UKIP probably wouldn’t want them though.

For as long as UK MEPs are elected via closed lists, a similar rule should be introduced preventing them from crossing the floor. Those elected via closed list cannot really claim to have much of a personal mandate.

Macmillan-Scott is following in the footsteps of Bill Newton-Dunn in leaving the party having been elected following a Euro-sceptic campaign, citing the fact that the Tories are too Euro-sceptic. What a pair of tools.

If he or his new party have a shred of decency and respect for the wishes of the voters of this region as expressed through the ballot box, he will be standing down in order to allow a Conservative to take his place. I wont be banking on that happening.

I wasn’t aware that I suggested it was. It is certainly a failing in the implementation of the system here that someone who holds his place purely by virtue of votes cast for a party list can still retain that place when he defects to a different party. It is bad enough when MPs sitting for single member constituencies defect and therefore turn against the wishes of those who voted for them, but they are at least able to maintain the fiction that they have been elected as an individual rather than as a representative of a party and therefore have some kind of personal mandate. There is no personal mandate here. The party list won seats in the European parliament not the individual therefore if one leaves the party they should forfeit their seat and it should go to the next person on the list of the party in question (in this case Fleur Butler).
Andy is entirely correct of course and the Conservatives were idiotic to continue to select someone like this. My sympathy is not with them but with the Conservative voters in Yorkshire who continued to think that a vote for their party was worthwhile in this election.

As for the first point, it not the fault of a long dead Belgian or his voting system that an elected member has been expelled from one party and subsequently joined another.