UPDATE
Depressingly, the BNP have won a seat in Yorkshire and Hmberside. Just had ten minutes of Nick Griffin on Sky News. I must say I thought Chris Bryant was very sharp in cutting through the claptrap with his question about who is allowed to join the BNP – people who, according to Griffin, “You look, you know” are “indigenous British”.
I thought William Hague spoke well against the BNP too. Except for this. Every single word Griffin said about upholding our indigenous traditions and Christian culture, and the threat of alien traditions. could have been said by the polish Law and Justice party which the Conservatives are joining in a new far right group, leaving the centre right EPP. In fact their Polish allies flaunt racism more than Griffin. I can’t understand why Hague expresses a decent horror of the British far right, but wants to ally with their European counterparts. (Happily the Tories new far right allies in Poland lost badly tonight).
Great news from Scotland – the SNP are romping away with it. Extraordinary news from Wales – the Tories got most votes. In Wales – that’s not something I thought I would ever see.
Electoral Fraud Alert 3
Following the election results on the BBC and Sky. One very interesting development. While there is a national swing against Labour of about 9%, in Leicester there is a very suspicious anomaly – a swing to Labour of about 6%, according to the BBC.
Now Leicester is exactly one of those places where New Labour carry out concentrated postal vote farming among a patriarchal South Asian community. I spoke there during the 2005 campaign in support of Yvonne Ridley, and spoke to people who had witnessed the same postal vote abuses we saw from New Labour in Blackburn.
I strongly suspect that it will prove that in Leicester the percentage of votes cast by post was extraordinarily high. If anyone has a connection to one of the parties in Leicester, maybe you can get that percentage tonight
See:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/electoral_fraud.html
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/06/new_labour_post.html#comments
We may well see several small but populous urban areas where New Labour buck the trend against them, and I confidently predict that these will directly correlate to South Asian communities plus an unusually high percentage of people voting by post.
The possibility of Postal Ballot Fraud (PBF) may prove to be an issue only in a few areas like Leicester, but it needs to be addressed in future voting reforms. As I understand it, published voting returns do not distinguish between postal ballots and those cast at polling stations in the constituency. They should be recorded separately, as should be the number of votes cast in each polling station.
PS (for Tony) the length of your posting guaranteed that I scrolled down past it, reading no more than the first few sentences. There’s a medical diagnosis when this condition affects the bowels
“But switching support to the Tories is, in my view, crazy”
Indeed. Out of the frying pan into a much deeper, even more unpleasant frying pan. The biggest story is surely the abysmal showing of the Lib Dems, beaten into fourth by Labour when, on the face of it, they should have been best placed to pick up disgruntled Labour votes especially since they emerged relatively unscathed from the expenses business.
George Dutton at June 8, 2009 12:48 AM
It’s that sort of attitude which resulted in your party not even being able to field a list of candidates in Scotland for the Europarl elections this year.
Also UKIP, now the second largest party. What’s going on there? I voted for them this time, purely on the strength of their strong anti-EU stand. But what do anti-EU parties do when they’re elected to the EU parliament? Sit at the back blowing raspberries and throwing paper aeroplanes?
Craig @11:16,
People are naturally cussed; they also present themselves as an ideal of what they truly are.
This results in people showing opposites when in the company of strong personality. For example: when Christians assert their Christian views, people react by expressing their atheist side; likewise leftwingers will elicit rightwing reactions in their company.
So if you and Charles were to meet the same company, independently on two different occasions, it is likely that you will have two different estimations of the same people, simply because your respective characters are strong enough to elicit two different responses from the same people.
This is why Christians believe the world is full of atheists; fascists believe the world is full of liberals; and scientists believe the world is full of arts graduates; etc etc.
MJ,
Have you not heard of Daniel Hannan?
Check out his YouTube profile if not.
william
You are right,we don’t have ANY “Big Business” backers hence not very much money.
@Jon – i’ve never voted Labour in my life but weren’t they supposed to be lefty? At least the Tories wouldn’t have destroyed their base and would also have had greater analysis of their policies from grassroots as they would have been included.
I’m an economic liberal – end the NHS, end the welfare state, have uncontrolled migration (with obvious border controls for criminals etc), have fully funded local services and only have central gov do foreign affairs & defence.
I just don’t buy this racism tag applied to the BNP – racism to be criminal has to be personal – being racially aware and stratifying socio demographic groups is just a thing geographers do.
PS – I wasn’t saying vote Tory or anything, i’m voting Tory because I work for them but I’m not elected or anything (quelle surprise!!).
“Have you not heard of Daniel Hannan?”
Who?
Check out his YouTube profile if not.
Right you are…
@Richard: yes, Labour were supposed to be left-wing, and discussions as to why they abandoned that whole point of the party are many and varied. Some people think it is because the “real left is unelectable”, although I think that argument is manufactured through institutional conservative media bias; others think that the Washington “consensus” is now so powerful that it even corrupts centre-left parties into neo-conservative war machines; and others (possibly including Craig) think it is just that MPs are generally fair-weather ‘party hacks’ who’re in it for the money, power and perks.
In fact I think the schizophrenic nature of a left party trying to falsely appeal to its working class roots whilst carrying on an economically neo-con agenda has helped bring down the party. Perhaps come the general election, people will have to suffer the neo-con instincts of the Tories without any need for the party to throw crumbs to the working classes.
