Monday, 18 May 2009

The BNP: Getting It Right

If, as certain blogosphere stalwarts would have it, the BNP is really a party of the Left, then why did it and the Tories run, only too successfully, a joint candidate for Mayor of London?
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8 comments:

  1. Bisque18 May 2009 at 14:58

    False premise.

    They didn't. Both parties had a candidate - Boris Johnson for the Conservatives, and Richard Barnbrook for the BNP.

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  2. David Lindsay18 May 2009 at 15:07

    Only two candidates could have won, and we know which one they backed. He owes them. He knows it. And they know it.

    Barnbrook was standing for Mayor in order to get himself an Assembly seat, as one might stand for the District Council in order to guarantee one's Parish Council seat elected on the same day. I know of which I speak. I don't know why this works. But I can assure you that it does.

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  3. Bisque18 May 2009 at 15:09

    That's a very different claim.

    Anyway, Johnson didn't need BNP second preferences to win - he had more first preferences than Livingstone had first and second preferences combined.

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  4. David Lindsay18 May 2009 at 15:14

    That was only people who voted BNP, not people who voted as it directed, which was how Johnson's figure was so enormous. He knows it. And the BNP knows it.

    You do not, because you cannot, dispute my main point: the BNP told its supporters to back Johnson, not Livingstone. The currently fashionable idea that it is a party of the Left is simply false.

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  5. Bisque18 May 2009 at 15:51

    I don't believe for a moment that the BNP is a party of the left.

    The BNP had a strong interest in maximising its own first preference vote. The only public statement it made about supporting Boris Johnson was to suggest that BNP voters should give Johnson their second preference votes. If they did so, it made no difference to the final result. Whether they did so or not, this wasn't Johnson's fault - he had no control over the BNP's statements to its supporters.

    All we know for sure is that the BNP leadership preferred Boris Johnson to Ken Livingstone. This, given Livingstone's record, is hardly surprising - the BNP would have preferred pretty much anyone to Ken Livingstone. It doesn't amount to a meaningful endorsement of Boris Johnson.

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  6. David Lindsay18 May 2009 at 15:54

    "The only public statement it made about supporting Boris Johnson was to suggest that BNP voters should give Johnson their second preference votes"

    Nuff said.

    "All we know for sure is that the BNP leadership preferred Boris Johnson to Ken Livingstone"

    Nuff said.

    And if that was also your view, then you were, and are, on the same side as the BNP.

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  7. Bisque18 May 2009 at 15:58

    No, no, I voted for Ken. I even campaigned for him. I just don't think that Boris Johnson is in any way close to the BNP.

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  8. David Lindsay18 May 2009 at 16:03

    He, personally, doesn't need to be.

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