Stories From Europe's Elections That Are Worth Keeping In Mind

Yesterday was the final day of elections across Europe for the EU Parliament. The headlines are all about how the mainstream center-right and center-left parties took terrible drubbings while the proto-fascist parties surged. The fascist surge had been predicted. A gigantic surge for Europe's Greens-- from 50 seats to 69-- hadn't been. But they did amazingly well in most of the advanced countries, up about 3.4% across the continent.

Malignant tumors

The big news in Ireland wasn't about fascists winning seats, It was about the Green Party surging. "The Sinn Féin vote is down all over the Republic of Ireland. It will no longer be the biggest party in Dublin, with several leaders saying the party is now the victim of the Green surge in support." There was also a referendum. Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar congratulated the Greens and vowed to take action on Climate Change.

The U.K. is a real mess. Putin interference has screwed them over good. The Conservatives lost their asses to the Brexit Party and Labour lost theirs to the Lib Dems. UKIP ceases to exist, virtually all their voters and certainly all their seats now in the hands of the Brexit Party. They fell from 26.6% of the vote in 2014 to just 3.3%, their worst showing ever. London elected 3 Lib-Dems, 2 from Labour, 2 from the Brexit Party and one Green. Scotland was deadly for Labour, which came in 5th (9.3%, down from 26%), losing both their seats! The Scottish National Party (SNP) won the most votes (37.8%), their best performance ever, followed by the Brexit Party (14.8%) and the Conservatives (11.6%). These votes aren't finalized but this is how the UK results look now:

• Brexit (EFDD)- 31.6% (28 seats)
• Lib-Dems (ALDE)- 20.3% (15 seats, from just 1 in 2014)
• Labour (S&D)- 14.1% (10 seats, down precipitously from 18)
• Green Party- 12.1% (7 seats, from just 3)
• Conservative Party (ECR)- 9.1% (3 seats, down from 18)
• Scottish National Party- 3.6% (3 seats, up from just 1)
• Plaid Cymru- 1% (1 seat)

It's worth noting that the Remain parties got 40.4% of the vote, the hard Brexit parties got 34.9% and the 2 confused mainstream parties that both lost because of being confused took 23.2% combined. It seems clear that Brits want a revote and that if they do, Remains will win.

This, more or less, is how the new parliament will look:

This kind of explains what that means although, keep in mind, that "liberal" doesn't mean the same here as it does there. Think of that bloc as centrists. This might help a bit:

• Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D): Forms part of the 'Grand Coalition' and is the second largest party. It's a traditional center-left bloc which is predominately pro-EU.
• European People's Party (EPP): Also forms part of the Grand Coalition and is the traditional center-right party. Also Pro-EU.
• Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE): Mostly made up of liberal-centrists who are Pro-EU.
• Greens / European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA): Made up of Europe's green and regionalist parties.
• Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF): Far-right parties and hard euroskeptics.
• European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR): Right-wing parties who often campaign to reform the EU.
• Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD): Populist and euroskeptic.
• European United Left / Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL): Left-wing, which comprises of socialist and communist MEPs.
• Non-Aligned: MEPs who choose not to align themselves to any groups.
• Others: New MEPs who do not belong to any political groupings yet.

Here are some notes I took during the vote counting:

In Malta, this was the first election where 16 year olds were permitted to vote and, Malta had the highest turnout of any European nation-- 73%. Early returns show the Labour Party way ahead of the Nationalist Party-- 56-36%. The very Trumpist fascist party-- Imperium Europa, which calls for a white ethnonationalist eurofederalist European state-- got just 3.2% of the vote. Malta's 6 EU parliament seats will be distributed among 4 Labour MEPs and just 2 Nationalists-- a gain of one for Labour and a loss of one for the conservatives.

The Greens also surged in Finland and came in second with 16% of the vote. The neo-Nazi pro-Trump Finns Party, ", which was widely expected to dumbfound critics as it did during the parliamentary elections, picked up an additional one percent of votes and held on to its two MEP seats. However the result appeared to fall short of the populist wave that political pundits anticipated across the continent.

