My last post was resolutely negative, but I said I was doing two posts, so here is the second, and it’s thankfully a lot more positive. In the UK, we held our two seats: there are still two loud Green voices from the UK in the EP. True, we didn’t manage to increase our seats as we had expected to do, but we held our base firmly, and the UK-wide increase in the Green vote was 50%. In other words, the electoral system is just a tad crap for us, but we did pretty well. Now we need to build on that and make sure that we get those extra seats next time. One of my favourite set of numbers for the night was Brighton & Hove, where we took the most votes, beating all other parties. Lets hope we can have a repeat performance when it comes to the general election.

Looking elsewhere in Europe, the state of the greens is rather good. In France, we saw a gain of 8 seats, taking us to a total of 14. In Belgium, Groen! (Dutch-speaking greens) suffered at the hands of Vlaams Belang (far-right), but Ecolo (French-speaking greens) won two seats in the EP (up one from last time), and are also the third largest party in the Brussels Capital Region Parliament. Not all results are in, but by my estimates, we’ve gained 13 seats across Europe, making the European Greens a stronger force in EU politics. I’ll try and keep that pan-European thought in mind, rather than the UK results.

There are so many things I want to say after what happened in the elections last night, so I’ll try fit it all into two posts here. First is the disaster that was the results from the UK. In the North West and Yorkshire & Humber, we’ve managed to elect BNP MEPs. I think this is one of those times that proves that it is easier to spread politics of hate and division when times are tough, than to promote politics of hope and optimism for what we could do with our future.

In the North West, the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, was elected with only a 0.3% lead over the Greens. Whenever things are that tight, the first question most activists in the North West will probably be asking is, “could we have done more?” I suppose we have to remember that, while we could have done more, and things didn’t turn out as we’d hoped, we made a tremendous effort which we can build on for next time, and use in national and local elections in the region.

The second I heard about the BNP’s gains, my mind jumped to all the things it could blame: the media for reporting the election on national issues instead of making it a European election; the voters for being such blithering idiots as to be taken in by the new face of the BNP—I don’t for one minute believe all those BNP voters are proper racists, just cretinous fools; the other parties for being so arrogant as to forget the people and their underlying ideologies; and us for not campaigning harder. The simple fact is that, as much as I desperately wish it were otherwise, the BNP have two seats in the next European Parliament, and we just have to get used to that, and do everything we can to make sure that it is us with at least a 1% lead over them in 2014.

I’ve never witnessed a European election count before, so my idea of live-blogging it may be a bit presumptuous, but I’ll give it a go anyway. Proper live-blogging should start from about 21h30 CET. The spreadsheet below is my attempt to gather together the green results from the European Parliament; Belgian and Luxembourgish legislative; and Irish, English, and Maltese local elections. Tweet in my direction (@tredford01) if I’ve missed anything out. Results in italics are provisional, and all information is as correct as I can make it, but there may be errors.

02h46 CEST: Well, that’s all I can manage for now. It seems that the European Greens have so far gained 12 seats against the 2004 session numbers. With the fresh light of day, I’ll hopefully be able to complete my results spreadsheet and put together some coherent comment on things, but just now I have mixed feelings. I’m happy for the overall gain, but the far-right’s gains in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, our losses in Austria and Italy, and our failure to increase our number of seats in the UK is very disappointing. Goodnight.

02h27 CEST: So in the last two results from UK South East and UK South West, Greens have beaten the Labour Party. Shame we aren’t managing to increase our seats.

02h25 CEST: UK South East results: 4 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Green, 1 Labour, 2 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 12%, 4% ahead of Labour.

02h21 CEST: UK South West results: 3 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 9%, 1% ahead of Labour.

02h01 CEST: Apparently there is a recount going on in Manchester. That explains the delay in results.

01h53 CEST: East Midlands results: 2 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 7% with no seats.

01h41 CEST: London results: 3 Conservative, 2 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 Green , 1 UKIP. Our first Green to be re-elected this time round.

01h32 CEST: BBC are now predicting that the BNP will win 2 seats, and Greens will also win 2 nationally. So UK North West could easily go to the evil nazis, while we just manage to hold our two existing seats.

01h25 CEST: Re-Tweeting @AdamRamsay “Report from NW count: Greens 5,000 behind in final tally ”

01h22 CEST: And there is a computer failure in the count for UK South East. Wonderful: more delays.

01h20 CEST: BBC are predicting that we will take a 9% share of the vote UK wide.

01h03 CEST: Italian result seems to have sneaked past the BBC. According to the European Greens, we’ve lost our MEPs from Italy. Federazione dei Verdi down to 3% of the vote.

01h01 CEST: Irish results forthcoming. No seats for the Greens.

00h54 CEST: So to tot up UK results so far, we have 7 Conservative, 4 Labour, 3 Liberal Democrat, 4 UKIP, 1 Plaid Cymru, and 1 evil fascist BNP nazi.

00h47 CEST: Greens on 6% with no seats in UK Wales, and Plaid Cymru will join the Greens/EFA group in Brussels.

00h46 CEST: UK Wales results: 1 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 Plaid Cymru, 1 UKIP.

00h41 CEST: Welsh results should be through shortly.

00h32 CEST: Greens on 9% in UK Yorkshire & Humber.

00h29 CEST: Fascist BNP have their first seat in UK Yorkshire & Humber. Horrible

00h28 CEST: UK Yorkshire & Humber: 2 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 BNP.

00h22 CEST: UK Yorkshire & Humber result should be through shortly.

