Post-Election Geekery

This isn’t going to be a particularly deep or rigorous analysis, just some observations and semi-idle speculation:

• It’s pretty clear the left is fucked, more or less all the way across Europe. The EPP, the mainstream centre-right group, has 264 seats, as many as all the lefty groups (the Party of European Socialists, the Left group and the Greens and regionalists) put together. And there’s another 49 MEPs in the eurosceptic rightwing groups. It’s not a good day to be a socialist.
• The BNP result matters. It may well be down to a combination of low turnout, the recession and Labour taking their white working class support for granted for a decade and a half while they chased the so-called Middle England vote (though of course “Middle England” is anything but), but none of those things look like going away in the immediate future. Having elected MEPs gets them a lot more resources to campaign with, so they’re going to be well-placed for future elections. If you live in Yorkshire or the Northwest, now might be a really good time to join Unite Against Fascism.
• Equally, though, I’d be surprised if the BNP made a breakthrough at the next general election. Euro and general election results don’t really mirror one another – the BNP’s share of the vote went from 4.9% at the last Euro election to 6.5 this time – worrying, but not exactly a stellar rise. In the general election we had in between they only got 0.7%.
• The same goes for UKIP. Yes, they got second place, but as that Wikipedia link above shows, their share of the vote was actually pretty much the same as at the last European election, and that didn’t help them at the general election any more than it helped the BNP. Though I suppose holding on to your share of the vote despite losing Kilroy and having one of your MEPs jailed for benefit fraud shows they’re doing quite well. Still, I’m guessing a lot of those UKIP votes are going to go to the Tories at the general election. So the Tories are almost certainly on course to wipe out Labour at Westminster even if Labour don’t do nearly as atrociously as they did at this election. But we basically knew that already.
• Finally, the Greens are doing OK, which is about the one bright spot in all this – they may have some fucking stupid views on science and health policy, but they’re pretty sound in general. They didn’t gain any more seats, (Salman’s post sadly proving a bit optimistic) but they did get nearly 9%, up from 5.8% in 2004. That means they’re not only well ahead of the BNP, but their share of the vote’s going up faster too. Only a few thousand more votes for them in the Northwest would have kept Griffin out. Also, they apparently won the popular vote in Brighton and Norwich (I don’t have a source for that but it was mentioned in the election night coverage), which could have interesting consequences. As with the BNP and UKIP, though, I wouldn’t bet on them actually winning Parliamentary seats without electoral reform.