United Kingdom Independence Party

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For criticism see Criticism of United_Kingdom_Independence_Party
United Kingdom Independence Party
Leader Nigel Farage MEP
Founded 1993
Headquarters PO Box 408
Newton Abbot
TQ12 9BG
Ideology Euroscepticism, Populism[1][2]
European Parliament Group Independence and Democracy
Official colours Purple and Grey
Website
http://www.ukip.org

The United Kingdom Independence Party (commonly known as UKIP, pronounced /ˈjuːkɪp/) is a right wing British political party. Its principal aim is the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union. UKIP currently holds nine seats in the European Parliament and two in the House of Lords (both were created as Conservative peers but defected). It also has around 100 local councillors on principal authorities, town and parish councils. It claimed a membership of 15,878 on 31 December 2007[3].

The party's policy is that the United Kingdom "shall again be governed by laws made to suit its own needs by its own Parliament, which must be directly and solely accountable to the electorate of the UK."[4]

In the 2004 European elections, UKIP received 2.7 million votes (16.8% of the national vote), gaining twelve seats in the European Parliament, although two of those were expelled after being convicted of fraud, and one resigned the party after internal conflicts. In the 2005 general election, the party received 603,298 votes (2.2% of the national vote). The party gained its first MP when Bob Spink, who had been sitting as an Independent Conservative, defected in April 2008.[5]

Contents

Some policies

Although the UKIP's original raison d'être was withdrawl from the EU, it has now expanded from being a single-issue party to developing a full domestic agenda, starting with a wide-ranging review and the establishment of a policy development group. UKIP has produced detailed policy documents on taxation [6] and education [7]. Its economic stance is based on what it claims to be the need for much lower taxation in order to compete internationally, a position which has been reinforced since the election of Nigel Farage as leader in September 2006.

Economic policies

UKIP favours combining income tax and national insurance into a single Flat Tax at 33%, which they claim would take 4.5 million lower paid workers out of the income tax system completely. [8] UKIP also proposes cuts in corporation taxes and the abolition of inheritance taxes.[9] The party advocates closer economic ties with the Commonwealth of Nations, which it sees as more viable to trade with in the coming decades, since Commonwealth nations like India are undergoing rapid economic growth, compared to the slow growth of the European Union.[10]

Identity cards & civil liberties

UKIP are against the planned introduction of identity cards, believing them to be ineffective as a way of combating fraud and terrorism, and an infringement of individual liberty. In December 2004, UKIP affiliated to the anti-ID card campaign, No2ID. Concern for civil liberties also led UKIP to oppose the Civil Contingencies Act 2004[11], which gives additional powers to the UK Home Secretary in broadly defined "emergency situations". UKIP's Jeffrey Titford MEP condemned the bill as "totalitarian". [12]

Education policy

UKIP's policy paper on education says it regards the aim of education as being to bring out the talents and abilities of each individual child. UKIP wants to give schools more freedom to determine their own direction so that parents have a more meaningful choice. It supports education vouchers for parents; would reform the National Curriculum to give schools a greater say over subjects taught; and would abolish nationwide testing of children before the age of 11. UKIP supports grammar schools equally with the other kinds of state-funded schools.[13]

Climate change

UKIP favours an expansion of nuclear power for reasons of energy security as well as to cut carbon emissions. It does not think large-scale cuts of carbon emissions are necessary, and also argues that plans to invest in wind power are uneconomic. The party's enthusiasm for CCS and "clean coal" has prompted considerable criticism from environmentalists.[14]

History

Founding and Early Years

UKIP was founded in 1993 by Alan Sked and other members of the all-party Anti-Federalist League. Its central aim was withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. The new party attracted some members of the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, which was split on the European question after the pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the struggle over ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. UKIP candidates stood in the 1997 general election, but were overshadowed by James Goldsmith's Referendum Party. After the election, Sked resigned the leadership and left the party, which was, he said, 'doomed to remain on the political fringes'. However, Goldsmith died soon after the election and his Referendum Party was dissolved, with a resulting influx of new UKIP supporters. The leadership election was won by millionaire businessman Michael Holmes, and in the 1999 elections to the European Parliament UKIP gained three seats and 7% of the vote. In that election, Nigel Farage (South East England), Jeffrey Titford (East of England), and Michael Holmes (South West England) were elected.

