The morning after

Cyberspace and the airwaves are full of interpretations of the European results but I make no apologies for adding to them.

Perhaps the one that is getting the most airtime is the election of two BNP representative especially over a weekend when we commemorated the start of a battle that ended fascism in Europe.

It is a sad reflection on the country.Make no bones that these people consider,no matter what they say in public, that those born outside these islands as second class citizens.

The good news is that there was no perceivable increase in their vote but instead benefited from a low turn out and a collapse in the Labour vote.

Now let's look at that in more detail.People are fed up with the main parties.The Labour party in particular is failing to connect with its core vote.Politicians always spout out after a bad electoral defeat that they will listen but it rarely happens.For Gordon Brown,providing he survives tonight,this is a last chance.

There was a Europe wide turn to the right,a reaction to current economic troubles but an unusual one put in historical context.Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic,all saw appreciable gains for right of centre parties.

Spain in particular saw the voters turning against the left of centre Zaperato just over a year after he won an election.An economy which had grown on a construction and a service industry boom-any similarities there?

There is also widespread apathy towards the European parliament.Excluding Northern Ireland 14m out of 40m of us managed to drag ourselves to the polls.It was lower that the European average and 17% voted for a party who wants us out of Europe(Ukip) and 28 % for the Tories who will not be sitting with right of centre allies who want to work within the European institutions.

On the subject of the Tories,they can hardly be happy with that figure given the unpopulraity of the Labour party at the moment.David Cameron has a lot of work to do to convince the electorate that he is a viable alternative.

As for the Lib Dems,finishing fourth in this climate is nothing short of a disaster for Nick Clegg and show how far behind their policies lag in the minds of the electorate.