Cyclops Throws His Hat in the Ring

[Y_I_Otter]

I've been checking out recent BNP news this evening. The Telegraph's Andrew Gilligan comes about as close to my thinking about Griffin's declaration to run in Barking as it gets.

Nick Griffin for Barking: Has the BNP made a mistake?

By Andrew Gilligan

Nick Griffin’s decision to stand against Margaret Hodge in Barking at the next general election might, just might, turn out to be another example of the BNP’s legendary capacity for unforced error.

True, in 2005 Barking gave the BNP its best parliamentary result ever – its candidate, Richard Barnbrook, got 16.9 per cent, and was just 27 votes away from coming second. True, nine of the 30 councillors in the wards which make up the seat are BNP – and there would probably be more if they had stood candidates in every ward at the last local elections. This part of London is the heartland of the British far right, something metropolitan liberals often forget when congratulating each other on the capital’s multicultural tolerance.

And true, Hodge has been a weak MP. Until only a few years ago, she didn’t have much of a presence or a proper office in her constituency. She is loathed by many in her own local party. She has said some incredibly stupid things that have played straight into the racists’ hands.

But if the BNP’s secret weapon is the behaviour of some of its opponents, its saving grace is its own incompetence. Griffin may not realise that things have changed in Barking since 2005. Hodge has upped her game organisationally, opening an office, campaigning quite hard on the ground and ruthlessly purging her local party enemies (though this last could still backfire – many of the people she has got rid of are rather good, and justifiably very unhappy with her).

More importantly, Barking is now a good deal more ethnically mixed than it was four years ago. Griffin’s opponents have a larger anti-BNP vote to call on, if they can get it to the polls. BNP support is often strongest in places where the ethnic presence is comparatively small, or comparatively new. That was the case in Barking in 2005; it is less the case now.

If I were Nick Griffin, I would have skipped Barking and gone for next-door Dagenham and Rainham, which is demographically at the stage Barking was when the BNP started to make headway there.

Yes, Dagenham does have an excellent Labour MP, Jon Cruddas – who really gets it about how Labour, particularly London Labour, has stopped talking to the white working class. And yes, Cruddas has been an active ground presence in his seat far longer than Hodge has in hers. But against that has to be set the work of the Boundary Commission. In the new redrawn Dagenham, some of Cruddas’s best wards have been taken out of his seat and some classic Essex Tory country in Rainham has been added in.

The BNP will be hindered in both Barking and in Dagenham by the general expectation that the Tories will win nationally, which usually tends to depress the far Right vote. In Dagenham, the risk, with a big name like Griffin, was still probably not that the far Right would win the seat, but that they might take enough votes off Cruddas to let the Tories through the middle. It could still happen – Labour has a tough fight here – but the man breathing slightly easier today will probably be Jon Cruddas.

Compare to The Evening Standard's coverage:

Margaret Hodge: I'll drive BNP's Nick Griffin out of Barking
By Paul Waugh

Government minister Margaret Hodge vowed to "expose and expel" BNP leader Nick Griffin today after it emerged that he would contest her east London constituency at the general election.

Ms Hodge told the Evening Standard that Mr Griffin had to be stopped in his attempt to win the party's first Westminister seat.

"We have been fighting the BNP for the last three years, so we have been expecting a BNP candidate to stand against me and it now turns out to be Nick Griffin," she said. "My job is to expose and expel him from the constituency."

The BNP took 17 per cent of the vote in her Barking constituency in the 2005 election, but in 2006 scored one of its biggest successes as it won 12 of the 51 Barking and Dagenham council seats. It is the official opposition there. Noteworthy for their appalling attendance records and Barnbrook's possibility of suspension, owing to his having brought the office of councilor into disrepute when he knowingly lied about the degree of knife crime in London.

At the time, the extreme nationalists seized on Mrs Hodge's remarks that eight out of 10 families were fearful of the influx of workers from Eastern Europe and were thinking of voting BNP.

After the BNP lost its deposit in the Glasgow North East by-election last week, and his own weak performance on the BBC's Question Time last month, Mr Griffin tried to get back on the front foot by announcing his candidacy yesterday. He said the BNP would be the only party advocating a pull out from Afghanistan.

Polls gave the party a rise in potential support after Mr Griffin's Question Time appearance. The BNP itself said 3,000 people had registered to join after the show.But as membership applications have been suspended for the duration, we won't really know if those registrations materialise until after the next membership list leak.

