The European Union is voting, and as the returns come in, it’s turning out to be another win for the right and loss for the left. Another win for Brexit and loss for “nevermind.”
It’s not a one-off, either. Voter turnout is higher than it’s been in 20 years. People are voting against mass immigration and a million other things, and for the politicians that European and American press assure you every day are lunatics on the fringe doomed to quick departure.
More:
While pro-EU parties still were expected to win about two-thirds of the 751-member legislature that sits in Brussels and Strasbourg, other contenders appeared headed for significant gains, according to projections released by Parliament.
Exit polls in France indicated that Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally party came out on top.
Le Pen said the expected result “confirms the new nationalist-globalist division” in France and beyond.
Exit polls in Germany, the EU’s biggest country, likewise indicated the party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and its center-left coalition partner also suffered losses, while the Greens were set for big gains and the far right was expected to pick up slightly more support.
Turnout across the bloc – not counting Britain – was put at a preliminary 51%, a 20-year high, according to AP. An estimated 426 million people were eligible to vote.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a major figure among the anti-migrant hard-line nationalists, said that he felt a “change in the air” and that a victory by his right-wing League party would “change everything in Europe.”
The results could leave Parliament’s two main parties, the European People’s Party and the Socialists & Democrats, without a majority.
Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party was set to storm to victory in a European election, riding a wave of anger at the failure of Prime Minister Theresa May to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union, early results showed.
The country’s two main parties, May’s Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party, hemorrhaged support while smaller pro-EU parties did well: the Liberal Democrats were in second place, according to a BBC projection.
Nearly three years after the United Kingdom voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU, it remains a member and its politicians are still arguing over how, when or even whether the country will leave the club it joined in 1973.
May quit on Friday, saying it was a matter of deep regret that she had been unable to deliver Brexit and arguing that the decision of the 2016 referendum should be honored. That opened up a period of further uncertainty as the Conservatives decide on who will take over as party leader and prime minister.
BBC projections put the Conservatives on around 10 to 12%, down from 23% in 2014, likely to be one of the party’s worst results in a nationwide election ever.
The Brexit Party was in first place, and was likely to do better than the UK Independence Party did in 2014, according to BBC projections.
“It looks like it’s going to be a big win for the Brexit Party,” Farage told reporters in Southampton in southern England where vote tallies from across the southeast region were being collated.
Does it strike anyone else odd that the press just can’t ever believe that a right-wing party is going to win? That what they call “anti-migrant” while patting themselves on the back is seen by enormous numbers of people as simply reasonable measures to protect sovereignty and security?
Well whatever bee it is that got stuck in their bonnet, I’m pretty sure tonight there are more than a few “blimeys’ coming out of BBC offices.