In the unusual Buckingham constituency*, UKIP’s Nigel Farage – advocating withdrawal from the EU – ended up in third place, despite a high-profile (non-fatal) election-day plane crash**.

The amusing news for pro-EU types? Farage was beaten into second place by an independent former Conservative MEP, John Stevens.

Why is this so funny? Stevens was the co-founder of the Pro-Euro Conservative Party.

Ha ha ha! Yes, an arch-eurosceptic beaten in a direct popularity contest by an arch europhile. In Britain.

So much for us all being anti-EU, eh?

My fuller post-election analysis can be found here.

* UK convention states that the major parties don’t run against a sitting Speaker of the House of Commons, leaving the way clear for various fringe parties to get high up the results list. Buckingham is the current Speaker’s constituency, hence the high placements for the likes of UKIP and independents.

** Get well soon, Nigel – but what were you doing going up in a plane with a UKIP banner anyway? Campaigning is expressly forbidden on election day…

Just back from Japan, from where I was closely following the UK election on Twitter (your best place for my day-to-day political commentary these days, though be warned they’re usually more jokey – and sweary – than here…)

After 30 hours offline, and 44 hours after the polling booths closed, the UK still doesn’t have a new government. As such, witness the wonders of my jetlag-inspired political guesswork!

I’d be surprised if this lack of a government lasted beyond Monday morning, largely because the next government will want to look responsible – and we had some serious global financial trouble on Friday for a variety of reasons (NY stock exchange hiccough, Greek crisis, UK election uncertainty, etc.). They’ll want to have a government before the markets open, if they can…)

Here’s what I currently reckon will happen, rejigged from a few comments on Twitter:

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s playing this absolutely perfectly so far – he has solid offers to join coalitions from both Labour and the Conservatives, and significant policy differences with both, and has explicitly stated that the Tories – with more seats and more of the vote – should have the right to “seek to form” a government first.

But the Tories can’t get a parliamentary majority without Lib Dem support. At least, not a stable one. Not the sort of majority that they’d need to do, well, just about anything.

But Labour and the Lib Dems combined can’t get a parliamentary majority without other parties’ support either.

Clegg has also repeatedly mentioned “the national interest” and equated this with electoral reform (unsurprising, considering Labour got only 5% more of the vote than the Lib Dems, but 5 times the parliamentary seats).

The Tories are fundamentally opposed to the sort of Proportional Representation-style electoral reform that the Lib Dems want (usually single transferable vote) – which is hardly surprising, as it would almost certainly lead to a permanent Labour/Lib Dem coalition (there being very few other parties on the centre right that are likely to end up big enough to give the Tories the backing they’d need under such a system).

So, Clegg is giving the impression that he’s willing to work with the Tories – and probably is – but his one major condition is a deal-breaker for Cameron and co.

So I’m now fairly convinced that Prime Minister Cameron’s not going to happen. If Cameron rejects PR, as he must to keep his party behind him (there have already been dire warnings from the right wing of the Conservative Party about such a move, in the shape of Thatcher-era relic Lord Tebbit), then a Lib Dem/Labour/Scottish National Party / Plaid Cymru coalition has first dibs (SNP leader Alex Salmond has already openly proposed this).

Constituionally-speaking, Gordon Brown retains first right to try to form a government, as the sitting Prime Minister in a hung parliament. With Lib Dem, SNP and Plaid Cymru support, the coalition would have an outright majority – able to outvote the Tories and their allies on anything. As such, despite his unpopularity (and calls from within his own party to step down), Brown could yet remain as caretaker PM of a coalition expressly set up to bring in electoral reform.

This would actually be a very sensible option, for several reasons:

1) It would be constitutionally unprecedented for Cameron to form a minority government in the current circumstances – he is impotent until he has enough supporters to claim an outright majority. This looks to be impossible.

2) The constitution explicitly states that Gordon Brown remains Prime Minister, so using him as a figurehead for any new coalition is – constitutionally – the least harmful in the short term.

3) Anyone unhappy with Brown remaining as PM simply adds to the case for major constitutional reform with their objections.

