The European Union’s parliament is about to undergo a dramatic transition as the latest round of elections wrapped up today, giving Euroskeptic parties with major anti-Euro stances a strong representation across several countries.
The most stark victories were in Britain and France, where parties usually dismissed as “fringe groups” won major victories at the expensive of the usual mainstream parties.
Britain saw the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) winning a dominant 28% of the vote on a platform of withdrawing from the EU and negotiating a free trade agreement across the Commonwealth of Nations as an alternative. UKIP had been growing in previous national elections, but this year’s election was their first ever victory in a national vote. The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, lost almost all their seats.
France was an even bigger surprise, as Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National (FN) came out of nowhere to win 25% of the vote and the largest number of seats, knocking the ruling Socialist Party down to a distant third place finish. FN’s main EU parliament issue is to withdraw France from the Eurozone and reestablish the franc as the nation’s currency.
Even Germany, normally hugely pro-EU, saw big gains for the brand new Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party, an anti-Euro party which split off from the Free Democrats as a Euroskeptic party. They didn’t win, but their fourth place finish saw them as the largest of eight new EU parliament parties from the nation.
Italy saw comedian Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement taking second place as well, as a brand new party. Though not overtly anti-EU, the party has called for a referendum on Italian withdrawal from the Eurozone.
Other nations seeing strong showings for skeptic parties include the Czech Republic, where ANO 2011 won four seats on a platform of stalling economic integration, and Poland, whose Kongres Nowa Prawica (new right) won 7.2% and four seats on an explicitly anti-Euro position.
Expect efforts toward concentrating even more power in the EU bureaucracy and reducing the EU parliament to more of a public relations side show that it already is.
Great news. Does this mean the eurocrooks and synchretists will learn and their head of state puppets will change course? Of course not. The European people will continue to get exactly what they don't want. Until next election when they'll elect an anti-euro majority. But since the euromobsters aren't about to give up power, it'll be interesting to see how the respond when they find themselves in the minority.
As always in EP elections, the turnout was very low: 48% in Germany, 43% in France, 34% in the UK. That means that Le Pen got just 10% of the total electorate, Farage just 9% and AfD a mere 3%. In practice, given the limited power of the EP, people use these elections to make a protest and "loony" parties normally do very well. That they were able to mobilise only 9 or 10% of the voters is no great victory. It means that roughly 90% of EU voters are either favourable to the EU or don't think there is a better alternative. Equally, it's an empty victory. The MEPs don't really have the power to do very much and the anti-EU faction is very small. The two major groups, conservatives and socialists, have 398 seats, wits a few seats yet to be filled. The majority is 376. The anti-EUs will be lucky to muster 60 – 70 seats and, as befits nationalists, are splintered into rival factions which don't agree with each other on anything. Yet another neocon anti-EU scam fails!
Twenty five years ago, Francis Fukuyama predicted that "Liberal Democracy" would bring about the "end of history." European voters, after more than two decades of open immigration, "free trade," and political correctness, are now deciding in favor of renewed nationalism, and against the globalist "Liberal Democracy" practised by banksters, millionaires / billionaires, and crony capitalists who occupy EU leadership positions. Sorry, Mr. Fukuyama, looks like it's "Liberal Democracy" that's ending, and history will simply record another failed attempt at global domination.