Over the following months there was a power struggle between the leader, Michael Holmes, and the party's National Executive Committee (NEC). This was partly due to Holmes making a speech perceived as calling for greater powers for the European Parliament against the European Commission. Ordinary party members forced the resignation of both Holmes and the entire NEC. Holmes resigned from the party itself in March 2000. There was a legal battle when he tried to continue as an independent MEP until resigning from the European Parliament in December 2002, when he was replaced by Graham Booth, the second candidate on the UKIP list in South West England.

Jeffrey Titford was narrowly elected to the vacant leadership.

2001 General Election

UKIP put up candidates in more than 420 seats in the 2001 general election, coming fifth in terms of votes cast (with 1.5% of the vote) and failing to win any representation at Westminster. It also failed to break through in the elections to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly, despite those elections being held under proportional representation. In 2002 Titford stood down as party leader, but continued to sit as a UKIP MEP. He was replaced as leader by Roger Knapman.

Robert Kilroy-Silk

In late 2004, reports in the mainstream UK press speculated on if or when former Labour Party MP and chat-show host Robert Kilroy-Silk would take control of the party. These reports were heightened by Kilroy-Silk's speech at the UKIP party conference in Bristol on 2 October 2004, in which he called for the Conservative Party to be "killed off" (following UKIP's forcing the Conservatives into fourth place in Hartlepool).

Interviewed by Channel 4 television, Kilroy-Silk did not deny having ambitions to lead the party, but stressed that Roger Knapman would lead it into the next general election. However, the next day, on Breakfast with Frost, he criticised Knapman's leadership. After further disagreement with the leadership, on 27 October 2004 Kilroy-Silk resigned the UKIP whip in the European Parliament. Initially he remained a member, while seeking a bid for the party leadership. However, this was not successful, and Kilroy-Silk resigned completely from UKIP on 20 January 2005, calling it a "joke". Two weeks later, he founded his own party, Veritas, taking several UKIP members, including both London Assembly members, with him. Kilroy-Silk has subsequently resigned from Veritas.

2006 leadership election

In October 2005, Petrina Holdsworth resigned as Chairman of UKIP and from the party's National Executive Committee. She was replaced as Chairman "on an interim basis" by the party's former leader, Jeffrey Titford MEP. In December 2005, David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Conservative, became the new party chairman, appointed by the party leader, Roger Knapman MEP. Knapman's four-year term as leader ended in June 2006, triggering a leadership contest that saw four challengers: (Richard Suchorzewski, David Campbell-Bannerman, David Noakes and Nigel Farage), from which Farage emerged as victor on 12 September 2006.

Farage's stated intention is to broaden the public perception of UKIP beyond merely being a party seeking to get the UK out of the EU, to one of being a free market party broadly standing for traditional conservative and libertarian values.[15]

Controversy over proposed constitution changes

In December 2008 the NEC proposed two significant amendments to the UKIP Constitution, to be voted on by UKIP members. However, the amendments caused controversy in the party, some members claiming that their purpose was to prevent members from voting on party business and to allow the unelected Party Chairman to expel members without a hearing.

On 29 January 2009 nine prominent UKIP members published a letter urging party members not to back these proposals,[16] claiming that their only purpose was to centralise more power within the leadership and to reduce democracy and accountability in the party. The members who signed the letter included the former party leader, Roger Knapman MEP, the economist Tim Congdon, the former Conservative MPs Sir Richard Body and Piers Merchant and members of the party NEC Delroy Young, Dr David Abbot and Dr Eric Edmond. The proposals were defeated.

2009 European Election Campaign

On 28 March 2009, the Conservative Party's biggest-ever donor Stuart Wheeler donated £100,000 to UKIP after criticising David Cameron's stance towards the Lisbon treaty and the European Union. He said, "if they kick me out I will understand. I will be very sorry about it, but it won't alter my stance."[17] The following day, 29 March, he was expelled from the Conservative Party.[18]

On 25 April 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that on the basis of polling evidence, Labour MPs feared being beaten into 4th place by the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament elections, and believed that if this happened, the Prime Minister would have to resign. [19]

Electoral performance 2004–2008

UKIP's first electoral success was the election of three MEPs in 1999, and it made further advances in 2004. Although it increased its share of the vote in both the 2001 general election and 2005 general election, it did not achieve the same levels of vote as in those elections to the European Parliament.