4) This would also give both Labour *and* the Conservatives time to sort themselves out, as they are blatantly in a shambles at the moment.

So, what I’d suggest is a short-term multi-party national coalition *explicitly* for electoral *and* parliamentary/constitutional reform, as well as to maintain some form of stability in the midst of an ongoing financial crisis, keeping Gordon Brown as a figurehead Prime Minister for constitutional reasons alone, with an explicit promise that he will step down once the basic reforms are in place to have a fresh election under a new electoral system.

One final note: There’s nothing to say – constitutionally – that the Prime Minister has to be a party leader. Nor even that he has to be an MP… The question is, is there *anyone* who could be seen as a sufficiently impartial lynchpin to take on the task of leading a coalition of (at least) four parties?

UKIP, love them or hate them, have been fairly consistent in one thing over the years – arguing against the EU because it is run by unelected bureaucrats. Just one of their arguments, perhaps – but the democratic deficit claim (though certainly disputable) has long been one of their most popular and successful.

Now, however, on the same day that the new (unelected) European Commissioners have been unveiled, they have chosen as their new leader a man who has never been elected to any public office. In one move, they’ve lost the moral high ground. What’s more, they have often in the past attacked “EU elites” – and to good effect. But now they are being led by an Old Etonian peer of the realm with one of the plummiest accents I’ve ever heard – and I went to a rather snobby public school… You simply do not get a better symbol of “elitism” than an Old Etonian peer.

At the same time as being unelected, Pearson’s obsessions are rather out of kilter with a large chunk of what I had previously taken to be British eurosceptic concerns.

UKIP has long been accused by some of its critics of being a BNP-lite, or a middle-class version of the BNP. I’m not one of them – or, at least, I haven’t been until now. I see most British eurosceptics as being misguided, certainly – but (despite the occasional mockery) I generally respect their concerns about the nature of the EU (and even agree with some of them). I can see why people are worried about decisions being taken in Brussels rather than London, even while disagreeing about it being a problem. I also don’t believe that most eurosceptics are xenophobes, as they are so often accused of being by some.

But with Lord Pearson taking the leadership, I’m not so sure. He was, after all, the person who caused a brief scandal by inviting right-wing, anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders to the UK to show his polemical anti-Muslim film Fitna. (Which I’ve seen and thought was rubbish. Relatively offensive, for sure, but not enough to be worth banning.)

What’s more, Pearson’s obsession seems not so much to be the EU – as you’d surely expect from the leader of a party set up to oppose the EU and advocate British withdrawal – as to be immigration. Take a recent interview with the BBC, broadcast on The Politics Show on BBC1 last Sunday. Transcript:

Pearson: “Immigration is probably the biggest issue outside the south east of England, and the people have been treated incredibly badly by their political class.”

Interviewer: “So is there a danger that you could be confused – UKIP and the BNP?”

Pearson: “We’ve got to be very careful, erm, especially in this area of immigration, erm, that we cannot be confused with the.. the BNP – I… I accept that. There’s a fine line to be drawn here, erm… But I would also want to bring up…”

Interviewer: “I’m sorry, but are you saying that there’s a fine line between UKIP and the BNP?”

Pearson: “Well, I don’t actually know, erm, the intimate detail of… of the BNP policy. What we would be aiming for is zero net increase, erm, in immigration. So obviously we’re… we welcom asylum seekers, we welcome people of all colours and everything, and in that we’re completely different, erm… t-to the BNP. But we think the prospect of the population moving towards 70 million, erm… you know, within 20 years or so is very worrying. Sharia Law, erm… Islamic law is running in this country in fact, erm, in many areas, which is completely unacceptable if it becomes superior to British law.”

Hardly anything there that doesn’t sound like a paraphrase of the BNP. A point that’s made even clearer by Pearson’s acceptance speech:

Please note again his obsessions:

“Of course we will be majoring on leaving the European Union – we can’t control our borders without that, we can’t control immigration… And we must get around the stranglehold of the political class.”

