What have we learnt this week?
I would have preferred the PES to have a candidate for the President of the European Commission, but we do not, and we will not before the elections.
Final anecdote: On my way back out to Heathrow I quizzed the cabby about the European elections. Exceptionally, he was not treating it as a “second-order election” on national politics but seemed really concerned about Europe. This meant–predictably–he was voting UKIP, consistent with the principle that extremists are disproportionately mobilized around Europe. Why UKIP? “We signed on for a free trade area,” he said, “and now Europe is taking over British politics, one issue at a time.” I asked him what issues concerned him most. “Not really sure,” he said. When I pressed him, he named human rights and criminal law (Council of Europe not the EU), and troops in Afghanistan (NATO), and third-country (Moslem) immigration (not a European competence at all). Only an anecdote, but multiply it by a million and you have the record of every West European EU election and referendum of which we have records. Need we say more about the prospects for meaningful deliberation on European politics?
Jean Quatremer (via Julien Frish and Opinion Corner):
Our newspaper is convinced that [the European Parliament election] is an event that has to be covered – but in the same way a plane crash has to be covered. We don’t have a choice.
Fredrik Reinfeldt (Prime Minister of Sweden):
…the voters are rational, they realize that the EU election is not (as) decisive for their everyday life and for the future.” He continues to say that there is a “tremendous difference” between national parliamentary elections and elections to the EP since the EP “has no influence on formation of government or influence”
Libertas.eu, the website of the pan European people’s movement for more democracy, accountability and transparency in the EU, had more visitors mid-week than any other political party in the world. Figures from Alexa, the web tracking company, for Wednesday May 13th , show Libertas blazing ahead, leaving even the US Democratic party website trailing.
you can cheat with alexa stats, especially for smaller sites (as it depends on people having the alexa toolbar)
Former PR man is said to apply ‘Daily Mail test’, asking ask how a claim would look on front page of a brutal tabloid