00h10 CEST: Greens on 9%, no MEP from us for East of England.

00h09 CEST: 3 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 Labour from UK East of England.

00h05 CEST: UK East of England result just coming through.

23h58 CEST: Apparently the Italian result is about to be announced. Also, there is a potential for BNP seat in UK Yorkshire & Humber.

23h36 CEST: Worrying news from the count in the UK North West, BNP may be 2,000 votes ahead of the Greens with 14 out of 39 areas in the region announced.

23h04 CEST: Argh, maddening religious population of Western Isles in Scotland refuses to count votes on a Sunday. Northern Ireland also waiting until Monday.

22h58 CEST: Tweets are suggesting the BNP are going to do badly in the UK North West. Still could be very tight, and still big chance Greens might not get a seat there.

22h45 CEST: 1 Labour, 1 Conservative, 1 Liberal Democrat in the UK North East region. Greens were up 1% to 5.8%.

22h43 CEST: First results coming in from the UK North East. Will post results very soon.

22h32 CEST: Discrepancies between the BBC’s reporting of results, and what I’m getting through SMS, Twitter and European Greens. We may have 1 or 2 MEPs from Spain.

22h15 CEST: RT @patrickharvie Rumours of 18% Green vote in Glasgow.

22h09 CEST: Finally getting some proper results in. Great results from France, and Germany.

21h08 CEST: Will be taking a short break in live-blogging to cycle to an election party now. Back online in half an hour or so.

20h56 CEST: Lebanon has apparently also voted in national elections today, so I’ll try to slot those results in as a little bonus when they come through. I’m not sure how strong the green party is over there.

20h53 CEST: Apparently low turn-out in France (surprise, surprise!), but Europe Ecologie (Les Verts and Regions et Peuples Solidaires) seems to be on 14.8%.

20h39 CEST: Closer to home, I’m also hearing good things about the Scottish Greens in Edinburgh. Let’s hope it’s enough to get Elaine to Brussels!

20h36 CEST: I’m hearing word that we may have our first MEP from Οικολόγων Πράσινων (Eco-Greens) in Greece. Looking for more information just now.

19h45 CEST: Getting mixed information from Belgium. Ecolo (French-speaking greens) seem to be doing quite well with 16 seats in the regional parliament for Brussels. Groen! (Dutch-speaking green), on the other hand, appear to be suffering, with few gains, and lots of far-right gains for Vlaams Belang. Very worrying, and I hope not an omen for our performance in the North-West region of the UK.

Ok, so I’m wired on caffeine and adrenaline right now. I’ve done last minute campaigning this morning, and just got back from my local army base which is serving as a polling station today. Needless to say, I voted Green (as you should too).

I haven’t really got much of an idea what to do now though. Parliament is having a day off so there isn’t much to do in the office there, and I’ve done pretty much all I need to do before the time I’d normally have finished eating breakfast, with my only remaining commitment being the collection of A-boards from polling stations at 22h. I wonder how many other party activists are like this across the country.

Polling day is upon us at last in Britain and the Netherlands, so remember to go and vote Green or GroenLinks today. I’ve been up since half five putting A-boards outside polling stations, and leafleting outside Waverley Station, so I’m off home now to grab my polling card and vote. It’ll be the first time I’ve voted in European elections, so the whole thing is jolly exciting. Interestingly I only saw SNP boards and one Lib Dem one when I was doing the rounds. I guess Labour are struggling to motivate their activists. Let’s see what Sunday brings.

Now I know all of the readers of this blog will either be green voters or will be misguided souls who have their votes otherwise committed, but the party election broadcast for the EP elections next month is amazing. Whoever is making these videos, well done!

Yesterday I made the mistake of putting my head above the parapet in the matter of the Green Party’s response to the Israel/Palestine issue. My first mistake was to think that people would assume my views on the issue to be promoting peace, love and universal harmony. I’m not going to go into detail of what exactly was said, suffice to say I advised a Green Party member to check the GPEW national approach to the conflict in Gaza before issuing a statement, to ensure that the statement represented the subtleties and complexities of the party’s opinion. The response to this essentially accused me of sitting on the fence on the issue, and of supporting the “Israeli military machine”.

Considering that at no point had I given any personal opinion on the issue, simply a piece of advice, I find this, not insulting, but certainly annoying. Annoying, because it demonstrates that the knee-jerk reflexes and lack of rational, reasoned analysis of the conflict, and its long-term implications on the region extends into the Green Party.

The debate on Israel and Palestine needs to be removed from this hot-headed approach, and considered properly and calmly. Any resolution to the present conflict must either set the stage for the development of a long term programme for peace, or be that very programme.

Conflicts in Israel and Palestine will continue so long as inequalities and discrimination continue. A peaceful resolution can only be achieved if both sides in this conflict (and I show no preference for Israel or Palestine here) lay down their arms and realise that they are all people. They have the same needs: food, water, shelter, social contact. Yes, they practice their religion in different ways, but that is no excuse whatsoever for the divisions in Israeli/Palestinian society.

The essential point I wish to convey with this post, is that I think there is a need to step back for a moment and make reasoned consideration of the full complexities of the conflict, and what can be done to resolve it and provide a sustainable peace. Accusations flying around help no-one, least of all those suffering in Gaza and Israel.

I support peaceful, non-violent protests to call for an end to conflict on both sides. What I don’t support are protests or actions which take sides with either the Israeli government, or the Palestinian Hamas government. Now is the time to bring peace for everyone living in Israel and Palestine, not peace for some, and punishment for others.

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