With an 80-seat majority under their belt, a new PM and riding high on 54% in polls, it’s easy to forget that just over 10 months ago, the Tories came 5th in the EU Parliament elections. The Electoral Commission has now finally released spending return figures, which show the victorious Brexit Party spent the most, closely followed by the Tories and the Lib Dems. For all their spending, the Tories were left with just four MEPs…
- The Brexit Party £2,609,834
- Conservatives £2,600,026
- Lib Dems £2,468,148
- Labour £1,556,028
- The Independent Group for Change £886,681
- UK Independence Party (UKIP) £643,100
- Greens £450,260
- SNP £257,005
These elections, which wouldn’t have happened had Parliament not repeatedly blocked Brexit, cost political parties a total of £11,471,082. They also sealed Theresa May’s fate and made way for Boris…
The BBC has admitted its representation of the European Parliamentary election results in May represented a “lapse of editorial standards” when it refused to count the Conservative Party as a ‘pro-Brexit’ party. The organisation’s Executive Complaints Unit is now “consider[ing] what further action is required”…
The notorious chart used by the BBC to present the election results attempted to present the Conservative Party as holding a similarly ambiguous position on Brexit as the Labour Party did at the time, in order to deliberately imply anti-Brexit parties received the most votes. Incredibly, it is still up on the BBC website. At the time Guido proposed an alternate chart…
A heroic co-conspirator has pursued the issue for months, and despite being rebuffed twice by the BBC, yesterday finally had his complaint accepted. It was only accepted after threatening to take the matter to OFCOM…
Read the BBC Executive Complaints Unit’s letter in full here.
Mohammed Amin, Chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum, has today hit the headlines by telling TalkRADIO that he would resign from the party if Boris became leader and endorsing Rory Stewart instead. Funny that he’s suddenly being less vocal about the other endorsement he’s been making over the last few weeks – Amin has been proudly declaring his support for the Liberal Democrats, even boasting about voting for them by post. If CCHQ follow their Heseltine precedent, it looks like he won’t have to face the choice of whether to resign after all…
Guido reported during the campaign, Change UK were massively outstripping the spending of other parties on Facebook throughout the election. By the last week of the campaign, the Lib Dems caught up with Change UK, followed by the Greens, Labour, then the Tories. In that crucial week, of the parties in England that won seats, the Brexit Party spent the least and won the most…
The final results of the EU elections are still trickling in, however the overall picture is pretty clear already. Eurofederalists have lost ground although they still outnumber Eurosceptics. Incredibly, it’s the first time ever in the European Parliament’s 40-year history that the giant Europhile EPP (Christian Democrat) and S&D (Socialist) blocks haven’t had a majority between them. However the equally Europhile ALDE group has 115 MEPs to throw into the mix now so the EU Parliament can continue its rubber stamping untroubled…
The Brexit Party is the joint largest party with 29 MEPs along with Merkel’s CDU/CSU – although technically that is two separate parties so the Brexit Party could arguably claim to be the largest. Ultimately none of it matters in terms of EU politics, the only thing of any significance is the outcome of the shady backroom deals and horse-trading between EU leaders over who will be the next President of the European Commission. The field of potential candidates is so unappealing that Michel Barnier might even be the best outcome for the UK…
This is an absolute classic of the “we only lost in one version of reality” genre. That version of objective reality being the one that can count votes. According to the Green Party’s Siân Berry, if you add up all the votes of the parties that lost, they won. If Bad Al is a “weapon of mass delusion”, what is Siân?
