EU elections: feminists, indignados and communists triumph
Jonathan Lindsell, 27 May 2014
Unless you’ve been under a wireless-impermeable rock, you will know the headline European Parliamentary election results. You’ll have heard plenty about Ukip’s rise, and endless speculation over the old parties’ reaction. You probably absorbed some comparisons with France’s Front National, which did similarly well, or Holland’s Partij voor de Vrijheid, which did terribly.
The French and British results (even Scotland elected a Ukip MEP) suggest a narrative of Europe’s people moving towards anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-EU parties. This story is attractively simple, but loses much of the election’s colour. Here, then, are some other points of interest:
Nobody Cares
The elections saw awful turnouts, when you would expect a rampaging anti-EU sentiment to motivate voters out of bed. The highest participation levels were seen in countries crushed by the EU’s austerity crusade and the eurozone’s instability, including Eire (51.6%), Greece (58.2%) and Italy (60%). Only microstates and Belgium, where voting is compulsory, scored higher.
It would seem that visionary philosopher and sometime comedian Russell Brand’s pronouncements have been taken to heart. Only 34.2% of Brits voted, despite massive media attention and concurrent local elections. Turnouts elsewhere were dismal – Poland 22.7%, the Czech Republic 19.5%, Slovakia 13%!
Lurch Left
While populism certainly triumphed, the far-right did not. The British National Party was wiped out, Italy’s Lega Nord dropped from 10.2% to 6.2%, Greece’s Chrysí Avgí (Golden Dawn) did far worse than augured last year (9%), and Hungary’s Jobbik stalled on three MEPs. Neither the Sweden Democrats nor the True Finns did as well as predicted.
On the other extreme, one third of Cypriot representation will be communist (AKEL). Spain’s United Left took 12 seats, and the left-wing party Podemos (‘We Can’) won another five (7.8% votes), despite being formed only two months ago from the indignados (‘The Outraged’) street protestors. In Greece, the election was won by the Syriza radical left-wing group, which formed under Alexis Tsipras to oppose the country’s austerity and EU/IMF bullying, and to act as a counterweight to Golden Dawn.
Another triumph was Sweden’s Feminist Initiative, which took over 5% and will send the only formally feminist MEP to Brussels. Soraya Post is also a Roma, and her platform linked women’s issues to rights for migrants, using the slogan, “Out With Racists, In With Feminists!”
Sceptical Complacency
While British Eurosceptics are celebrating an emphatic victory in this latest battle, they may be losing the war: YouGov polling shows that in a hypothetical referendum, 42% would vote to stay and only 37% to leave, reflecting a 2014 trend of ‘In’ tipping the balance.
Ukrainian Hope
OSCE international observers have approved Ukraine’s presidential election, asides the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, meaning Petro Poroshenko has a serious presidential mandate, one that Vladimir Putin has promised to respect. Poroshenko has Russian and business links, so is seen as a capable fixer, but the chocolate magnate also wields a legitimacy his predecessor lacked, so may order more emphatic military operations against Eastern rebels and agitators.
EU leaders must now choose a Commission President, and David Cameron is desperate to block Jean-Claude Juncker. In this we’ll see quite how radical the new European Parliament is.