UKIP's expectations were high before the 2004 European Parliament election, with a number of opinion polls – starting with one from YouGov - showing them on course to beat the Liberal Democrats and pick up a dozen MEPs. The prediction proved accurate, with UKIP winning 16.8% of the vote and taking third place nationally, with 12 seats. UKIP won seats in eight regions, taking votes from all three major political parties. It came second, ahead of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, in four regions: South West, South East, Eastern and East Midlands. In the East Midlands region, UKIP came within a percentage point of being top of the poll. UKIP received assistance in coordinating its 2004 election campaign from Dick Morris, formerly Bill Clinton's campaign advisor, who has since emerged as an advocate of US unilateralism and an opponent of the EU.

In the 2005 general election, despite fielding 495 candidates, the party failed to win any seats at Westminster. UKIP gained 618,000 votes, or 2.4% of the total votes cast (an increase of 220,000 votes/0.9% from its result in the 2001 general election). Although this may be regarded as respectable for a small party, and was sufficient to place it fourth in terms of total votes cast behind the Liberal Democrats, the Liberal Democrats polled, as is customary, in excess of 20% of the total vote cast. UKIP's best result was in Boston & Skegness, where their candidate Richard Horsnell came third with 9.6% of the vote.

In the 2006 English local elections, UKIP won its first borough council seat in Hartlepool, when Stephen Allison was elected for the St. Hilda Ward. UKIP also beat Labour into fourth place in the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election in June 2006. The UKIP candidate, Nigel Farage, came third with 8.1% of the vote, against Labour's 6.6%.

In May 2008 the Greater London Assembly elections saw the UKIP vote fall dramatically from over 8% to under 2% on the pan-London proportional list vote. In the London Mayoral election UKIP candidate, Gerard Batten's result was over 5% lower than Frank Maloney's result in 2004.

Relationship with other parties

The Conservatives

UKIP is often seen as a "Tory pressure group" whose main aim is to persuade the Conservative Party to support withdrawal from the European Union. Many prominent members of UKIP are former members of the Conservative Party, such as former UKIP leader Roger Knapman - other former Conservative MPs include Jonathan Aitken, Sir Richard Body, Michael Brotherton, John Browne, Christopher Gill and Piers Merchant.

Although UKIP did not come close to winning any seats at the 2005 general election, it polled well enough that their votes, if added to the Conservative candidates totals constituency by constituency, would have led to Conservative majorities in 22 more seats (13 of which were won by Labour, 9 by the Liberal Democrats). This has led to UKIP being criticised for preventing the election of eurosceptic Conservative MPs. UKIP counter by saying that they will not oppose any incumbent MPs from any party who support the Better Off Out campaign. A recent ConservativeHome survey revealed that 43% of surveyed members of the Conservative Party felt that UKIP was the closest party to their views (apart from the Conservative Party itself)[20], with 66% either supporting or sympathising with the Better Off Out campaign. Six Conservative MPs have signed the Better Off Out petition.

In April 2006 Conservative Party leader David Cameron called UKIP members "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" while talking on LBC radio in London after a question about UKIP using the Freedom of Information Act to force the disclosure of donors. UKIP demanded an apology for the "closet racists" remark and threatened legal action for slander, although this was later dropped, on the grounds that to sue the party would have to prove loss, and the comment had actually had a positive effect for UKIP. Conservative MP Bob Spink criticised his leader's remarks, as did the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph. [21]

Defection of Conservative peers to UKIP

On 9 January 2007, two former Conservative peers defected from the Conservative Party to the UKIP. Lords Pearson and Willoughby de Broke joined the UKIP as they felt the Conservative Party was not producing policy to support their beliefs. They had previously had the Conservative whip withdrawn when they had encouraged voters to support UKIP. Other high-profile Conservatives have defected to UKIP, but this was the first example of sitting parliamentarians doing so. On 20 January 2007 the Earl of Dartmouth, also a former Conservative member of the House of Lords, defected.[22] On 22 April 2008 Conservative MP Bob Spink defected to UKIP, giving the party its first representative in the House of Commons. Spink didn't actually join from the Conservatives as he had been expelled from the party a few weeks earlier due to a dispute with his local party branch.[23]

Far-right parties

UKIP's constitution contains a clause guaranteeing that the party will not discriminate on the grounds of race and will be non-sectarian, and the party's rules require all candidates to declare that they have no past or present links with far-right organisations.