“The political class” is a favourite phrase of a certain other anti-immigration party leader…

In that clip of Pearson’s acceptance speech – uploaded to YouTube by UKIP itself, so surely what the party want the public to see – Pearson spends little more than 15 seconds discussing the EU. The rest is given over to immigration.

So, is UKIP no longer an anti-EU party, but an anti-immigration party? And if it’s both, then what’s the major emphasis – the EU or immigration? And what exactly *is* the “fine line” between UKIP and the BNP?

More importantly, who do British eurosceptics who are opposed to the EU but dislike such hardline anti-immigration rhetoric supposed to turn to now? There are innumerable reasons to oppose the EU that have nothing to do with immigration – yet Pearson seems determined to make this the party’s primary concern. In the process, he is confirming everything nasty that has ever been said about British eurosceptics. And, what’s more, he may well be about to split the party in two. Again. Witness fellow UKIP leadership candidate, Cllr Alan Wood (transcript from BBC Politics Show last Sunday):

Interviewer: “Do you respect Lord Pearson?”

Wood: “No I don’t. I think he’s totally off the wall with his remarks about Muslims and Sharia Law, and for that I can’t respect him”

Inteviewer: “Are you saying that if he’s elected people will think that you’re too close to the BNP?”

Wood: “Yes, yes. People already think we are the BNP. Erm… It’s tragic. It’s tragic that we’ve been painted into this corner.”

Interviewer: “And so if he’s elected, you’re leaving, you’re off?”

Wood: “I cannot stay with Lord Pearson, with those views, and I don’t think he’s the right man.”

Wood will not be alone in this. Members of my family have been known to vote UKIP – some of them as recently as last summer. None of them will approve of the party shifting towards an anti-immigration position – certainly not if that becomes the party’s primary focus, as Pearson seems determined to make it.

There is a place – indeed a need – for a strong, anti-EU voice in British politics. Poll after poll shows the public’s concern on this issue. UKIP – especially after the fall-out from Cameron’s decision about a Lisbon Treaty referendum – was the obvious choice to be that voice. By picking Lord Pearson as leader, I’m afraid that British eurosceptics are being very poorly served by the party. This is bad not just for eurosceptics, but for politics as a whole.

The old eurosceptic Independence/Democracy group in the European Parliament was kept more or less respectable largely thanks to the influence of its former joint leader Jens-Peter Bonde, who stemmed from the relatively moderate lefty side of euroscepticism. Now, however, Bonde has retired and his old June Movement was wiped out at the European elections – along with its Polish equivalent – and the Ind/Dem group died with them.

But now, from the ashes, UKIP leader Nigel Farage (the former joint leader of Ind/Dem) has managed to salvage an alliance – with 30 MEPs from 8 countries (where the EP requires 25 MEPs from 7 countries for an official group to qualify for funding and committee places). But where the old Ind/Dem group was confined largely to criticising the EU and calling for repatriation of powers to the member states by the restraining influence of the left-wing anti-EU parties, this new group appears to be taking a decidedly more hardline nationalist approach, characterised primarily by strongly anti-immigration rhetoric.

UKIP dominates the new group with 13 MEPs, and for this we should be grateful – because they seem to be one of the most moderate parties in the thing.

Their major partners are Italy’s Lega Nord, with 9 representatives. What do these chaps – part of Berlusconi’s broad church right-wing governing coalition – believe? Well, let’s ask Wikipedia…

The party is often described as “xenophobic” and “anti-immigrant”. [Leader] Umberto Bossi himself, described African immigrants as Bingo-bongos, in an interview suggested opening fire on the boats of illegal immigrants who would disembark in Italy.

In 2002 Erminio Boso, a Lega Nord politician from the Province of Trento, proposed a separate train for immigrants and Italians. In 2003 he former Mayor of Treviso, Giancarlo Gentilini, while in office, spoke about those he called “immigrant slackers”, saying, “We should dress them up like hares and bang-bang-bang”.

