I won it last year – there’s no reason why (if you have a blog on EU affairs) you couldn’t win it this year.

From the press release:

The European Parliament Prize for Journalism will be awarded for the fourth time in 2011 to journalists who have covered major issues at European level or promoted better understanding of EU institutions or policies. Journalists can submit their applications as of Saturday 15 January.

There will be four different categories for the prize: written press, radio, TV and Internet, the winner in each section receiving €5,000.

The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2011. Individuals or teams of up to five people are eligible to contribute articles or reports. The contributions must have been published or broadcast between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2011 in one of the official languages of the European Union. All entrants must be registered journalists who are nationals or residents of an EU Member State.

Don’t be put off by the idea of being a “registered” journalist. I’m not, and I still got through. (As an aside, the very concept of a “registered journalist” sends a shiver down my spine – redolent of totalitarian times past. Or is that just me?) If you’re a blogger and you’ve been going for a while, that should be enough for them to take you seriously.

More info here: http://www.eppj.eu/view/en/introduction.html

Sorry – no time to write up yet, so beneath the fold are the videos of the event I spoke at earlier this month, looking at how the EU is portrayed in the British media and blogs.

The first panel (on which I sat) looked at the EU in the media, and was rather spoiled by David Rennie of the Economist (erstwhile Charlemagne, now Bagehot) having to leave early, leaving me stuck by default as the sole “pro-EU” voice – a role I wasn’t keen to accept. We then also got into the Eurozone crisis – areas I hoped David would be able to field, due to my lack of comfort with fiscal/economic policy debates – along with plenty of other sidetracks.

The second panel, focusing on the UK in British blogs, was a lot tighter and more focused – but probably of less interest to the general EU geek, rather than EU blogging geeks. There doesn’t appear to be video of that yet.

Short version of my take:

- Journalists are lazy
- Journalists are ignorant
- Journalists rarely bother to do their research
- Journalists are arrogant enough to assume they’re right without checking
- Journalists have too little space/time to satisfactorily explain complex issues to a general audience
- Too few newspapers employ decent sub-editors to fact-check

(And I say all this as a journalist, of sorts, who’s earned his living from writing, subbing and editing for more than a decade.)

Plus:

- The EU is boring
- The EU is incredibly complicated
- The EU rarely does anything newsworthy

All this combines to give the likes of UKIP and other anti-EU groups plenty of scope for sexing up non-stories, lies and distortions to suit their agenda. People like Nigel Farage are entertaining, which is why they get airtime. People like Dan Hannan make the EU sound important and immediate, so they get listened to.

Even shorter version: If the EU *isn’t* getting reported in the media (because this isn’t a problem that’s exclusively British), that’s because it’s doing its job properly. If there’s nothing to report, that means there’s nothing to complain about.

But at the same time, I think it’s a genuine disgrace that the media – so often so proud of its role as the body that keeps an eye on the politicians for the public – pays so little attention to the EU when EU laws affect so many parts of our lives. This is largely due to ignorance and laziness on the part of the press – not helped by the EU being so very, very boring.

Not sure if I got that across or not. The videos are below – judge for yourself…

As long-time readers will know, one of this blog’s lasting obsessions is the portrayal of the EU in the British media. Hell, the rampant bias and distortions (from both the pro- and the anti- camps) were pretty much what got me interested in the EU in the first place. Indeed, the reason this blog’s title was originally “Europhobia” was because I started out aiming to focus on what makes us Brits so inherently eurosceptic.

So my participation in a panel discussion / mini-conference this time next week (organised by Bloggingportal.eu) may be of interest to some London-based readers – though I can’t pretend to be as comfortable forming coherent arguments off the cuff while speaking in public as I am jotting my thoughts down in a more considered manner on the interweb. Details as follows:

WHEN: 10th December 2010 – 13:00 – 18:00

WHERE: Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London, SW1P 3EU

WHAT: A non-partisan event exploring the different ways bloggers and journalists can cover the EU in Britain

HASHTAG: #EUuk

EVENT PROGRAMME

13:00 – EVENT START / REGISTRATION / SANDWICH LUNCH

13:45 to 15:15 – FIRST PANEL – “The EU in the British Media”

We’ll be asking our panelists about the coverage of the EU in the British press. Do the media generally do a good job of “keeping tabs” on the EU? Is it true that British euroscepticism is driven by the media, or are the media just following public opinion?

