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The 2004 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's part of the wider 2004 European Parliament election which was held between 10 and 13 June 2004 in the 25 member states of the European Union. The United Kingdom's part of this election was held on Thursday 10 June 2004. The election also coincided with the 2004 local elections and the London Assembly and mayoral elections. In total, 78 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation.
The Conservative Party and the Labour Party both polled poorly. The Conservatives experienced their second-lowest ever recorded vote share in a national election (even less than their 1832 nadir, although the party would do worse still in the 2014 and 2019 elections), and Labour their lowest since 1918. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) saw a large increase in support, increasing its number of MEPs from 3 to 12 and on popular vote pushed the Liberal Democrats, who themselves had increased their representation from 10 to 12 seats into fourth place. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin beat the SDLP in the polls and took its first Northern Ireland seat.
Background
Electoral system
The United Kingdom elected 78 Members of the European Parliament using proportional representation. The United Kingdom was divided into twelve multi-member constituencies. The eleven of these regions which form Great Britain used a closed-list party list system method of proportional representation, calculated using the D'Hondt method. Northern Ireland used the Single Transferable Vote (STV). As a consequence of the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, the number of seats allocated to the United Kingdom was fewer than in 1999.
It was the first European election to be held in the United Kingdom using postal-only voting in four areas: the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, and East Midlands
regions.
Regional seat allocations
A combination of the effects of the Treaty of Nice and the 2004 enlargement of the European Union meant that the number of seats allocated to the United Kingdom for the 2004 election was reduced from the 87 MEPs allocated for the 1999 election to 78 MEPs.
As a result of the successful challenge of Matthews v United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights in 1999 residents of Gibraltar, voted in the European Parliament election for the first time, as part of the South West England region.
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1"
|+Changes in regional seat allocations
!Constituency!!Representation<br /> in 1999!!Representation<br /> in 2004!!class="unsortable"|Net Gain/Loss
|-
|East Midlands
|6
|6
|
|-
|East of England
|8
|7
| 1
|-
|London
|10
|9
| 1
|-
|North East England
|4
|3
| 1
|-
|North West England
|10
|9
| 1
|-
|Northern Ireland
|3
|3
|
|-
|Scotland
|8
|7
| 1
|-
|South East England
|11
|10
| 1
|-
|South West England<sup>1</sup>
|7
|7
|
|-
|Wales
|5
|4
| 1
|-
|West Midlands
|8
|7
| 1
|-
|Yorkshire and the Humber
|7
|6
| 1
|-
!Overall
!87
!78
! 9
|}
<sup>1</sup> <small>Includes Gibraltar, the only British overseas territory which was part of the EU.</small>
Results
thumb|Partial map, showing most popular party by counting area in Great Britain only.
Turnout for all the regions was 38.2% on an electorate of 44,157,267 (43,084,598 in Great Britain and 1,072,669 in Northern Ireland). The Conservatives and Labour both polled poorly. The Conservatives, although getting a vote share 4.1% greater than Labour, experienced their lowest vote share in a national election since 1832. Labour's vote share was its lowest since 1918. Labour's decline in votes was regarded as being largely due to widespread public dissatisfaction about the Iraq War and (as with the Conservatives) the increased popularity of UK Independence Party (UKIP). UKIP saw a large increase in support, increasing its number of MEPs from 3 to 12, drawing level with the Liberal Democrats, who themselves had increased their representation from 10 to 12 seats. UKIP polled higher than the Liberal Democrats to push the latter into fourth place.
Turnout was lowest in Scotland, which did not hold local elections on the same day. In Scotland, Labour topped the poll, followed by the Scottish National Party (SNP). The Conservatives' share of the vote declined by 2 per cent, making it the region with the smallest swing against them. Gibraltar was however part of the EU, the only BOT to be so included. Following however, the result of the successful challenge of Matthews v United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights in 1999
Turnout in Gibraltar was 57.5%, higher than the 37.6% for the South West England electoral region as a whole. The Conservative Party polled over two-thirds of the Gibraltar vote, with no other party exceeding 10% support.
