Star

A good result for the BNP in London could prove a disaster for UKIP. Opinion polls suggest that they may beat us. What can we do to avoid this?

The title of this post should read What will happen if the BNP beat UKIP in London?

The Bear

Use such a result to illustrate the clear blue water that should exist between the two parties.

Dissident Congress

With the BNP floating on top and UKIP sunk at the bottom!?

The Bear

Seperation of any kind has to be good.

Hartlepool

DC,I'm sure you know very well that **** floats to the top,look at Labour.

blueblood1920

Such a result would possibly mean UKIP failing to return any AM's, that could be the final nail in the coffin for many UKIP members who may jump ship or just resign from the party. After all I am sure they dont want to be beaten by baby eating granny bashing nazis.

Tom Wilde

Well, UKIP's many enemies in the Labour Party, the LibDems, the Tories, and the editorial boards of the major national newspapers will get into a flap about the irresistable (ho ho) rise of the BNP, but will also have a quiet smirk about the electoral 'implosion' of UKIP. (In fact, the Guardian has started already!) If the BNP's vote goes up and UKIP's vote goes down, then this will be taken as confirming the theory already being floated in various quarters, ie that the support of the two parties comes from the same muddy pool.

The fact that the BNP's new votes will have come mainly from disgruntled Labour supporters, and the UKIP's lost votes will have gone largely to the Tories, will be completely overlooked.

Human beings always do 2 things when they are trying to understand their environment: (1) They make theories and (2) They look for patterns. And the two things are interlinked. The old parties and their newspapers now have a theory that the BNP and UKIP are somehow a bit similar in terms of who supports them. Any evidence that comes along in terms of voting patterns will either be taken to support that theory or else will be ignored.

The only way out of this is for UKIP - like The Bear says - to put vast stretches of blue water between itself and the fascists. I don't just mean there should be policy differences which are nuanced but clear enough to people who really look carefully into things. I mean there should be policy differences so great as to be completely, unmissably, obvious even to the dullest and most stupid Guardian opinion columnist. There should be differences so glaring that anyone attempting to deny them would simply be laughed at loudly and rudely by anyone who heard.

This means above all a liberal approach towards immigration - even more liberal than the policy UKIP used to have before Knapman was leader. It means UKIP should be lobbying hard for better treatment for asylum seekers. It means ferocious, principled, libertarian opposition to any talk of bringing back National Service. It means an enlightened attitude towards the punishment of criminals, not just "lock em up and throw away the key". It means you have to love the multicultural society, not just grit your teeth and tolerate it. These are only small areas of the policy agenda, but they are the iconic issues that voters use to sift the fascists from the non-fascists. You might not like all of this - you might think that UKIP's new no-immigration policy is more practical - but in that case however liberal you might be on other issues UKIP will never get a fair hearing in this country. So do you want to help save this country or not?

I got tired of pointing this out, and I genuinely think that UKIP's immigration freeze is unacceptable, and these are the reasons I've gone over to the Liberals. But dear god, I do occasionally still hope that UKIP will see the light, because we really do need a big, decent anti-EU party in the country.

Tom Wilde

p.s. The BNP beat UKIP in the London elections in 2000 and nobody took a blind bit of notice, but that was probably because most of the media had a policy back then of not reporting UKIP at all. I remember that Damian Hockney's UKIP mayoral campaign in 2000 got pretty much zero coverage, and nobody thought for a moment that it mattered which minnow party got more votes than which other.

p.p.s. In the long term I think that if the BNP do win GLA seats it is likely to accelerate their recent electoral decline rather than reverse it, because it'll give a high profile to the deficiencies of whatever idiot gets elected.

Dissident Congress

This is what the establishment parties and journalists will go round thinking. In reality most of the BNP vote will come from the Tories and the no vote, and most of UKIP's losses will go to the Tories and to a lesser extent the EDs. London doesn't have disgruntled Labour supporters who now vote BNP anywhere near like that of the West Midlands or Yorkshire.

Do any ethnic minorities ever vote for the Liberal Party? They seem to be a bit like the Greens; very pro-immigration and pro-multicultural, but appear to get next to no support from ethnic minorities unless I'm not noticing something.

a swansong 4 europe

As far as I can see, no matter is said about this of that party, the obvious stand to take is one based on actual recent voting patterns, and based on those, it is reasonably clear, that no matter which party you support, its outcome is already largely evident as witnessed by election results of the last 6 months.

In fact, there is a similarity of the BNP being "talked-up" in the same way as UKIP was in the 2004 EU campaign, and though I am not sure about the first preference votes, I can see them getting a substantial second preference vote, with whatever consequences that will have on the outcome.