Compared with its 2010 General Election Manifesto, UKIP’s manifestos for the recent Euro and local elections were remarkably light on detail but long on saloon bar, right wing sentiment – open borders/immigration, leave the EU, allow smoking in pubs and the sort of petty nationalism that allows us to see some similarities – but not […]
Posts Tagged ‘Euro elections 2014’
Podemos – We can!
Jun 2nd, 2014 by Mike Phipps.One of the most spectacular – and unpredicted – results in the European elections was in Spain. A 16% swing against the governing conservative People’s Party saw the newly formed left party Podemos (We can) take 8% of the vote and 5 seats in the European Parliament. Additionally the United Left, a broad grouping to […]
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European elections: A rising left amid the far right danger
May 30th, 2014 by Kate Hudson.If you base your assessment of what’s going on politically in Europe on the BBC coverage of the Euro elections, you’ll be aware of the massive victory of the Front National in France and not too much else. The parallel rise of the far left was under-reported and where it was covered, the preferred terminology […]
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EU results confirm rejection of austerity is key issue across whole of Europe
May 27th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Commentators continue to misunderstand and misinterpret the EU election results, totting up the far-Right votes in France, UK, Denmark and elsewhere as mounting an almighty challenge to the ‘European project’. They miss the point. The far-Right did not achieve their breakthroughs because their supporters were voting against Europe as such (despite its admitted failures in bureaucratic […]
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Austerity drove white working class to UKIP: why won’t Labour say they’ll end it
May 26th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.It’s true there’s rage at the political establishment for the current state of Britain, especially the deeply run-down economy, and that was the real reason for the UKIP so-called surge (though actually a significant fall-back from UKIP’s vote last year). Of course there was constant vilification of Europe and immigrants, but they are merely convenient scapegoats for […]
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Where now for the Liberal Democrats
May 26th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.While we wait for the final results from the Orkneys to trickle in so I can scrutinise those all-important No2EU votes, let’s spare a thought for the Liberal Democrats. They went from 11 MEPs to just one, and managed to lose even more councillors than the Tories. In all, a very bad night and a […]
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Revisiting No2EU
May 18th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.If it wasn’t for UKIP, it’s fair to say most people wouldn’t know European elections are in the offing. Yet while the media buzzes about Farage’s one-man party and what the mainstream are doing about it, the ballot paper is littered with anti-EU also rans. Here in the West Mids there’s the BNP and English […]
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Why is the extreme right on the rise in Europe?
May 12th, 2014 by Tom Gill.The European Parliament is preparing to welcome the most powerful extreme right that the Old Continent has seen since the 1930s. Ignacio Ramonet discusses the factors behind this disturbing political development in a translation by Tom Gill from the French original. One thing is certain: the European elections in late May will result in an overall rise of […]
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Why a Euro victory for UKIP would give Labour & Tories alike cause for concern
Apr 28th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.I’ve previously written about the drift of working class voters to UKIP and argued that, whilst in the short-term it would harm the Tories more than Labour, it was a serious longer-term threat to Labour. Phil Burton-Cartledge has also written more recently about what lies behind this threat and how to respond to it. Yesterday, Lord […]
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Radical left could become third force in EU parliament, polls show
Apr 26th, 2014 by Tom Gill.The radical left could become the third force in the European parliament, after the conservatives and social democrats, according to recent polls. Syriza in Greece leads with 26.2 % support, followed by Portugal, Spain and France. With a month to go to the European Parliament elections, polls suggest the Parliamentary Group of the European United Left (GUE – NGL) could increase […]
