Red, Green or Something In-Between?

It is now just over four weeks since I launched the Facebook group Forum for Progressive Action, since which time it has steadily developed into a highly active - and interactive - resource for some 230+ participants. Whilst quality over quantity remains the watchword, not a day passes without useful new contributors being added to the roll.

What has already become clear is that one of the great debates that is developing revolves around the nature of today's left (a convenient generic term with which I do not necessarily myself identify). Specifically, whether the progressive Green/SNP/Plaid vision which made itself known for the first time to so many of the uninitiated in the build-up to the recent general election is the real deal, or whether the future lies in a rallying of the masses to the more "traditional" left.

I say one of the great debates, of course, because this discourse cannot be separated from the question of whether the long-term future for progressive politics lies within or without the Labour Party. This is particularly so right now within the context of the Labour leadership challenge from Jeremy Corbyn. At the very least the sense of resigned inevitability that has accompanied the otherwise apparent consensus that the future of the party lies in an even further shift to the right has been stalled by this event, although Corbyn's equally inevitable rejection by the party through fair means or foul is likely only to emphasise the point when it happens.

One senses a soreness amongst some stalwarts of the socialist tradition towards the "Johnny Come Lately" leftists of the Scottish National Party, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru. Certainly what unites all of these parties is that the wider public knows them best for other things - in the case of the Greens for their environmentalism, and of the SNP and Plaid for their respective advocacy of Scottish and Welsh independence. Whilst these are themes which need not contradict a left-wing political perspective, it is undoubtedly true that they are not necessarily exclusive to same and could equally be embraced by people of a centrist or even right-wing disposition. Thus the fear is that for adherents of what I will hereafter lazily refer to as the new left, progressive politics is merely additional ballast to a worldview formed around other priorities.

MASS MOVEMENT

The attraction of the new left lies in its potential to turn progressive politics into a mass movement around an identifiable party banner. This has certainly been so in Scotland, where the SNP took 56 out of a total of 59 parliamentary seats on an openly left-of-Labour, anti-austerity platform to which its traditional theme of Scottish independence was successfully subordinated. Whilst the Greens only managed to hold onto their one Westminster seat the party's vote share increased enormously and one senses that it is just a few years of experience and training in the harsh truths of realpolitik away from a real breakthrough.

By contrast the old left has never demonstrated the ability to form a viable party capable of sustaining mass appeal. Certainly when it comes to individual causes it has been able to turn out the bodies - nuclear disarmament, the anti-racist and anti-fascist rallies of the 1970s, the Poll Tax demos and the protests against the invasion of Iraq to name just a few. But politically that opposition to the system has been fragmented between the Labour entryists and exitists, and between the plethora of left groups which themselves exist outside of the Labour Party, and then liberally spread like watered-down butter throughout 650 constituencies around the UK in a way that renders any prospect of political power via the parliamentary road improbable to put it politely. The one party that has managed momentarily to buck the trend, Respect, has been far too focused around one man, in one place and at one time to offer any lasting threat to the established order.

The old left argues, not without some justification, that there are some distinctly unleftish aspects to the wider politics of the new kids on the progressive block. The Greens' desire to protect the Green Belt could be seen as running contrary to the notion of a widespread building program as a remedy to the housing crisis. Scottish and Welsh nationalism is, well, nationalism, which belies the internationalism of classic socialist doctrine.

Add to this the ovine tribalism of that significant section of progressive opinion - if one still accepts it as such - which places organisational allegiance, even to a right-wing and neoliberal party, above ideology or political principle and even in broad terms what is loosely thought of as one movement would seem irreparably divided into three distinct camps.

Under the circumstances the prospects for political unity, in the sense of bringing progressives together under one organisational roof, appear remote. Furthermore, unless the issues of fundamental import which divide progressives can be resolved it is questionable whether such a unity would even be desirable.

What can and must be achieved however is the kind of unity which allows progressive opinion to act in unison whenever a wider interest is served. On the streets, when the occasion demands, this is already happening. Witness last weekend's anti-austerity protests in London and elsewhere.

The task of unaligned progressives is to harness united action around a defined list of points of agreement - areas where all of us see things the same way and from which some mutual benefit may be derived from working together. If nothing else this should be the task for the duration of this parliament.

Let's Organise and Co-ordinate Progressive Action

I’ve left it for a couple of weeks or so to comment on the result of the general election as it is always helpful to wait for the dust to settle before trying to acquire a clear view.

For starters let us say I got it wrong – but with YouGov, MORI, ComRes, the whole of the world’s media and most inside political opinion I was in pretty good company. I still maintain that a Lab-LD coalition would have been the outcome had the numbers stacked up differently, but with the Tory overall majority that is just so much history and speculation. Probably we will never know.

