What to make of the BNP's success?

Thomas Bridge

Its not a reflection even on PR - it's a reflection of the idiotic way it's been implemented in this country (the system is not PR - it's a form of First Past the Post on a party system).

The combined vote of UKIP and the LibDems in the North West for instance was more than the Tories, yet gained one less seat (arguably the one the BNP gained in fact).

It is interesting to consider if the BNP would have made the same gains had the election been held on the same transferable system they use in Ireland.

dearieme

Can the arithmetic be right? Surely not much more than 5% of the electorate voted Labour.

Rhoda Klapp

So issues of immigration, or national identity, are not up for discussion? How cosy. Especially written by a Scot, whose national identity is assured by measures not allowed to those who might consider themselves British or English.

Please justify this position (or deny it).

Michael Sweeney

It is an irony that two causes that so-called progressives enthuse about - PR and the EU - are now causing them apoplexy. Many on the left want us to be more like France, home of Jean Marie Le Pen, to say nothing of the extremists in Hungary, Poland and the like. I also think the media's response - Adam Boulton last night, John Humphries this morning - is counter productive, allowing Griffin to appear relatively sweet and reasonable by comparison. Very many people will be a bit miffed that there is a black police officers association or a back Friar Tuck in the BBC's Robin Hood, but the same folks voted in their thousand for Diversity (literally and metaphorically) only a week earlier. The BNP are thuggish and nasty, no doubt, and overwhelmingly the British people are wise enough not to want them. Their vote fell in Burnley, which has had some experience of their representatives. Labour's collapse has been freakishly bad, and both they and the Tories will do better in a general election.

Malcolm Clark

Systems don't elect candidates; it is the actions of parties and voters who do. What we have seen in the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber is a failure of the Labour party and the political class as a whole to engage with and mobilise people – at these elections, and more widely.

You could even argue the electoral system worked: it did what it was designed to do - reflect the strength of voter feeling. If enough people vote for a particular party, their voice will be heard and that party gains some representation. The hard truth in this election is that in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West 9.8% and 8% respectively of voters region-wide have chosen the BNP.

Nick Kaplan

I think the BNP gains are more significant than you make out.

Although their share of the vote hasn't increased they now get access to a whole load of public money via the EU.

This is what Le Pen did in France. Before his party one a few seats in the EU it was virtually insignificant. 10 years later he was running Chirac for a close second in the Presidential elections.

Thomas Bridge;

If a more proportional PR system was used the BNP would have done just as well. Moreover, it would make it easier for them to do better in the future. As the system stands one needs very big gains to move from having one seat in an area to having 2. Make it more proportional and it becomes much easier to increase the number of seats minor parties win. PR is a disaster and the BNP winning seats last night should be the last nail in the coffin for any talk about it as the system for general elections.

Sean Hunter

So when democracy doesn't produce the democratic result which suits you, something must have gone wrong somewhere? Grow up. People have the right to vote for whomever they choose. I note that more people voted BNP than for the Greens - yet the Greens aren't being referred to as a "mob".

Instead of making excuses for why the BNP has done as well as it has, we need to start looking at the underlying reasons why some people think the BNP is a credible alternative and start addressing them.

Shane Glackin

Alex, I don't think many suppose the problem is that we are living in a re-run of the last days of Weimar. It's that it is soul-destroying, horrifying, to see this side of the people around you. As a foreigner living in Leeds, I know that one in every nine voters - the people I work with, pass in the street, hold doors open for, ask directions from - voted for a Nazi. Not a metaphorical Nazi, not an I'm-slightly-exaggerating-Nazi, an actual Nazi. I can't tell you how dispiriting that is, how unconfortable it makes me feel in what I have come to think of as my home.

Which is, of course, the point.

The Brain

If only people had listened to Enoch Powell in the first place, things would be so very different.

All those idiots who campaigned for mass-immigration are responsible for this. Just what exactly did they think mass-immigration would achieve? Anyone with a brain in their head can see that mass immigration leads to trouble. Fools.

ndm

Proving that having a brain is necessary but not sufficient, The Brain writes:

-- Anyone with a brain in their head can see that mass immigration leads to trouble. Fools.

I would have thought the United States of America to be an immediate disproof of The Brain's hypothesis. There are now four states classified as minority-majority states: California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii.

Nick Kaplan

ndm;

The difference being that in the US one can have an open and frank discussion about immigration without being accused of being a racist. In addition Immigrants are encourage to integrate in the US, in the UK they are actively discouraged.

It's the fact that the mainstream parties refuse to discuss immigration that is the problem. What alternative do people have but to turn to the extremes?

(NB. I’m not trying to excuse voting BNP, but it's important to understand why people are voting this way)

egh

ndm: I argue that the USA is a different kettle of fish.

First: the place is vast - in comparison to our little island - so it can absorb far more immigrants.

Second: The indigenous population there has long been a minority - and has been sup-pressed, re-pressed, and dis-possessed.

Immigrant populations there have taken over - that's why immigration works: hardly anybody's an indigene, so they don't think of the land as theirs in the same way as... well, indigenes do!! [And some of those Native Americans are quite bitter about it, believe me].

Britain has, for the last 7,000 years (approx.), housed a majority who now consider themselves indigenes. So the British think this country is theirs; and they have successfully got rid of most invaders - though some stayed longer than others; and perhaps Vikings intermarried more than the others.

In short, the majority population in the USA is of immigrants who have colonized the place. The reverse is true in the UK.

So what you are suggesting is that present-day Immigrants to the UK should do to the British what early-modern Immigrants did to the Native Americans.

Nice [Irony].

ndm

Nick Kaplan, the best way to have "an open and frank discussion about immigration without being accused of being a racist" is to not be a racist in the first place.

