Questions to Labour following the elections

Shouldn't you have won?

Of course we'd have liked to win, but these are good results significantly increasing our share of the vote and number of MEPs. The Tories have gone backwards, just as they did in the local elections last week.

You didn't win a year out from the General Election – that's not good enough?
There's famously little correlation between European election results and general elections. William Hague won the 1999 Euro elections and lost to a landslide in 2001. Tony Blair in fact never won a European election and won three general elections.

Labour hasn't won the European elections for 20 years. Traditionally these are tough elections for centre and centre-left parties across Europe, and we've seen right-wing non-governing parties do well in the results so far from the rest of Europe.

UKIP beat you
Right wing nationalist parties have done well across Europe tonight, as we've come to expect in European elections. We beat UKIP significantly in the share of the vote in the local elections.

What's going to change in Labour's approach?
We've made good progress in European and local elections, with a campaign focused on concrete action the next Labour government will take to deal with the cost of living crisis. Going forward we will focus on three things:

• Organisation, building on the excellent results we've had in our key seats. In these elections we knocked on 7 million doors, more than any other party; in the General Election we will need to knock on millions more. We know that we will be outspent, but we will not be out-organised.
• Policy: we've announced important policies to deal with the cost of living crisis, freezing energy bills, helping families who rent and raising the minimum wage, and we've fought a policy-rich campaign, but we'll be announcing more policies at the National Policy Forum in July and at Conference.
• Politics: in a General Election year, we need to show that our vision meets the needs and aspirations of the country and offers answers to the challenges people see in their own lives. The Conservatives have nothing to say about the deep alienation many people feel in Britain today as they face a cost-of-living crisis.

Doesn't Labour need to be doing better?
We are moving forward while the Conservatives and Lib Dems are going backwards. We've made real progress in the key seats we need to win in the General Election, while the Conservatives have lost ground and the Liberal Democrats have seen a catastrophic collapse in their vote. The Tories aren't making progress in the seats they need to win to form a majority - we are.

Aren't UKIP as much of a problem for Labour as they are for the Tories?
That's not what the evidence shows. The Tories lost seats, we gained 338 councillors. But we all know that people feel left out of the economy and ignored by our politics and UKIP is tapping into that feeling. The strength of support for UKIP isn't simply about Europe. It's about the frustrations that people feel about an economy that doesn't work for them. That's why Ed Miliband has led the way on the big changes we need to see in our economy

Shouldn't you change your policy on a referendum to try and counter the UKIP threat?
No. It's far too simplistic to say that the UKIP vote is just about Europe. It is as much anti-politics as anti-Europe. Our focus is on setting out concrete steps about how we make Britain work for working people once again. The party that's seeing discontent over the UKIP threat is the Tories, with backbenchers calling for a Tory-UKIP pact and saying that David Cameron's European policy isn't credible.

What difference do Labour MEPs actually make?
Over the last few years Labour MEPs have:

• Stood up to the banking sector, backing new laws to curb bankers' bonuses.
• Opposed unfair roaming charges and forced phone companies to reduce them.
• Protected consumers  against sky-high credit card transaction fees.
• Stood up to big tobacco companies, banning products which encourage children to smoke. 

Doesn't the rise of the far right across Europe show you're too pro-european for the public?
The right has traditionally done better in European elections, and these elections take place in the context of much of Europe still feeling the effects of the financial crash with high unemployment. But we're clear that the EU does need to change so that it works for Britain, which is why we've argued for longer transitional controls before citizens of any new member states can come to UK and for an end to child benefit being paid for children not living in the UK.