Northern Ireland
Turnout in Northern Ireland was 51.2%. Sinn Féin beat the SDLP in the polls and took its first Northern Ireland seat. Sinn Féin also won a seat in the corresponding elections in the Republic of Ireland. Sinn Féin and the DUP increased their shares of the vote relative to the 1999 European Parliament elections, while the shares for both the SDLP and the UUP fell. Jim Allister of the DUP and Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin were elected in the first round while Jim Nicholson of the UUP was elected in the third stage, after the votes of the other candidates were reallocated.
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | Party
! rowspan="2" | Candidate(s)
! rowspan="2" | Seats
! rowspan="2" | Loss/Gain
! colspan="2" | First Preference Votes
|-
! Number
! % of vote
|- align="right"
|
|Jim Allister||1||||175,761||31.9
|- align="right"
|
|Bairbre de Brún||1|| 1||144,541||26.3
|- align="right"
|
|Jim Nicholson||1||||91,164||16.6
|- align="right"
|
|Martin Morgan||0|| 1||87,559||15.9
|- align="right"
|
|John Gilliland||0||||36,270||6.6
|- align="right"
|
|Eamonn McCann||0||||9,172||1.6
|- align="right"
|
|Lindsay Whitcroft||0||||4,810||0.9
|- align="right"
|colspan=5|Total||549,277 ||
|- align="right"
|colspan=5|Turnout|| ||51.2%
- Mo O'Toole (North East England)
- Mark F. Watts (South East England)
Conservative
- Jacqueline Foster (North West England) - was reelected in the 2009 election.
- Alexander Macmillan (South West England)
- Roy Perry (South East England)
- Ian Twinn (London) - only took seat on 21 October 2003 after the ill-health resignation of Lord Bethell.
Plaid Cymru
- Eurig Wyn (Wales)
Aftermath
Both Tony Blair and Michael Howard faced criticism for their results with then Secretary of State for Health John Reid calling the results "disappointing" for Labour and "disastrous" for the Conservatives.
Shortly after the election UKIP's Robert Kilroy-Silk, who was credited with raising the profile of the party during the election, was interviewed by Channel 4 television about leadership ambitions, Kilroy-Silk did not deny having ambitions to lead the party, but stressed that Roger Knapman would lead it into the next general election. However, the next day, on Breakfast with Frost, he criticised Knapman's leadership. After further disagreement with the leadership, Kilroy-Silk resigned the UKIP whip in the European Parliament on 27 October 2004. Initially, he remained a member, while seeking a bid for the party leadership. However, this was not successful and he resigned completely from UKIP on 20 January 2005, calling it a "joke". Two weeks later, he founded his own party, Veritas, taking a number of UKIP members, including both of the London Assembly members, with him.
UKIP formed a new European Parliament Group, Independence/Democracy which was co-chaired by Nigel Farage and Hanne Dahl.
See also
- 2005 United Kingdom general election
- List of political parties in the United Kingdom
Notes
References
External links
- European Election News by European Election Law Association (Eurela)
- Guide and results at the UK Office of the European Parliament
- Guide and links Richard Kimber's at Political Science Resources
Manifestos and documents
- Guardian (newspaper): incomplete collection of manifestos
- Conservative manifesto
- European Greens manifesto; Successes of the Greens in the European Parliament; A Green Contract for Europe; European Election Manifesto: Green Party of England and Wales Manifesto: Northern Ireland
- Labour document
- Liberal Democrat manifesto
- Democratic Unionist Party manifesto
- Social Democratic and Labour Party manifesto
- Socialist Environmental Alliance manifesto
- Ulster Unionist Party manifesto European manifesto (ED)
- Scottish National Party manifesto
- Plaid Cymru / The Party of Wales Manifesto