Mr Griffin, elected one of the party's two MEPs in June, said at its annual conference yesterday that he would gladly exchange Brussels for Westminster, adding: "I do not want to be in Europe any longer than I have to." The beauty of it is that if he manages to win the seat, he gets to stay an MEP while he's MPing.

He told the conference: "The thrust of the [Barking] campaign will be the housing and education problems."

But what about Barnbrook running? Is he considering going at it as an independent? There aren't any BNP references in his blurbs.

Would that Canadian General Election leadups were as interesting this early on.

[MrA]

This appears to be an all or nothing gamble on Griff's part. BNP party funds are in disarray and this could either be another stay of execution if he wins or the death blow if he loses.

Hopefully the opposition will campaign on his policies and refute his lies and spin, shouting racist isn't having the effect that it once did.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by MrA

This appears to be an all or nothing gamble on Griff's part. BNP party funds are in disarray and this could either be another stay of execution if he wins or the death blow if he loses.

Hopefully the opposition will campaign on his policies and refute his lies and spin, shouting racist isn't having the effect that it once did.

You could be right about it being a massive gamble. but are wrong about the oppo campaigning on BNP policy. Most Brits support BNP policy

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/566088/Shock-poll-shows-majority-share-BNP-views-on-immigrants.html

The oppo have deliberatley avoided discussing BNP policy because they know that many of the policies are supported by the public. Screaming Nazi etc is much more fun for them. If you throw enough mud, something will stick.

[Y_I_Otter]

Whatever immigration platform the Tories come up with for the GE will be a moderate policy based in part on the most salable elements of what the BNP have been thumping. They'll ditch any 'voluntary repatriation' nonsense but they'll curtail non-EU immigration with a stringent set of criteria applied to a points system-- with family reunification being insufficient reason for admission, in and of itself. Such a move could not be considered racist, but a person disturbed by large numbers of brown people would know right away to whom it would apply most in practice. That might be enough to draw great numbers of 'soft' racists into the Conservative fold, at least for this election.

And it might even win them a majority. I think working class whites will be holding their noses and voting for them in droves, because Labour have totally abandoned what used to be their core constituency.

I remember when Blair was first elected. One wag on a forum I used to read back then had fun rearranging the letters of "Tony Blair, PM' into 'Tory, plan B'. I chuckled at the time, but that's because I had no idea how prescient that anagram would turn out to be.

I must google to see what the bookies are predicting at this point.

[Jake Featherston]

Originally Posted by MrA

This appears to be an all or nothing gamble on Griff's part. BNP party funds are in disarray and this could either be another stay of execution if he wins or the death blow if he loses.

Wishful thinking; he's not really expected to win the seat. But if he does, it will be a tremendous victory.

[SmokeOnTheWater]

Originally Posted by Y_I_Otter

Whatever immigration platform the Tories come up with for the GE will be a moderate policy based in part on the most salable elements of what the BNP have been thumping. They'll ditch any 'voluntary repatriation' nonsense but they'll curtail non-EU immigration with a stringent set of criteria applied to a points system-- with family reunification being insufficient reason for admission, in and of itself. Such a move could not be considered racist, but a person disturbed by large numbers of brown people would know right away to whom it would apply most in practice. That might be enough to draw great numbers of 'soft' racists into the Conservative fold, at least for this election.

And it might even win them a majority. I think working class whites will be holding their noses and voting for them in droves, because Labour have totally abandoned what used to be their core constituency.

I remember when Blair was first elected. One wag on a forum I used to read back then had fun rearranging the letters of "Tony Blair, PM' into 'Tory, plan B'. I chuckled at the time, but that's because I had no idea how prescient that anagram would turn out to be.

I must google to see what the bookies are predicting at this point.

Possible, but I doubt it. Cameron's polled in the high thirties and low forties for some time now, whereas Blair's poll ratings just prior to 1997 were in the high forties and sometimes over fifty.

I think the main party who's going to benefit from the white working class vote will be the What's The Bloody Use, May As Well Stay At Home party.

[MrA]

Originally Posted by Jake Featherston

Wishful thinking; he's not really expected to win the seat. But if he does, it will be a tremendous victory.

Wishful thinking perhaps, but it takes a lot of resources to even fight one Parliamentary seat, resources he doesn't have in abundance.