Despite its stated policies, some critics of UKIP claim links to racist groups. Aidan Rankin, co-author of the party's 2001 manifesto, was once involved with the Third Way, which was founded by former members of the National Front (though he has since repudiated these views and has denied ever being a racist; it must also be stated that Third Way has never been as extreme as the NF). Alistair McConnachie, a five-time UKIP candidate and National Executive member, was expelled from UKIP for his views on the Holocaust. [24] Some other candidates were formerly members of the New Britain Party, during a brief phase in the 1990s when it presented itself as a moderate anti-EU party.

Buster Mottram, a UKIP member who claimed to represent the BNP, made an offer of a pact between the BNP and UKIP for the 2009 Euro elections at a UKIP executive meeting. According to the UKIP website, Mottram "had to be escorted out by uniformed police officers."[25]. UKIP leader Nigel Farage has told the BBC that there had been an attempt "over many months" to infiltrate and try to "demoralise" UKIP members into thinking there was no future without a deal with the BNP.[26]. The BNP has stated that Buster Mottram, an ex-tennis star, has never been a member of the BNP and that the pact was his idea only[27].

Minority members of UKIP

The first ethnic-minority candidate to represent UKIP in a parliamentary by-election was Ashwinkumar Tanna, a pharmacist who had previously been an independent candidate for Mayor of London. He represented UKIP in the Tottenham by-election, 2000; his campaign, which called for British withdrawal from the EU and fairer treatment for immigrants, was ignored by the media apart from a brief paragraph in Chemist and Druggist magazine.

Perhaps the best-known black member of UKIP is former TV chef Rustie Lee, who stood as a candidate in the 2005 general election and also appeared in the party's election broadcast that year. The most senior black member of the UKIP leadership is Delroy Young, another general election candidate, who was elected to the party's NEC in 2006 (coming 2nd out of 46 candidates). On Boxing Day night 2007, Young received a death threat on his answerphone from three men and a woman who repeatedly claimed to be acting on the orders of a senior party member.[28] UKIP's only Muslim local councillor to date was Mohammed Yaqub, originally elected as a Conservative to Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council. He and a colleague defected to UKIP in 2004 but were defeated in their re-election bids a few months later.

Membership

Membership at the end of 2007 was claimed to be 15,878[29]. Members are invited to, and may participate and vote at, the national conference, as well as annual and extraordinary general meetings.

Current representatives

UKIP has three representatives in the Parliament of the United Kingdom: Bob Spink in the House of Commons, who joined the party in April 2008, and Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Willoughby de Broke in the House of Lords. All three were selected or elected to Parliament representing the Conservative Party: Spink joined UKIP having already left the Conservatives, whilst the two Lords directly defected in January 2007. [30] Ambiguously, Spink asked to be officially designated as 'Independent' by the Clerk of the House of Commons in November of that year,[31] and has since denied joining UKIP at all.[32] UKIP has around 100 district, town and parish councillors. Although the party does not provide a list of councillors, an old unofficial list is maintained on the British Democracy Forum. [33]

Twelve UKIP MEPs were elected to the European Parliament in 2004. However, one of them, Ashley Mote, had the party whip withdrawn almost immediately (on 15 July 2004) as he had failed to tell the party about an ongoing prosecution for benefit fraud. [34] Mote rejected repeated suggestions that he should step down in favour of the next UKIP candidate on the party list. Robert Kilroy Silk left UKIP after a failed leadership challenge, briefly leading his own party, Veritas. On 28 February 2007 UKIP suspended Tom Wise due to his being under investigation by OLAF (the European Anti Fraud Office) regarding expenses claims[35].

