I’ve read several analyses of the EU vote for MEPs just concluded. Most of what I read tried to find overarching themes for the entire election across 28 nations.
Guess what? The meta-analyses weren’t vastly successful because those 28 really are separate nations.
In the U.K. the new Brexit Party did very well, as did the formerly scorned Liberal Democrats. Who did poorly? The two old mainstream parties: the Conservatives and Labour.
In Spain the Socialists did great, in Greece, France and Germany they did terrible. Macron’s newish party was beaten by one percentage point in France, by the rightist National Rally. In Italy the anti-immigrationists did very well.
If I had to generalize it would be that people had change on their minds when they went, in record numbers, to vote. In many cases the old establishment parties didn’t fare well.
The U.K. is probably closer than previously thought to doing a so-called “hard Brexit” in October. It means leaving with no deal in hand, as a result of so many voting for Farage’s new Brexit Party, saying “get on with it.”