Add to that the call by one of the party’s deputy mayors for “an ethnic cleansing of faggots”, and I’m sure you’ll agree that UKIP have chosen some regular charmers. But it doesn’t end there…

There’s also a couple of MEPs from the anti-immigration Dansk Folkeparti, whose leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, lost a 2003 libel action against a political opponent who accused the party of having “racist policies” – making the DPP an officially racist organisation. DPP politicians have also come under fire for comparing the Qu-ran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf (evidently unaware of Godwin’s Law), while others are on record as saying “In many ways, we are anti-Muslims”.

Slightly less mad is the MEP from the Dutch Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij – they just want the Netherlands to be reformed along strict Calvinist lines, with all laws to be derived from the Bible.

There’s also a couple of True Finns (Perussuomalaiset), who have also been involved with the Tories’ new centre-right eurosceptic grouping, one of whose party members is currently facing two years in jail on race hate charges for describing all foreigners as “criminals”, and asylum-seekers as “gang-rapists” and “parasites”.

Then there’s a couple of MEPs from the delightful Greek Laïkós Orthódoxos Synagermós – former members of Ind/Dem who have been repeatedly accused of anti-semitism (including their founder/leader, who is alleged to have called for a debate on “the Auschwitz and Dachau myth”, claimed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a reality, and blamed “the Jews” for the September 11th 2001 attacks.

The new group has already been described as being “far-right lite” – with UKIP accused of hoping to tone down some of the more overtly racist/fascist rhetoric of their new partners and repackaging the strongly anti-immigration stance that is the new group’s one binding ideology into a more friendly, populist package.

But will it last? The last racist group in the European Parliament, the short-lived Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty soon fell apart when its members all realised that the other members were, well, filthy foreigners. Could the same happen to UKIP’s new group? And is UKIP – a party that has striven hard in the last few years to shake off its past image as being xenophobic and anti-foreigner – really going to be prepared to be associated with parties with such unpleasant associations?

Yet here’s some confusion… While UKIP refuse to back the Conservative party in the UK thanks to the Tories being centre-right eurosceptics but – crucially – not withdrawalist like UKIP, they seem quite happy to do business with all these parties in their new group in the European Parliament – none of whom, bar UKIP themselves, advocate withdrawing from the EU.

So what is it that makes UKIP think that they have more in common with these European parties than they do with the Tories in the UK? Because the only thing I can see that ties these parties together beyond the standard centre-right euroscepticism that would see them as good fits for the Tories own new group is precisely the hardline, frequently (allegedly) racist approach to immigration.

Only a couple of days after its formation, and already David Cameron’s new European Parliament political grouping (the brilliantly-named Conservatives and Reformists) have lost a member. Considering that you need MEPs from seven member states to form an EP group, and this new one is relying on no fewer than five individual MEPs from various member states to make up the numbers, I reckon we should set up a sweepstake on how long this lasts.

It is, after all, basically just three parties from three member states (the Conservatives from the UK, Law & Justice from Poland and the Civic Democrats from the Czech Republic), of which the Tories massively dominate (and seem, from what I can tell, to be the most sensible and successful of the lot – both the Poles and the Czechs have some rather odd views, to put it mildly, and seem to be on the wane in their respective countries while the Tories are on the rise).

Relying on a bunch of individual MEPs to make up the requirement for multiple member states was always going to be a risky strategy – but how far are the Conservatives, as by far the dominant force in terms of numbers, going to be prepared to pander to individuals to hold the group together? Today we’ve learned that one member – Hannu Takkula of the Finnish Centre Party – has already decided to jump ship. He may well swiftly have been replaced with Waldemar Tomaszewski from Lithuania (although I’m not sure of the details here as yet), but that’s still taking the new group perilously close to the bare minimum spread of member states for group qualification.

And at the same time, there’s a whole bunch of eurosceptic/anti-EU right(ish)-wing parties knocking around in the large unaligned part of the European Parliament – not just the likes of the UK’s BNP and other far-right nationalists and fascists, but also the leftovers from the recently collapsed Independence/Democracy group (the one headed by UKIP’s Nigel Farage until the elections, when the collapse of support for the group’s Polish contingent spelled its doom).