The remaining MEPs are:

East Midlands Derek Clark
East of England Jeffrey Titford
London Gerard Batten
North West England John Whittaker
South East England Nigel Farage
South West England
Trevor Colman (replaced Graham Booth on 1 October 2008 when Booth retired), Roger Knapman
West Midlands Mike Nattrass
Yorkshire and the Humber Godfrey Bloom

Leaders of UKIP since 1993

UKIP in the European Parliament

In 1999, three UKIP members were elected to the European Parliament. Together with eurosceptics from other countries, they formed a grouping called Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD).

In 2004, 37 MEPs from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called Independence and Democracy from the old Europe of Democracies and Diversities group. The group's leaders are Nigel Farage of UKIP and Kathy Sinnott from Ireland.[36] From this point on, UKIP's MEPs and researchers were involved in a number of controversies regarding what they claimed to be dubious practices by senior officials of the European Commission and European Parliament:

Revelations about Jacques Barrot

On 18 November 2004, Nigel Farage announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, the French Commissioner designate, had been barred from elected office in France for 2 years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. [37] The president of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, enjoined him to retract his comments under threat of "legal consequences".[38] However, the following day it was confirmed that Barrot had received an 8 month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority. The Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso admitted that he had not known of Barrot's criminal record when appointing him as a Commission vice-president.[39] The Socialist and Liberal groups in the European Parliament then joined UKIP in demanding the sacking of Barrot for failing to disclose the conviction during his confirmation hearings.

José Manuel Barroso no confidence motion

During the spring of 2005, UKIP formally requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission refused, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis. It then emerged that this had occurred only a month before the Commission approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company.[40] It also became known that Peter Mandelson, a member of the Commission, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source.[41] Farage then persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political spectrum to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, in order to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue.[42] The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament[43] at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party - European Democrats (EPP-ED) in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Poettering as a result of his support for the UKIP motion.

Joseph Daul controversy

In January 2007, Joseph Daul was elected the new leader of the European People's Party–European Democrats (EPP-ED), the European Parliamentary grouping which includes the British Conservatives. The UK Independence Party almost immediately revealed that Daul had been under judicial investigation in France since 2004 as part of an inquiry into the alleged misuse of public funds worth €16 million (£10.6 million) by French farming unions."[44] It was not suggested that Daul had personally benefited, but he was accused of "complicity and concealment of the abuse of public funds." Daul accused Farage of publicising the investigation for political reasons and threatened to sue, but did not do so.

UKIP speeches replying to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown

The European Parliament also provided opportunities for UKIP MEPs to question British Prime Ministers. On 20 December 2005, Tony Blair addressed the European Parliament in a debate to round up the UK's six-month presidency. Nigel Farage responded to Blair with a speech in which he claimed that the result of just-concluded EU budget negotiations had been "game, set and match to President Chirac", adding that Mr Blair had "been outclassed and outplayed at every turn". [45]

In 2009 Gordon Brown, who had succeeded Blair as British Prime Minister, also addressed the European Parliament and again Nigel Farage responded on behalf of UKIP, with a speech in which he attacked Brown for reneging on an election pledge to hold a referendum before ratifying the treaty on the European Constitution. [46]

