| Members of the European Parliament for the United Kingdom | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| Women | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Part of a series of articles on |
| UK membership of the European Union (1973–2020) |
|---|
 |
 EU portal · UK portal |
The 8th European Parliament was elected across the European Union in the late days of May 2014 for the 2014–2019 session. The United Kingdom was apportioned to send 73 out of the 751 Member of the European Parliament (MEPs) that are listed below.
The UK had representation with 73 of the 751 seats of the European Parliament with party contributions within political groups as follows at time of dissolution:
| National party | MEPs | Political group | Governance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour Party | 19 / 185 | S&D | Commission majority |
| Conservative Party | 18 / 77 | ECR | Opposition and non-aligned |
| UKIP | 2 / 36 | ENF | Opposition and non-aligned |
| UKIP | 1 / 20 | NI | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Green Party | 3 / 52 | Greens/EFA | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Scottish National Party | 2 / 52 | Greens/EFA | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 1 / 77 | ECR | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Liberal Democrats | 1 / 69 | ALDE | Commission majority |
| Sinn Féin | 1 / 52 | GUE/NGL | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Plaid Cymru | 1 / 52 | Greens/EFA | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 1 / 20 | Non-Inscrits | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Independent | 2 / 216 | EPP | Commission majority |
| SDP | 1 / 42 | EFDD | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Brexit Party | 14 / 42 | EFDD | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Independent | 1 / 36 | ENF | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Independent | 3 / 42 | EFDD | Opposition and non-aligned |
| Independent politician | 1 / 20 | Non-Inscrits | Opposition and non-aligned |
| vacant | 2 / 21 | n/a | n/a |
This table can be sorted by constituency, party or party group: click the symbol at the top of the appropriate column.
| Name | Region | Party | Date | Reason for departure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philip Bradbourn | West Midlands | Conservative Party | 19 December 2014 | Died in office |
| Anneliese Dodds | South East England | Labour Party | 8 June 2017 | Elected MP |
| Ian Duncan | Scotland | Conservative Party | 22 June 2017 | Resigned after being created life peer |
| Vicky Ford | East of England | Conservative Party | 8 June 2017 | Elected MP |
| Afzal Khan | North West England | Labour Party | 8 June 2017 | Elected MP |
| Timothy Kirkhope | Yorkshire and the Humber | Conservative Party | 5 October 2016 | Resigned after being created life peer |
| Andrew Lewer | East Midlands | Conservative Party | 8 June 2017 | Elected MP |
| Roger Helmer | East Midlands | UKIP | 31 July 2017 | Resigned citing age and health status as reasons, but amid allegations of misuse of public funds [18] |
| Richard Howitt | East of England | Labour Party | 2 November 2016 | Resigned after taking up chief executive position at International Integrated Reporting Council |
| Glenis Willmott | East Midlands | Labour Party | 2 October 2017 | Retired |
| Catherine Stihler | Scotland | Labour Party | 31 January 2019 | Retired to take up chief executive post at Open Knowledge International |
The UK Independence Party is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest party representing the UK in the European Parliament. The party is currently led by Neil Hamilton.
Non-Inscrits are Members of the European Parliament (MEP) who do not belong to one of the recognised political groups.
Gerard Joseph Batten is a British politician who served as the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2018 to 2019. He was a founding member of the party in 1993, and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London from 2004 to 2019.
Jonathan Bullock is an English politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands constituency until the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020. He was third on the UKIP list for that constituency in the 2014 European election, and became an MEP on 1 August 2017, succeeding Roger Helmer. He was re-elected in 2019 for the Brexit Party.
Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) was a Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament. The group was formed following the 2009 European parliamentary election, mostly composed of elements of the Independence/Democracy (IND/DEM) and Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN) groups that had existed during the 6th European Parliament. The group had a loose relationship with Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy (MELD), a European political party founded in 2011.
Paul Andrew Nuttall is a British politician who served as Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2016 to 2017. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England between 2009 and 2019, sitting in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group. He left UKIP in December 2018, criticising the party's association with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and joined The Brexit Party in 2019.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is a soft Eurosceptic, anti-federalist political group of the European Parliament. The ECR is the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party European political party (formerly known as the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe or Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, but also includes MEPs from four other European parties and thirteen MEPs without European party affiliation.