"It looks like political parties were better able to mobilise voters who were concerned about issues like climate change and social exclusion and equality than the far-right was able to mobilise about closing borders," social commentator and writer Maryan Abdulkarim told Yle News. She noted that Green parties had posted big gains across the EU on election night.

...The Greens may have been the evening’s biggest winner, but the National Coalition Party led by Petteri Orpo topped the poll with 20.8 percent voter support to retain its three MEP seats, although voter enthusiasm in this election slipped by 1.8 percentage points... The Social Democratic Party also protected its two Europarliament seats, snapping up an additional 2.3 percent of votes in this election to close the night on 14.6 percent support.

The big winner in Spain was the Socialist Party, although the neo-fascist VOX Party took away votes from the mainstream conservatives. Spain has 54 seats at it looks like the Socialists will take 18 of them (up from 14). The conservative People's Party came in second with 11 seats, down from 16. The center-right Ciudadanos won 9 seats, up from 2. The left-wing Unidas Podemos Party came in 4th (7 seats) and Vox came in 5th and will enter the EU Parliament for the first time with 4 seats. Catalan separatist leaders Carles Puigdemont (living in exile in Belgium) and Oriol Junqueras (in prison) were both won EU seats, but unlikely to ever be able to take their seats.

In France Macron suffered a disaster with Le Pen's neo-Nazi party narrowly in first place 24.0% to 22.5%-- 22 seats for the fascists, 21 seats for Macron. The Green Party came in 3rd with 12.5%-- and 12 seats. "The two parties that between them had dominated French politics for decades until the rise of Macron are both shown to have polled in single figures. Nicolas Sarkozy's old party Les Republicains polled around 8 percent, while the Socialist party of Francois Hollande was on 7 percent."

Italy's would-be Mussolini, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini-- who dubbed his campaign "Make Europe Great Again"-- won big, especially in northern Italy. The left-wing parties lost badly.

In Germany the reborn Nazi Party-- Alternative for Germany (AfD) party-- came in 4th and won 10.8% of the vote and 11 seats, 8 more than in 2014. Merkel's CDU came in first with 28.7% and 29 seats, making it the biggest party in parliament, either tied with the Brexit Party or with one MEP more. The Greens came in second with 20.7% to the Social Democrats' 15.6%-- and 21 seats, eight more than in 2014..

In Poland the far right Trumpist ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) won with 42.4% of the vote, to 39.1% for the European Coalition-- led by the biggest opposition party, the Civic Platform (PO). Coming in far short of polling, the center-left Wiosna Party won only 6.6%, and the far right-wing Konfederacja followed with 6.1%. The Law and Justice Party campaigned on a virulently anti-LGBTQ platform.

Estonia reported are no major surprises as pre-election polls proved to be accurate, unlike in much Europe. Their 6 EU seats went to 2 Social Democrats, 2 Reform Party candidates-- one from the Centre Party and one from the fascistic Estonian Conservative People’s Party-- and one to an independent.

Lithuania elected former central banker Gitanas Nauseda, a conservative who ran as an independent, president. He beat another conservative, Ingrida Simonyte. The mainstream conservative party won and extra seat and so did the Greens.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s neo-Nazi ruling Fidesz party won 13 of the country's 21 seats, one more than in 2014. Former Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s Democratic Coalition won 4 seats and the Momentum Movement captured 2. The left-wing/green coalition of the Socialist and Dialogue parties took just one seat and the Jobbik Party, which is even further steeped in fascism than Orbán’s Fidesz, also won a single seat, worse than had been predicted. Turnout was relatively high-- 43%-- more than in any European parliament election since the EU made the colossal mistake of admitting Hungary in 2004.

Shockingly, despite the Strache scandal that featured a tape showing the Austrian fascist leader taking a bribe a Putin crony to sell out the country, the fascists still picked up three seats! After a no confidence vote against the ÖVP-Kurz government, there will be a snap election in September. I have to admit I was once stuck in Innsbruck for six months and I found the countryside beautiful but the people absolutely intolerable; still as Nazi-like as they must have been during World Was II. Conservative as shit, they and the Hungarians were always a problem for Europe.