Woods and trees again …

Most media coverage of the May 2019 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom was, understandably, concentrated on the domestic fortunes of the traditional political parties and the rise of the newly formed Brexit Party. These were elections that were not supposed to happen and that Prime Minister Theresa May had fervently hoped could be avoided. Not for the first time, European elections had a reverse effect, with low turnout and discontented and motivated voters using their vote in a way that sent a message to the domestic government (for or against Brexit) rather than for EU representation. Some election coverage examined the effects that the Brexit Party’s majority (29 MEPs), a sizeable contingent of Lib Dem MEPs (16) and the reduction in Conservative (down 15 to 4) and Labour (down 10 to 10) representatives might have on the dynamics of the European Parliament. A few articles in the “quality press” covered the likely impact of the redistribution of British MEPs for the so-called “lead candidate”, or Spitzenkandidaten, procedure for choosing the new president of the European Commission. The implicit assumption was nevertheless that the procedure and its outcome would be of little relevance to the UK, since Brexit was considered likely to occur at some stage in the not-too-distant future. As this chapter will show, were the UK to have remained an EU member state up to and beyond the next European elections (in 2024), then the procedure would indeed have been of great potential significance since on this issue, as on so many others, the UK’s mainstream political parties almost inadvertently isolated themselves. Their only way out of the dilemma this isolation created would have been either to be outvoted and accept the procedure’s consequences, or meekly go along with it. In either case, the UK would have had to live with a significant constitutional innovation that is gradually changing the institutional power dynamics in the European Union.

And yet, on this issue as on so many others, longer-term trends were increasingly discernible, almost inexorably leading on to the quasi-constitutional changes within the EU that are now under way (Westlake 2016).