Zone 1

here in the Canary Islands, in both EU and local elections.

Liberal Democrats and Greens both have good lead candidates from the city where I live. I know which of the two I will be voting for.

I'm not impressed by the lead candidate for Change / TIG in the region where I live (Yorkshire and the Humber). One of the candidates on their list has just been voted out of the council ward where I live. In spite of having been a longstanding Sheffield councilor he only polled 102 votes!

Labour's policy on the EU is poor, the Tories are abysmal and the less said about the rest the better quite frankly. I wouldn't even describe the Brexshitters as the "WTO lot" as none of them appear to understand what applying for membership of the WTO actually entails.

Not only staunchly anti-Brexit, but a decent list of prospective MEPs, headed by current MEP Alyn Smith.

But then I'm biased as I was a card carrying member at one point.

In Scotland, SNP is an OK choice, Plaid Cymru in Wales too. Alliance in Northern Ireland (sister party to LibDems).

Labour have no proper policy on Europe. The Tories should just shoot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly.

https://www.remainunited.org/

which seems to boil down to SNP, Plaid or the Lib Dems. It says ComRes data shows the Lib Dems ahead in each English region, out of them, Change UK and the Greens. Though I can't see the detail on that, so I don't know what it's based on.

The benefits for Remain in most other regions are marginal, an extra seat (usually) for the Lib Dems at most. If it works out as Miller hopes, the main beneficiaries would be the Lib Dems overall. The current "Remain" parties would have 16 seats, versus 10 without tactical voting, whereas the Brexit Party would have 3 fewer seats with tactical voting, as would (today confirmed to be Brexit-supporting) Labour.

It underlines a couple of points I've made before (not allowing for how the polling may shift during the course of the campaign): (1) tactical voting under the D'Hondt system isn't that effective (and can have unintended consequences these simplistic charts don't take into account), and (2) any Remain supporters would be well advised to avoid trumpeting the Euro elections as a proxy for a referendum.

I could easily feel bad for Labour's MEP candidates. Despite their party's current swithering and today's confirmed capitulation, they've generally been a force for good in the European Parliament.

It would seem most likely that our MEPs will be out of a job within a year, and other parties won't want them to take significant roles because of that. But perhaps we'll end up with a referendum, and perhaps that'll be a Remain win, in which case they have a 'full' job after all, and we should elect the best for that. A backstop, so to speak?

Yes, that site's tactical voting suggests 1 extra Plaid MEP (as opposed to none), a few more Lib Dems, and one less Change UK (leading their SE England list, and thus the one who would lose of if it happened, is Richard Ashworth, former Tory MEP (suspended about 18 months ago for being too pro-EU)). I suspect no-one has good enough polls to really be able to predict much in each region, but the idea that 50% of Remain party voters would switch seems optimistic.

I've been trying to work out Corbyn's attitude to a referendum, and it's getting muddier by the day. Maybe tough on their MEPs, but this is the one election (in England, anyway) in which we do literally vote for a party, so they have to live with the effects of their Westminster leadership.

I suppose they're trying to seem realistic (if even that goal's being realistic), but from a campaigning point of view, it might be better to give a 100% switcher set of results - "this is what we could achieve" - as the differences in those charts aren't too inspiring: 60-10 Leave-Remain without tactical voting, 54-16 Leave-Remain with. This is, of course, accepting the framing that votes for the Tories and Labour are Leave votes, whereas the parties are evidently hardly monolithic. (I wonder if anyone's polled the actual MEP candidates?!)

As far as I can figure out Corbyn's line from today's launch, he's now in favour of a people's vote, but only within parameters that would exclude Remain as an option!

I have a very faint hope that the polls are overstating the Brexit Party's support. There's plenty of time for a few cock-ups, in-fights and developments between now and polling day, and as I keep saying, D'Hondt is a slippery system (UKIP got their only Scottish MEP last time largely because of internecine counter-(tactical) voting between Labour and the SNP!).

In the end, it will probably hinge on turnout (low turnouts in Euro elections being how UKIP gained a foothold in the first place and part of the reason we're in this current mess) more than any attempts at co-ordinated tactical voting.

As a personal choice, I'd vote for the party with a decent list of prospective MEPs. How we conduct ourselves as (tentative if) we leave the EU could be significant for the future. Do we really want our parting face to be Farage's ugly physog and the hangers-on he's attracted?

Are any of the pro-remain parties, apart from the in/out question, actually putting forward any EU-centric policy proposals they would actually work to carry out if their MEPs actually remain for a full term?

You know, things like more oversight of the Commission, less-neoliberal economic policies, combat corruption, even greater environmental protection, build pan-European alliances, NATO reform, asylum & immigration policy, that sort of thing?

https://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto

The Greens will also have their own manifesto going beyond stopping the disastrous project to leave the EU.

Change UK / TIG? Not so sure to be honest.

https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/images/national-site/eu-2019/eu-manifesto-online-19-05-07.pdf

Both seem fairly comprehensive. But, I doubt many of these policies will get aired during the campaigns. Campaigns will be entirely UK-centric I predict. More 'what's in it for us'; not so much 'what we can do in solidarity with others'.

it looks like Lord Buckethead is not going to stand after all in South East England:

https://twitter.com/lordbuckethead?lang=en

He may have been serious enough to not want to split the vote.

I'll vote Lib Dem; tactical or not, it's the party I tend to vote for, their top of the list is a perfectly good MEP at the moment, and there's no-one at the top of other lists who's a must-have in the Parliament.

I have had one leaflet each from Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, English Democrats and Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.

Tories seem too keen on self destructing to be sending out leaflets.

In Central London...

The South East has Nigel, 3 other Brexit/Kipper/affiliated MEPS, and Daniel Hannan, so it can only improve here, but don't know if it will.

Despite having a Change UK / TIG MP and also having had her husband stand in the council ward where I live where he was the incumbent councilor a few weeks ago. (He lost with only 102 votes)