Your guide to this week’s EU election

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The European Parliamentary elections are due to take place between May 23-26, with the UK voting on the first day.

All EU citizens living in the UK will have the opportunity to vote in an MEP.

Owing to the failure of the UK and the EU to reach a Brexit deal, the UK has been granted an extension to the Article 50 process for leaving the EU until October 31. This means that because no agreement has yet been reached, European elections will be held for UK representatives.

The decision to offer the UK an extension to the Brexit process says that if the UK fails to hold elections, the extension will come to an end on May 31.

As well as the traditional offerings there are two high-profile new parties contesting these elections, one pro-Brexit and one pro-second referendum.

In April, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage launched The Brexit Party. The party, which has been registered with the Electoral Commission since February 5, was led by Catherine Blaiklock, UKIP’s former economics spokesman, until March 20 when she resigned following the discovery of Islamophobic tweets she had made. The party currently has 14 MEPs including Farage, all of whom defected from UKIP.

Change UK will contest the elections and is the party formed by The Independent Group of MPs who defected from Labour and the Conservatives in February. Its registration was accepted on April 15, although the proposed emblem was rejected. Interim party leader Heidi Allen has said the party is not making policy on EU matters ‘at this stage’ and will be agreeing ‘no deals and no pacts’ with other parties.

The South East

In the South East there are 10 seats. These are currently held by 4 Ukip, 3 Conservatives, 1 Labour, 1 Lib Dem, 1 Green

The election polls are open on May 23 from 7am until 10pm. The results will be declared after 10pm on May 26,

The process

The reason for the long gap between polls closing and results being announced is because different countries vote on different days over the four day period from 23 to 26 May (with the vast majority voting on the final day), and the results cannot be announced until voting has concluded in all countries.

The new European Parliament will hold its inaugural session on July 2, at which the new president  and vicr-presidents of the European Parliament will be elected for a two-and-a-half-year term.

As things stand, the UK’s MEPs will lose their jobs when the Brexit extension ends on October 31, and could lose them before then. However, if a further extension was agreed, they could find themselves in post for much longer.

South East candidates

Brexit Party

Nigel Farage

Alexandra Phillips

Robert Rowland

Belinda de Lucy

James Bartholomew

Christopher Ellis

John Kennedy

Matthew Taylor

George Farmer

Peter Wiltshire

Change UK

Richard Ashworth

Victoria Groulef

Warren Morgan

Eleanor Fuller

Robin Bextor

Nicholas Mazzei

Suzana Carp

Phil Murphy

Heather Allen

Diane Yeo

Conservatives

Daniel Hannan

Nirj Deva

Richard Robinson

Michael Whiting

Juliette Ash

Anna Firth

Adrian Pepper

Clarence Mitchell

Neva Sadikoglu-Novaky

Caroline Newton

Greens

Alexandra Philips

Elise Benjamin

Vix Lowthion

Leslie Groves Williams

Phelim Mac Cafferty

Jan Doerfel

Larry Sanders

Isabella Moir

Oliver Sykes

Jonathan Essex

Independent

Jason McMahon

David Round

Michael Turberville

Labour

John Howarth

Cathy Shutt

Arran Neathey

Emma Christina Turnbull

Rohit Dasgupta

Amy Fowler

Duncan Shaw Thomas Enright

Lubna Arshad

Simon Burgess

Rachael Ward

Liberal Democrats

Catherine Bearder

Anthony Hook

Judith Bunting

Martin Tod

Liz Leffman

Chris Bowers

Giles Goodall

Ruvi Ziegler

Nick Perry

John Vincent

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Mandy Bruce

Raymond Carr

David Chesham

Robert Cox

Michael Foster

Stephen Harper

Neil Kirk

Anton Pruden

Andrew Thomas-Emans

Darren Williams

UK European Union Party

Pacelli Ndikumana

Clinton Powell

Ukip

Piers Wauchope

Liz Phillips

Daryll Pitcher

Toby Brothers

Tony Gould

Clive Keith Egan

Troy De Leon

Alan Harvey Stone

Judy Moore

Pat Mountain

3 Comments

  1. By delaying the departure how much has this cost the country in total since the vote took place. That being Chris Graylings department as well as payments to the EU and the EU election and negotiators etc costs.

    Total and utter madness.

    How many people could have been taken on for essential services.

  2. No one knew what the Terms & Conditions for leaving the EU were when we voted in the Referendum, if they think they did why didn’t they tell Teresa May, because she doesn’t know, and neither does her government!

    Its going to be a race to the bottom if we leave the EU without any T & C, which have protected our trade, and industry for decades, and which will take decades to re-negotiate with other countries! The EU has protected us against the predatory trade interests of the USA, India, China, Russia, and other major countries, so they can’t dump their goods and services on us for a pittance than they cost now. Be prepared to work for a bowl of rice a day! Better the devil you know, so vote Remain!

    • I agree with Dumpton. Any exit scenario will cost the UK in terms of jobs and gdp; a hard Brexit will be catastrophic.
      Who says so:
      The CBI and the TUC in an unheard of joint statement.
      The Treasury.
      The Bank of England.
      The actions of Barclays (moved £Billions out of the UK)
      Nissan (closed its factory, moved to Europe).
      Need I go on?
      And the benefits?
      Blue passports (which, it turns out, we could have had anyway) and sovereignty (which we’ve got: she’s called “The Queen”)

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