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Polarised Politics – The European Elections in the UK

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 September 2019
AuthorJohn Curtice
DOI10.1177/2041905819871837
Published date01 September 2019
8 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2019
The 2019 European Parliament
Election in the UK was not
supposed to happen. Following
a majority vote to leave the EU
in a referendum held in June 2016, the
country was due to exit the multinational
institution on March 29. However, repeated
attempts by the UK government to secure
MPs’ approval for a withdrawal treaty that
had been negotiated with the EU ended in
failure. Reluctant to leave the EU without an
agreed deal, the government found itself
asking for not just one but two extensions to
the withdrawal process, the second of which
entailed the UK remaining in the EU until the
end of October 2019. However, this meant
Polarised Politics
– The European
Elections in the UK
John Curtice looks back on an election that was not suppose d to
happen and f‌inds a British electorate deeply divided on Brexit and a
two-party system struggling to maintain its political hold.
the UK would still be a member in May
2019, when elections to a new European
Parliament were due to be held in all
member states. Reluctantly, the government
accepted that these elections would now
have to go ahead in the UK too.
An unexpected election
There was, in truth, good reason for the
Conservative government to prefer that
the election did not take place. It had, after
all, just failed to deliver the Brexit it had
promised to achieve in the 2017 General
© Press Association
Political Insight SEPT2019.indd 8 01/08/2019 14:10

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