Turning Away From Right and Left

January 15th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Norman Tebbit claimed the BNP is a left-wing party on his new blog, so of course the New Statesman had to respond with an fantastically silly list of ten reasons the BNP is right wing — presumably on the logic that Left is Good, BNP is Bad, therefore the BNP cannot be Left.

Perhaps that’s glib, but one does begin to wonder when one is presented with arguments of the calibre of, “4. Unlike the “far-left” CND (to borrow the right’s own definition) the BNP supports Britain’s continued possession of nuclear weapons”, and “6. The party supports immediate withdrawal from the EU… But those on the right who describe the BNP as “left-wing” are the very same people who portray the EU as an inherently left-wing institution.”

(more…)

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Categories [ Miscellaneous Titbits, UK Politics, Uncategorized ]

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Could Maloney Frankess Spell the End of Nick Griffin’s Barking Dream?

January 11th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

It’s not often that a story comes along that combines the Parallax Brief’s two loves in life, Boxing and Politics, so boxing promoter Frank Maloney’s decision to run as the UKIP’s parliamentary candidate for Barking was something that was always going to get coverage on this blog.

And in selecting Mr. Maloney as its PPC for Barking, the UKIP might have just pulled a master stroke

At first glance, it’s doubtful that the right of centre UKIP will be able to strongly influence a seat which is through and through red. Barking has returned Labour MPs since its creation in 1945, and while it’s incumbent, Margret Hodge, may be faced with voters itching to punish the government for the recession and the expenses scandal, she still has room for maneuver: Labour returned just under 14,000 votes at the last election, 9,000 more than the second placed Conservatives.

Interestingly, however, the BNP has had significant success in Barking in recent elections. It came tantalisingly close to becoming the constituency’s second party during the 2005 election, finishing only 17 votes behind the Conservatives. Furthermore, the BNP won 9 of the 30 council seats in the the parliamentary constituency’s wards during the last local elections.

BNP successes tend to come in working class areas in which hardship and malcontent mix with the disenfranchisement wrought by a Labour Party that has increasingly shunned its working class, socialist roots in favour of a centrist, socially liberal platform to fight the Tories for the middle-class centre ground.

However, the BNP also tends to excel in areas with a relatively small or newly arrived non-white population, and while Barking may have met that criteria in 2005, the number of ethnic minorities in the area has grown since. Meantime, Mr. Griffin’s presence is bound to attract both increased efforts from the main parties in an effort to make sure he doesn’t secure a seat in parliament, as well as heavy presence from anti-fascist activists. It all suggests that the BNP may not compete as well as feared.

However, against this, the potential for a protest vote against Labour is likely even greater this time around, with working class areas being savaged by the worst recession in living memory, immigration having turned into a full-blown election issue, and the government, and Ms. Hodge, still sullied by the expenses scandal.

This combination of demographic circumstances within the constituency worsening from a BNP point of view, and the resounding protest vote that the Parallax Brief believes is on its way in most of the country’s constituencies, may allow a candidate like Mr. Maloney to gain leverage in Barking.

Mr. Maloney, who is probably best remembered as the manager of world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, has a high profile and a deep well of goodwill in East London, a compelling life story, a sharp-witted cockney delivery style, and the kind of right-of-centre Sun-reader political dynamic that allowed Margaret Thatcher to capture Essex Man.

If the main three parties are increasingly stilted in speaking the language of the working class, Mr. Maloney is fluent. Read, for example, the straight-talking, no-nonsense way he tackled Mr. Griffin in his Independent on Sunday interview from yesterday, and compare it to the more pious, elite delivery of the mainstream parties:

“I’ve never met [Griffin], but I don’t like what he says. Yes, there is prejudice in this country, but it’s a prejudice that is controlled, and we have to learn to live together…

“Having Irish blood in me, I know my family were first persecuted when they first came to this country. I remember my father telling me that when I was born, they didn’t have anywhere to live and when they were looking for places, there were signs that said: ‘No Blacks, No Irish and No Dogs’. So it’s a big issue for me and we must stand up against it.”

And this message will be delivered in a way that couldn’t be more down-to-earth or authentic if it was shouted from the window of a yellow Robin Reliant.

It might be too much to expect him to repeat the 2005 success of seasoned political street-fighter George Galloway and win a working class, Labour stronghold by peddling a populist message to a constituency ripe for a protest vote, but the Parallax Brief believes that Mr. Maloney’s presence might be enough to scupper any chances Mr. Griffin has of winning the seat.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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BNP Plagiarises Barack Obama’s Website

November 9th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief


Irony of ironies!

