Euro elections results

[policywonk]

Here's one prediction www.predict09.eu/default/en-us/state_analyses.aspx#united

Cheeringly, it reckons that the BNP won't win a seat. Here's hoping.

As a working class northern woman in exile down south I felt quite ashamed today.

Well I tweeted the Green Party (get me! I'm so totally twenty-first century): 'so, were you wrong to tell people to vote Green to stop Griffin? Wd be interested to hear what you think. Had 2400 Green voters gone for UKIP instead, UKIP would have got Griffin's seat [h/t to SomeGuy here].'

And they tweeted back:

'People kept saying you can't predict D'Hondt calculations, but we called it pretty correctly. You're right about UKIP. Of course, much of UKIP are climate change deniers, so we feel a slightly better non-BNP alternative to them ;) It's a shame we couldn't find 5000 more voters for a green anti-racist socialist like Peter (Labour/No2EU/Soc Lab voters in NW).'

Am too tired to decide what I think... I guess it rests on whether you agree that they 'called it pretty correctly'.

I am shocked at the idea that people think it is not easy enough to vote. Are people really that lazy?

If you can't leave the house there are postal votes and lots of canvassers/local parties will pick you up.

I guess that depends where you are FC- around here, only the BNP even bothered to deliver a leaflet.... when we got to the ballot there were parties there i'd never heard of, and I am relatively well informed I think.

I'm not sxure I think UKIP is an alternative to BNP, in all truth; they might not be BNP but they're still around the level of thetories on mt radar and I'm probably not alone in that

DH amusingly got Plaid after the greens on votematch- amusing as he's not Welsh

Yes, you're right about UKIP and Greens not having much in common

Greens are saying that No2EU (socialist anti-EUers) and Socialist Party voters should have voted Green - but I guess supporters from the first two would say that there were things about the Green platform that they don't like.

Basically, none of us (me included) really want to vote for parties we really disagree with, even if it means keeping out a corpulent fasco-cock.

Difficult one...

I certainly think it is possible to take tactical voting too far. I don't regret voting Green. The green parties are a moderately significant presence in the EU Parl, and that is good. Perhaps it is good that the BNP are there: they will be subject to greater scrutiny. I don't think that democracy should be all about pretending that a strand of opinion doesn't exist in this country. It does exist; now it has an EU voice, which we need to keep answering.

That wasn't very lucid. What I mean is tactical voting has to be within the constraints of principle -- there is no way on earth I would vote UKIP tactically. And ... it is not the end of the world that these shits in the BNP have MEPs. It is shaming. But it does put them under greater pressure of scrutiny and will hopefully result in a more vocal opposition to them AND, so long as they are exiled from institutions they have it easy: martyred outsiders who don't have to take respionsibility for saying or doing anything constructive.

I'd like to thik the majority of those who voted BNP, did so misguidedly. I think the BNP have conned a lot of people with their message. Bron's acceptance speech was along the lines of 'we are a credible party, don't listen to the bad press about us, and the people have spoken' blah blah. I was quite heartened as all their energy is going to be taken up now with acting decent and concentrating on distancing themselves from their really murky stuff. They will therefore be toothless tigers.

I don't feel frightened by their presence. I think wormy is right; they will be shown up for what they really are.

Have started a thread with this petition, but here it is again
action.hopenothate.org.uk/notinmyname
To register protest at the BNP it will be presented to European Parliament on the first day.

I agree that their presence will result in more scrutiny because of their MEPs.

But the downside is that they'll also get a lot of funds with which to publicise themselves, recruit paid workers etc (and let's face it, they won't be publicising the hateful parts of their agenda; they'll be using those funds to present a very dishonest version to credulous wazzocks).

I think tactical voting to keep a party like the BNP out is legitimate - I just don't know that anti-BNP voters are going to be able to organise themselves in the way that would be necessary.

But yes, if you're going to try to keep the BNP out in an organised way, you also have to think carefully about what it is that is motivating people to vote for them, and try to address those underlying concerns.

Have you seen the bnp's new manifesto?? That wasn't the same as last weeks?? Was it?? I'm sure it was different.

But what constraints are there on them using their funds for party political propaganda? There must be some. We don't generally imagine that staff and office funds can be used for party political purposes??

