That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
Labour’s recent electoral embarrassment is perhaps most palpable here in Yorkshire and the Humber. Its vote fell from 413,000 to 230,000, resulting in a loss of its seat to the British Nationalist Party. The BNP’s first major electoral success was closely followed by its second, as our neighbouring constituency the North-West declared that Nick Griffin had won the party’s second seat.
This dramatic victory meant that the BNP, in just a matter of hours, made the move from a fringe party to join mainstream politics. After winning his seat in Yorkshire, Andrew Brons claimed that “this is the end of the beginning for the BNP”.
So what does this mean for British politics? Have we in the north become so disaffected with Westminster that in response we’ve turned into a group of racist neo-fascists? Not quite; the BNP’s support traditionally comes from middle-aged working class males, particularly in the North, and there is no evidence to suggest that this trend has changed in any way.
Before we launch into a frenzy of panic that the BNP are going to be running the show in a few years, we should put things into perspective. The actuality is that the BNP have not gained masses of support in these elections. In fact, in Yorkshire, the BNP are down 6000 votes from the EU Elections in 2004. Their share of the vote has however increased at Labour's expense, and since everything seems to be Labour’s fault these days, we might as well throw this one at them too.
The BNP’s following has mainly been found amongst disaffected ex-Labour supporters angered by what they perceive as the handing over of British jobs to foreign workers. Both of the BNP’s seats were previously Labour’s; however, funnily enough, Gordon Brown’s vacuous promises have failed to engender enough support to keep previous Labour strongholds. So perhaps the despair that Labour have expressed at the BNP’s victory should instead be despair at their own failures to get voters to vote for them.
The crisis of the MP scandal and the recession has clearly driven voters away from Labour, and since far right parties traditionally find increases in their support in times of domestic crisis, it's not really surprising that the BNP have too. However, the current crisis will in time pass and no doubt support will return to Labour. The BNP’s success is unlikely to be repeated in the national elections (unless Brown is seriously contemplating changing the voting system).
Furthermore, their victory is very much a product of the day, marked by a general surge in support for anti EU parties. Hence the BNP fought this campaign on immigration, an issue that perhaps the Westminster parties are being too cautious to address - maybe it would be sensible if they were to listen to how the people voted. After all when the National Front made large gains in 1979, Margret Thatcher put an abrupt end to the party’s success by pursuing a hard-line anti-immigration policy.
Since the BNP could potentially be stopped in their tracks if the Westminster parties were to get their act together, is there any reason for concern? Well, a victory of this calibre could present the party with a certain air of legitimacy; perspectives amongst voters are likely to change as the BNP may come to be seen a mainstream alternative. However, this does not pre-ordain further electoral success.
Secondly, the BNP will now receive a considerable amount of funding; in total over £5m of tax-payers' money is set to be given to the party in various forms (wages, expenses etc) over the next five years, allowing them to massively increase their campaign efforts.
The fact that tax-payers' money will now be used to fund the BNP has caused considerable anger from the anti-BNP lobby. However, this is proportional representation after all, the form of democracy which is most representative of the people. And if the people vote for the BNP they are just as entitled to a fair representation as anyone else.
Didn't something similar happen shortly before the collapse of the National Front? They became much more public and then everyone with a brain started finding the obvious faults in their fascist policies?
The National Front in 79 where nowhere near as successful as the BNP, but the immigration issue was much more high profile. What killed any fascist rising then was the 1981 Nationality Act that faced immigration head on.
PR is the least representative form of democracy as shown by these elections. In the event of a low turnout they give political representation to extreme minority parties that would not prevail in FPP, displaying why any move towards general election reform is potentially damaging for us. Although the parliamentary procedure will take too long to be implemented in this parliament - no matter how much Brown wants to try and fix it
Not true; straight proportional representation is very bad but Alternative Voting will eliminate the small groups and allow for big groups to be dictated more fairly. Moving towards PR is good because FPP is likewise corrupt; either extreme is bad, though.
"PR is the least representative form of democracy"
The least representative form of democracy is one that allows a party to form a government even if they have 20% of the national vote.
"After all when the National Front made large gains in 1979, Margaret Thatcher put an abrupt end to the party’s success by pursuing a hard-line anti-immigration policy." And so essentially handed them an unmerited and unacceptable influence. We cannot allow the prescence of extremists in the political sphere to dictate government policy just because they have made gains in an electon. Immigration policy should be determined by rational consideration of the needs, interests, benefits and disadvantages to all of those involved, it shouldn't be provoked by a thought-process of "if we go hard-line some of those who are obsessed with immigration might vote for us instead of the racists".
I do agree that we should be talking about immigration as it clearly is an issue for some people, but we should be defending the role and benefit of immigration in our history and future and exposing just why the BNP position is utterly wrong, not moving towards it. I believe the BNP rise has been precipitated partly by a general slide to more harsh immigration policies and the relentless pursuit of anti-immigration headlines by some of the tabloids; moving the boundaries of popular acceptability closer to the far-right so that the BNP, provided they remain relatively quiet about the "it's non-whites we want to get rid of" clause, can pretend to be close to popular opinion on the issue.
Absolute rubbish #2, the most representitive form of democracy is a straightfoward ' percentage of vote = seats ' formula.
This doesn't mean it'll work the best, but it's the most representitive. The European elections used the d'Hondt method of PR, where a mathematical formula allocates seats. Its too complicated to explain here but wikipedia has an explanation.
If extreme parties win seats through PR, it's called democracy, and it means major parties are out of touch. We can't have 'democracy as long as you agree with me' not can we tinker with the electoral system to ensure certain parties don't get in.
PR isn't an electoral system itself, its just a concept. There are several systems that are forms of PR, the party list system happens to be a very flawed one that presumes MPs are not elected as individuals, but as agents of a party. If labour put up 6 candidates, one of whom has fiddled his 2nd home allowance and claimed for his daughters flat, a labour voter has 2 choices - Vote for the party and endorse a man they don't like, or not vote labour at all.
Multi-member constituencies should be looked at, plus Alternate voting and the single transferrable vote (Like YUSU uses to ensure theres at least 2nd preference endorsement, giving a winning candidate more legitimacy).
Electoral reform is well overdue, but yes, it naturally will result in 'fringe' parties getting some seats. But we must remember parties have to win a significant number of votes to get in, and if the BNP have elected members, it means they stand up for a considerable number of people. We can't engineer an electoral system to shut out the BNP.
#6 you make the assumption that everyone will vote. Normally we are stricken with apathy let alone when everyone is disenchanted with the current political class. Therefore extreme parties get over represented as voters of the mian parties (particularly the inucumbent) stay at home.
Race is a factor with the BNP rise but they are a party as much of the extreme Left as they are of the Right. One of the biggest drivers of BNP support is unemployment, granted boosted by Brown's failed boast of British Jobs for British Workers
#7 Agree about the leftist issues pushed by the BNP. They do seem to have pressed hard to become the 'voice' of the old working class left, talking about saving jobs, stopping privatisation, more council houses and their general attack on greed and capitalism. It really does seem to resonate, and it is Browns fault that he has abandoned the 'workers' in favour of cozying up to bankers.
I assume everybody has the right to vote. If you do not vote, you can't complain at the representation you end up with. If everybody's given the chance to vote, then the representation that results is fair - regardless of whether 1% or 100% actually turn out.
How do we know the main parties' voters stayed at home and the BNP or greens didn't. There could be hundreds of thousands of green or BNP-leaning people who didn't vote for all we know. Nobody gets 'over represented', you can't label the apathetic as 'supporters of the main parties'. If they supported the main / incumbent party/ies they would have got out and voted for them, surely?
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