Brits - Who are you voting for in the European Elections?

Two results and no great shakes so far.

So Labour are losing votes to BNP and Greens and the Tories are not getting them? Come the general election what will happen to those votes? Interesting times.

It will be interesting, are people going to vote tactically when it gets down to constituency level, either to turf out labour or to block the BNP. This weekend feels like it is much worse for the LDs than for labour. I feel like they are going to loose a bunch of seats in the south west and possibly in scotland (although we won't know about that yet).

I keep looking up at Newsnight Scotland and seeing Tories winning stuff. This is giving me proper fear.

Edinburgh could be true blue next year.

Did you think somehow Scotland would be immune to the Rise Of The Right?

Is there anywhere that is publishing the council level vote tallies?

The local news websites are (or at least they are here in Leicestershire) - very depressing reading.

jesus, over 100,000 votes for the bnp in wherever this is, west riding or something.

yorkshire

Fucking cunt bastards

Ned, no, I didn't, but it's the sheer volume of it that's thrown me.

Astonished and depressed by the BNP "success", for fuck's sake what is is happening to this country?

THIS GUY IS A TEACHER?!?

I feel a bit sick. I really didn't think they'd make the top five in any constituency and hence unlikely to snag a seat. Jesus.

I am seriously up for organising a mass protest outside the offices of The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Express where everyone waves massive banners going 'THIS IS YOUR FAULT YOU CUNTS'.

His guff on tv just then was woeful. What a fucking prick, apparently former NF as well.

Well, yeh, apart from the fact it isn't or anything. Still, delighted anyone still thinks the press is that powerful.

Mother fuck, the lack of an xpost warning on iPhone ILX is a pain in the arse.

I don't even know what to say or think. Fuck. I want to cry.

Fucking hell, conservatives largest party in wales.

can yorkshire just fucking fall into the north sea

seriously WOULD NOT MISS ANY OF YOU AND YOUR BNP-VOTING CUNTING POPULATION. fuck off. secede. go back where you came from ie the fucking mud at the bottom of the ocean. cunts.

Umm. Sorry, people are surprised by this?

The only good thing to come from this (eternal optimist that I am) is that the rest of the country might wake up to the fact the festering sore of small-minded racism is a really fucking big problem and can't just be ignored. The BNP might be chumps but we fail to take them seriously at our peril ... as, darkly, this seems to be proving. Christ.

God Toynbee is insufferable right now.

why don't we have any decent political assassins around any more??? if the 60s could produce someone to murder jfk why can't this decade get it together to take nick griffin out

Krishan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News: "people get the politicians they deserve.....maybe all the fuckwits who say they're not interested in politics will sit up"

I knew it was all going a bit wrong, but having it there in black and white, or Tory fucking blue, it's just awful, like a negative photo of that night in 1997 when we all thought everything was going to be OK again. I thought the threat of this might make people cast their minds back further than a couple of years, but no, people are cnuts.

Also: superb, Lex, small-minded broad-brush attack on an entire county there. Irony lost on you, is it?

Dimbleby is outright calling Nick Griffin a racist on TV. Thank fucking fuck for that.

AARGH, GET THIS MAN OFF MY TV. Can we repatriate him to cnutsville?

When people said in 1997 that the Tories would be out of power for a generation I didn't realise that they were talking about Alfie Patten.

ILLEGALS! You dumb cunt, Griffin.

I'm assuming this is the pattern emerging across Europe? Incumbent governments getting a kicking, far right parties gaining ground? The worrying thing is a fascist coalition in the EP.

Maybe I should make my move stateside permanent, or maybe not, the FEC tells me there are plenty of fuckers in my zipcode who gave to Santorum.

Alex Salmond delighted to point out that incumbent party in Scotland remained the most popular.

(note: Scottish Nationalists in no way related to British Nationalists)

Has the UK got to the stage that you can look up campaign contributions yet?

So who else is looking forward to the point when they try to replace Brown with another New Labour type as if that's going to make any fucking difference whatsoever?

This will ensure brown gets to fight the next election, no one is going to want to lead the charge of the light brigade in the next election.

Labour's inevitable defeat (and probable considerable time out of power) at the next general election isn't the most worrying/depressing thing any more, it's the possible collapse of the two/three party balance of power. The combined share of Labour and Conservative votes tonight is going to well under 50%, maybe nearer 40%. Once the BNP (and others) start being seen as a credible alternative ('credible' in the sense that they *could* actually win a seat) then a lot of people who currently vote for one of the big parties because they're the only ones who can win, or who don't vote at all because they don't feel their votes will count for anything, will start voting for these other ones. If it came down to a choice between a 100-seat Tory majority or a minority Tory government with a significant BNP / UKIP presence in parliament, I'd definitely go for the former.

Aye, but the flip-side of that is that other smaller parties can theoretically benefit from such an attitude shift too.

Also: not sure it's that simple, either, but hey.

It's a huge leap for an extremist party to go from polling 10% and hence picking up the last seat in a D'Hondt PR election to actually winning a parliamentary constituency outright in a first-past-the-post system.

Yeah I was going to say. If anyone's going to be dismayed at these results it's the LibDems because the idea of proportional representation is being absolutely trashed here.

0.23am: The BBC has just broadcast its estimate as to the final figures for share of the vote. They are:
Tories - 27% - n/c
Ukip - 17% - up 1
Labour - 16% - down 7
Lib Dems - 14% - down 1
Greens - 9% - up 3
BNP - 6% - up 1

(copy-pasted from guardian 'liveblog')
(there's like at least two very, very minor bright sides there)

But it's the start of the slippery slope. The 'first past the post' system is really designed for two-way contests. If MPs start winning seats with just 25% of the votes in their constituency (which is probably less than 20% of the electorate) and governments get elected with less than a third of the votes (and maybe less than a quarter of the electorate) then there'll be a huge problem of legitimacy and probably a move to PR.
(xposts)

The other thing mitigating against a leadership election is that would labour want to elect someone who may get decapitated at the next election. (Alan Johnson, could loose his seat if a general went like this, not sure about milibands, straw must be at risk)

The Plaid Cymru guy just brought up the inconvenient fact that people are voting Tory in vast numbers at the exact time the consensus shifts towards more state intervention and less free market fundementalism and Dimbleby cut him off to go to the UKIP guy. FFS.

Lib Dems - 14% - down 1

Fuck's sake, lads. Might as well give up now, really.

'lose' not 'loose' (or this another ilx meme?)