Having said that, of course it does feel horrible that we will be funding the BNP in any way whatsoever, and I hadn't particularly thought of that. But it is the same principle as their being allowed airtime and whatever other perks are allowed to all candidates during elections. It makes the gorge rise, but it is necessary, for two sorts of reasons. One is the JSMill-type reason that no truth is properly held except in a context of vigourous rethining and thoughtful restatement, which means giving a soapbox to its denigrators; and (more satisfyingly) by allowing their voice to be well heard we don't give them the satisfaction and appearance of moral high-ground that they have when we try too hard to keep them the fuck out.

vigorous
rethinking -- we mustn't thin truths, in general.

I think I'm sounding more liberal towards the bastards than I feel. My instincts just tell me to take them down a dark alley for a kicking. It's just that I really hope we will move to a decent PR system soon, and I am really wary of the stock excuse for avoiding PR the danger of letting in small extremist parties. I do think that they can be present in small numbers without undemining a society and political system with cohesive values. The Hitler example is always brought up, but it was a product of a time and a society not (fundamentally) of an electoral system.

When we want to keep the BNP out altogether, is it because we fear the policy outcomes that might be generated by their presence? Or is it more because we feel shamed and contaminated by having to rub shoulders with them?

Yes, I know what you mean about not giving them martyr status and I do take that point.

I don't honestly know the answer to the point about using funding for purposes of promotion - don't know what the Euro rules are. I did hear Nigel Farrage, the UKIP bloke, saying that UKIP MEPs claim the maximum travel expenses from the Euro pork barrel despite never attending Parliament in Strasbourg (as they're entitled to do by Euro Parl's fucking disgraceful expenses system), and using all of those funds to promote UKIP in the UK.

I suppose, at the moment, I just don't have a lot of faith in the UK electorate's ability to recognise hateful bullshit for what it is, no matter how much light is shed. There's a very depressing recent YouGov analysis here of voters showing that - of the public as a whole, not BNP voters - 49 per cent name immigration as among their top two or three concerns, 20 per cent say it's their single biggest concern, 40 per cent think that white people suffer unfair discrimination, just 7 per cent think that white people benefit from unfair advantages, one in three think that non-white and Muslim people receive unfair help, and 56 per cent think that local councils allow immigrants to unfairly jump housing queues.

I'm starting to think that a large proportion of the UK population shouldn't be allowed access to metal cutlery, let alone a ballot paper.

Fair point. Don't know what to say, really.

I want to keep the BNP out because the more elected representatives they have, the more their message becomes normalised. That awful slogan 'people like you vote BNP' - I fear that that's very effective. Halfwits all over the country who didn't vote BNP last Thursday will have woken up on Monday and thought, ooh look, lots of people like me did vote BNP; maybe I will next time too.

And then, before you know it, concepts like 'voluntary repatriation' will no longer be crazy fringe concepts but legitimate policy ideas that are floating around the political ether along with Post Office privatisation or green taxes.

I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned about immigration. There have been levels of immigration unprecedented in British history in the last 10 years and the population is projected to grow from 60 to 80 million in the next 40 years. Land and housing is not exactly cheap, and more people are not going to improve that situation. The government is basically powerless to stop it as well, so it would seem in many ways a more serious concern than say the economy, which always sorts itself out in the end.

Immigration has benefits but also costs, which full disproportionately on the poor, who face competition for jobs, social housing and education.

Sorry, I'm downhearted and cross.

Anyway, gerroff here and do some blimmin work

Len, another depressing thing about that survey is that it shows that the average BNP voter doesn't have a particularly low household income: 'the household income of the typical BNP voter (£27,000 a year) is only slightly below the national median (£29,000) ? and not that far below that of a typical Conservative voter (£33,000).'

So although I absolutely believe in redistribution, it might not be the answer to this particular problem.

Yes that is terrifying. And Mills views are premised on an incredibly optimistic view about human rationality and enlightenment.

I would certainly make a tactical vote against BNP in the right circs -- it is just a question of how far to go in that respect. I don't actively want them around. Its a question about the boundaries of legit supression.

SG, I do accept that immigration is a legitimate topic for debate. But its benefits (and it does have them) are rarely publicised, and lots of outright lies are propagated (such as the notion that failed asylum seekers are given council housing, when in truth failed asylum seekers live in absolute destitution or in detention centres).

Anyway SG, did you see the Green's response to the d'Hondt stuff below?

Worm, I thought that about the Mill position - it does seem very optimistic about the public's ability to reach reasoned conclusions. I guess he was writing in an era when only about 10 per cent of the population had the vote, and they had a fairly strong set of shared values.

Unfortunately have to go and pay some attention to DS2 now.

Typical victorian optimism I suppose. Cos I think he wanted the vote significantly widened??

anyway, am gone. Shouldn't be here, you are right.