And a racist is precisely what you are if you frame discussion of immigration round terms like dhimmitude, caliphate, Gates of Vienna, or any of the other similarly ignorant locutions that are the life blood of the anti-Muslim ultra-right in Europe and the United States.

ndm

The treatment of the indigenous population of the Americas by white European invadors was despicable. The hostility to foreigners by the European ultra-right is the modern incarnation of the colonists' hostility to American natives.

Mass non-white immigration into the United States happened in the 20th Century long after the near destruction of the indigenous population. It is therefore both disingenuous and ignorant to use that destruction to explain why the United States is more tolerant of non-white immigration than is Britain.

The reality is that, contrary to the mythological history presented by egh, the British Isles have been invaded successfully many times in the last seven thousand years. The Romans, Vikings and Normans all seemed to have inserted a lot of genes into the indigenes. And these are just the invasions in which the locals had a genuine reason to fear the invador.

And that is certainly not true in Muslim immigration to Britain. Regardless of how many times ultra-right commentators bring up the Gates of Vienna there is, as they know full well, absolutely no prospect of an Islamic takeover of Britain. Their attacks on Muslim immigrants and immigration are correctly called racism.

Nick Kaplan

ndm;

What a completely fatuous argument. Why have you brought up “terms like dhimmitude, caliphate, Gates of Vienna,” terms which I haven’t even mentioned. You seem to be wonderfully able to prove my point just by the stupidity of your argument against it. I haven’t even mentioned my views on immigration (which I support) but have only said it is a subject worth discussing, whatever one’s views, and immediately you assume I am racist just for bringing up the fact that people will call you racist for bringing it up. I’m afraid it is people like you who are indirectly responsible for the surge in BNP support; I hope you are proud of yourself.

One more thing; Islam is a religion not a race. Since it is a set of beliefs, not an ethnicity, it is perfectly legitimate to criticise Islam, just like any other belief system.

ndm

Nick Kaplan - I would have thought it obvious that in writing the following I was using the modern vernacular "you" in place of the now uber-formal "one."

-- And a racist is precisely what you are if you frame discussion of immigration round terms like dhimmitude, caliphate, Gates of Vienna, or any of the other similarly ignorant locutions that are the life blood of the anti-Muslim ultra-right in Europe and the United States.

However, you continue:

-- One more thing; Islam is a religion not a race. Since it is a set of beliefs, not an ethnicity, it is perfectly legitimate to criticise Islam, just like any other belief system.

You are correct that it is perfectly legitimate to criticize Islam as a "set of beliefs." That is not, however, how Islam is criticized in the West. Most of the criticism from the right, and all of it from the ultra-right, is founded on deliberate misreadings both of the Koran and of history. Symptoms of that misreading include the use of terms like dhimmitude, caliphate and the Gates of Vienna to describe the Muslim "threat." This is not criticism of Islam as a "set of beliefs" it is deliberate malice.

Nick Kaplan

ndm;

Firstly criticisms of Islam come from both the right (Melanie Philips, Douglas Murray, David Starkey etc) and the Left (Oliver Kamm, Rod Liddle, Christopher Hitchens etc), it is by no means solely a right wing phenomenon as you make out.

I don’t know what you mean by the ‘ultra-right’ but if you mean something like the BNP then I think you are mistaken to suppose that they are right wing at all.

From your post I get the impression that you have never read anything written by the right or the left criticising Islam. If you had you would see it is not motivated by racism but by legitimate worries over how some (the Islamists) interpret the Koran.

The fact is that the Koran, like all religious texts, contains passages openly advocating violence and throughout proclaiming backwards values that may have been appropriate when it was written, but are not today (e.g. its homophobia, chauvinism etc). The difference however, is that other religions do not claim that their texts are the literal word of God and thus are far more open to reinterpretation and reformation. The Koran on the other hand was supposedly dictated to Mohamed by the Arch Angel Gabriel, it is meant to be the direct and final revelation of God.

Consequently Islam is unreformable and open to much abuse from those with the intention to do so.

Moreover terms like caliphate are not just used by those on the left and the right to criticize Islam, such terms are also used by those who want to manipulate Islam for their own violent ends. The criticisms of Islam that empathise these terms are made on the basis of the actual use of these terms by Islamists with a violent agenda. This is not to say that all Muslims are violent, I know they are not, a few of my good friends come from Muslim families (although they have since given up their faith). However there is no use burying your head in the sand and pretending there is no problem just because it doesn’t sit with your world view. A significant minority of Muslims believe things that are incompatible with basic Western values like the liberty of the individual. Many in the wider Muslim community seem worryingly unable (perhaps unwilling) to criticize this extreme minority.

To pretend such criticisms are based on racism is not only puerile but dangerous. The longer you avoid dealing with this issue the worse it will get and the more people will turn to extremists like the BNP for solutions; nobody wants that.

rhory fraser

The BNP did not 'barely increase' its vote. It went up from 808,000 to 953,000.

And that after the most unprecedented, co-ordinated media onslaught in recent political history.

Peter H

'And that success, I suspect, will be a minor blip, unlikely to be repeated,' says Alex Massie. I'd argue against this. If we look at the BNP's electoral results since their Burnley breakthrough in 2002, we can see a slow and steady upward trajectory which has gradually gone from local through to national. There's no blip about it.

As for the Euro results, we could put it another way - for every three Tory voters in Yorkshire, there was a BNP voter. And please bear in mind, that's in the Euros which is not the BNP's best turf. I await the next round of local elections with great interest.

Finally, as Alex recommends 'people keep their heads,' can I point him in the direction of his own hairstyle. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Ben

The Labour party's shocking success shouldn't be worried about, after all, 95% of the British electorate didn't vote for them. This little party will be a real non-entity in the next general election.