PANELISTS:
David Rennie – Political Editor and Bagehot Columnist, The Economist, Bagehot’s Notebook
Paul Staines – Blogger, Guido Fawkes
Mats Persson – Director, Open Europe
J Clive Matthews – Blogger, Nosemonkey’s EUtopia

15:15 – COFFEE BREAK

15:45 to 17:45 – SECOND PANEL – “The EU in the British Blogosphere”

In this panel, we’ll be turning a critical eye on the British blogosphere. Do bloggers have any advantages over mainstream journalists when writing about the EU? Are bloggers better informed and freer to say what everybody is really thinking? Unconstrained by deadlines and editorial oversight, can they delve deeper into a story? Or are they just under less pressure to maintain levels of accuracy and ethical behaviour?

PANELISTS:

Bruno Waterfield – Brussels Correspondent, The Daily Telegraph, Europe not EU
Gawain Towler – UKIP / Europe of Freedom and Democracy Press Officer and Blogger, England Expects
Antonia Mochan – Head of Media, EU Commission Representative in the UK, Talking About the EU
Jon Worth – Blogger, Jon Worth’s Euroblog

Both panels will be moderated discussions, including time for questions from the audience. There will be wifi provision and a charging station for laptops/mobile phones etc. There are still a couple of places available, so please let us know by e-mail (at info bloggingportal eu) if you are interested in attending. Entry is free.

—

You may also have noticed that the blog now has a new look. Hopefully a bit more readable than the traditional light text on a dark background – I’d been meaning to change it for years…

There’s still a few bugs in the system (the categories aren’t displaying properly, for starters – and I need to get a few more images in here to make it look prettier), but I’m hoping to get them fixed soon.

Many thanks to Jon Worth for helping me out by fixing as many as he has done already.

And here’s a nice report from Journalism.co.uk.

I may well be posting some more detailed thoughts here at some point soon – no doubt musing on the concept of a political institution giving journalists money for doing their job in a manner the politicians like (or, indeed, of giving journalists any money whatsoever), the state of political blogging, journalism and EU coverage in general.

For now, however, here’s an updated version of the acceptance speech that I decided on the day that I wouldn’t use (mostly due to not having had the time to formulate it in my head after hearing why I’d won…)

—-

Although I’m flattered, I genuinely *don’t* think that my post on the percentage of laws that come from the EU [which won me the 5,000 euro prize] deserves to be described as “extraordinary research work”.

“Informative and interesting”, perhaps. “Understandable and convincing”, I hope. Written “with a sense of humour”, I’d like to think. But “extraordinary research work”?

The research that went into that post was less than I would have done on an undergraduate history essay while at university. It was just a tiny fraction of what I would have needed to do for a postgraduate level essay. Compared to a PhD or a book? It’s nothing.

I’ve not done a PhD, but do have an MA in history, have written two books and edited several others – I don’t know what “extraordinary” research is, but I’ve got a good idea of what counts as *proper* research.

You want proper research on the percentage of laws that comes from the EU? Check out this 59-page PDF research paper from the (politically independent) House of Commons Library – amusingly published the very same day that I was in Brussels being handed an award for my supposedly “extraordinary research work” on the very same topic. My post looks like *nothing* in comparison (though – sweetly – it is referenced in the footnotes).

I did my MA before the internet had really taken off as a research tool, when to find things out one had to sit in libraries for weeks, months on end, inhaling the dust of generations of pasty students. When to get to the *really* interesting stuff, one had to hop on a train – perhaps even a plane – to go to the documents, rather than have the documents delivered to you, direct to your laptop. When to uncover something new, one might have to spend years studying a new language to enable the decryption of a document that no one had read for hundreds of years.

We don’t realise how lucky we are. Thanks to the internet, we’re utterly spoiled.

Had I been working ten years ago, that post would have taken me a good couple of days – perhaps as long as a week – to dig out all the information. As it was, it took me a little over an hour and a half.

That’s not “extraordinary research work”. That’s being aware of this thing called Google, and understanding how to use the web to uncover information. Something that *every* journalist or blogger worthy of the name should know how to do.

I’ll accept that I may have compiled that information in an accessible way – hell, I’ve been a professional writer/editor for over a decade so I bloody ought to be able to – but research? That was nothing. And if anyone thinks it is, that says more about the dire state of the general, accepted standard of research that goes into articles about the EU (and most other subjects these days) than it does about my own abilities.

I’m flattered, but let’s be realistic here…

—

For those who are interested, a report and some interviews with yours truly – I like the last the best:

Journalists following the dodo?: Interview w/Nosemonkey
Uploaded by tuulitoivanen. – Up-to-the minute news videos.