Farage is a canny operator, and certainly not stupid – I wouldn’t put it past him to be able to paint Cameron’s Conservatives as far too wishy-washy (which is, after all, the entire UKIP strategy in the UK) in an effort to steal away some of those individual MEPs from this new group to an Ind/Dem successor. He may even get somewhere. And with the numbers Cameron’s new group is relying on, this split between the *quite* eurosceptics and the *very* eurosceptics could roll on and on – all the while with the balance of power being determined by a small group of individual, more or less independent MEPs, most of whom will have entirely their own agendas.

I can only see this as turning out badly – either they give individuals (many of whom appear to have rather, shall we say “unusual” views?) various positions of influence to keep them on board and so hold the group together, or they go for their original plans (in Cameron’s case, unknown, and in Farage’s case, an all out anti-EU nationalism – albeit one that’s not quite as extreme as it is often made out), and risk alienating the individuals on which they will both be entirely reliant for the committee places and funding that EP group status affords.

In other words, the two pretenders to the title of official European Parliamentary eurosceptic group have the option of either sacrificing their ideals and handing power over to mavericks or risking obscurity in the nonaligned sidelines.

If so many people in Britain (80% was the usual figure quoted) wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, how come only 43% bothered voting?

If the anti-EU cause is so overwhelmingly popular, how come only around half of those voted for an anti-EU party? (And that’s only if you include the Tories as anti-EU.)

Let’s number-crunch: 28.6% Tory, 17.4% UKIP, 6.5% BNP, Socialist Labour c.1%, English Democrats c.2%, Jury Team/No2EU/Libertas all <1% – so that’s c.55.5% of the vote for anti-Lisbon parties, and only around 27% of the vote for explicitly anti-EU parties (the Tories are more hard eurosceptics than overtly withdrawalist, after all).

I make that, with a 43% turnout, just 24% of the electorate supporting an anti-Lisbon party, and just 11.6% of the electorate supporting a party that advocates pulling out of the EU.

Update: Sorry – forgot that the Greens are anti-Lisbon. So that’s another 5.8%, so 61.3% total for anti-Lisbon parties, or 26.4% of the electorate. But still only 11.6% in favour of withdrawal.

Buried away in the middle of an article about UKIP’s efforts to win over middle-England in today’s Sunday Telegraph:

Accusations of racism are nothing new for Ukip. Last November a pro-BNP group stormed into a meeting of the party’s national executive and offered an alliance in which the BNP would concentrate on the north of the country and Ukip the south.

Mr Farage told the delegation to leave but the impression persists that there is common ground between them.

Nothing new there, I know. But in the following paragraph comes a fascinating pair of statistics that I hadn’t seen before:

It may not be an official pact, but the BNP is free from a Ukip challenge in 80 per cent of the seats it is contesting, while Ukip has no BNP challenger in 85 per cent of the seats in which it is standing.

That’s a mighty odd coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

So, has UKIP teamed up with the fascists? They may not agree on economic policy, but they do both want out of the EU, and they’re both strongly anti-immigration. UKIP may not have an overtly racist constitution, but the two parties share two key policy aims, and know that they are both competing for much the same relatively small fringe of discontented anti-EU, anti-immigration voters.

It would make strong strategic sense for the two main anti-EU, anti-immigration parties not to split their already limited potential vote by avoiding competing directly against each other – but is this a formal agreement, something more back room, or have the two parties’ election strategists simply ended up coming to the same conclusions about which party has the best hope in 8 out of every 10 electoral contests, and entirely independently decided to target their resources elsewhere?

I’m not much of a one for conspiracy theories, but an 80% correlation seems a tad too much of a coincidence to merely be coincidence. Then again, I’m also no statistician, and haven’t seen the figures for myself – it is possible that there’s an entirely innocent explanation. But if UKIP want to maximise their votes, a secret team-up with the BNP would be a good way to go about it. As long as the team-up remained secret, of course…

Update: In the interest of fairness, see the comments below. Given the relatively small number of seats the two parties are standing in out of the total being contested, it rather looks like this isn’t statistically significant. Coincidence or conspiracy? Quite possibly neither.

