Fringe Parties in the Euro Elections on 10 June

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 14th Jun 2004

With so many fringe parties in the Euro elections, most did not attract enough votes to get any MEPs elected. They would need to get over 10% of the vote, with the major parties not getting a high enough percentage to claim another MEP.

This time, there will only be 7 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the West Midlands, down from 8 last time, when there were 4 Conservatives, 3 Labour and 1 Liberal Democrat, Liz Lynne, who has worked tirelessly for the WM region.

With many Conservatives supporting right-wing parties such as UKIP or the BNP, their tally fell to 3 MEPs, with the outsiders getting none! Due to the unpopularity of Labour, they went down to 2 MEPs, as one of their previous high profile MEPs did not stand for re-election! The Liberal Democrats and UKIP gained one seat each.

It was unfortunate that the anti-European vote prevented the Liberal Democrat getting an extra MEP in the region, because support has been growing for the party over their stance on the Iraq war, and their opposition to Council Tax and student tuition fees.

The Conservatives lost 8 seats in all, Labour lost 6 seats, and the Liberal Democrats gained 2. UKIP gained 9 seats, but support for other single issue fringe parties resulted in no seats at all. It will be interesting to see what effect the UKIP vote has on the Conservative and Labour attitudes to Europe. At least the Liberal Democrats have always had a consistent approach!