THE Liberal Democrats were in a buoyant mood yesterday after they increased their number of MEPs from 10 to 12, despite coming fourth in the European elections.
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The pro-European party was beaten into fourth place by the UK Independence Party, which garnered 16 per cent of the vote and also won 12 seats.
But the Lib Dems, with 15 per cent of the vote — an increase of 2 percentage points on 1999 — could claim to have made good progress.
Charles Kennedy, the party leader, said: “I stated at the outset of the campaign that my aim was for the Liberal Democrats to win more votes and more seats — and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
He congratulated his new MEPs, Fiona Hall, in the North East, and Sajjad Karim, in the North West, who becomes the party’s first non-white elected representative.
The Lib Dems believe that their gains in the North in the European and local elections, where they won control of Newcastle, and Conservative weakness in those areas show that they are now the main challenger to Labour in its heartlands.
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Their European campaign chiefly highlighted the party’s opposition to the war in Iraq. A spokesman defended the decision to link the two issues, saying: “Part of the great damage that the war did was to our allies in Europe, by jettisoning them in favour of a misguidedly close relationship with George Bush.”