Quotes of the Day
Britain's Brown Suffers Another Blow in European Elections
It's perhaps an inevitable consequence of European parliamentary elections that voters in country after country across the continent so often choose to thump national politicians over distinctly domestic issues. As the results of Thursday's Europe-wide poll trickled in late Sunday, nowhere was that more evident than Britain. Rounding off an abysmal week for Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister's Labour Party slumped to third in the Euro vote with just 15.7% of the vote, far behind the opposition Conservatives and trumped even by the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), a fringe group whose singular focus is to get Britain to quit the E.U. altogether. Worse still, the far-right British National Party (BNP) picked up two seats in the Strasbourg Parliament, its first ever. "It was," said Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, "a very, very bad defeat for us."
You have to go back close to 100 years to find a worse result for Labour in a national poll. In a couple of southern English regions, the party fell to fifth behind the Greens; Labour came second to the Conservatives in Wales, where it has won in election after election for decades. (Read "Europe's Voters Reward the Right.")
The implosion owes much to the economic crisis but also to a series of Labour blunders. As it's the party in power, revelations that MPs on all sides have been milking a lavish expenses system have left Labour with the bloodiest nose. Throw in the perception that the governing party is out of steam, out of ideas and surviving on borrowed time, and the results were never likely to bring Labour out of its stupor.
As it was, the party's rout — Labour's share of the votes fell 7 percentage points, at a cost of five seats in Europe's Parliament — was far more dramatic than any of its rivals' gains. In securing its 13 seats in the European Parliament, for instance, UKIP increased its slice of the vote by just half a point. The Tories, with close to twice the share of votes as Labour's, saw its support climb by only 1 point. Even the BNP, whose two northern English seats included one for Nick Griffin, the party's pugnacious leader, grew its share of polling by just 1.3 points. Voters were desperate to "kick us in the shins," said Chris Bryant, Labour's deputy leader of the House of Commons, "if not somewhere a little further north of that."
Still, fallout from the prominence of fringe parties could be far-reaching. While Britain's first-past-the-post voting system at general elections mitigates against small parties, the euroskeptic Conservatives, for instance, will be left pondering how many of its supporters could in the future migrate to UKIP — and how it might keep them from doing so. The triumph of the BNP (along with seats for far-right parties from the Netherlands and Austria) will add to concerns that the economic downturn is fueling a move to fascist parties in some corners of Europe.
For Brown, the impact could be most painful of all. Labour lost control of all four of its remaining county councils in local elections also held last Thursday. And as a string of disillusioned Ministers rushed for the exits in the days on either side of the poll, Brown even bungled a Cabinet reshuffle designed to reassert his authority. Trailing in third in the European elections leaves the PM "beaten by a party that he mocked and derided as being on the fringes," said UKIP leader Nigel Farage. "So if we have beaten him, he has got to go."
Farage's call — echoing that of many Labour MPs in recent days — surely won't be the last; expect further dissent at a meeting this evening between Brown and Labour MPs. Despite the rumpus, though, there are reasons Brown — only two years into his premiership — could yet cling on. Rebel MPs have so far shown little sign of uniting around a single replacement for Brown. Even if they manage to, choosing a second successive unelected Prime Minister would make an immediate general election almost inevitable.
— Adam Smith / London
Go to Page 2 to read about the election in Italy.
Despite Much Huffing and Puffing, Italy's Political Landscape Is Mostly Unchanged
The photo op of voting in Italy, predictably, featured a showgirl. Noemi Letizia, the leggy 18-year-old at the center of a would-be scandal that has dominated Italy's campaign season, was followed by a pack of paparazzi as she cast her first-ever vote in Naples on Sunday. Donning designer sunglasses and accompanied by her parents, Letizia presumably sided with Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition, though both she and the Italian Prime Minister have repeatedly denied anything "spicy, or more than spicy" (as the PM put it) to their mutual affinity.
By now, Italian politics seems much more about the show on TV than the showing at the ballot box. Indeed, after so much huffing and puffing on the campaign trail, the results from weekend voting left the political landscape in Italy mostly unchanged. Berlusconi's People's Freedom Party notched 35% of the electorate, safely ahead of the center-left challengers but short of the runaway victory the 72-year-old billionaire Berlusconi had hoped for.
The biggest beneficiaries of the relative status quo were two smaller groupings on opposite sides of the political spectrum. On the left, the Italy of Values Party, led by former anticorruption prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro, tallied 8% by appealing to voters who want a more aggressive approach in taking on Berlusconi. On the right, the once separatist Northern League Party, allied with Berlusconi, collected an impressive 10% of the vote, as its sometimes nasty anti-immigration rhetoric registered with an electorate feeling the effects of the economic crisis.
Among Italy's more mainstream opposition parties, the results confirm deep division. There's now a risk that Italy's left might splinter further, mostly because nobody can agree on how best to take on Berlusconi, a man who has dominated politics for 15 years with the most personalized of approaches to governing. Questions remain about the use of the presidential aircraft to bring entertainers to Berlusconi's villa on Sardinia, and reports are circulating of additional racy shots in a series of photos recently published by the Spanish daily El País that showed naked and half-naked visitors inside the Prime Minister's island estate. Democratic Party leader Dario Franceschini, once considered a measured and somewhat soft-spoken figure, has found his voice in attacking Berlusconi's private behavior. Meanwhile, Di Pietro, in celebrating his party's doubling of its support at the polls, called Berlusconi "fascist ... and racist."