The 2014 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2014 European Parliament election, held on Thursday 22 May 2014, coinciding with the 2014 local elections in England and Northern Ireland. In total, 73 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom using proportional representation. England, Scotland and Wales use a closed-list party list system of PR, while Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote (STV).
Diane Martine James is a British politician who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 2014 to 2019. She was briefly leader-elect of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from September 2016 to October 2016, but resigned before formalising her leadership. At the time of her election to the European Parliament, James was one of three UKIP MEPs for South East England, before joining the Brexit Party in 2019.
Janice Ann Atkinson is a former British politician who was a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region. She formerly represented the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and later sat as an independent: she was elected in 2014, second on the list for the region behind Nigel Farage. In March 2015, she was expelled from UKIP for "bringing the party into disrepute" after her chief of staff was recorded trying to fraudulently inflate her expenses.
Michael Hookem is a British politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Yorkshire and the Humber from 2014 to 2019.
Nathan Lee Gill is a British politician, who was the Leader of Reform UK Wales from March to May 2021, when he resigned from the party. He previously served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wales from 2014 to January 2020.
Steven Marcus Woolfe is a British barrister, writer and commentator. He is currently the Director of the Centre for Migration & Economic Prosperity a research think tank studying population and immigration into the UK, Europe and US. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England from 2014 until 2019. From 2014 he was a UKIP MEP but resigned to become an Independent MEP in October 2016 following his opposition to the party's overly negative policy on immigration. He remained Independent until July 2019. He is not a member of any political party or holds any political office.
William Milroy Etheridge is an English politician who was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands region. He was elected in 2014 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, but left the party in October 2018 and joined the Libertarian Party. He joined the Brexit Party in 2019 but rejoined UKIP in September 2020.
Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy was a Eurosceptic and populist political group in the European Parliament. The EFDD group was a continuation for the Eighth European Parliament of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group that existed during the Seventh European Parliament, with significant changes to group membership.
Europe of Nations and Freedom was a political group in the European Parliament launched on 15 June 2015. The group was the smallest within the European Parliament during the eighth European Parliament term with 37 members. The largest faction in the group was the French National Rally with 17 MEPs. Twenty-eight members were part of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom (MENF), with the remaining nine MEPs being their ideological allies. The ENF was the parliamentary group of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom although some MEPs were without any European affiliations.
The 2019 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2019 European Parliament election, held on Thursday 23 May 2019 and the results were announced on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May 2019, after all the other EU countries had voted. This was the United Kingdom's final participation in a European Parliament election before leaving the European Union on 31 January 2020, and was also the last election to be held under the provisions of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 before its repeal under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
The September 2016 UK Independence Party leadership election was triggered after Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, announced on 4 July 2016, following the Leave result in the UK referendum on EU membership, that he would step down when a new leader had been elected.
The November 2016 UK Independence Party leadership election took place following the announcement on 4 October 2016 by Diane James, the leader-elect of the UK Independence Party, that she would not accept the leadership of the party, despite winning the leadership election 18 days earlier. Nigel Farage, whom James was to succeed after the previous leadership election following his resignation, was selected the next day to serve as interim leader.
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was a significant political force in 2019. After Brexit, it was renamed to Reform UK in January 2021, and became primarily an anti-lockdown party during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, in December 2022, it began campaigning on broader right-wing populist themes during the British cost-of-living crisis. Its greatest electoral success was as the Brexit Party, which won 29 seats and the largest share of the national vote in the 2019 European Parliament election.
Last week the MEP for South West England and Gibraltar learned she had been expelled from the party, after clashing with the leadership over Brexit.
Girling, a conservative party member for more than 40 years, fell out with party hierarchy over the UK's impending divorce from the EU, and her dismissal was confirmed in a letter last week. The letter, dated 25 September, was signed by party chairman Brandon Lewis and cites Girling's recent decision to join the European Parliament centre-right EPP group as the reason for her exile.