As seems to be the norm these days when serious parties lose elections their leaders fall instantly upon their swords. There was the Clegg resignation and the Miliband resignation, the Farage resignation and then the Farage unresignation. The expected SNP landslide in Scotland did indeed materialise, UKIP and the Greens are left ruing the inequities of First Past the Post as the millions of votes they attracted between them earned them one solitary seat apiece. The Lib Dems now are not only unable to claim third party status but can only with a certain stretch of the imagination profess to be Britain’s fourth party, having been soundly beaten by UKIP in terms of votes and boasting fewer members than the Greens and only the same number of parliamentary seats as the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile David Cameron will by now have unpacked the furniture at No.10 once again, while the new member for Uxbridge takes a look around and makes notes.

THIRD PARTY

That the Lib Dems will come back some in the fullness of time from their 8-seat nadir is in little doubt. British politics needs a viable, UK-wide third party. But the big issue of the day is wherein lies the future for the Labour Party, which was second to the Conservatives by a massive 99 seats, not only leaving the Tories as the largest party but even handing them a completely unanticipated overall majority, albeit one of only twelve seats, making redundant all the pre-election speculation about the dreaded SNP holding the balance of power.

Already Labour has set out its stall for a leadership contest in September, accompanied by a very public bout of naval-gazing. The party consensus would appear to be that Ed Miliband led a party into the election that was “too left-wing” and which paid scant regard to the electorate’s “aspirations”. A headlong rush back into the arms of Blairism, or at least of some horrible mutation thereof, now appears inevitable.

Certainly the Labour narrative employed during the campaign, that electing a Labour government was a matter of life and death to which all considerations of working for a better system and a fairer and more sustainable society in the long-term had to be subordinated, was distasteful. It was also appallingly hypocritical when one considers that incessant criticisms of “Tory austerity” were quite deliberately constructed to mask the fact that the intended remedy was its replacement with a programme of Labour austerity.

However the argument that Labour’s rejection arose from the fact that its agenda was not sufficiently identical to that of its Conservative opponents would appear to have been given the lie by the fact that the Scottish National Party, which contested the election on a manifesto far more progressive than that of Labour, swept all before it, capturing half the Scottish vote and in the process taking 56 of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats.

SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND

One could argue of course that Scotland is different. What works north of the wall may not, indeed probably will not, work in the leafy shires of South East England. But against that argument one could equally point out that swathes of northern England and even the Midlands have far more in common with Scotland than they have with Kent or Berkshire.

The other inherent danger faced by Labour when embracing a strategy of trying to out-Tory the Tories in what has come to be described as “Middle England” is that any chance of it succeeding depends very much on the more traditional Labour vote acquiescing faithfully without a murmur. What Tony Blair and New Labour got away with in 1997, before the social media revolution and in the wake of an orgy of self-destruction from within a crumbling and decrepit Tory Party that had been in office for almost two decades, there is no certainty it will get away with again. With the Green Party slowly acquiring some political nous and the example of the SNP to show us the way, there will be viable options for progressive opinion which simply did not exist in 1997. Labour abandons these people at its absolute peril.

I make no secret of the fact that I detest the Labour Party as an institution. The completely undeserved and unwarranted sense of superiority that it imbues in its followers is a nauseating spectacle for me and others like me on the outside to behold. If there is anything worse than elitism itself it is elitism coming from a group of people who profess to be about equality for all and to eschew discrimination and bigotry. The vicious anti-community agenda that we here in my locality have been compelled to witness stems entirely from a belief that people existing outside of the Labour organisational bubble are inherently incapable of working for the betterment of their own society, and that any evidence which appears to suggest the contrary must be ruthlessly expunged before it has the opportunity to manifest itself as a viable counter to the party orthodoxy.

Nevertheless it is an undeniable truism that in order for progressive politics to break through from the fringes of English politics it will be necessary to bring with us many of those people who currently still regard themselves as loyal followers of Labour. At times the inane tribalism of some folk makes this appear an almost impossible ask, but then there can be little doubt that very many of those who rallied to the SNP banner earlier this month were former Labour voters and in many cases former members. When the conditions are right and the argument is made, nothing is impossible.

SOCIAL MEDIA OFFENSIVE

What progressives need to do right now is to prepare the ground for a social media-inspired offensive which will lift them from the fringes and elevate them into a viable political force, taking full advantage of Labour’s problems which should be viewed as an opportunity rather than cause for regret. We need to remember that as an organisation Labour is there to manage our expectations rather than as a vehicle for real change. Ultimately its demise is essential before progressive politics can have any hope of making meaningful progress.

This in turn requires some semblance of unity, or at least a vehicle for interaction between those on the progressive wing of politics who may themselves have their own fields of vision obscured by organisational loyalties. To this end I have set up a humble forum through the medium of Facebook, for friendly and constructive discussion between those of a radical bent, whether they happen to be members or supporters of the SNP, Plaid, the Green Party, community organisations, “traditional” left groups or indeed of none in particular.

Called the Forum for Progressive Action, the objective of it is simple – to engender debate and to explore possible options for practical co-operation to the benefit of all.

I don’t profess to operate with any authority, with any special knowledge or in possession of any particular talent which might be of significant benefit to the struggle. I only believe that an opportunity exists in the aftermath of Labour’s electoral drubbing which must be seized mercilessly, and soon, and that as a starting point for such an initiative a Facebook forum must be as good as any. Please use it, and encourage others to do likewise.

