THE results of the European and local elections have been presented by the media as an unquestioning triumph for Ukip and the right. 

Throughout Saturday all the media were leading with the allegedly huge Ukip gains in the council elections — completely ignoring that Labour had already won 2,000 council seats in total. 

However, we cannot ignore the fact that in the European elections — albeit on a 34 per cent turnout — Ukip managed 4.3 million votes to Labour’s 4 million, with the Conservatives being down to 3.7 million. 

The results across Britain varied enormously as Labour’s best results in London were achieved with 800,000 votes, more than 400,000 ahead of Ukip and 300,000 ahead of the Tories.

Across Europe the results also varied enormously. The biggest support for the racist and far-right parties was in France, where the right-wing media are cock-a-hoop at the success of Marine Le Pen. The normally opaque Francois Hollande looks more miserable than ever. 

Interestingly, in countries where there is a serious left opposition to the austerity programme of the European Central Bank and others, the left parties have done extremely well. 

For example, Syriza in Greece achieved astounding success. Together with the Communist Party it won almost half of the country’s seats in the European Parliament. 

In Spain the combination of the opposition PSOE, Spain’s socialist party, and the Ecology-Communist coalition taken together won 25 of Spain’s 54 seats. 

In Ireland Sinn Fein offered a clear anti-austerity package and had a significant result winning three seats.

The media present all this as though the next election could well be a disaster for Labour, as Ukip begin to take Westminster seats. 

Interestingly, the Labour results in the local authority elections were often better than in the European elections, and where, as in London, the party concentrated on housing, living standards and public services, it had a spectacularly successful election campaign, gaining control, notably, of Croydon, Hammersmith and Fulham, Redbridge and Merton. 

By not conceding ground to Ukip on debates about immigration, Labour showed itself to be in a much stronger position.

Interestingly, the message coming out of Labour head office over the weekend was that the party should concentrate on issues of living standards. It did not mention immigration. 

Nigel Farage has a very clever and often unchallenged appeal. 

He comes across as the folksy pipe-smoking, local pub pint-swilling neighbour. 

Beneath this exterior and very clever media front lie two things. 

First, Ukip’s support for free-market economics across the continent, a reduction in social spending and opposition to any kind of health and safety or other regulations. 

Not very far away and not terribly well hidden is the deep racism within the party and its co-operation with the openly fascist Britain First group which, fresh from attacking mosques in Bradford, is now providing voluntary security cover for Ukip meetings and rallies. 

The key now surely is to unite the labour movement around the vital demands of council housing, private-sector regulation including rent controls and an end to the marketisation of our health service and therefore its ultimate destruction. 

The last Labour government, apart from its wars and attacks on civil liberties, completely failed to impose any control on the financial markets, hence the disasters of 2008. 

I would urge anyone who wants to see a different approach to the economy to read Andrew Fisher’s excellent book The Failed Experiment and How to Build an Economy that Works.

In an age of social media, comment is immediate and apparently endless and sometimes very apposite. 

Two adjoined messages on Facebook came up on my screen this morning, the first from the Blue Street Journal showing an empty road with a carnival banner across it labelled Free Market Capitalism. 

On one side of the road behind crushed barriers were thousands of people living in tents and underneath it the sign said: People Without Homes. 

On the other side of the street, behind yet another security fence, were a large number of empty homes, with the caption Homes Without People. 

The next message was somebody standing in front of a group of desperate street dwellers in New York holding a peace sign reading: “Why is there always money for war?” 

The lesson for these elections is that we don’t have to get into the gutter with Ukip or any other racist party. 

We have to unite people around basic social demands. That’s what gives people hope. 

Prejudice and racism never built a house, ran a hospital or a transport system or educated any children. 

It can only lead to something worse. 

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North.