Britain is set to vote in the European Elections on 23 May unless MPs agree on a Brexit deal beforehand.
All EU citizens have the chance to vote for the MEP they wish to defend their interests in European Parliament.
Now the parties and candidates running for the South West have been announced, including those for new groups Change UK and The Brexit Party.
Change UK is a pro-EU group founded this year by MPs who resigned from The Labour Party.
The Brexit Party is a pro-Brexit group also founded this year and lead by Nigel Farage.
The traditional parties; Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, all have candidates nominated. Also standing are candidates from The Green Party, the enviromentalist group; English Democrats, the English nationalist group; UKIP, the Eurosceptic group; and independent candidates.
For a full list of candidates, see the list from BCP Council here.
European Elections take place on 23 May, and you must register before 7 May to be eligible.
STOP PRESS: In the lead up to the elections, we’ll be asking candidates to write in to us to tell our readers what they’ll be standing for. You can find their letters on our letters page.
1 Comment
One thing that people seem to forget or simply not know about the EU elections is that it is not run on the same First Past the Post (FPTP) that we use in General Elections, it is done on a Proportional Representation (PR) system using the Party List Voting System, so the current bickering between UKIP & The Brexit Party is nonsense really because actually having two Pro Brexit parties is better than having one because it means more Pro Brexit MPs can be elected and sent to Brussels.
In EU2014 UKIP won 24 MEP seats with 4.4 million votes, Labour came 2nd with 4 million votes winning 20 MEP seats. So with a target audience of 17.4 million if UKIP & Brexit Party come 1st & 2nd then it will return even more MEP seats than a single party could achieve using PR.
PR Works like this:
Each party (or independent) votes are totalled and the one with the highest number of votes is awarded 1 MEP, their total is then dived by 1 + the number of MEPs, so initially the one with the highest number will have their total divided by 2. Then they are looked at again and the one with the highest number of votes is awarded 1 MEP and if that was the same as the first one their total will then be divided by 3 (1 + 2 MEPs). This process is continued until all 73 MEPs are elected.
So anyone saying that UKIP and Brexit Party should join forces because they will be splitting the vote, obviously do not know how the PR system works. As a Brexiteer myself I will vote tactically for UKIP because I think Brexit Party is going to win hands down in EU2019 but the important thing is that 17.4 million Leave voters do go out and vote for one or the other, it matters not which really but I have no doubts whatsoever that after May 23rd the results of the two will be added together and compared with the Remain party totals to try to evaluate it has an EU Referendum result. Refusing to vote or spoiling your ballot paper will be the same as voting to Remain in the EU.
You can be sure that Remain will be out in force for this EU election.