foxsoft ltd

Those of you living in an EU member state over the past week might have noticed the European elections taking place. Despite low voter turnout for the European elections, there are people who seem surprised at the performance of smaller parties such as the Greens and the BNP, particularly with the latter gaining 2 seats out of the 72 up for grabs in the UK. So what does this mean for British Politics? Does it mean we’re going to start seeing the influence of the BNP in the running of our country and should it matter if we do?

You’ve got to have a system

When it comes to elections there are a number of systems to choose from when deciding who actually wins. For European Parliamentary elections we use a version of what’s called Proportional Representation. Under this system, the proportion of votes in a region is worked out and the available seats for the region are dished out accordingly. For example, imagine a region with 10 seats up for grabs with 2 parties fighting for them. If Party 1 receives 90% of votes and Party 2 gets 10% then Party 1 would get 9 of the seats available and Party 2 would get one. Obviously Party 1 has a massive majority, but the people who voted for Party 2 still have a small voice in the European Parliament.

Contrast this with the Plurality Voting System used in UK general elections. Under this system each constituency has one seat available and the party with the most votes takes the seat. So in terms of Party 1 and Party 2 above, Party 1 takes the seat and Party 2 has no representation in the House of Commons.

The price of a fair system

So you can see that the system we use for European elections makes it much more likely that smaller parties will gain seats. It also means that if you vote for a party that represents you better than one of the main parties then you’re more likely to see your party represent you in Europe. This is a much fairer system in terms of representation of voters, but the flip-side of this is that it makes it much easier for extreme parties to gain some power – much easier to gain a seat in Europe rather than a seat in the Commons.

It’s generally accepted that low voter turnout has the general effect of increasing the proportion of votes that go to fringe parties. The idea is that the people who vote for fringe parties are more passionate about voting while the apathetic don’t care enough to vote for the main parties. The turnout statistics for Europe was an all-time low since voting began in 1979 with around 43% and just 35% of the UK’s voters did their civic duty. It’s certainly possible that a better turnout would mean worse proportions for smaller parties, but it’s by no means certain.

The distribution of power

The fact remains that the BNP, a UK political party long associated with racial intolerance, has managed to capture 2 seats in the European Parliament. If you believe popular media then this is a very bad thing and marks the beginning of the end, but the likelihood of the BNP being able to make massive headway with any extremist policies they might have is actually pretty unlikely. The European Parliament has a total of 736 seats divided between member states so the impact of 2 seats without outside support would have very little impact overall.

Where the BNP is more likely to have an impact is where its policies overlap with other popular policies on environment, economy and agriculture for example. Whether this is ultimately a bad thing depends on what you think about these policies, but then that’s no different to any other party in Europe.