BNP tank at polls

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Having not been to WP for a while i thought i'd return briefly just to point out that the racist British National Party absolutely tanked at the polls, didn't win a single seat, their leader Nick Griffin finished a distant third in his constituency and they lost a shed load of local council seats. Add this to the massive convulsions taking place internally (e.g. their head of PR, Mark Collett, was expelled and reported to the police for making death threats toward the party leadership, then returned because the evidence provided against him, a recorded conversation, had been massively edited to remove reference to the fraud/embezzlement of party funds taking place and the police refused to accept evidence that was only partial/had been tampered with) and the litigation brought by Unilever for breach of copyright and their in something of a pinch, shall we say

Ascan et al - well done! :p

The only good news that has come out of this election!

Titus, how did the far left do at the polls?
And how's the Trotskyite revolution coming along by the way?

Triumphalism: two can play at that game.

Last edited by codarac on 08 May 2010, 6:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Over 560,000 people voted BNP, and yet they get no seats in Parliament.
Over 917,000 people voted UKIP, and yet they get no seats in Parliament.

Meanwhile
168,000 voted Democratic Unionist Party, and they get eight seats
490,000 voted Scottish National Party, and they get six seats.
171,000 voted Sinn Fein, and they get five.
165,000 voted Plaid Cymru, and they get three.
42,000 voted Alliance Party (Northern Ireland), and they get one.

And, to be fair to the Lib Dems, I should mention how they did in comparison to the other Big Two.

Conservatives: Received approx 10.7 million votes, won 306 seats
Labour: Received approx 8.6 million votes, won 258 seats
LidDems; Received approx 6.8 million votes, won 57 seats

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/

Well that's the First-Past-The-Post system for you. If it does anything good, it keeps nutters like these two out of Westminster.

codarac, I'm not one of the sectarians who use the labels 'Marxist' and 'Trotskyist' like the Socialist Party or the TUSC

and how many seats is that 500k spread over? the point is that you have to win the seat, parliament is a constituent assembly, it's not a question of first past the post - it's a question of you lot coming third and fourth place in each seat you contested.

the trotskyite revolution is coming along actually, the capitalists are squaring up to take the organised working class head on and this will be an extremely difficult period for all, but it will demonstrate that capitalism cannot answer the fundamental questions faced by the working men and women of the world, bu this has to be learned through lived experience - as is said: events, events and events

On each individual count for each individual seat the BNP usually pulled less then a 1000. The UKIP were in or just over 1000. The only result I heard overnight (yes I listened to the entire election on radio 4, sad I know) were the BNP actually scored anything over 1000 was the Barking one were Wonky Eye Griffen failed at life.

So it seems we don't have a highly concentrated community of BNP supporters out there despite all the talk in the press. Suprised? No, even if people are pissed at migration there too apathetic to vote for it.

I'm touched that you should be thinking of me, TLC.


With the electoral system as it is you'll find that most people fell into one of two camps, Laz; either they wanted to get Brown out, or they wanted to keep Cameron out. So in England that meant voting Conservative, Labour, or in a minority of areas Liberal. Most people who support what the BNP stand for would have voted along those lines.

Presuming the majority of natural BNP supporters would get out of their seat to vote or register for mail voting. Presuming the majority of natural BNP voteres were prepared to engage in tactical voting.

Why are UKIP nutters? We don't want to throw anyone out - we're civic nationalists very much in the conservative mould.

The BNP are a bit of a different story but to be honest I wouldn't mind seeing more MPs from minority parties like the Greens, UKIP, BNP, English Democrats and other Ulster unionist parties.

Astonishing. You actually believe this, don't you?

That's one of the most foolish statements I've ever heard.

Their is almost no working class solidarity, much of the working class across the world has been attracted much more to rightwing nationalism than world socialism, and the managerial class is growing. The only hopes of a vaguely more equitable society in the UK or elsewhere is proportional representation and social democracy.

In the U.S., the union movement is pretty feeble. Something like fifteen percent of the work force is unionized.

ruveyn

Both Labour and Conservative have their votes/support concentrated in specific areas whereas the Lib Dems are much more spread out which is why Lab and Conservative got so many more seats. It also explains why the Green Party gained a seat although overall they had less votes than the BNP and UKIP.
Plus I think that the Lib Dems will agree to a power-sharing agreement with one of the two main parties if they agree to an alternative voting system which of course Labour and Conservative will not agree to as it will mean that the Lib Dems will get a lot more seats because the Lib Dems are usually people's second choice if they vote Conservative or Labour. If a coalition is formed the the larger party will simply string the Lib Dems along until they gain the majority. This is just my opinion though.

Pity party topic

Ethnic pride and nationalistic tendencies seem to connect pathologically, though there is nothing inherently wrong with being proud of one's roots as long as it is done realistically and not in a bullying fashion. Since this is difficult, if not impossible for most there are many who simply deny their pasts, depress into self hatred, or seem to develop the other extreme--neonationalism based on narrow criteria (such as skin colour, and religion.

A person can be proud of his/her past, and privately, if not done at the expense of others' pain, and to learn from mistakes done to other ethnic/cultural roots by resolving not to repeat them, and to understand other persons' cultures, finding unification by shared values. No need to deny/negate who you are. Find the good stuff and build from there.

As I see it, if the UK continues on its current path, it is heading for ruin (and I would say the same about the rest of the Western world) and I think it is going to take something more radical than proportional representation to turn things around. So in a way, I share Titus's dissatisfaction with the status quo, although I do not share his vision of of the solution (or his sense of inevitability that a solution will be found).
Still, I hope (and suspect) that you are correct about nationalism proving attractive than world socialism.