UK: Labour and the Conservatives were braced for a serious political setback this morning as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) celebrated its expected success in Britain's European Parliament elections.
First indications from counting centres appeared to support predictions of a major breakthrough by the "British withdrawal" party, threatening fresh Conservative divisions over Europe while underlining Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair's struggle to win any British referendum on the new EU constitution.
And a YouGov exit poll for Sky News suggested the final count could give UKIP a stunning 20 per cent of the votes cast - just behind Labour and the Conservatives who might take less than half the popular vote between them.
That unprecedented result would give UKIP - long regarded as a "fringe" party, currently with no MPs and just three MEPs - an astonishing 18 seats in the new parliament. Adjusting the projected results to have regard to the UK's reduced representation following EU enlargement - from 87 to 78 MEPs - that would represent a loss of three seats for Labour and 15 for the Conservatives. While Mr Michael Howard's Conservatives thus stood to be the big losers of the night, the poll - conducted on Thursday and published immediately after the rest of Europe finished voting last night - also suggested Labour support down a full six points on its 1999 share of the vote.
Because Scotland, like Northern Ireland, will not declare until today the final shape of the UK result will not become clear until this evening.
However should the governing party and principal opposition end-up level pegging on a meagre 22 per cent of the vote, this would represent Labour's worst result since the first World War and the Conservative's worst performance in a national election in the party's history.
The potential dangers for both party leaderships were laid bare yesterday as UKIP's star turn Mr Robert Kilroy Silk suggested Mr Blair would be unable to endorse the new EU Constitution; former chancellor Mr Kenneth Clarke warned Mr Michael Howard against "chasing" Mr Kilroy Silk's vote; and Commons leader Mr Peter Hain warned that Labour could lose the next general election unless "protest" voters stepped back from the brink.
Amid speculation that he might fight next month's Leicester by-election for Westminster, and that UKIP intends to mount a strong challenge in Mr Howard's Folkstone constituency at the general election, Mr Kilroy Silk said the European election results would prove "highly significant" for the prime minister.
Speaking on Sky's Sunday with Adam Boulton programme, the man tipped to assume leadership of UKIP said: "He [Mr Blair\] has had seven years to persuade the British people that they need to be somewhere called the heart of Europe. If we get a significant vote, and I suspect we will, then clearly the British people don't want to be there with him. That will be a tremendous snub to him. He cannot go ahead this week and sign up to the new constitution if there is a significant number of people voting for UKIP." Pressed later on Channel 4 News that anything less than 50 per cent of the vote would actually mean the majority of British voters had backed parties committed to staying in Europe, Mr Kilroy Silk insisted no such conclusion was possible because people would have voted for a variety of positions - including the Conservative commitment to renegotiate the new constitution.
Former Conservative party chairman warned Conservative "protest" voters backing UKIP that they were playing into Labour's hands.
"I think voting UKIP for a lot of Conservative voters is a way of firing a warning shot across the bows of the Conservative Party. The trouble is that if they are not careful they could fire it a bit close to the waterline," he told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost.
Meanwhile as Labour's inquest continued in to Thursday's humiliating third place in the local elections, Mr Hain warned Labour's deserters they could cost Mr Blair his Commons majority. "If this behaviour is reflected at the general election, then it isn't teaching us a lesson or giving a message. What it's doing is bringing in Michael Howard by the back door," he told The Observer.