Sweeping gains by UKIP deliver a body blow to the Conservatives
By Andrew Grice and Stephen Castle in Brussels
14 June 2004
news.independent.co.uk
The Conservatives and Labour suffered big setbacks as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) made sweeping gains when the results of last Thursday's elections to the European Parliament were announced last night.
UKIP, which wants Britain to withdraw from the European Union, was on course to achieve the best performance by a fringe party in a UK-wide election after dominating the campaign and sending shockwaves through the mainstream parties.
An opinion poll, taken as Britain voted on Thursday and published last night, suggested UKIP inflicted more damage on the Conservatives than Labour, winning votes from one in four people who would back the Tories in a general election. That would be a body blow for Michael Howard in his first electoral test as Tory leader. The YouGov survey of 7,400 people for Sky News suggested a close three-way fight between the Tories, Labour and UKIP in the share of the votes cast in the European elections, with the Liberal Democrats trailing in fourth place.
It predicted that Labour and the Tories would each win 22 per cent of the votes with UKIP breathing down their necks on 20 per cent - a stunning success. It put the Liberal Democrats on 14 per cent, the Greens on 8 per cent, the British National Party on 4 per cent and others on 10 per cent.
Such results would give Labour 22 seats in the European Parliament, the Tories 21, UKIP 18, the Liberal Democrats 10, the Greens three and Scottish National Party (SNP) one. At the last elections five years ago, Labour won 29 seats (with 28 per cent of the votes), the Tories 36 seats (36 per cent), UKIP three seats (7 per cent); the Liberal Democrats 10 seats (13 per cent); the Greens two seats (6 per cent); the SNP two seats (3 per cent) and Plaid Cymru two seats (2 per cent).
The number of seats in the UK is being reduced from 87 to 78 following the expansion of the EU from 15 to 25 members last month. The results for the three seats in Northern Ireland will be announced today.
Although the UK turnout was higher than in the 1999 elections, officials in Brussels predicted the lowest EU-wide turnout in a European election of 44.6 per cent, with only 28.7 per cent of people in the 10 new countries turning out.
Across the EU, sitting governments were punished as disgruntled voters opted for opposition politicians, mavericks or Eurosceptics. In Germany, the Social Democratic Party, led by the Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, went down to a humiliating defeat as voters extracted retribution over the sluggish state of the economy. At about 23 per cent, Mr Schröder's share of the vote slumped to less than half of that of his Christian Democrat rivals. who scored 46.3 per cent. The trend was repeated in the Czech Republic, one of the EU's 10 new members, where the Social Democratic Party led by Vladimir Spidla, the Prime Minister, dropped to third. There Eurosceptics gained, as they were expected to do in Poland where the party led by Andrez Lepper, a firebrand Eurosceptic, was expected to prosper.
And in Austria, Hans-Peter Martin, a maverick MEP who has exposed abuses in the European Parliament's expenses regime, emerged triumphant by attracting an impressive 13.8 per cent of the vote on a "clean up Brussels" ticket, and winning two of the country's 18 seats.
Few governments escaped, with the exception of recently elected ones, such as the Greek centre-right administration and the Spanish Socialist government, elected after the Madrid terror attack of 11 March. Mr Howard will come under pressure from some Eurosceptic MPs to harden his party's line on Europe to win back its "lost" supporters. Some senior Tories fear another outbreak of the party's damaging civil war over Europe. Eurosceptics claim Mr Howard's pursuit of a middle way on Europe lost votes. Kenneth Clarke, a former chancellor, warned him not to adopt a more Eurosceptic line. "To start haring after Robert Kilroy-Silk's vote would be a complete disaster," he said.
According to YouGov, Tory supporters favour UKIP's policy of pulling out of the EU by 47 per cent to 40 per cent. But 51 per cent of the population as a whole want to stay in and only 33 per cent want to leave.
Labour hopes that the damage inflicted on the Tories by UKIP will relieve some of the pressure on Tony Blair. |
