The elections for the European Parliament are only days away, and the status quo appears to be about to get a big shake up – Polls suggest Euroskeptic parties could wind up with between 25 percent and 30 percent of the 751 European Parliament seats.

In Britain, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has pulled ahead of Labour and left the ruling Conservatives in a distant third place.  This is despite the rather high profile and racist gaffes by some members – one local candidate blamed recent flooding on Gay Marriage, another said a black comedian should move to a “black country”, and yet another did the usual denunciation of Islam as “evil”. 

“We do not have a monopoly on stupid people,” said UKIP leader Nigel Farage, claiming his party is coming under undo scrutiny.  And each night, the Europhobes show up at rallies to hear his message:  “The best people to govern Britain are the British people themselves.”

Those people tend to be “older, less well-qualified, economically struggling blue-collar voters,” said Politics lecturer Rob Ford of Manchester University, who co-authored a book about UKIP, “Revolt on the Right”.

A similar percentage of anti-EU votes is expected in Italy, where the anti-establishment “Five Star Movement” polled at about 25 percent, and the ultra-conservative Northern League polled at five percent.  Even traditionally pro-Europe countries are seeing anti-EU parties grow in popularity, although not as fast as Britain’s UKIP.  Economics professor Bernd Lucke of the Euroskeptic Alliance for Germany has gained ground by observing that even though the worst of the economic crisis appeared to have passed, “not a single problem in Europe has been solved.” 

But it could be that once these parties are in the European Parliament, they won’t necessarily cooperate.  They are, after all, suspicious and nationalist by definition.  And the parties with some veneer of respectability are unlikely to seek coalitions with the more vile Euroskeptic parties such as Hungary’s anti-Semitic Jobbik, Greece’s neonazi Golden Dawn, or the patently xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and ironically named Freedom Party of the Netherlands.