If winning the Euro elections had been a good general election predictor William Hague would have become Prime Minister in 2001
Instead Blair got 413 MPs and the Tories 166
This is starting to feel a bit tiresome those people taking European election voting intention polls and seeking them to apply to a general election. Sure the Tory shares down to 13% are terrible but history suggests that this is not a guide to any General Election outcome.
Go back and look at the 2001. Two years earlier William Hague had secured most seats in the EU parliament for his Tories and made a big deal of this.
That barely mattered barely two years later. At the General Election the number of CON seats increased by just one.
Hague quit as leader the following day.
Yet we keep on seeing these projections. Five years ago UKIP, then without Tommy Robinson as a prominent party figure, came top in the Euro elections with the Tories in third place. Some excitable people were predicting all sorts for the party. It didn’t happen. At the 2015 general election UKIP lost one of the two seats that it had secured a year earlier as a result of the defection.
There are several big differences between the Euro and general elections. In the latter the turnouts are generally about twice as large and of course they electing the Parliament that will govern the country perhaps for the following five years. The Euro Parliament might have some powers that impact on life in the UK but you’d be hard pressed to be specific.
Mike Smithson