Horrifically busy in the real world, hence the longest break in blogging on this site in more than six years. I am, however, still commenting away about the EU (among other things) in 140 characters or less on Twitter on a daily basis – that’s the best place to find me these days. You can get an RSS feed of my Twitter ramblings here – just be warned that it’s not all politics related, some of it’s personal, some of it’s very silly, and some of it’s very sweary.

Twitter has a wonderful ability to suddenly introduce you to new people – a 140 character limit meaning that you can read hundreds of different people’s opinions every day in a way that simply isn’t possible in long-form. If also means I’ve been coming across more ridiculous nonsense than I have in several years, as I keep getting alerted to stories and blog posts from sources I’d never normally come across by myself.

When these are EU-related, they’re normally incredibly familiar – the usual stories that get repeated year after year. Having, as I do, fairly extensive archives, I keep finding myself using old posts to rebut “new” stories – be it over the EU budget, the EU’s role in guaranteeing British freedom, the concept of an EU superstate. Along the way, I’ve got into arguments with anti-EU campaigners from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Bruges Group, OpenEurope and more.

It’s all great fun. A bit like blogging in the good old days, when I actually had time to read and comment on other blogs.

Having said that, I’m planning to start blogging again soon. I’m writing less and less in the day job these days (unless you count innumerable emails, Powerpoint presentations and planning documents), and am starting to get rusty.

There’s still a question of precisely what to write *about*, though. I’ve covered many of the broad EU issues – often several times. I have no time for party politics or the “personalities” of the Brussels bubble (something I’ve never been a part of anyway). I usually haven’t got the time – or expertise – for detailed policy analysis. And as entertaining as arguing with eurosceptics can be on Twitter, I prefer to keep the blog for considered argument and polite debate – turning the focus back to pointing out the flaws of eurosceptic arguments tends to attract the kind of responses I have no interest in dealing with.

And in any case, these days there are plenty of other EU bloggers to do that sort of thing – you can find them via Bloggingportal. (I remember when this here EUblogosphere were all fields – just me, EU Referendum (sadly increasingly shrill in its anti-EU vehemence these days), A Fistful of Euros, and a handful of others, now long since departed.)

So, back properly soon. Hopefully. At which point I’ll hopefully also find time to give this place a spring clean – some of the site’s code has broken, and a redesign is long overdue to make the text more readable. The only trouble is I’ve lost my FTP details, so can’t get in to change anything…

More egg nonsense, I’m afraid, but this was too good not to share. From the comments to inexplicably popular UK political blogger Iain Dale’s “you couldn’t make it up” post about the made-up story about the EU banning the selling of eggs by number:

“At June 29, 2010 10:45 AM, Roger Thornhill said…

@Douglas “The weight needs to be displayed. That is all.”

Replace “weight” with “yellow star” and the penny might just drop for you.

Yes, that’s right – someone whose chosen online pseudonym is the name of Cary Grant’s falsely-persecuted everyman in Hitchcock’s conspiracy thriller classic North by Northwest is comparing a regulation asking for food packaging to include an indication of the product’s weight to the start of the Holocaust.

First they came for the egg boxes, and I did not complain, for I was not an egg box…

As I say, sometimes it can be very hard to take eurosceptics seriously… This is now my new favourite stupid anti-EU comment of all time, swiftly overtaking one-time sensible anti-EU blogger Tim Worstall’s bizarre allegation that I simply *must* be in on the grand EU conspiracy – how else to explain someone saying that europhobic bullshit is, erm… europhobic bullshit? (Though to be fair on Tim, he’s only the latest in a long line of ranting maniacs to flatter my ego with suggestions that people might find me worth bribing.)

I do love writing about the EU sometimes – it has a wonderful tendency to bring out the very maddest in people.

Details here. I’ve been named the UK finalist in the internet section for my June 2009 post on the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU (also published on Liberal Conspiracy and BlogActiv).

From the announcement:

“An article on the percentage of our laws originating in the EU got the UK nomination for the internet section. The judging panel found James Clive-Matthews’ EUtopia blog overall very entertaining, but selected this entry for its attempt to clarify how the arguments used to make claims about the influence of EU legislation often take original quotes out of context. EUtopia does not draw any conclusions, but lays out the context for the various claims and counter-claims, as such helping to clarify what is often a contentious issue.”

Which is nice.

I would also like to state for the record that nothing I have written on this blog has ever been published with the hope of securing money. It’s all just for my ego – not for anyone else’s, and certainly never to support any political institution or ideology (except on the very rare occasions that I feel that such support is warranted).

