European Elections - West Midlands

11.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 22nd May 2009

In the penultimate in the series of looking at each of the regions (and nations) for the European Elections I today examine my home region the West Midlands.

The West Midlands will this year be electing six MEPs, down from seven in 2004.

In 2004 the Conservatives topped the poll with 27.3% gaining 3 MEPs, Labour were second with 23.4% and 2 MEPs, UKIP third with 17.5% and 1 MEP, The Liberal Democrats fourth with 13.7% and 1 MEP, the BNP were fifth with 7.5% followed by the Green Party with 5.2%, Respect with 2.4%, the Pensioners Party with 2.3% and The Common Good with 0.6%.

Philip Bushill-Matthews (Conservative) was first elected followed by Michael Cashman (Lbaour), then Mike Nattrass (UKIP), Liz Lynne (Liberal Democrat), Philip Bradbourn (Conservative), Neena Gill (Labour) and Malcolm Harbour (Conservative).

I suspect the Labour and UKIP votes will drop and the Conservatives increase well. The Liberal Democrat vote should not drop too much. The West Midlands will see local elections in Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire which will further help the Conservatives.

None of the three seats the Liberal Democrats have MPs and only three of the eight seats where the Liberal Democrats were second will have local elections. Something like a quarter of the Liberal Democrat vote last time came from Birmingham which is not voting in local elections this time but a decent campaign should be enough to keep the Liberal Democrat vote somewhere in the region they got in 2004.

The Conservatives remain top of the poll and will increase their lead and vote share, Labour will be second. That will probably see the first three seats allocated Conservative, Labour and Conservatives Then Liberal Democrats will be fighting it out with UKIP as to who will be third and fourth and take the fourth and fifth seats. The sixth seat then comes down to the Conservatives or Labour and I suspect it will be the Conservatives.

Of course if UKIP and or the Liberal Democrats dip down to around 11% (not impossible) it could a four-way battle for the last seat.

And the worst situation is if the BNP do well, getting to above 10% it could become a five-way fight.

To stop the BNP in the North West there are some choices, and it depends on how confident you are of the Liberal Democrats and UKIP holding their seats. If you are not confident then you need to vote for one of them to keep the BNP out. If you think they will hold their seats (and 12-13% should be enough) then you need to try and work out if the second Labour seat of the third Conservative seat is more at risk and vote to save it - as I say above I suspect the Labour seat is more at risk.

I will try and give a better view on how it is going nearer to polling day as at the moment we could end up with a number of scenarios in the West Midlands

As with all the regions I will have a quick look at the Liberal Democrat list. The list is headed by current MEP Liz Lynne, then Phil Bennion, Susan Juned, Stephen Barber, William Powell and Jonathan Bramall.