The Labour Party and the EU Take A Beating in Britain’s Elections

Ted Bromund /

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown attends a meeting in Stratford, east London where he spoke with local Labour Party activists on June 7, 2009. Gordon Brown today sought to face down his critics, vowing that he would not "walk away" in the face of political and economic difficulties. Addressing Labour activists in East London he pledged to push on with measures to tackle the recession and clean up Parliament.

The polls said it would be bad for Labour. But no one expected it to be this bad. On Thursday, Britons voted in local county elections and elections for the European Parliament. The result was a devastating repudiation of Gordon Brown’s tottering government, and of the cause of European integration.

First, the local numbers. England’s divided up into 34 counties. After the elections, the Conservatives control 30 of them. The Liberal Democrats run one county council. The remaining three are not controlled by any one party. There are 2,362 council seats. The Conservatives went into the election with over a thousand more than Labour. They now have 1,531. Across all of England, Labour lost 291 seats and now has only 178. (more…)

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