So although I find (UKIP press officer) Gawain’s old description of this as the European sycophancy prize amusing, I’d dispute it. Because any blogger/journalist willing to spew out rubbish that they don’t believe in the hope of sucking up to the powerful is never going to be worth reading anyway – and no amount of prixe money will ever alter that.

On a related note: For a more detailed analysis of the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU, check out this detailed report into the subject (PDF). Fascinating stuff – and also tends to support my own vague conclusions.

Hell, I’m supposedly a leading EU politics blogger, and I’ve barely discussed what’s been going on in the midst of one of the biggest crises I can remember the EU facing as the various member states try and work out what the hell to do about the Greek economic collapse.

I thought it was just me being lazy, but according to The Week in Bloggingportal roundup of Euroblogs, not a single one of the 555+ EU-related blogs that Bloggingportal aggregates could be bothered to discuss last week’s EU summit.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Good old Fistful (one of the few EU-focussed blogs to have been going longer than this place) has been covering the Greek crisis in depth for ages now, and had another lengthy post on Friday looking at how the Greek situation could impact on the Eurozone. Yet even Fistful found little room to discuss the machinations at the EU Summit, preferring to focus more specifically on the economics.

And herein lies the problem. Now that the Lisbon Treaty has been passed, the major areas of EU-related debate have shifted – as they often do, when there aren’t treaty negotiations going on – to the economy.

The only trouble is that there have been treaty negotiations going on for so long now (pretty much continually since the late 90s, with first the Nice negotiations, then the discussions that led to the EU Constitution, then the run-up to Lisbon, and Lisbon again after the first Irish referendum) that most EU-watchers (especially us amateur ones) have become more used to constitutional issues than economic ones. We’ve all been looking at the big *political* picture, not the economic one. (And – let’s face it – most people who are interested in politics aren’t very good when it comes to economics… How many newspaper columnists outside the Business section would you trust on economic analysis? How many politicians not involved with a Finance ministry, for that matter?)

But the EU is, at its most fundamental, an economic body. Yes, you can dispute precisely how it goes about it (and you may be one of the conspiracy theorists who sees the economic aspects of the EU as being a mere smokescreen for the political project), but at the EU’s heart lie vastly ambitious economic projects, from the Common Market and Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies through the Eurozone, Regional Development Funds, even the attempts to cut mobile phone tarrifs and promote the free movement of people. All of these are economic at heart – and even if you are one of the conspiracy theorists, they are economic as much as they are political.

But understanding continental-scale economics takes levels of knowledge, reading, education and understanding that most political commentators simply don’t have . Hell, the very fact that there’s still no consensus on the benefits of the euro shows that – and most people who comment on the euro, even those who have the economic background to know roughly what they’re talking about – don’t have the knowledge of the individual economies and polities that make up the Eurozone that would really be necessary to provide a proper analysis (though Fistful and the Economist’s Charlemagne have good stabs at coming close on occasion).

And so what we mostly do, us EU political commentators, is we try to discuss what’s going on in the EU in terms that are easier to understand. We try to treat the EU as if it’s a country, and EU politics as if its the politics of any old nation state. We try to create conflict – as over the European Council Presidency appointment – and we try to create factions – be they pro-EU vs anti-EU (if you’re in Britain), neo-liberal vs socialist, Anglo-Saxon vs whatever you happen to identify with that’s not Anglo-Saxon (if you’re outside Britain), or whatever.

Part of the reason for this is a desperate attempt to get people interested in a subject that interests us – because so few people care tuppence for EU affairs. But it’s also because we understand conflict. We can explain conflict. We can understand personal, selfish reasons for particular policy positions. They make sense to us, looking at the EU from the perspective of people only used to national-level politics. We don’t all understand economics or interntaional law, and none of us understands the politics of all the individual member states. And so we focus on those things we do understand, and read those into everything the EU does.

But the EU is not a single, harmonious entity, and cannot be simply explained. It is made up of 27 individual member state governments (who all still have to agree unanimously on all major decisions, despite being made up of political parties of all stripes), plus the European Parliament, plus the commission, plus the numerous other bodies that hang around the fringes.

If “the EU” decides to act, it is never for just *one* reason. It is for *at least* 27 different reasons. Unlike with national politics, where policy decisions can often be explained in just a sentence, every EU decision is vastly complex – with large chunks of the decision-making process having taken place behind closed doors in languages that you don’t understand.

