hold one.
There is no possibility of no deal. See my reply to Caradoc. The UK will revoke article 50 rather than crash out. The elections results are
coming in rapidly. Add all the remain parties together and they nudge 50%+, leavers 42%. The liars in the Brexit campaign are now turning on each other. The revolution is eating its own. ( Not surprising when Farage looks like he has had elected a Revolutionary Communist to the EP-Clare Fox-check herout.)
“There is no possibility of no deal.“
You really are living in fantasyland
Time will tell
Good for Clare Fox, on the side of the workers. At least she knows what she stands for.
Against the total commoditization of less skilled workers via unfettered freedom of movement pushing up living costs, burdening services, and lowering wages at the same time.
Claire Fox ( my apologies for spelling her first name incorrectly) Revolutionary Communist party member, IRA apologist, Stalinist commie just elected for the Brexit Party in Manchester. If you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas. Disgraceful.
When your Party is named the “Brexit Party,” that’s a pretty good indication that it is a single issue party.
As long as they all work to deliver Brexit, exactly what else they have done, or will do; is no more relevant than whether your Uber driver is a closet Commie, as long as he does deliver you to the agreed upon destination.
I’m not talking about a closet commie. She is a loud and proud card carrying Communist, as I said lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.
If my Uber driver drops me off where I’m going, he can do so in a Lada flying a Soviet flag for all I care.
As long as Stalinita works to deliver Brexit, she is doing what she is supposed to do for a party named “Brexit.” If, once Brexit is delivered, she reveals that her underlying motives is to move Britain into an uncomfortably close alliance with Putin… dump her then. As I would do to my Uber driver, if I catch him punching the address of some Siberian Gulag into his nav system, as I enter his Lada.
Read up on EU corruption and need to “ignore” corruption below certainly levels and how those “ignore” levels have had to increase as there is too much to investigate.
A little knowledge is dangerous, no knowledge is fatal. In order to get an FTA with the EU you deal with the Commission, try to talk to the individual country and they will say ” Talk to the Commission “. Mrs May’s main fault was that she thought negotiating with the EU is the same as negotiating within the EU. A major fault with her and the Brexit loonies-no understanding how the EU works.
I don’t know but perhaps her main fault was she didn’t go to WTO rules from day one and blame the pain on the EU.
No planes in the air, choke points at Calais/Dover, no cabotage rights in Europe, no pan European insurance for drivers, All MRAs gone, end of UK agriculture and fisheries industry, bye bye manufacturing, all FTAs gone, services gone to pot etc…etc… What planet are you on?
Soooooo manyy scary Hobgoblins coming to eat the little children! Unless they exercise their supposed right to vote, by voting for that which they are told to vote for….
You did forget the mother-Hobgoblin though: The Syyyysteeeem will Cooooolaaapse!!!! I mean, what could possibly be scarier, than the collapse of a system propped up by a gaggle of drunks in Brussels?
shouldn’t you migrate to Zerohedge?
We shall see. It’s coming.
You are forgetting no car imports, no prepared salad, soft fruit imports etc. All from EU. Not to forget UK controlled airspace blocked to western Europe, zero tourists to southern Europe etc.
The employer of last resort to many kids and poor in the EU will be off-line too.
Meanwhile there are many countries keen to fill the gaps.
As for driving in the EU, get real. There will be insurance, check your facts. However, EU lorries in the UK will have to pay more, read up on it.
Currently my UK car insurance covers me Europe wide. If we leave on no deal and I want to drive to Italy then I will need separate car insurance for France and Italy. UK Hauliers will face a massacre, their costs will go through the roof. Add to that the loss of cabotage and it will be an unholy mess. Easyjet, BA and even Ryan air will have to become 50% owned by EU citizens in order to operate within the EU. You do understand that BA is a Spanish Airline don’t you. Oh and I forgot, under a no deal VAT will be levied by the EU at the border and paid in full. What company can pay 20% of the value of their goods and leave it as dead money? As to cars, what will people buy? There are no import substitutes produced in the UK so it is French, German, Japanese, Italian or Indian cars or nothing.
NONSENSE
Do you really believe your own rant ? Your UK insurer will keep on covering you where ever you drive on the continent ! Do the swiss need special insurance to drive to Spain ? LOL! ….and all that VAT and car nonsense….Jeez!
Read the Notices for Stakeholders issued by the commission. I said that car insurance will cost more not that it would disappear. The Swiss have cabotage agreements with the EU. Do you know what cabotage is? VAT will be levied on the border, what is it about EU Customs Union law that you don’t understand. Please tell me of any British owned volume carmakers that exist. You cannot. You do not
appear to understand the meaning of the word ” rant”. A rant usually consist of words like “rant” “jeez” and “nonsense” exclamation marks and are usually devoid of fact.
I’m for free trade but note the below.
Korean, Japanese cars. I drive French, next it won’t be as there are better alternatives arriving. Considering Jag as prices have fallen and the i-Pace is pretty good and I can afford it. Suzuki are moving manufacture to UK to service the market for smaller cars.
Insurance companies are working on cover.
UK is net importer so duties in > duties out to be recycled into UK industry and no EU interference.
BA have stated they have no concerns. Ryanair is Irish etc.
It’s not all total doom and gloom.
All 13,000 people in the UK Fisheries industry will be excluded from their largest market, the EU, by punitive tariffs. They will then have to seek other markets. How long will the UK fleet lay idle while their reps sell to these new markets? Get real.
No time at all. Watch what happens.
don t know about you but as far as I remember we had a good life BEFORE the Lisbon and Maastricht treaties and BEFORE the insane common currency was ‘democratically’ shoved down our throats…My late father, a belgian too, set up a small exporting business in Spain in 1976 ! without stupid EU rules, we had lorries driving all over Europe without ‘pan european insurance’ , there s probably some nostalgy involved here but life was not merely good without the EU, it was BETTER !
Appears to have been the case in Italy too before the Euro.
There are valid reason for being in or out but the debate has slipped to the extremes so all reason is muddied.
Good luck to you FromBrussells.
One thing, if the EU is able to elect and be happy with Junker then something is not right.
Lord David Owen is no extremist so if he promotes exiting the EU I tend to listen, not follow, listen, then make up my own mind.
Europe was more united before the first world war, without the Brussels commissars, and without the mandatory quotas for member countries, how many migrants they have to rescue from their self inflicted disasters.
I think fisheries will boom. Controlled EU access and a global market to address. UK fishing ports would be revitalised.
As for air travel, closing UK airspace to the EU would be a nightmare for all.
ChangeUK party is falling to pieces by looks of it. No seats and blame game started.
I don’t warm to Farage but he’s doing what he said he would do – dismantle the Tories, limb from limb. Labour will get hit too. Brexit Party preparing for a General Election and money rolling in.
Touche!
If the goal is to implement Brexit, first you implement Brexit. Only then you look at what may need attention.
With Farage and populists doing so well, might Boris Johnson go for a soft BREXIT to gain strength in the UK, and strengthen populists effort to derail the Brussels technocrats? Or might he take a hard BREXIT, but work out trade deals with individual countries where populism is strong? I prefer the second option because sovereignty will give the UK more flexibility negotiating trade deals.