Elections

So,did the earth move for you? Earthquake is one of the commoner descriptions of the election results as Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen sweep all before them, but....I'm not so sure. A Euro election is a good time for a protest but that doesn't mean the voter won't return to type, certainly in France. A few years ago the socialist vote collapsed but left-wingers were seen going into the poling booths holding their noses as they voted for Chirac in order to keep out Marine's father, Jean-Marie.

The British voter is a little different. I remember people saying to me that they wouldn't vote for me because I couldn't win. Farage's success this time will make more people think it is OK to vote for him.

But the mainstream politicians are wondering what they should do now. I think it is easy to guess what will happen in Europe: they will ignore the vote, as they always do. They will tell themselves that what the silly little people really meant was that they wanted more Europe.

In the UK there may be some small change. Ed Miliband might now endorse the idea of a referendum, although I think he was Always going to do that anyway. What would be a breakthrough is if Cameron announced that in the event of his renegotiations not working he would campaign to leave. We'll see.

I have a piece in the Commentator about the European results. Read it; it's free.