Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

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Hi, I'm Toby Young, one of Quilets London-based editors.

On Sunday night, we learned the results of the European Parliament election

in which voters in the 28 member states of the European Parliament election, in which voters in the 28 member states of the European Union

elected 751 MEPs, members of the European Parliament.

Five years ago, the unexpected success of three national populist parties in the European election,

the Front National in France, the Danish People's Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party, heralded the beginning of the

populist surge that has transformed European politics. Were there any comparable

earthquakes this time round? I sat down to discuss the results with Eric Kaufman, a Colette contributor

and a professor of politics at Birkbeck College and Sunda Katwala, the director of British

Future, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on the issues of identity, immigration, and integration.

So, Southern Eric, thank you very much for doing this. I guess before we get started on reading the tea leaves, we should make it clear that the European elections are not hugely significant politically.

The European Parliament has very little power.

Turnout, though slightly higher this year, is historically quite

low in European elections and often result in European elections aren't repeated in national elections. So UKIP came first in the

...