AFP

IT WAS a terrible night for European socialists, but also a worrying night for those who believe in a Europe of open borders. As elections for a new European Parliament ended on Sunday June 7th, after four days of voting in 27 countries, it became clear that not only Britain's Labour Party had received a pasting. In the words of the socialists' leader in the Euro-parliament, the centre left suffered a “very bitter evening”, confirming their failure to take advantage of a financial crisis that might have been tailor-made for critics of free market excesses.

At the same time, the vote for mainstream conservative parties in several countries only held steady or even slightly fell, against a backdrop of the lowest ever turnout for a Euro-election, with just 43% bothering to vote. In many countries, large protest votes went to populist, fringe and hard-right politicians vowing to close borders, repatriate immigrants or even dismantle the European Union in its current form.

Britain elected two members of the avowedly racist British National Party and in the Netherlands, a populist party which vows to ban the Koran and close the European Parliament, picked up four seats with 17% of the vote, coming second only to the ruling conservative Christian Democrats. Far-right and anti-immigrant parties picked up seats in Austria, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary. The hard-left picked up an extra seat in Denmark, but failed to make breakthroughs predicted in France and Germany.

Gloom for Britain's Labour government became outright humiliation when the party was pushed into third place by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which advocates withdrawal from the European Union. UKIP was a big beneficiary of British voter rage at an expenses scandal that has left the British Parliament reeling. This is ironic, given that of the 12 UKIP members of the European Parliament elected in 2004, one was later jailed for fraud and a second is now facing trial for money laundering and false accounting. UKIP now has 13 seats, one ahead of Labour, and well behind the opposition Conservatives, who picked up 24 seats with nearly 29% of the vote.

The appalling results for Labour came after a week in which Gordon Brown, the prime minister, had to fight off calls for his resignation, including from members of his own cabinet. Oddly, Mr Brown's mauling last week may save him now: his survival thus far seems to show that his own party has no appetite for his immediate removal.

Using provisional figures as final votes were tallied, in Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered its worst ever result, with just 21% of the vote. The SPD has suffered badly from being locked in an uneasy coalition with the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) of Angela Merkel. Mrs Merkel will be relieved to take first place, but the CDU vote still fell compared with the Euro-elections in 2004. The big winners of the night in Germany were the pro-business liberals of the Free Democratic Party, whose vote almost doubled to 11%, perhaps gaining from free-market minded Christian Democrats worried by Mrs Merkel's recent shifts leftwards.

In France, the Socialist Party only just escaped being pushed into third place by Greens led by a former student firebrand of the May 1968 movement, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The ruling Socialists in Spain lost painfully to the centre-right opposition, while in Poland, the left was simply crushed, with 75% of the vote going to conservative parties.

The pattern of misery for the left was powerful enough to trump the adage that deep recessions punish governments in office. In France, the governing UMP party of President Nicolas Sarkozy was left jubilant after coming first, with 28% of the vote. The result seemed to endorse Mr Sarkozy's jackdaw-like approach to the Euro-campaign, in which he has played to the right with stern talk about cracking down on crime and opposing Turkey's entry to the EU, while appealing to the left with attacks on financial “speculators” and promises to construct a “social market economy” which “protects” workers from unfair foreign competition.

In Italy, a similar focus on controlling illegal immigration and protecting workers was enough to hand victory to Silvio Berlusconi and his conservative Party of Freedom. As in France, Mr Berlusconi was helped by disarray among his opponents on the left. However, the Italian prime minister did not emerge unscathed from an ongoing press furore about his private life: his 35% of the vote was down from his general election showing last year, and less than the 45% he had predicted.

Overall, the European Parliament will look a different place after these elections. The socialists remain the second largest group, but they are a reduced force and will have to seek alliances more of the time with Greens and others. The largest centre-right grouping will also be transformed by the departure of Britain's Conservatives, who say they will form a new anti-federalist alliance in the Euro-parliament with other right-wing parties, mostly from eastern Europe.