In short, we can never hope to understand the EU. It takes more economic knowledge than most of us have. It takes more knowledge of the politics and economics of the individual member states than anyone had. It takes an understanding of all the insane confusion of EU rules, reglations, laws and treaties that can only be gained with a lifetime’s study of international and EU law. It takes insider knowledge of diplomatic discussions and deals that will probably never be revealed.

All we can do is guess – and our guesses will *always* be based on only a tiny, tiny fraction of the knowledge that is needed to get close to the truth. In fact, I can state with utmost certainty that anyone who tells you that they understand the EU is either lying or deluded. No one understands the EU. It is simply too big, too complex, too secretive, too multidisciplinary, too multilingual, too innovative, too unique for anyone to be able to grasp it in its entirety.

This, of course, makes it fascinating to those of use who like a challenge. But it also makes it utterly daunting. To try to explain the EU is like trying to climb Mount Everest. Without oxygen. Or ropes. Or protective clothing. With both arms tied behind your back. At night. In a blizzard.

Little wonder, then, that sometimes the enthusiasm leaves us. Some will quit for good. Others will keep bashing away at it – perhaps deluding themselves that one day they will get it. I intend to keep bashing away at it – but after seven years of an uphill struggle, for now I need a breather while I scout out a new route. This economic crisis in Greece and its reveberations throughout the continent has shown that there are some major gaps in my knowledge of the EU, and I need to fill these in as best I can before I continue.

Back soon, I hope. But in the meantime just remember that *no one* knows what’s going on. Keep that in mind whenever you read anything about the EU and you should do just fine.

I’ve been a bit quiet over the last few weeks, largely thanks to the real world getting in the way.

One of the major projects I’ve been working on, however, is now in a pre-launch beta phase, and so can be officially revealed: Ideas on Europe – a new group blog that I’ve been developing in partnership with UACES, the University Association for Contemporary University Studies.

Describing itself as a place for “informed analysis, comment, dialogue and debate on all things European”, Ideas on Europe is intended as a non-partisan, multi-national, not exclusively political portal for academics working in the field of European Studies – taking in politics, economics, history, sociology, public policy, culture, geography and more – to engage with those of us outside the ivory towers as well as those within.

At the moment we’ve got nearly 40 contributors on board – a number that’s set to rise considerably – ranging from postgrad students to named chairs at high-profile universities. Some of them have begun to make their first forays into blogging, with posts from Jaani Kaerne (from the University of Tartu in Estonia), EUoplocephalus (from the University of Surrey in the UK), and (in German) Vanessa Buth – as well as a few from me – leading the way.

Among even this initial contributor base, there is a broad range of expertise and experience – with blogs dedicated to subjects like welfare, migration, security, energy, north Africa, and education, as well as more generalist contributors. Now that the site is going public, we should start to see a bit more activity from these early adopters.

Many of the areas we aim to end up covering are currently sorely under-represented in the world of Euroblogging – not to mention the relative lack of academic contributors to the various online debates, most of which are currently dominated by a combination of enthusiastic amateurs and professional political types – so I very much hope that those of us who’ve been active in this section of the internet give the site and its contributors our support, encouragement and advice as it starts to get off the ground over the next few months. Not least because the vast majority of our contributors have never blogged before – nor, indeed, taken part in online discussions.

I’ve already answered some questions about Ideas on Europe’s aims and intentions over at Kosmopolito (which now has its own presence on the new site) and also at Blogactiv, but naturally enough, I’m happy to answer any more that anyone may have here.

I’m on Twitter at the moment, blathering away more or less incoherently with a bunch of other Eurobloggers (@JonWorth, @JulienFrisch, @kosmopolit, @citizeneurope, @EuropeanCitizen and a bunch of others) as the results and rumours come in.

Follow along via the hashtags #eu09 and #ep09 – your best bet is probably to use Twitterfall to follow the various tweets live. It’s fairly simple to use, it must be said – just add a bunch of searches into the “Custom” field in the left-hand column (I’m using #ep09, #eu09, EU, Europe and elections), and get real-time commentary from all over the shop. Some of it’s rubbish, naturally – this is the internet – but some is surprisingly good.

Current trend – at 8:45pm UK time, so 15 minutes from the results – seems to be a surge in support for the right (both centre right and far right), with mostly falling turnouts yet again, though ranging member state to member state from c.20% to c.80%. But with national issues likely to dominate everywhere, working out Europe-wide reasons for any apparent trends is something to be treated with great caution.

