A European Parliament election that UK only took part in because May delayed Brexit showed a country even more polarized over the EU divorce nearly three years since a 2016 referendum in which it voted 52% to 48% to leave.
CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S LOSS
UK was supposed to have left on March 29 but it remains a member of the EU and its politicians are still arguing over how, when or even whether the country will leave the club it joined in 1973.
May on Friday announced she was stepping down, saying it was a matter of deep regret that she could not deliver Brexit. The Conservative Party was on course for one of its worst results in a nationwide election ever. Across England and Wales, voters turned away in anger from May’s Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn, which had sought a softer version of Brexit.
FARAGE ELECTED AS MEMBER OF EP
The Brexit Party came first while explicitly pro-EU parties – the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK – were, combined, a few percentage points behind. Farage, elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the South East of England, said he wanted to be involved in Brexit negotiations and warned that British politics was on the cusp of major upheaval unless Brexit took place on Oct. 31.
“We want to be part of that negotiating team,” Farage said in Southampton, southern England. “If we don’t leave on Oct. 31 then the score that you have seen for the Brexit Party today will be repeated in a general election and we are getting ready for it.”