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Categories [ Miscellaneous Titbits, UK Politics ]

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Have Labour Failures Created the BNP Monster?

October 27th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief has viewed with skepticism the recent opinions emerging from the conservative blogosphere that the failures of the Labour Party are responsible for the groundswell of support for the BNP. To be sure, it’s not difficult to cobble together a theory along those lines given that the rise in votes for the BNP occurred on Labour’s watch, and often in working class areas that were traditionally viewed as the very basis for Labour Party support.

However, the Parallax Brief believes these views are risibly superficial, and that it would be just as easy to argue that the conservative media’s constant bleating about immigration has raised the heckles of those who feel most vulnerable, or that the Conservative Party’s shift to the centre and subsequent preference for discussing environmental issues and hugging hoodies rather than populist Essex man topics such as being tough on immigration, a strong defence policy, and longer prison sentences has left room on the right into which a moderated BNP could expand.

But such hypotheses would be equally vacuous.

At any rate, Mike Smithson over at the brilliant Political Betting blog, has crunched some numbers to produce data suggesting the Labour Party is not the culprit.

Of the 132 men and women who said they were going to vote BNP, a staggering 65% didn’t vote for one of the big three parties last time – most of those are very likely not to have voted at all. This means that well over half of BNP voters are not disaffected Labour voters, but rather simply aren’t normally voters at all. Of the remaining 35%, the split is 10% Conservative, 20% Labour and 5% Lib Dem.

[…]

What’s the profile then of BNP voters from this brief analysis? We get a picture of a man or woman, most likely C2DE, who didn’t vote at the 2005 election (though if they did vote they were most likely to have supported Labour). It appears therefore that rather than the BNP tapping into disaffected Labour votes, they have actually managed to mobilise a previously non-participating part of the electorate and persuaded them to go out and cast ballots.

Ultimately, the reasons for the recent rise in BNP popularity are likely to be more complex than can be dealt with in a blog, but perhaps it’s time to admit that Nick Griffin, shellacked as he was on Question Time, is generally a skillful political operator who has struck a tone that resonates with the disenfranchised.

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We Have No Right to Silence Griffin, BNP

October 19th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief genuinely has no idea why the BNP’s forthcoming Question Time appearance has caused quite this of amount indecorous flapping in Westminster and in the media. The latest development is a desperate rearguard action by Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, and one of the government frontbenchers most outspoken against the BNP’s Question Time bow. According to the Independent, Hain has written a letter to the Beeb, telling the corporation that it runs “a “serious risk” of a legal challenge if it allows Nick Griffin to participate.” The basis for this latest fusillade in the effort to deny the BNP a television platform is connected to the recent decision by Griffin, made under pressure from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to change his party’s constitution to allow non-whites to join.

“Ah-ha!” Says Hain. That won’t happen for another month, meaning the BBC has invited on Question Time an illegally constituted party.

The BBC, according to the Indy article, has claimed it makes no judgment on the legality of the BNP, arguing that, “If there were to be an election tomorrow, the BNP would be able to stand.”

As far as the Parallax Brief can tell, most talking heads (both of the journalist and politician sort) fall into two camps on the BNP Question Time issue. First, there are those who view the BNP as abhorrent and against everything that Britain stands for, and therefore not the sort of chaps who either deserve, or should be given, a national television platform from which to publicise their hateful cause; and then there are those who agree, but believe that providing that platform will actually go some way to exposing them to a wider audience as abhorrent and hateful.

Now, this — along with the internal wrangling within the Cabinet about who will and who won’t sit at a table with Griffin or whether to even turn up at all — is of tremendous interest for those of us interested in political strategy. Interesting, perhaps, but wholly irrelevant and missing the only point which should have any bearing on this matter: The BNP is a British political party, operating on British soil, and is about to appear on British television. And Britain, lest we forget, is a country in which citizens and political organisations may speak freely. Make no mistake, the BNP is a dangerous combination of idiotic populist economic policies and brazen racism. But why that should matter when it comes to the right to speak freely, and, more important, a citizen’s right to hear freely, is beyond the Parallax Brief. Liberty is only as robust in a society as how it is applied to the minority groups in that society. One can’t say that we have freedom of speech in the United Kingdom if we silence everyone we find somewhat distasteful. Of course, the BNP is distasteful, but it would be even more distasteful to abrogate its and its members’ inalienable rights to free speech.

There was never a better excuse to roll out the hackneyed Voltaire line “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” because the BNP, odious as it may be, deserves the same BBC treatment as received by all other political parties of its size.

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