Below the fold – my Twitter contributions from the night (in chronological order, starting c.8:45pm UK time, ending c.2:30am UK time – and for Twitter newcomers, “RT” indicates where I’m quoting someone else):

Wow – passably interesting live coverage from EuroparlTV! (Well, interesting if you’re a bit of a geek…) http://tinyurl.com/quudxp

Anyone know of alternatives (FR/EN ideally) to the BBC’s fancy graphical EU elections thingie? http://tinyurl.com/o8x7lg #ep09 #eu09

Good news for lefties – in Greece, at any rate: http://tinyurl.com/qxtma5 The right doing well pretty much everywhere else #ep09 #eu09

RT @jonworth Swedish Pirates get 7.4% so 1 MEP at least. http://tr.im/nIDZ #eu09 #ep09 [I utterly insist they dress as pirates AT ALL TIMES]

RT @demsoc Early turnout figures for #ep09 – new low of 43% [Yay for democratic engagement! I hate people sometimes...] #eu09

#eu09 now seems t be trending in Twitterfall… #ep09

Declan Ganley trailing in 5th place, according to the BBC. So much for Libertas… #ep09 #eu09

RT @JulienFrisch #eu09 hashtag has made it on the global Twitter trends. [Hurrah! A few days too late, but still...] #ep09

Oh Christ – not Jeremy sodding Vine and his sodding patronising graphical bullshit… #eu09 #ep09

RT @ConnectIrmeli: #eu09 #ep09 Finland: Big winners are True Finns (rising EU critic) and Greens, all three big parties (Right, Centre, Left) losing votes

Christ – the Socialists have absolutely collapsed in France. Minus 18% share of vote, and minus 11 MEPs! Sarkozy’s lot up. #ep09 #eu09

Dear anti-BNP protest types in Manchester – don’t get aggressive at BNP twat Griffin – he’ll only use the footage for self-promotion

RT @dnotice Less likely BNP will win a NW seat, as in Burnley Lib Dems are looking as if they will come 1st http://is.gd/RYbE #ep09 #eu09

RT @dnotice RT @StopNickGriffin: Looks like BNP can’t win – LD & Green for final seat – v high Green in Manc & L’pool seems to have done it!

RT @jonnelledge SNP probably beat Labour in Scotland, even though SNP in power up there. Christ, they’re fucked, aren’t they? #eu09 #ep09

RT @RTE_Elections: Across Europe, no sign of Libertas candidates being elected yet in other member states, apart from France #ep09 #eu09

RT @siliconglen: #eu09 Labour in 6th place? wow. http://bit.ly/CMyCD

Hmmm… Greens, Liberals and Socialists all up (slightly) in Germany. That “right on the rise” trend seems less clear #ep09 #eu09

@JulienFrisch Ah – fair enough. My knowledge of German politics these days is next to non-existent…

William Hague: “All the main EP groups are too pro-EU.” What about the IND group, Bill? Tories would be an ideal fit with Farrage’s lot…

Anyone know why France and Germany, who voted today, already have full results out, but the UK has NOTHING, despite voting days ago? #eu09

RT @kosmopolit @Nosemonkey German TV had UK result (forecast?) 20 min ago: CON 26% UKIP 18 % LAB 16% GREENS 10% LIB 12% as far as I remember

RT @bloggers4ukip: Independence & Democracy group loses all 9 MEPs in Poland – Poland is now a eurofederalist country #eu09 [Ha ha ha!]

Labour still 1st in the North East? I wasn’t expecting that, even though it IS the North East… #eu09 #ep09

RT @JulienFrisch RT @Tayebot: First estimations of the new hemicycle online: http://bit.ly/11OdNi SOURCE: TNS #eu09 #ep09

RT @tim_woodall: The Apprentice more of a trending topic than the election! [And this is why democracy is screwed...] #ep09 #eu09

RT @tpcom provisional #eu09 results PES 155-167 EPP 263-273 Greens 52-56 ALDE 78-84 GUE 33-37 UEN 33-37 IND 1519 Others 83-89 http://is.gd/

RT @Eurocentrique Just got back from the European Parliament – walked into a press room at one stage and saw 30 screens all on twitter :)

IND Group’s loss of all nine MEPs in Poland now confirmed by the BBC. EPP up 30% – Cameron’s new Group looking even more silly #eu09 #ep09

“The Poles may be the biggest national bloc within the EPP” – BBC’s Alan Little. Nice move, Cameron! Could have been the Tories. #ep09 #eu09

RT @jonworth Eric Pickles is shockingly bad. “We won’t ally with anti-gay parties” – so what is PiS / Law & Justice in Poland, Eric? Idiot.

