Posts Tagged ‘Election results’

By the time I headed for bed on Sunday night France and Germany had declared the results of their European elections, but comparatively few of the British results had come through, despite the fact that our polls had closed some 70 hours before theirs.  Why, I wondered?

Indeed, the British results could not even be confirmed during the night as in some places, – the romantic and forsaken Western Isles for instance – and Northern Ireland, counting did not begin until Monday.  For reasons of Sabbatarianism, I understand.

Should we rejoice at this quaint expression of European Union diversity – or simply be irritated when the count in certain electoral pockets is so far off the pace?

******
It can’t be down to all the votes being lumped together. For courtesy of ‘Le Figaro’s’  excellent website I can even discover how the villagers voted in the little Auverne commune where I spend occasional holidays.  As there are only seventy odd electors, the split of votes between the parties practically identifies who voted how.

We stay in an old water Mill located on the higher reaches of the river Célé, which river forms a practical boundary between two deeply rural communes.  The Mill itself is in one, much of its forest and fields in the other.

You might think both would therefore vote in the same way, but no.  In ‘our’ village, the French ‘Greens’ won 17 percent of the vote, contributing to the excellent result for them in France as a whole, where they managed 16 per cent and 8 seats.

But cross the little bridge into the walnut meadow and there, in the neighbouring commune, the Green vote was only 11 per cent.  Still respectable, but 5 per cent below the national average.  Why?

You can understand the appeal of the ecologists. Stand in the lovely medieval square of Figeac and survey the abundance of fresh meat and vegetables, the quality and taste of which can only be imagined by someone used to supermarket pap.  In this deeply rural environment agriculture produces products of real excellence, yet farmers cling on by their fingertips in the face of the worldwide onslaught of fast food, low prices and industrial production. If I lived here permanently I’d also vote for the ecologists, I’m thinking.

*****

It was in France, too, that Libertas, the pan-European movement dedicated to the incongruous objectives of scrapping the Lisbon Treaty and making the EU more democratic, claimed its one sad success in the form of Philippe de Villiers, who allied his own party to the Libertas banner.  Even Mr Declan Ganley, the party’s founder and driving force, failed to win a seat on his home turf in Ireland.

Many accounts have spoken of actions or omissions on Mr Ganley’s part, which, when taken together, seem to amount to something more distasteful than the mere cut and thrust of normal political campaigning.  Whether true or not it scarcely seems to matter now, especially as Ganley has said that he will not lead the ‘no’ campaign in Ireland’s second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  He is in danger of vanishing from the political scene.

Nevertheless, though it was pretty clear that the goal of building a pan-European party from scratch and achieving any sort of impact in a few short months was forlorn and impossible, the fact that someone had the courage to attempt it surely deserves some commendation.  However lightly, some pan-European ground has been broken and into it more profitable seeds may fall.  For this service even supporters of the Lisbon Treaty can afford to be generous to Mr Ganley in his defeat.

*****
I was much impressed by the erudite debate that followed my last post. My only comment is to say that it has always seemed to me that Britain’s strategic policy interests of security and prosperity at home and advancement of the human rights agenda abroad were always most likely to be promoted through an active partnership of like-minded countries, rather than in a splendid and righteous isolation.  Besides this, who determines the size of our car headlights is really quite irrelevant.