The really short version? It’s utterly rubbish. But this is how it works, courtesy of a short film by the Green Party:

Note: This is not an endorsement of the Green Party. But their logic for preventing BNP leader Nick Griffin from getting a seat does have its merits. I’d prefer it if you researched the parties and their candidates and cast your vote based on who tallies most with your views, but if you must protest vote, with a likely low turnout at the upcoming elections we’re in a situation where votes for the Greens and UKIP are more likely to be the clinchers that will help prevent the fascists from getting a seat than ones for the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems. (Yes, I think UKIP are more or less a joke party with ill-thought-out policies and some unpleasant undertones to much of their rhetoric, but at least they aren’t Nazis.)

This has been on various UKIP election leaflets, so it’s evidently a claim they’re proud of – but does it stand up?

Simple maths tells us that Britain paying £40 million a day to the EU would mean an annual contribution of £14.6 billion. However, the most recent Treasury Report on the UK’s EU budget contributions (PDF) shows the following GROSS figures:

2005 – £12.5 billion
2006 – £12.4 billion
2007 – £12.5 billion
2008 – £13.7 billion (estimated)

£13.7 billion divided by 365 = £37.5 million, so UKIP are, at the very least, rounding up by £2.5 million a day. Not much to round up by? That works out as £912,500,000 a year – I hope UKIP won’t be that out with their sums if they ever get near power…

But what about the rebate? What about the EU funds that are paid back to the UK in the form of things like the European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund and the like? What’s the NET contribution? (Again from the most recent Treasury report)

2005 – £3.6 billion
2006 – £3.9 billion
2007 – £4.6 billion
2008 – £3.6 billion (estimate)

UKIP deliberately using gross rather than net to make the situation seem worse is to be expected, of course, but still – let’s be generous and take the highest figure of £4.6 billion – that’s still a lot of money, right? It may only work out as £12.6 million a day, but that’s still a lot of money.

Well, yes. But big figures are nothing without context, so let’s see how much the UK government spends on other things:

Would you look at that? The UK may be forking out a net figure of around £4 billion a year for EU membership, but at the same time we’re having to pay £31 billion a year merely to service the INTEREST on our debt. That’s not *pay off* our debt – just keep up with the interest. Christ!

In other words, the EU costs us 7.75 times LESS than it does to keep the international bailiffs from the door. (And that £31 billion was BEFORE the most recent round of government borrowing, and before the collapse of sterling, both of which will have hugely escalated the figure for this year, as and when it’s released.)

So, £31 billion in interest payments, for which we see no return whatsoever, versus £4 billion in payments to the EU, from which even its harshest critics must admit that we get *some* benefits – even if they will only admit to cheaper mobile phone charges or ease of travel. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s not too bad a deal, in comparison.

Update, October 2010:

If you’re interested in this post, you may also be interested in:

- What are the economic costs of the EU?
- What percentage of laws come from the EU?
- Why legislating and regulating at EU level is almost always a good thing
- The dishonesty of the EU debate

(Alternate post title: Westminster MPs: Not as corrupt as UKIP MEPs…)

The last few days of revelations about Westminster MPs’ taking advantage of lax expenses rules – many of the allegations decidedly sexed-up, a number of them mistaken, but nonetheless indicative of a long-running problem with the way politics is conducted in the UK and elsewhere – have unsurprisingly been hitting the opinion polls hard.

As such, old predictions of UK voting intentions at the European Parliamentary elections, now just three weeks away, should now be entirely discounted. The latest polls shows both Tories and Labour taking a -4% hit (and that was conducted a few days ago – since when a whole bunch of new stories have appeared about alleged Conservative abuses).

The only likely impact of this constant stream of stories about Westminster MPs seemingly being on the make – especially coming as it does so soon before an election – is a major boost for the smaller parties, both through reduced turnout with a public now even more disillusioned with politics than they were before, and through misguided protest votes. Hell, even old Tory grandee (and bogeyman of the British left) Norman Tebbit has explicitly warned right-wingers not to vote for his party at the European elections to register their disgust.

