The European Parliament election 2019

The first-past-the-post minds of most of the UK media are looking at the results of the EU election and thinking: 'triumph for Brexit'. Looking at those results through proportional-representation eyes leads to completely opposite conclusions.

At the time of writing, the two clear LEAVE parties have collected 36.7% of the vote and 28 seats. The four clear REMAIN parties 40.3% and 22 seats. One could muddle these numbers even more by adding in the factions in the fence-sitting parties of Labour and the Conservative, which would make the situation even worse.

This election has given no clear mandate for Brexit, merely reflected and perpetuated the indecisive muddle that has dominated the UK Parliament and the UK media for the last three years. In other words, business as usual.

The results are, in fact, extremely worrying. Three of the major parties – Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens – share many interchangeable policies: we might expect their members to be able to vote for any other party in this cluster with little heartache, despite wearing badges of different colours. A proportional representation voting system encourages such false-flag allegiances.

The international Green tsunami

The rise of the Greens is a particular cause for concern.

Firstly because they are a truly international movement with a greater reach than that old bogeyman the Communist International (Comintern) ever had. They are organized globally and think on a global scale. They are awash with cash. In these EU elections they have done very well indeed. If we add in their 'running dogs' they have done sensationally well.

Secondly because the political and social nostrums they propagate are as socially revolutionary as anything the old Comintern ever thought up. The early Greens half a century ago were cuddly environmental protectionists; the modern Greens have leveraged Global Warming, Climate Change, the 'Climate Emergency' into an instrument of global agitprop, a madness that justifies almost any measures, an end that justifies almost any means. They are as uncaring of the little people as Comintern was of the peasants whom it was supposed to liberate.

The existing national parties are largely powerless against this international movement. If they try to steal Green policies to buff up their own rejected ideologies they must also end up arguing for the destruction of civilisation as we know it. Once they bite the green apple they are done for. No one can outgreen a Green.

In plucky little Switzerland, that bellwhether of national self-destruction, the FDP party, the party that traditionally stands for fiscal caution, sound money and economic growth, recently elected a woman as their president who, in her first act, has seized the green apple. Within a year or so of the first bite, the FDP will become just another Green party, but with a yellow rosette. Similar things are happening throughout Europe.

Update 27.05.2019

For the avoidance of all doubt…

The Remainers in the UK have been telling any media outlet that will listen that Remain were the real winners of the election because the sum of the percentages of the vote for nominally Remain parties was greater than that for the nominally leave parties. Add in some convoluted assumptions about the 'remainity' of the Conservative and Labour parties and you come up with the same arguments the sore losers of the Clinton camp put up against Donald Trump's slightly smaller proportion of the popular vote in the last US presidential election.

We nearly left out the chart supplied by the notoriously left-wing, remainerish Press Association that was based on percentages of the votes for this reason, but since we had also given the seat numbers elsewhere using it seemed reasonable enough.

The percentage of the popular vote is a misleading figure – what matters are seats assigned, since these numbers follow the mathematics of proportional voting to give the fairest result. Counting seats won (using the above figures, not the current results): Leave: Brexit 28 + Ukip 0 = 28; Remain: Lib Dem 15 + Green 7 + Change 0 + Plaid 1 = 23. In total a five seat lead for Leave/Brexit party. Counting votes for parties that failed to get across the hurdle and so obtained no seats at all (Ukip, Change) is cheating. We were discussing voter sentiment, which is not the same thing as seats.

The confused should recall the way things work in UK first past the post elections. In the 2015 election UKIP won 3.9 million votes, a proportion of 12.6% and for their trouble ended up with one seat out of the 650 that were available. No Remainers at the time were clamouring to give them more seats.