If you voted Tory, then you’ll no doubt be pleased about the rightward shift of the Labour party over the last 10 years. Upon what basis did you vote Conservative, may I ask? I am not sure there is a great deal to distinguish the two parties, except for the historical left/right disdain each has for the other (and which I argued earlier is outdated and now largely meaningless).
@Jon – ofcourse you may ask – hope I think. Plain and simple hope.
Your analysis of the past 10-15 years is pretty much on the nail but in no way am I happy about it. I think there are significant divides between the Tories & the Labour Party on civil liberties with a natural Tory having a much stronger ‘fuck you’ reflex. I’d like to think that Iraq wouldn’t have happened had they been in control of the info (but that’s no doubt utter bollox) – I think the economic clusterfuck would have definately happened under the Tories too.
I think the main difference is a philosophical attitude – Labour tries to teach people to be better by inculcation, handing out cash, attempting to change society (as this thread started off – the BNP are racist etc when frankly they’re nothing of the sort and even if they are – who gives a toss?) whereas the Tories would (hopefully again) manage the finances better and attempt to incentivize rather than provide, streamline rather than diverge, aim for equality of service provision based upon pragmatism and need rather than that which ‘ought’ to exist.
I dunno – i’m certainly not stating that they’re the bee’s knees, the cat’s whiskers, the dog’s bollox but Tories can talk down to wealth, don’t really wanna teach anyone anything and can execute Prime Ministers without putting their cup of tea down. But it’s all mainly visceral and based on etheral stuff which may not sit well with rigourous analysis.
“I think there are significant divides between the Tories & the Labour Party on civil liberties”
How significant I wonder? I remember when Blair first started pushing through the authoritan agenda, at PMQs then tory leader Michael Howard came out with a strong statement against it, using the “we dealt with the IRA terrorist campaign for years without needing legislation like this” line. Blair just looked at him with vague bemusement and embarrassment. Embarrassment for Howard, not for himself, as though Howard had somehow made a faux pas.
Sure enough, only a week later, Howard was back in Parliament stating his solid support for Blair’s proposed legislation. It was as though someone had had a quiet word with Howard and put firmly back in line.
Not sure that erosion of civil liberties is actually emanating from the parties themselves. It seems to be coming from a higher power, one which both Labour and Conservative must obey.
There are probably some in the Conservative party who are supporters of civil liberties, but that did not stop Howard trying to introduce identity cards in 1995. Paradoxically Labour opposed them at the time, and now the roles are reversed, Labour have laid all the ground-work for the project, and Howard had to be deposed in order to prevent subsequent Tory opposition from looking ludicrous.
Iraq would almost certainly have happened under the Tories, and in any case they generally voted for it (in my view mainly on the grounds that a plank of Conservative support comes from angry, nationalist, hawkish voters). That attempts to achieve the second resolution were abandoned did nothing to their position on Iraq, AFAICT.
I am not as given to conspiracy theories as some – and I don’t use the phrase as a perjorative here – but often I am given to MJ’s line of thinking about a higher powers. On this topic the “consistent inconsistency” of party thinking on both sides, and the maniacal drive for high levels of social control and surveillance, are deeply worrying.
‘Depressingly, the BNP have won a seat in Yorkshire and Humberside’.
‘Great news from Scotland – the SNP are romping away with it’.
Let me see if I have got this…
English Nationalist = Bad.
Scots Nationalist = Good?
Andy, don’t be silly. The English Nationalists in question are fascist, and the Scots Nationalists in question are not. It is the fascism that thinking people rightly object to, and I think you know that; it is therefore quite disingenuous to make false claims about double-standards.
Isn’t fascism when the government and big business conspire to abuse and rip off the public.
Surely this is what British Government has been doing for centuries to it’s people at home and abroad?
We are indeed already a fascist country and need no help from the BNP or anyone else, we are already there!
“We are indeed already a fascist country”
How true. My friend was taken away last night and beaten with rubber truncheons and had electicity applied to his genitals because he hadn’t swept the pavement in front of his house. Another friend was beaten up by the police because he was found keeping a diary that criticised government policy. Yet another friend has disappeared without trace because he had been talking to an exiled opposition politician by e-mail.
Idiot.
George Dutton at June 8, 2009 12:27 PM
What “big business” donations? Personal donations by Souter, Tulloch and MacDonald? The vast majority of the money donated to the SNP comes from ordinary members. A quick look at the Electoral Commission register would tell you how wrong your first claim was.
all that’s above is a preoccupation, nay, an obsession, with ‘left’ and ‘right’
it’s not reality, yet you’re trying to understand the reality of people’s views by squeezing the grossly attenuated voting results through your simplistic, reductionist, nondescript notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’
unbelievable!
you need to throw away those out-dated concepts, and fast
“What “big business” donations?”
william
Salmond has put a lot of effort into wooing big business.
He has received the backing of former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir George Mathewson and donations of £100,000 from Sir Tom Farmer and £500,000 from tycoon and stagecoach founder Souter who led the campaign against the repeal of anti-gay law Clause 28.
PROCLAIMERS star Charlie Reid left the SNP in protest at their links to big business.
What else do they get upto???.
“What “big business” donations?”
william
http://tinyurl.com/mjsttb