This is, of course, entirely missing the point that if you want to punish the actual transgressors in this expenses scandal then to vote out MEPs is rather like spanking your niece because your nephew stole your wallet. “Ha! I’m punishing someone who’s got nothing to do with the wrong that’s been committed! THAT’ll learn them!”

Most likely beneficiaries of all this? Well, disgruntled Labour voters are likely to shunt either to the BNP or to the Greens, while disgruntled Tories are more likely to head to the other major centre-right eurosceptic party – often a leech on Tory votes in European polls in any case – UKIP. A party its hard not to see the strongly anti-EU Tebbit having a great deal of sympathy for in any case, and which was – until this little furore – likely to lose a good number of MEPs at the upcoming elections thanks to a combination of David Cameron (largely at the behest of Shadow Foreign Secretary and ex-Tory leader William Hague) taking the Tories in a more eurosceptic direction again and the loss of the Kilroy-Silk factor, which so boosted their media coverage and vote in the 2004 elections.

But, lest we forget, UKIP is a party with only one competent elected politician – its articulately populist, platitude-spouting leader Nigel Farrage. It also has a tendency to pick candidates, like MEPs Ashley “convicted benefit fraudster” Mote and Tom “charged with money laundering and false accounting” Wise, who put even the worst Westminster politicians to shame. (And that’s not to mention the on-going infighting that has plagued the party since its inception, including ongoing allegations of seemingly institutional corruption.)

Yep, UKIP’s pound symbol logo does seem rather appropriate…

Then again, to be fair, a vote for the Tories in the European elections is a wasted one anyway. Having pulled out of the EPP, the largest centre-right group in the European Parliament, in order to have any influence at all in Brussels and Strasbourg they need to join another political group (as without EP group membership, securing the all-important committee places where all the real work goes on, Tory MEPs will be effectively powerless). The only other viable existing centre-right EP group? Independence/Democracy – leader? One Nigel Farrage… Which means the Tories won’t be able to join it, which means they’re stuck on the fringes with other outcasts like the former members of the right-wing Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty Group – such charmers as Jean-Marie Le Pen, Alessandra Mussolini and assorted other fascists.

The simple solution? Check out Votematch.co.uk to get an idea of which parties have policies you might like (as these are often rather different at European level), then check your local candidates for the European Parliament, visit the invaluable Votewatch.eu to check the performance of your local sitting MEPs, and cast your vote based on the character, policies and dedication the of candidates the parties are putting up.

No, you can’t vote for an individual candidate in the European elections (an horrific flaw in the system that needs rapid alteration), but you can make a moderately informed choice about the likely value those on offer are going to provide to their constituents. Have a poor attendance record, like UKIP MEPs Godfrey Bloom, Trevor Coleman and John Whittaker, the Lib Dems’ Baroness Nicholson, the Tories’ Jonathan Evans and Caroline Jackson or Labour’s Eluned Morgan? Think hard about whether they’re worth your vote.

Me? As ever, I’m not endorsing any party. In fact I’m still sorely tempted not to vote at all, thanks purely to the British electoral system for EP elections preventing me from endorsing an individual candidate whose jib I like the cut of. But that way, thanks again to the awfulness of the party list proportional representation system that the UK uses for these things, lies more seats for the likes of UKIP and even (possibly) the BNP. With the Tories out of the EPP, to vote for some sensible MEPs to represent the UK is essential lest the country become a laughing stock. The question now is how to play the system. And for that, the greater the turnout, the less the chance of the smaller, more extremist parties getting representation. I may not like the bigger parties either, but at least they’re (usually) not as mad.

In short: No matter what your political outlook, your vote is important. But your vote is for the next five years, not the last five days. Don’t let short-term disgust with an unpleasant scandal affect which box you tick when that vote is for members of an institution who have nothing to do with the scandal in question. Base your vote instead on the performance of those politicians and what you want to see happen at that institution – because the European Parliament, no matter how much national politicians like to use it as proof of their domestic support, is a very different beast to that in Westminster. Want to punish corrupt Westminster MPs? There’s a general election less than a year away. You’ll have your chance then. That’s the way democracy works.

/stating what should be the obvious…