Northern Ireland and Scotland only declared today partly for religious reasons. Excluding the former where the parties are so different, the aggregate vote for the rest of the UK broadly were in % with change from 4 years ago
27 - 9 Conservatives 23 -5.4 Labour 16 + 9 UK Independence Party 15 + 2 Liberal Democrats 6 Greens 5 British National Party (fascist) 1.5 Respect - George Galloway, anti Iraq war coalition. Vote markedly up associated with much tactical voting for smaller protest parties. Across the EU little enthusiasm for parties supporting EU and strong oppositional votes for parties intuitively against it. UKIP may have drawn votes also from racists opposed to immigration. It now presents a big problem for the Conservatives who will have illogically in terms of the interests of capitalism, to move even further against Europe and for Blair's Labour party which will have a big problem with a referendum on the new EU constitution, which it has already had to concede. Iraq has badly damaged Blair's credibility, and this was more clearly seen without the EU distraction, in the local votes counted on Thursday. This may have helped the Liberal Democrats a bit. But the modest rise for them and the weak showing for Galloway's Respect shows that opposition to the Iraq war is not the result of a deeply engrained opposition to imperialist interventions, merely opposition to this one. About the dilemmas over Europe for the conventional political parties of capitalism to paraphrase Lenin, one might say, the masses know the benefits of large markets and large states, but they have little enthusiasm for them. And whereas the national bourgeoisie in the 19th century poured money into chauvinist building of the nation state, the finance capitalist companies of the 21st century have no interest for example in welding European solidarity against the USA. Even though George Bush's neo-Cons do not really represent the best interests of capitalism, they can be discarded in other ways, than by drumming up too severe a polarisation between Europe and the USA. So Europe has won peace but it is finding that democracy is not the shining ideal it was when held up against communist dicatorship. It is about many pragmatic alliances, and being able to achieve things only when potential opponents are bored or diverted by something else. Not a bad model for world unity if gradually it requires the wishes and interests of ordinary working people to be appeased. But that leaves it more likely to be vulnerable to populist or fascist rebellions than to glorious and coordinated proletarian revolution. Chris Burford London
