22 May 2014 2019 → 13 seats 13 seats 24 20 | Turnout 35.6% 0.9% 13 seats 26 seats 20 19 | |
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The United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election was held on Thursday 22 May 2014, coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England and Northern Ireland. In total, 73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England, Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR (with the D'Hondt method), while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).
Contents
- Results
- Conservative
- Liberal Democrats
- British National Party
- An Independence from Europe
- We Demand a Referendum
- MEPs before the 2014 election by European Parliament group
- Voting system and regional representation
- Returning officers
- Parties and candidates
- British Democratic Party
- Green
- Labour
- UKIP
- Debates
- Opinion polls
- References
Most of the results of the election were announced after 10pm on Sunday 25 May (Although Scotland didn't declare its result until the following day), after voting closed throughout the 28 member states of the European Union. Given the subsequent Leave vote in the 23 June 2016 referendum, it seems highly likely that this will be the last time the United Kingdom participated in a European Parliament election.
The UK Independence Party (UKIP) came top of the poll – the first time a political party other than the Labour Party or Conservative Party has won the popular vote in a British election since the 1906 general election winning 26.6% of the national vote and 24 seats overall from every region apart from Northern Ireland and also won the highest vote share in 168 council areas with the highest local council vote share recorded in Boston in Lincolnshire where they won 51.6% of the vote share although it was the only council area in the United Kingdom where they won more than half the vote. It is also the first time a party other than the Labour and Conservatives won the largest number of seats in a national election since the December 1910 general election.
The Labour Party became the first largest opposition party since 1984 that failed to win the European Parliament election although they did gain 7 seats to take their overall tally to 20 seats winning 24.4% of the national vote winning the largest share of the vote in 100 council areas with their largest vote share recorded in Newham at 58.4%.
The co-governing Conservatives were pushed into third place for the first time in any European Parliament winning just 23.3% of the national vote share and losing 7 seats to fall to 19 overall, one behind Labour and won the largest share of the vote in just 89 council areas and their highest vote was recorded in Elmbridge at 43.1%.
The co-governing Liberal Democrats lost ten of their eleven seats they were defending and nationally won just 6.6% of the vote share and won just 4 council areas, their highest vote share was recorded in Gibraltar where they won 67.2% of the vote share.
In Scotland the Scottish National Party won the largest share of the vote taking 29% of the vote and won the largest share of the vote in 15 of the 32 Scottish council areas and held on to its two seats although they only won 2.3% of the national UK vote.
Figures released in December 2014 showed that the Conservatives and UKIP each spent £2.96m on the campaign, the Liberal Democrats £1.5 million and the Labour party approximately £1m.
Results
Election results by constituency
Conservative
Liberal Democrats
British National Party
An Independence from Europe
We Demand a Referendum
MEPs before the 2014 election, by European Parliament group
Between the 2009 and 2014 elections, there were various changes to the breakdown of UK members. In December 2011 a 73rd member from the UK (Anthea McIntyre, Conservative) was allocated to England because of the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon. There were also various defections:
The Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force (UCUNF) electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) was dissolved.
Thus, before the 2014 election, the following parties had MEPs representing UK constituencies:
Voting system and regional representation
The United Kingdom elected 73 Members of the European Parliament using proportional representation. The United Kingdom was divided into twelve multi-member constituencies. The eleven of these regions which form Great Britain used a closed-list party list system method of proportional representation, calculated using the D'Hondt method. Northern Ireland used the Single Transferable Vote (STV). As a result of the Treaty of Lisbon coming into force, the UK became entitled to a 73rd MEP as from November 2011. The Electoral Commission performed a reallocation in keeping with the same procedures they used to allocate 72 MEPs and an extra Conservative MEP was allocated to the West Midlands constituency based on the 2009 vote and was enshrined in the European Union Act 2011 as an amendment of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002.
1 Includes Gibraltar, the only British overseas territory which is part of the European Union.
Returning officers
The European Parliamentary Elections (Returning Officers) Order 2013 provides for the designated Returning Officer for each electoral region to be the council official responsible for elections in each of the following Westminster constituencies: Kettering for the East Midlands, Chelmsford for the Eastern region, Lewisham, Deptford for the London region, Sunderland Central for the North East region, Manchester Central for the North West region, Falkirk for Scotland, Southampton, Test for the South East region, Poole for the South West region, Preseli Pembrokeshire for Wales, Birmingham Ladywood for the West Midlands region, Leeds Central for the Yorkshire and Humber region, and Belfast South for the Northern Ireland Region
Parties and candidates
39 parties stood a total of 747 candidates. The Conservative Party and UKIP had candidates in every region, as did the three Green parties. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the BNP had a full slate of candidates in all the regions in Great Britain (i.e. excluding Northern Ireland). The English Democrats and An Independence from Europe had a full slate of candidates in all the English regions. No2EU had a full slate in seven regions, while Britain First and the Socialist Party of Great Britain had full slates in two regions each. The Harmony Party stood in four regions and the Christian Peoples Alliance in three regions. Other parties only stood in one region.
British Democratic Party
(Elected in 2009 as British National Party)
Conservative
Green
Labour
Liberal Democrats
UKIP
Debates
On 20 February, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg used his weekly phone-in show on LBC 97.3 to challenge the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, to a live public debate on the UK's membership of the European Union. Clegg said, "he is the leader of the party of 'out'; I am the leader of the party of 'in'. I think it's time we now have a proper, public debate so that the public can listen to the two sides of the argument and judge from themselves." Farage accepted, but said he would also like to see Ed Miliband and David Cameron participate.
The first hour-long debate between the two men was held on 26 March 2014 and was broadcast live on television by Sky News and on the BBC News Channel. The debate was hosted by LBC and moderated by Nick Ferrari. After the first debate, a YouGov poll asked "Who performed better?", with 57% saying Farage did better compared to 36% for Clegg.
The second debate was held on BBC Two on 2 April in a special programme called The European Union: In or Out, moderated by David Dimbleby. Farage was again seen as outperforming his rival, with a snap poll by YouGov showing 68% of people thought he did better in the debate compared to 27% for Clegg. A snap Guardian poll also showed that 69% thought Farage won the debate.
Despite David Cameron and Ed Miliband declining to participate in the leaders' debates, the Conservative and Labour parties were represented in a lower-profile debate on the BBC. On 13 February Andrew Neil hosted a four-way debate on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme. The Conservatives were represented by Syed Kamall MEP, Labour by Richard Howitt MEP, the Liberal Democrats by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and the UK Independence Party by Patrick O'Flynn, the party's Director of communications and an MEP candidate.
Opinion polls
These opinion polls are for Great Britain and generally exclude Northern Ireland. The methodology used for these polls broadly corresponds to that used for opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election; see that article for the methodology used by each polling company. YouGov have experimented with different methods of polling for these elections, using their own method for their 8–9 January 2013 poll and another corresponding to that used by Survation and ComRes for their 10–11 January 2013 poll (both below) and argue that their method gives more accurate answers. Data for these polls are generally gathered at the same time as the data for General Election polling.