RT @ALDEgroup Libertas’ Declan Ganley 4th place after the 1st count “virtually no chance” of a seat in Ireland’s North West. #eu09 #ep09

RT @pickledpolitics Eric Pickles didn’t know what to say… as to why Tories didn’t gain from Labour in Eastern region. hilarious #ep09 #eu09

Christ – BNP ahead of the Tories in Barnsley? Right – new first strike coordinates for when I get the nuke codes… #eu09 #ep09

Yorkshire & the Humber – BNP get 120,139… Fuck you, Yorkshire. #ep09 #eu09

FUCK. British Nazi Party gets a seat. Fuck you thoroughly, Yorkshire and the Humber. #eu09 #ep09

RT @jonworth Britain’s best Labour MEP, Richard Corbett, loses his seat to Andrew Brons of BNP. Awful, awful. #eu09 #ep09 [I hadn't twigged]

RT @jamesgraham Polls seem to have consistently over represented the Greens. #ep09 #eu09 [in the UK, at any rate]

So, farewell then, Richard Corbett: The only non-mental MEP to ever get regular UK media coverage, and the first MEP to blog. #eu09 #ep09

Oh God, an articulate, middle-class racist MEP. Barking conspiracy-theorist racist loon, but a good speaker. This could be very bad. #eu09

RT @demsoc Newly elected BNP MEP claims Gordon Brown is going to rerun Euro election until he gets the right answer. He’s nuts, isn’t he? #eu09

BNP MEP former National Socialist Movement member, former National Front candidate. Hardcore fascist, in other words. Hurrah. #eu09

RT @demsoc Frankly, BNP MEP sounded just like a UKIP one to me.

RT @pickledpolitics It’s looking like [British Nazi Party leader] Nick Griffin may be elected MEP. Great. Just great. #ep09 #eu09

RT @jonnelledge Labour down 12% in Wales. Beaten by the Tories. In Wales. You know, the place with the unions and miners and stuff. Christ

RT @demsoc Polish far-right party, Samoobrona/Self-Defence, loses all 6 of its MEPs as vote collapses. [See - it's not all bad...] #eu09

I’m not a violent man, but I’d happily stomp Nick Griffin’s face into a bloody pulp.

RT @JamieSport If racism is vitriol directed at people who look like Griffin, then I’m a massive racist.

Christ. It’s starting to sink in. The last five years of Kilroy and UKIP stupidity was fun. But the BNP in the EP? It’s just not funny.

@dnotice The BNP won’t be in any group – the far-right Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition group collapsed thanks to them all hating foreigners.

RT @CaffeinatedDave: BNP gets it’s first seat, due to 2.5 million people doing nothing #yorkshireshame #eu09

I’ve decided to personally blame Hazel Blears for the BNP picking up a seat. Undermined Labour confidence at the last minute and gifted it.

RT @JamieSport Hey Yorkshire! Here’s your new Nazi arsonist swastika wearing MEP: http://bit.ly/TZluO

RT @jockso I don’t want to keep repeating myself but the BNP vote in Yorkshire fell. Not the rise of fascism, the rise of apathy. #eu09

South East region computer failure preventing the result. Bring on the National Identity Database and NHS IT system, eh? #eu09 #ep09

RT @deanlove: The EU election results are like a horrible mirror of the US elections earlier in the year. It’s all fear instead of hope.

RT @doctorvee PR *doesn’t* let fascist parties in. People voting for fascist parties does! #eu09 #ep09

RT @jonnelledge Nigel Farage says UKIP will put up 500 candidates for the next general election. If anything saves Labour, it’ll be that.

RT @keewa: funny how the BNP preach racial purity when they all look like piggly eyed, saggy jawed troglodytes isn’t it? #eu09

RT @monstris: Apprentice’s Yasmina, of Iranian extraction, [post-facto note: the winner of a reality TV show, announced the same night] is the sort of person the BNP wld expel. How’s that for a socipolitcal mashup?

BNP – 86,420 in London? Christ… *crosses fingers it’s not enough* #eu09 #ep09

190,000 for the Greens – I don’t like the Greens, but that should keep out the fascists. Yay! #ep09 #eu09

London: Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP, Labour, Tory, Tory – no seat for @jonathanfryer again. Damn – but UKIP pushed to 4th. Yay! #eu09

RT @johnhalton: The big plus for Gordon Brown: total lack of any real breakthrough for Tories so far (Wales notwithstanding). #eu09

RT @markclapham RT @jamesmoran: If you choose not to vote, then you’re just as bad as the BNP voters. But you don’t get to complain.

