08:00 – I didn’t quite finish building the biology kits yesterday, but I’ll get that done today. Fortunately so, because I have outstanding orders to fill today.
The US MSM has paid little attention to the seismic shift in European politics over the last week. Embarrassingly, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Tories finished third in the EU elections, far behind the UK Independence Party (UKIP; think the British version of the Tea Party). The Tories even managed to finish slightly behind Labour. But it’s not just the UK. Voters in most EU countries voted heavily for Eurosceptic parties. In France, voters’ rejection of Hollande’s Socialists was stunning, with Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN; think the French version of the Tea Party) essentially sweeping the election.
These elections bode ill for the EU in general and the euro in particular. Here’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s take: Europe has an even bigger crisis on its hands than a British exit FTA:
If Europe’s policy elites could not quite believe it before, they must now know beyond much doubt that they have lost Britain. This island is no longer part of the European project in any meaningful sense.
British defenders of the status quo were knouted on Sunday. UKIP won 27.5pc of the vote, or 29pc after adjusting for the negligence – or worse – of the Electoral Commission in allowing a spoiler party with much the same name to sow confusion. Margaret Thatcher’s Tory children are scarcely more friendly to the EU enterprise.