The far right made gains in the elections to the European parliament, with voters in Italy, the UK, Hungary and the Netherlands, among others, supporting candidates who espoused explicitly anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic and hardline nationalist platforms.

Italy's Northern League, stridently anti-foreigner, more than doubled its share of the vote to 10.2 per cent and won eight seats. In Hungary, the Jobbik party, with its anti-gypsy platform, won three seats. In the Netherlands, the Freedom party of Geert Wilders, the maverick politician who has become the face of anti-Islamic sentiment across Europe, won four seats.

In the UK, the anti- Islamic British National Party won its first two European parliament seats because of widespread disaffection with the ruling Labour party among white voters in the depressed industrial north.