ONLY a few weeks ago, the psephologists were forecasting that the European elections would see a return towards the status quo in Britain.
While Labour would take a mid-term hammering at the expense of sweeping Tory gains, this would be mainly at the expense of the minor parties. The Liberal Democrats were going nowhere, while the xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party was in sharp decline and disarray and so likely to lose a majority of the 12 seats it won at the last European elections in 2004. Even the Greens were forecast to lose one or both of their seats. The only major cause for concern was that the extreme-right British National Party might win seats.
In 2004, the BNP’s advance was obscured by Robert Kilroy-Silk and UKIP. Kilroy-Silk, a renegade right-wing Labour MP from the 1970s, had over the years transformed himself into the populist host of a daily televison talkshow. When his programme was terminated following Kilroy-Silk’s close to racist comments, he became a political cause celebre on the right. His acceptance of UKIP’s offer to lead its list in the East Midlands region gave the Eurosceptic party both charisma and cash, underpinning its 2004 breakthrough.
It soon went horribly wrong. Kilroy-Silk proved impossible to work with and, after failing to get his own way, he flounced out. Another MEP from the UKIP list, Ashley Mote, was jailed for benefit fraud, while a third, Tom Wise, has recently been charged, along with his assistant, with money laundering. Now former UKIP voters could push the BNP over the top. In 2004, the BNP was fewer than 100,000 votes off winning three seats, this time they could win seats in the North West, where their leader Nick Griffin is standing, the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, Eastern Region and maybe Midlands Central and London.
The Daily Telegraph’s revelations on MPs’ expenses has whipped up a perfect political storm that has transformed the situation entirely, with even core supporters of the main parties demanding punishment and retribution.
While the sums involved in the expenses’ row are baubles for the bankers, they are amounts ordinary people can relate to. The almost prurient interest in bath plugs, biscuits and porn films catches popular imagination in a way Sir Fred Goodwin’s overseeing the loss of £28,000 million by the Royal Bank of Scotland is incapable of doing, even though RBS mismanagement alone will cost every man woman and child in this country £500.
Anyway, if the politicians were unable or unwilling to punish the criminally negligent bankers, they are convenient whipping boys and girls to take their place.
Hidden at the quiet centre of the storm is the Telegraph’s own agenda. The newspaper didn’t create the circumstances, but it is using and manipulating them. The Telegraph sees Labour and Lib Dems as fair game, but there is a selectivity on the Tory side that cuts with the grain of its politics. It is hard to believe that Conservative Euroscepticism correlates with good behaviour on expenses. The Tory patriarchs who have been singled out for exposure are the last remnant of the Tory centre right and “one-nation” pro-Europeans.
The electoral consequences are that it now it looks as if all the major parties will do badly on June 4. The Tories will probably lose three or four seats from their current 27, with the Lib Dems down a couple from 12. Labour is likely to do worse and could go down from its current 19 to 14 or below.
Seats under threat in order of likelihood are in London, the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, the North West, the South West – my own region – Wales and Scotland.
After being virtually written off by the commentators, UKIP is likely to be back with a vengeance – replicating or bettering its result from the last election. The Greens may well pick up seats in some regions as well.
One of the few consolations is that the BNP is being squeezed badly. The anti-fascist campaign by Unite Against Fascism and others that will culminate in the “Love Music, Hate Racism” Festival in Stoke tomorrow (May 30) is having an impact. And so is UKIP’s revival.
Yet the BNP’s support is holding up in some urban areas, including London and the Eastern region. Further, opinion polls are notorious for underestimating voting intentions for extreme-right parties. People are embarrassed to admit they intend to vote for such unsavoury individuals. The BNP might just pick up a couple of seats, but just possibly without Nick Griffin making it.
Thus David Cameron’s seemingly inevitable forward march could be checked. Moderate Tories would be cowed, with Tory Eurosceptics rampant in the wake of a result that means success only for anti-Europeans – whether they support the “leave now” position of UKIP or the “leave yesterday” BNP.
Even the British Greens, in contrast to their continental partners, are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty and the euro, apparently believing the challenge of climate change is best addressed at nation state level. But it would be best to empower the EU to make the necessary decisions within the required timescale.
In the short term, the result for the Tories will leave them well short of their anticipated number of MEPs, thus forcing Cameron, in his search for Eurosceptic allies in Brussels, to treat with the further shores of European politics and thus meaning the comprehensive isolation of his party from the mainstream centre-right. Britain’s results should only be replicated as a pale shadow across the Channel where, despite a slow growth of right – and a little left – populism, it is likely to be business as before. Next week’s results and their political aftermath could put a future Tory government on a path that may well see this country stumbling out of the EU a decade down the line as British obduracy eventually looks too much like sabotage to be tolerated.
It will be bad for Britain, but good for the rest of Europe. With the more pro-European sentiment in Scotland and Wales, the further consequence could be the break-up of the United Kingdom. That the Daily Telegraph triggered the destruction of what it fought to defend may prove a poignant epitaph for its current project.
Glyn Ford is Labour MEP for South West England and Gibraltar
