Left takes battering in EU elections

Centre-Right and anti-Islamic far-Right parties advance after parliamentary elections attract the lowest number of voters in 30 years.

LONDON // Centre-Right parties were celebrating yesterday, leaving the Left to lick its electoral wounds after results of the European parliament elections. But the silent winner from the votes in 27 EU member nations appeared to be militant indifference - the 43 per cent of voters who bothered to go to the polls was the lowest turnout since Europeans started electing a parliament 30 years ago. Significant, too, were the advances made by far-Right parties peddling an anti-immigrant and, often, anti-Islamic message in countries such as the Netherlands and United Kingdom. It was, however, the centre-Right that had the most to cheer about yesterday after the majority of results emerged overnight. The success of those parties seemed to run at odds with conventional political wisdom, which has it that at times of economic difficulty voters turn to socialist or leftist parties because they expect them to provide better safeguards for jobs and improved provisions for social benefits. As it turned out, arguments that the current recession could be mainly laid at the door of irresponsible US-UK capitalist enterprises - assisted by lacklustre leadership among many centre-Left parties - seem to have held sway. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union pour un Mouvement Populaire took advantage of disarray among its socialist opponents to chalk up an impressive victory, though the Europe-Ecologie Party also made healthy gains. Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition in Germany did not fare quite as well, but still managed to finish ahead of its rivals, with the Social Democrats turning in their worst election results since the Second World War. In Italy, the ruling centre-Right grouping shrugged off weeks of scandalous publicity over Silvio Berlusconi's alleged dalliances with attractive and much younger women, to walk away with about 36 per cent of the vote. By contrast, Labour, the centre-Left party of the embattled UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, turned in its worst election showing since 1918, getting only 15 per cent of the vote and finishing behind the UK Independence Party and the election's big winners, the resurgent Conservatives. For the first time, the Labour Party finished behind the Conservatives in Wales and were second to the Scottish National Party north of the border, bringing renewed pressure from MPs on Mr Brown's leadership. From as far afield as Poland, where the ruling Civic Platform made advances, to Portugal, where the ruling Socialist Party vote crumbled, centre-Right politicians were jubilant. The upshot of the results is that the centre-Right European People's Party (EPP) grouping in the 736-seat European parliament, a reduction in seats from the current 785, will continue to dominate the proceedings in Strasbourg for the next five years. In turn, that means that Jose Manuel Barroso, the former Portuguese prime minister and current president of the European Commission, is likely to be re-elected for another five-year term. "Overall, the results are an undeniable victory for those parties and candidates that support the European project and want to see the European Union delivering policy responses to their everyday concerns," he said. On the other side of the political fence, Martin Schulz, the leader of the socialist group, admitted: "It's a sad evening for social democracy in Europe. We are particularly disappointed. It is a bitter evening for us." The low turnout allowed disaffected voters to give a boost to fringe parties. Greens benefited in several countries, but in Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary and Slovakia, mainstream parties expressed their concern at advances by the far Right. In Holland, the PVV party led by Geert Wilders, who is currently facing prosecution for fomenting religious hatred against Muslims, finished in second place with 17 per cent of the vote and will send four deputies to the European parliament. The far-Right Jobbik Party, taking part in the Euro elections for the first time, finished third in Hungary with 14.74 per cent of the vote and will send three MEPs to Strasbourg, while the neo-fascist BNP in Britain picked up its first two Euro seats ever. Alfred Pijpers, a political researcher at Clingendael, a Dutch international relations institute, said the far right had tapped into voters who "veer from left to right without subscribing to the specific policies of political parties". "These are, above all, people who have a degree of resentment towards the elite and feel misunderstood, excluded from society and the media," he said. Nick Griffin, one of the two successful BNP candidates in Britain, summed up much of the far-Right ideology when he told Sky News: "This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women's rights do not mix." The success of these extremists was seen as a reflection of the meagre turnout, which the EU estimated yesterday to be at record lows in some of Europe's most powerful countries, including Germany (43.3 per cent), France (40.5 per cent) and the UK (35 per cent). In the first European elections in 1979, the turnout stood at 62 per cent but has been in decline ever since; but not everywhere. In the latest round of voting, held between last Thursday and Sunday, 85.9 per cent of Belgians went to the polls. [e-mail]