By Madeleine Kearns
April 30, 2019
Why are Britons, who voted to leave the European Union in
June 2016, and who were scheduled to do so on March 31 of this year, headed
toward European elections in May? It’s a good question that, sadly, has no
satisfying answer.
Members of the European Parliament are elected every five
years. Of 751 MEPs representing 18 nations, the U.K. currently has 73. In
February 2018, the parliament voted to lower the total number of MEPs to 703 if
Brexit came to pass. But 15 months later, that plan remains on hold.
After nearly three years of politically incompetent
Conservative government, Britain is no closer to leaving the EU. And unless
Theresa May manages, by some miracle, to pass her thrice-failed deal before May
23, new MEPs will be elected and sent to Brussels to do a job that British
voters opted to abolish in June 2016.
In ordinary times, one would be wary of overstating the
domestic importance of European elections, which typically have low voter
turnout and little bearing on Britain’s general and local elections. But this
year’s vote may have broader implications for the country’s future. For one
thing, both the Conservative and Labour parties are facing Brexit-induced
identity crises. Though both promised to uphold the vote to leave the EU, the
Conservatives weakened their parliamentary majority in the 2017 general
election and have failed to deliver ever since. May’s attempt at a compromise
has been unable to pass. And Jeremy Corbyn is feeling increased pressure from
Labour back-benchers to move toward a second referendum, which Remainer MPs hope
could stop Brexit entirely.
Amid all this Brexit chaos, signs of a possible electoral
realignment have emerged.
Change UK — formerly “the Independent Group” — began as a
group of disgruntled Labour MPs concerned about Brexit and the party’s
anti-Semitism problem. Its ranks were soon supplemented by a handful of
Europhilic Tory defectors. It now has 70 candidates on offer for the European
elections, including Rachel Johnson, a writer and journalist who is the sister
of Boris Johnson, the pro-Brexit Tory who is currently the polling favorite to
succeed May as the leader of the Conservative party.
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP, has
emerged to lead the newly founded Brexit party. Farage’s UKIP did well in the
2014 European elections, and he is confident that his new party will have
similar success. He seems to be right; the bloc is currently leading the polls
with 27 percent of the vote.
Daniel Hannan, who has served as a Conservative MEP for
nearly 20 years and is the author of Why
Vote Leave and What Next: How to Get
the Best from Brexit, tells National
Review by phone,
If the Tory party goes into the
elections with Theresa May still at the helm, it is going to get what our
[American] cousins call a shellacking, and on a different scale than anything
that has come before. So, current opinion polls suggest that we would get around
15 percent of the vote in the European elections. That would by some measure be
the worst national vote share we’ve ever had. And when I say, “we’ve ever had,”
I mean literally since Robert Peel founded the party in 1834. But actually, it
could be even worse. Because those polls don’t factor in differential turnout,
the fact that all of our activists are on strike, the fact that we’ve got no
money, and the central problem, which is the failure to deliver Brexit in the
timetable that Theresa May set herself.
Hannan adds that if the Tories are dealt a big enough
blow in the European elections, Corbyn might gain “irresistible momentum” in
the race to succeed May.
The public is understandably furious. A moderate, clean
Brexit was once an entirely achievable aim, but it now seems impossible. The
only choices on offer appear to be May’s Brexit-in-name-only plan, a high-risk,
sudden, “no deal” Brexit, or no Brexit at all. Whatever happens, one thing
looks certain: The Tories’ bungling of the entire process will haunt them for
years to come.
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