RT @MakeVotesCount Turnout in London is 33.3% – only 4% down since last time. Not bad considering no local elections in London on Thu.

East Midlands: Tory, Labour, UKIP, Tory, Lib Dem – UKIP lose a seat to the Lib Dems. Ha! Probably lack of Kilroy this time. Labour only -4%

RT @jonnelledge So far UKwide Tories +1%, Labour -7%, LibDems and UKIP -1% each. Not a big swing to the right, it’s just Labour imploding.

RT @doktorb: Reports from Manchester count – NW result imminent – BNP 1, UKIP 1, LD 1, Con 3, Lab 2 most likely #eu09

BNP’s rise not surprising (if worrying): Nationalism, racism and xenophobia always rise in recessions. Labour collapse amplifying the effect

UKIP support in Cornwall dropping. About time. Cornwall’s entire economy relies on EU funding… #eu09 #ep09

Hmmm… Socialists up in Czech Republic. Not much of a boost for the Tories’ potential Czech allies, from what I can tell. #eu09 #ep09

South West England: The Libertas FAIL continues apace. They’re not even beating individual independents… #eu09 #ep09

South West: Tory, UKIP, Lib Dem, Tory, UKIP, Tory – no Labour MEPs at all for the South West. #ep09 #eu09

Tory and UKIP vote share both -1% – Labour down 7%; Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Conservative Party, is it? #eu09 #ep09

Nice – South East BNP vote read out to shout of “Fascists! Fucking fascists!” Over 100,000 voted BNP, though hopefully not enough…

South East England: Tory, UKIP, Tory, Lib Dem, Green, Tory, UKIP, Tory, Labour, Lib Dem

Good result for the EU there – Marta Andreassen was No.2 on the UKP list: http://bit.ly/jTgvp #eu09 #ep09

RT @demsoc Labour frozen out in South West, in 5th place behind Greens. UKIP get 2 – lots of ungrateful farmers… #eu09 #ep09

Nigel Farrage still complaining about his supporters being too stupid to read a ballot paper… #eu09 #ep09

He he! RT @JamieSport RT @cathelliott I do not like green eggs and ham: I do not like that Hannan man #Icandodrseusstoo #eu09

I meant what I said and I said what I meant – BNP voters can go and get bent #Icandodrseusstoo

Nice – Dimbleby finally asks Tory arch anti-EU type Hannan the question I’ve been pondering for ages: “Why don’t you join UKIP?” #eu09

Ah – the BBC have finally remembered that they have a Europe Editor waiting around in the European Parliament giving continent-wide analysis

RT @pickledpolitics The tweedledum and tweedledee of Europe – Nigel Farage and Dan Hannan! hah! gotta love Dimbleby

RT @JamieSport Terribly friendly are Hannan and Farige; it can’t be that long til we hear of their marriage #icandodrseusstoo

West Midlands: BNP 121,967 – That’s now well over half a million BNP voters UK-wide. Still, 2.4m Muslims – who’d win in a fight? #eu09

West Midlands: Tory, UKIP, Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, UKIP – UKIP gain from Labour

North West England: BNP Leader Nick Griffin looks to be in with 132,094. Close, though…

Looks like about 200 more votes for UKIP would have been enough to keep the BNP out…

West Midlands: Tory, Labour, UKIP, Lib Dem, Tory, Labour, Tory, BNP

Make that 1,200 more votes for UKP to keep out the BNP, or 5,00 more for the Greens. But the BNP’s total votes actually went down. #eu09

I hope the 25,999 who voted Socialist Labour and the 23,580 who voted No2EU are pleased with themselves – they could have stopped Griffin.

Nick Griffin blaming Labour, “an out of touch political elite”, “unelected bureaucrats” and claiming electoral fraud. #eu09 #ep09

Griffin’s speech so far could have been delivered by someone from UKIP… #eu09 #ep09

Griffin: “We have no problem with people who are here legally and are contributing”? You could have fooled me… #ep09 #eu09

Wow… BBC News channel have one of their camp entertainment reporters fronting the rest of their elections coverage… #eu09 #ep09

With that, it’s probably time to go to bed. Proper analysis after some sleep before spouting off on BBC World News again in the evening.

RT @warrenellis The UK has elected in record low turnout a neofascist Shoah-denier & an actual no-hyperbole neo-Nazi to the Euro Parliament