The European Election

It has been a strange week. The European Elections have come and gone with some very strange twists and turns. In the UK we voted on Thursday (as did the Netherlands) and had the counts on Sunday so that all the seats across Europe were counted together. Why then did we have to wait until Monday for the result from the Western Isles. Does it take four days to ship the ballot boxes over to the mainland?

Labour had a bad time of it, as part of a protracted attempt to fall on its communal sword. Some Tories began to gloat, not realising that in overall terms their own per capita support had also fallen. They showed an increase in support of 1% on a much lower turnout than last time, and failed to take the disillusioned Labour vote. Similarly for the Lib Dems; no real progress. People stayed at home in their droves, especially Labour voters.

This left the way open for others. On the positive side there was a consolidation of the Green vote, and that cannot be a bad thing. On the negative side there was an upsurge of support for UKIP, an oversized pressure group of xenophobes with half their recent leadership missing because they are in jail.

More worringly, was the opportunistic benefit drawn by the BNP on Labour voters apathy. The BNP effectively rallied the minority racist scum of Yorkshire and the North West to sneak in two of their candidates, including the execrable Nick Griffin, a vile little thug who would have joined Combat 18 but could not count that far without taking his shoes off.

I think it shows the importance of registering your vote even when you don't feel that strongly about something. The Little Englanders stopped ranting about straight bananas for a few minutes and registered their support for UKIP, whilst those who still refer to some of their fellow human beings as Yids, Coons, Pakis and Poofs, came out and gave their support to the BNP. These people do not represent us. The rest of us need to be ever vigilant and recognise the importance of exercising our democratic freedoms. We neither want to be an isolated little island off the west coast of Europe, nor do we want to be a thuggish monoculture of hate and intolerance. We are men, we are women, we are Christian, we are Hindu, we are Muslim, we are Buddhist, we are Jewish, we are atheist, we are straight, we are gay, we are black, we are white, we are British, we are European.