European Parliament elections: first thoughts

Welsh Liberal Democrats came tantalisingly close to the first European Parliament seat for the party (or for the predecessor Liberal Party). Chloe Hutchinson tells us that this was our best performance since direct elections to the EP started in 1979. If Change UK had not interfered, their votes would have been enough to take Welsh Lib Dem Sam Bennett over the bar. One also wonders how much Plaid Cymru's late intervention, urging Lib Dem supporters to vote Nationalist, had on the contest. If it had caused a 2% swing between the parties, that would have been enough to ensure that Brexit achieved a second seat, exactly the opposite result from the purported aim of Plaid's mail-shot.

Change UK also gave Brexit an extra seat in North-East England, preventing Fiona Hall from returning to Brussels. Other regions in England may have been affected, but that result stood out clearly. The bad news that the controversial Claire Fox had topped the poll for Brexit in the North-West was mitigated by the more welcome return of the excellent Lib Dem Chris Davies. Overall, the party in Scotland and England has easily topped our previous haul. And there are suggestions from Northern Ireland, which is counting today, that Naomi Long of our sister party the Northern Ireland Alliance will be one of the successful candidates.

Our fifteen Liberal Democrats and one Alliance MEP will join a reinvigorated ALDE bloc in the EP. Greens have also increased their representation across Europe. Together - and they seem like natural bedfellows - they will constitute 24% of the new parliament, filling the void left by the decline in democratic socialist and moderate conservative blocs. Extremist parties have increased their representation, but it is noteworthy that few want to break up the EU. Even Marine le Pen's Rallye National, born of the neo-Nazi Front National, has reversed its policy on membership.

Vince Cable and his successor as leader of the Lib Dems, whoever that may be, now need to use the party's new-found prominence to stress that we are not a one-issue party, that we have policies to help the "just getting by" people to whom Theresa May promised so much and so miserably let down.  An increasingly self-serving Conservative party and a disastrously-split Labour will not do so.

And we have by no means heard the last of Sam Bennett.