When it was announced that Mr Smyth was going, Labour refused to comment on reports of a rift between party groupings at Holyrood and Glasgow.

BBC: Scottish Labour recruits Ian Price as general secretary

Mr Watson has been a Lib Dem MEP since 1994 and has been head of the ALDE group, one of the biggest party groupings in the Parliament, for the past seven and half years.

BBC: Brian Wheeler

In future they will be handed out on the basis of party strength and not that of political groupings.

BBC: Belfast City Council votes for rule change

The parliament's new members will mostly sit in vaguely like-minded groupings, like the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (centre-left) and the European Liberal Democrats (socially, and sometimes economically, liberal).

ECONOMIST: Unhappy voters send a message | The

This is significant because the changing nature of the American population means that no party can hope to gain power having alienated the vote of various ethnic groupings - that group will simply vote against them.

BBC: News Online

They now find themselves, largely by accident since both had been written off as party leaders, at the head of their respective right-wing and left-of-centre groupings.

ECONOMIST: Israel��s odd couple