Anti-Brexit camp fragmented in Britain's European elections
The pro-EU camp in European elections in Britain next month is fragmented.
LONDON (AFP) - The pro-EU camp in European elections in Britain next month is fragmented, while the Brexit Party is topping opinion polls by picking up votes from Britons frustrated by delays in leaving the EU.
As he presented his party s candidates in London on Friday, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said he regretted there was no "common platform with the other Remain parties to stop Brexit.
"We should be standing together. The millions of people in this country who voted Remain would expect us to stand together," said the former government minister.
In a 2016 referendum, 52 percent voted to leave the European Union. The Brexit date was initially set for March 29 but has been delayed twice since then because MPs cannot agree on the terms of departure.
The ruling Conservatives and the main opposition Labour are broadly in favour of implementing Brexit but are deeply divided internally over strategy and smaller parties on both sides of the debate are coming to the fore.
The Liberal Democrats are currently only fifth in the latest YouGov poll unveiled last week, with 9 percent of voting intentions.
The figure is about the same as other anti-Brexit parties with the Greens on 10 percent and Change UK on 8 percent, the poll showed.
The three parties, which all support a second Brexit referendum with an option to remain in the EU, would easily beat the Brexit Party s 23 percent if they united in an alliance.
But newly-formed Change UK, which is made up of former Conservative and Labour MPs, has turned down a partnership offer from the Liberal Democrats.
"Britain s newest political party has put vanity before realism," wrote Philip Collins, a Times columnist and former adviser to Labour prime minister Tony Blair.
"Perhaps Change UK will do well anyway but there s a chance its vote will scatter. For a fledgling party, that is a risk it should try to avoid," Collins said.
Labour were on 22 percent and the Conservatives on 15 percent in the same poll.
Change UK has scored some successes, with 3,700 people applying to be MEP candidates for it.
Among them is Rachel Johnson, a prominent journalist and TV personality who is also the sister of former foreign minister and Conservative MP Boris Johnson.
Anand Menon, European politics progressor at King s College London, said Change UK going it alone was "a sensible strategy" that would allow it to exist as an independent party and gain visibility.
Asked about the splits in the anti-Brexit camp, Menon said the parties "would probably get fewer seats than they would have got if they had done a unified campaign but it might conceivably increase the number of votes".
"If your ambition is to make the vote share as high as possible so you can signal that the British people would vote remain in another referendum, being split is probably not a bad thing," he said.
But Menon said the Brexit Party had launched "a lot more effectively" than Change UK.
The Brexit Party s leader Nigel Farage is "perhaps one of the most influential politicians of our generation," he said.
Farage, then head of the UK Independence Party, won the last European elections in 2014 -- a victory that helped push then prime minister David Cameron into holding a referendum on EU membership.
But Menon said it remains to be seen if voters come out in significant numbers as Britons "traditionally do not care" about European elections.
And, after all, any MEPs that are elected may only sit in the European parliament for a few short weeks before Britain leaves the bloc.
