I regret to have to let people know that a member of the British Nationalist Party (who stood for the National Front and in his youth was in a group founded on Adolf Hitler's birthday) has won a seat in the European Parliament for the European Constituency of Yorkshire and Humberside.
This will be presented as a victory for the fascist BNP but I would like to give people a bit of background which explains why this is far from the truth. The number of votes they received went DOWN compared to the last election.
In reality, his election was the result of two factors, the main one being the collapse of the Labour Party vote. If they had managed to hold on to just 10,270 of its previous supporters, they and not the BNP would now hold the seat.
Ignoring minor parties who won no seats, the parties with the largest number of votes were as follows, in order of votes.
Conservative 299,802
Labour 230,009
UKIP* 213,715
LibDems 161,552
BNP 120,139
*United Kingdon Independence Party
Several factors have contributed to a large fall in the vote compared to the last elections. Among these are that this area previously had experimental all postal voting and this change resulted in a large drop in the percentage of people voting. It was a lot easier to vote at home and post the ballot in rather than having to go to a polling place. There is some evidence that supporters of radical fringe parties of the extreme right and left are more committed to making an effort to vote. This is demonstrated by the BNP vote in this election being slightly lower but the fall for other parties was greater, notably for Labour.
The DeHondt method of allocating seats means that the party with the greatest number of votes is allocated the first place. Their vote is then divided by the number of seats they hold plus 1, ie 2. The list of parties is then re-examined and the party then at the top of the list is allocated the second seat. The formula is then applied to that party's vote. The process continues until the final seat is allocated.
The crutial point came for the sixth and last place. By then the Conservatives had been allocated 2 seats so their initial total had been divided by 3. Labour, UKIP and the Liberal Democrats had been allocated one seat so their initial vote was divided by 2 so at the sixth round the party positions looked like this.
BNP 120,139
Labour 115,004.5
UKIP 106,857.5
Conservative 99,934
LibDem 80,776
To not have lost their second seat, Labour needed twice the difference between their revised vote and BNP plus 1. In other words 5134.5 x 2 plus 1 or 10269 + 1.
The elections were held last Thursday in the middle of a Cabinet crisis. One minister in charge of local government resigned the day before in a move against Prime Minister Brown. Local government elections in some areas outside London were held at the same time. You will also be aware of the expenses scandals that have been the source of a mixture of amusement and outrage here.
In short, this victory is not the BNP winning, it is the expression of a general antipathy towards members of the Westminster parliament in the form of abstentions rather than an increase in the BNP's support.
UPDATE:
Labour have lost another seat to the BNP, this time in the North West. I will do a similar analysis ASAP however the BBC analyst pointed out that if UKIP had got about another 1200 votes or the Greens another 5000 votes, they would have taken the last allocation. This is another area where there was only postal voting last time. Again, the BNP went down but the other parties' votes went down more.
UPDATE2
I have now had an opportunity to look at the North West result and compare the results from 2004 to 2009
First, the effect on turnout of the change in both regions from the experimental all postal voting to the ordinary system of polling stations with people having to ask for a postal ballot.
In the NW, the turnout reduced from 40.8% to 30.4%
In Yorkshire and Humberside from 40.9% to 31.7%
As far as actual votes are concerned.
In Yorkshire and Humberside the BNP vote fell from 126,139 to 120,139, a drop of 6,444.
In the NE the BNP vote went up slightly from 50,249 to 52,700 an increase of 2,451 which is 0.06% of the electorate. Even if you were falsely to argue that all these voters were motivated by xenophobia, it is hardly a massive movement.
In the North West it went from 134,959 to 132,094, a fall of 2,865 despite the BNP picking up a seat.
I repeated the exercise above for the North West and this was the line up at the allocation of the final 8th seat with the number of seats already allocated to each party in brackets.
BNP 132094
UKIP 130870 (1 seat)
Green 127133 (0 seat)
Lib Dem 117819.5 (1 seat)
Labour 112277 (2 seats)
Cons 105763.5 (3 seats)
Here there was a harder hill for Labour to climb to retain the seat as they would have needed to hold on to 59,451 of their previous vote to keep their third seat. UKIP needed 2443 additional votes to take it as their second seat in the region and the Greens another 4962.
The overall story is one of voters deserting Labour by either switching their vote to a minor party other than the BNP or abstaining. However there is a caution in this against using scare tactics. Both Labour and the Christian people's party had on their literature and, in the Christian's case their billboard advertisements, a warning that if people did not vote for them, it could let in the BNP. Ironically in Yorkshire and Humberside, the Christian People's Party got 16,742 votes. Bearing in mind that their electors were very likely former Labour voting, one could argue that the Christian Peoples' Party let the BNP win by taking votes from Labour.
There is a second reason that the scare tactic was so stupid. When Britons switch their votes, they often look at the opposition and vote for the party with the greatest likelihood of winning. In Westminster constituencies it leads to a "third party squeeze" where the third party will generally lose votes in tight contests. By indicating a party that they want to avoid getting elected, they showed voters who they feared the greatest. Now that fear was justified by the repugnance that all reputable parties feel at BNP successes however it was not truthful to claim that voting for their own party, particularly the Christian Party, the BNP would be defeated.
Finally, I should make the point in the body of the diary that I made in response to others. The BNP are fascist, xenophobic thugs but they are equal opportunity xenophobes. Hatred against Jews has been delegitimized as a way of getting votes. In order to get elected they have to stir up hatred against another group that is seen as "other". They have used "immigrants" as code for Afro-caribbeans. "Asylum seekers" for those from Africa and Asia and now, thanks to the reaction to 9/11, Muslims have been added to asylum seekers (by which they mean people who have been refused asylum) as the current object of their hatred.
That is not to say their leadership and many members are not anti-semitic, it is just that playing that card is counter-productive. Similarly it is false to assume that all of the people who voted for them share this xenophobia and, specifically, that the size of their votes reflects the level of anti-semitism in the country. THAT spin may be used to justify attempts to panic Jews to move to Israel in much the same way that a previous Israeli Prime Minister used reports of increased anti-semitism in France. Bearing in mind that precendent, I await a statement from a member or spokesperson for the Israeli government that British Jews should now move to Israeli to avoid a rising tide of anti-semitism illustrated by this election. Attempts by posters here to similary characterize this demonstrates the own ignorance of British politics and its dynamics.
UPDATE 3:
Channel4 News has now published an opinion survey which went into a lot of background atitude questions as well as simply asking voting intentions. These go a long way to support my assertions above;
Yet, depending on how the term "racist" is precisely defined, our survey suggests that the label applies to only around a half of BNP voters. On their own, these votes would not have been enough to give the BNP either of the seats they won last night.
There are two telling pieces of evidence that suggest wider causes of disenchantment. Seven out of 10 BNP voters (and almost as many Green and Ukip voters) think that "there is no real difference these between Britain’s three main parties".
But perhaps the most startling finding came when we tested anecdotal reports that many BNP voters were old Labour sympathisers who felt that the party no longer speaks up for them. It turns out to be true. As many as 59 per cent of BNP voters think that Labour "used to care about the concerns of people like me but doesn’t nowadays".
http://www.channel4.com/...