The Prime Minister will no doubt fight back at the accusations with all the means at his disposal. But his most potent weapon may be his teeth. "Beware of anyone who doesn't smile!" he told voters at a recent campaign rally, flashing his trademark toothy grin. "Beware of anyone who takes themselves too seriously!" The show, my friends, must go on.
— Jeff Israely
Go to Page 3 to read about the election in France.
A Relatively Strong Showing for Sarkozy
It's difficult to speak of winners in France's European parliamentary election on Sunday, given that almost 60% of French adults voted with their derrières by staying at home and avoiding the democratic process altogether. But those who did turn up rewarded two unlikely and rival contestants: the ruling party of France's unpopular President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a union of traditionally marginal environmental parties now challenging the Socialists for leadership of the nation's leftist opposition.
Sarkozy's rightist Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) claimed first place with 27.9% of the Euro vote. The result marks the first time a sitting French President's party has won a European election since 1979. That success in avoiding the traditional midterm European protest vote was all the more significant against Sarkozy's modest 43% approval rating, as well as polls indicating the public continues to frown on how he and his government have responded to the global financial crisis. Despite all that, ruling conservatives came within four points of Sarkozy's commanding 31.1% score during the first round of French presidential polling in 2007. "The penalty vote was penalized by French voters," quipped UMP secretary-general Xavier Bertrand.
Rivals on both the left and right have noted that the result still means more than 70% of voters backed parties hostile to Sarkozy and his Cabinet. True, but it brings little comfort to the crowded landscape of government opponents — especially the Socialist Party (PS), whose position as the left's leading political force is now in question. The faction-riven Socialists won just 16.5%, far short of the 28.9% it won in European elections in 2004 and dangerously close to its worst showing ever, 14.5% in 1994.
By seeking to turn the European campaign into a referendum on Sarkozy's leadership, the Socialists found themselves outflanked by the Europe Ecologie movement, a collection of diverse environmentalist parties. The grouping's seven-month campaign, which fused environmental messages with those of European construction and leadership, apparently appealed to voters: Europe Ecologie won 16.3%, and in so doing, staked a claim to a leadership role on the left
in both France and the European Parliament. "Our first big action will be negotiating a [leftist] majority," proclaimed Europe Ecologie official Daniel Cohn-Bendit — the Franco-German ecologist who first gained fame as the iconic leader of radical students during France's May 1968 uprising before becoming a moving force in the European Parliament. "I have already spoken with the President of the European Socialist Party, Nyrup Rasmussen, to try to form a majority."
— Bruce Crumley / Paris
Go to Page 4 to read about the election in Germany.
Merkel's Conservatives Emerge As the Clear Winners
The European elections are the first big test of public opinion before September's general election in Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel's Conservatives emerged as the clear winners. The ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party in the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won about 38% of the vote. With Germany in the middle of a deep recession, the result seems to be the voters' way of telling Merkel that they trust her leadership and her handling of the economic crisis.
"Angela Merkel is very popular. She's even more popular than her own party," Oskar Niedermayer, a professor of political science at Berlin's Free University, tells TIME. "Voters are confident Merkel will be able to steer Germany through difficult times. This election result is an important psychological boost for her."
But it was a bad night for the other big player in German politics, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The Social Democrats are licking their wounds after suffering a humiliating election result, with the party's share of the vote sinking to a historic low of just 21%. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Foreign Minister and SPD member who's standing against Merkel in the federal election, summed up the dismal mood in his party when he said, "This is a disappointing election result — there's no talking around it."
Reflecting the miserable voter turnout across Europe, only 43% of Germans bothered to go to the polls. Social Democrats have been quick to point to the low turnout as a reason the European Parliament vote shouldn't be seen as a test for the upcoming federal elections. "I don't think you can reach any conclusions when the turnout for the European elections was so low," says Social Democrat MP Sebastian Edathy. "It's a different picture in the federal elections, when we normally have a bigger turnout of 70%-80%." Nevertheless, Edathy admits his party failed to reach out to its traditional supporters. "The SPD failed to mobilize its voters," he says. "But that is often the problem with European elections because our regular voters weren't able to relate to any European issues."
Meanwhile, there was a strong showing from some of the country's smaller parties. The Green Party won 12% of the vote, and the Left Party, successor to East Germany's Communist Party, took 7.5% of the vote. But the real winner was the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which won its best-ever result in a European election, with 11% of the vote. The FDP, under its outspoken leader Guido Westerwelle, is Merkel's preferred coalition partner. Their combined results leave Merkel's Conservatives and the FDP just short of the 50% they would need in September should the Chancellor decide to replace the current grand coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats with a conservative-liberal alliance.
"This result shows the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the liberals are the strongest force in German politics today," says Manfred Güllner, head of the Forsa polling institute. But the Social Democrats say they're determined to claw back support before the federal elections on Sept. 27. It's an ambitious goal for a party that is hemorrhaging votes and can't seem to find a way out of the crisis.
— Tristana Moore / Berlin
Read "Europe's Voters Reward the Right."
See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
- TIME Staff
- Three in five European voters stayed away from parliamentary elections; those who did vote elected an eclectic mix of mainstream politicians and fringe dwellers