See also

References

  1. ^ Abedi, Amir; Lundberg, Thomas Carl (29 November 2007). "Doomed to Failure? UKIP and the Organisational Challenges Facing Right-Wing Populist Anti-Political Establishment Parties" (PDF). First Annual International Conference on Minor Parties; Independent Politicians, Voter Associations and Political Associations in Politics. University of Birmingham. http://www.inlogov.bham.ac.uk/seminars/minor_parties/pdfs/Abedi_Lundberg.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-11-13. 
  2. ^ Fieschi, Catherine (15 June 2004). "The new avengers". guardian.co.uk (Guardian News & Media). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jun/15/thefarright.uk. Retrieved on 2008-11-13. 
  3. ^ Electoral Commission database: UKIP Statement of Accounts, 31 December 2007
  4. ^ UKIP Party Constitution
  5. ^ Robert Winnett and Rosa Prince, "Tory rebel Bob Spink becomes Ukip's first MP", Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2008.
  6. ^ UK Independence Party
  7. ^ ukipeducation.pdf
  8. ^ UKIP Policy Statement: A Flat Tax for Britain, UKIP, 2007-07-17, http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/ukipflattaxpolicy.pdf, retrieved on 2009-05-05 
  9. ^ Watson, Nick (2006-10-05). "West Midlands: On the Coleshill trail". The Politics Show (British Broadcasting Corporation). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/5407572.stm. Retrieved on 2008-06-25. 
  10. ^ http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/726-ukip-policies-in-brief
  11. ^ Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (c. 36)
  12. ^ http://ukip.org/abc_news/gen12.php?t=1&id=974
  13. ^ UKIP Policy Statement on Education: Time to Come Clean, UKIP, 2007-07-17, http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/ukipeducation.pdf, retrieved on 2009-05-05 
  14. ^ UKIP: Environmental Policy, 2007 (accessed 17 October 2007
  15. ^ Will Woodward, "Ukip trebles candidates for local elections", The Guardian, 11 April 2007
  16. ^ juniusonukip, [1], 29 January 2009
  17. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5996975.ece
  18. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7971102.stm
  19. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5216307/Tony-Blair-opposes-new-50-pence-tax-rate-for-high-earners.html
  20. ^ ConservativeHome's ToryDiary: Tory members are closest to UKIP
  21. ^ "UKIP deserves better" Daily Telegraph, 5 April 2006
  22. ^ BBC News: "Conservative peer defects to UKIP", 20 January 2007
  23. ^ BBC News: "Ex-Tory MP Spink defects to UKIP", 22 April 2008
  24. ^ Matthew Tempest, "Ambitions on the right","guardian.co.uk", 13 April 2001
  25. ^ David Mitchell, "Putting the boot in on friendship", The Observer, 9 November 2008
  26. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7706857.stm
  27. ^ http://bnp.org.uk/category/news/page/3/
  28. ^ Daniel Foggo, "Black Ukip executive receives death threat", Sunday Times, 19 January 2008
  29. ^ Electoral Commission database: UKIP Statement of Accounts, 31 December 2007
  30. ^ Brendan Carlin, "Two Tory peers defect to Ukip" Telegraph.co.uk, 10 January 2007
  31. ^ http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/847-bob-spink-mp
  32. ^ http://www.echo-news.co.uk/search/4179128.Tory__UKIP__Now_I_m_just_an_inde_says_MP_Bob
  33. ^ New list of UKIP councillors
  34. ^ MEP is jailed for benefit fraud BBC News, 4 September 2007
  35. ^ UKIP in disarray after MEP is suspended over fraud allegation, Times Online Edition, 2007-03-01. Retrieved 2008-01-21
  36. ^ Your MEPs : Directory : Kathy SINNOTT
  37. ^ http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/europe/4032113.stm
  38. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/19/wukip19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/19/ixworld.html
  39. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/21/nbook21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/21/ixhome.html
  40. ^ http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article223215.ece
  41. ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1575180,00.html
  42. ^ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aFq2hOeCcYZc&refer=europe
  43. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4578261.stm
  44. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/13/wdaul13.xml
  45. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grLmZGlzBW8
  46. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1waGanUNt0

External links

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Northern Ireland Assembly (108):
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European Parliament
(78 of 732):
Conservatives (EPP-ED, 28)  · Labour (PES, 19)  · Liberal Democrats (ELDR, 11)  · UKIP (ID, 9)  · Greens (E&W) (EGP, 2)  · SNP (EFA, 2) • Plaid Cymru (EFA, 1)  · Sinn Féin† (EUL-NGL, 1)  · UUP (EPP-ED, 1)  · Independent (ADIE, 1)  · Independent (NA, 1)  · Independent (NA, 1)  · Independent (NA, 1)
Minor parties:
Notes:
*Although Sinn Féin have five elected members and have offices at Westminster, they are abstentionist and therefore do not take their seats
†Sinn Féin has a second MEP representing Dublin in the Republic of Ireland.
‡Co-operative candidates stand jointly with the Labour Party as “Labour and Co-operative Party” candidates.
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