The current state of British Politics

[lil_shepherd]

My flist is full of people being shocked because the BNP won two seats in the European elections.

I am just surprised that they are surprised. What surprises me is that the BNP does not gain more votes, because I meet the people who express BNP-type views (in private) often enough. I also overhear them on the bus and the tube and the train. Do

Comments

[philmophlegm]

I think you're right.

Two thoughts on this that I expressed in my own journal ( http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/98511.html?mode=reply ) :

If you look at the changes in the share of the votes in the two regions where the BNP got MEPs, they mostly took votes off Labour. The knuckle-dragging element of Labour supporters vote Labour because they blame their own failures on the rich. It's a small step from that position to blaming their own failures on immigrants.

Worse than the BNP's two MEPs is Sinn Fein - IRA's one (gaining more votes than anyone else in Ulster). The BNP are a nasty bunch of bigots, but they've never to my knowledge killed 1,800 people.

[lil_shepherd]

And I do agree with your thoughts.

[lil_shepherd]

As a native of one of the two areas that ended up with a BNP member (I am originally from Sheffield) and a working class area in an (ex) Council Estate at that, I am not sure it is envy of the rich so much as a nostalgia for the 40s, 50s and early 60s, when times were hard, but people survived them, and felt they had earned the good times - only there weren't any good times. Like I said, it's tribal.

It's a period where there were no black or brown faces, either. (I saw my first person of colour when I was about 14 - this in a major industrial city. There were no black kids at any of the schools I attended - well, there were two in the first year when I was in the Upper Sixth. I think I saw them half a dozen times.)

The people least likely to be racially prejudiced were, in fact, the most left wing of trade union activitists - they regarded people like the Viet Cong or the Mau Mau as Brothers in Arms against the right wing Capitalist oppressors. It's complicated.

The two should not be conflated, but they are.

[philmophlegm]

No, I don't think the switchers are likely to be the activists so much as the more prejudiced rank-and-file union members. South Park illustrates this pretty well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFG2P-toC6k

[lil_shepherd]

They probably are no longer union members because a lot of them will be either unemployed or retired.

[lil_shepherd]

I don't think they "took votes off Labour" - they, in fact, got fewer actual votes than in the last European elections. What happened was that Labour voters did not turn out. It's not the same thing.

(Incidentally, I do think that BNP voters are more likely to have voted Labour in the past. I just don't think that this was a significant factor in this particular election.)

You could say the same about a lot of recent Israeli governments, and they are not the only ones. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

[philmophlegm]

Turnout was down generally, but it was down more for most parties than it was for the BNP. Assuming that a similar percentage of the people who voted BNP in 2004 stayed at home as other parties' 2004 voters, then they must have benefited from voters switching from some of the other parties. And the numbers would seem to suggest Labour more than any other.

It's also true that several left-wing parties benefited from the collapse in the Labour vote - Greens (+2.4%), SNP (+0.7%), Socialist Labour (+1.1%), No2EU (+1.0%). Add these percentages to the BNP's 1.3% increase in the share of the vote, and you get 6.5%, which almost accounts for Labour's 6.9% fall in overall share.

[lil_shepherd]

But is there any reason for a BNP or UKIP voter to stay at home? They haven't been involved in either the economic collapse or the expenses scandal at Westminster.

[philmophlegm]

Point taken, especially about UKIP. Doesn't take much to reduce turnout by a fairly small percentage though - weather, better things to do...

[philmophlegm]

Actually they got more votes this year (quite a lot more in fact). Your point about them getting fewer votes than in 2004 has been mentioned by a number of news outlets, but it's just plain incorrect. They received 808,200 votes in 2004 and 943,598 this time. That's an increase of 17%.

[fatpie42]

they mostly took votes off Labour

So Labour voters are fascists?

I knew it!

[alitalf]

I read a description of the BNP saying that they are like Labour, but with racism.