Oxford has bucked the South East trend in the European Parliament elections, with Labour having come first in Oxford’s results, securing 13,015 votes (33%), followed by the Green Party, with 8337 votes (21.24%).
However, in the South East (the European Parliament constituency to which Oxfordshire belongs), UKIP have won four of the ten available seats, with the Conservative Party in second place with three. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party each took one seat. UKIP leader Nigel Farage is among the candidates elected to the European Parliament for the South East.
Across the South East, UKIP secured 32.14% of the vote, seeing their share increase 13.29% from 2009; a win of two additional seats. In second place, the Conservatives won 30.95% of the vote; a decrease of 3.84%, and the loss of one seat. In third, Labour won 14.66%, an increase of 6.41%, but remained with one seat.
Despite their overall success in the South East, UKIP came fifth in the Oxford poll, with 4979 votes (12.63%). In Oxford, the Conservative Party came in at third place, having secured 5997 votes (15.21%), closely followed by the Liberal Democrats, with 5332 votes (13.52%).
Balliol student and Socialist Party candidate Claudia Hogg-Blake, the only Oxford student to run in the European elections, told Cherwell that she took some consolation in the fact that UKIP were knocked into fifth place in Oxford. Speaking on the success of UKIP on a national scale, Hogg-Blake commented, “I would rather people had voted for a non-racist party”.
Remarking on the performance of the Socialist Party in the elections, she added, “It’s good that we managed to increase our vote, but it’s not as good as we would have liked. That said, we didn’t expect to do that well”. In Oxford, the Socialist Party won 221 votes, or 0.56% of the vote.
Turnout in the Oxford area was 38.22%, up from 35.5% in the 2009 European elections, and greater than the 36.46% turnout for the South East. Europe-wide, turnout has marginally increased for the first time since elections to the European Parliament began in 1979, at 43.11%, up from 43% in 2009.
Speaking after the results were announced for the South East, Nigel Farage claimed that UKIP “have delivered just about the most extraordinary result that has been seen in British politics for 100 years.”
Farage continued, “In a way it is surprising it didn’t happen before, because we have had three parties in British politics that have lead us into a common market that has developed into a political union, who’ve twisted and turned with a variety of promises to give us a referendum that they’ve never actually kept. I think the penny’s really dropped, that as members of this union, we can’t run our own country, and crucially we can’t control our own borders”.
Nationally, UKIP have increased their vote by nearly 11%, so far securing an additional ten seats, bringing their total to twenty-three. This matches the European trend, as across Europe, anti-immigration and euroskeptic parties seem to have made significant gains. Nevertheless, in Britain the far-right BNP have seen their vote decrease by over 5%, losing all their seats in the European Parliament.
In elections to the European Parliament, Oxford is part of the South East constituency, which comprises Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Sussex. The constituency, which is the largest in the UK, returns ten members to the European Parliament, representing a population of around eight million.