Why the System Has To Go

What do we mean when we refer to “the system”?

It can of course mean a host of things, and many use the term simply to describe the political forces which prevail in the corridors of government in any given place. But to properly understand “the system” within any political construct we surely need to understand the internal dynamic which propels the society in which we live, or the society that we are examining.

The United Kingdom has a “system” which is based on more or less unfettered capitalism. It is true that governments make laws which even the rich and powerful have to abide by, and that on occasions even senior politicians or seminal figures from the world of business fall foul of them and end up in durance vile. All the same, within the limitations defined by the law of the land big business effectively runs rampant, sweeping aside not only organised (and even more so disorganised) labour but also honest small business in its wake. Witness the death of the family grocer or the independent high street trader as the likes of Tesco exploit farmers and their own workers alike to bring you their produce at the most competitive prices whilst still reserving for themselves the seemingly divine right to make a vast profit.

Under a totalitarian system such as fascism or communism the state will dictate just how far enterprise is allowed to go. Under the former it may be controlled or it may be permitted to run riot, but the fact remains that that permission is needed. The state, in theory at least, calls the tune. Under communism ownership is transferred to the government, which in practice operates a controlled economy of its own, the state replicating the role of the capitalist owner and the wider public playing the same part of the unquestioning consumer.

WEALTH AND POWER

In a “democratic” society such as ours however it is the forces driving the economy that are in control. This is because the conflation of wealth with power makes it inevitably so. The richer an individual or a corporation is, the more power he, she or it will inevitably wield. Power over the media, the power of patronage, the power to sell (or to distort) a message which can make or break a politician or decide the destiny of a political party. Within such a system it is inevitable that the political parties which take it in turns to man the offices of government will strive to serve the master. I wanna sell you a Tory, as the late Max Bygraves might have put it.

It is because of this unfailing logic that I, as those who know me will attest, instinctively wince whenever I hear some self-styled critic of the system bleating about how it is all going to change when the party they dislike the most is removed from office at the next general election and replaced by the party they have opted to endorse. At times I just want to wake up screaming. The two main parties are not the same, they protest, and of course they are right. Why, after all, would the system offer us two parties from which to make our selection and not imbue each of them with at least some kind of superficial defining characteristic? It is essential, in a “democracy”, to keep alive the illusion of choice.

What we are not given, of course, is the means through which to challenge the master. And in the master’s unrelenting drive towards ever greater profits there needs to be somebody else providing the labour, at as low a cost as possible, to drive the master’s success. Understand that and combine it with a recognition that neither of the major parties aspires to change that reality at source, and their essential sameness becomes a given. Any “difference” between them can only define the range of flexibility that the master is prepared to grant in order to preserve the illusion.

SYSTEM PARTIES

But to talk of there being just two “system parties” is of course overly simplistic. Whilst radical on matters of constitutional reform their support for the economic status quo demonstrates that the Liberal Democrats clearly are and have been since their inception a party of the establishment. I voted for them in 2010 in spite of this, not because of it, mostly because of the qualities of the local candidate but also because I felt the injection of the Lib Dems into the government of the country would in some way upset the apple cart. A crisis for capitalism perhaps not, but an unscripted fly in the ointment for the two-party system it indeed was.

Neither am I so blindly optimistic as to consider all if indeed any of the smaller parties that are currently enjoying some relative good fortune as being anti-system in the broadest sense. Certainly UKIP aspire to be and in some senses are already a party of the establishment. Rather like Trotsky’s theoretical fascists, they are a proto-establishment party waiting in the wings, currently something of a nuisance and an embarrassment but there if ever they are needed.

Which brings us to the left of centre, anti-austerity parties – the Greens, the SNP and Plaid. Are they the stuff of which revolutions are made? Probably not, but that is to miss the point somewhat. In our fast-changing political environment the establishment does on occasions find itself playing catch-up with events. The two-party system has, for the time being at least, already given way to the three-party system. If the three-party system in turn heralds the emergence of the four-, five-, six- or seven-party system then a fissure is created in the edifice of the all-powerful financial establishment which has effectively been the puppetmaster of our body politic for as long as any of us can remember.

ANSWERABLE

What emerges from the haze just may be better – more answerable, more democratic, more radical – than the façade which went before. If it isn’t then nothing has been lost. The financial elites will, I have no doubt, attempt to buy into the new politics but the more widely they need to cast their nets the less control they can hope to exercise. The plethora of significant parties which challenge both major system parties from the left, and the further-left grouplets which are emerging by dint of social media from amid the growing dissatisfaction with Labour’s presumably permanent shift to the right, coupled with the threat to the Tories from their own right flank in the form of UKIP, is making political engagement in the run-up to May 2015 uniquely interesting.

On top of it all are the “Don’t Vote” voices and the “None of the Aboves”, both positions with which I have some sympathy although I do intend to cast my cross, on this occasion at least. For those who are serious about real, lasting, meaningful change the outcome of the traditional contest between the toxic twins of the old establishment is a sideshow of scarcely any relevance. The real determining events for the future of our politics are to be found about the periphery of this elaborate charade.

How "Green" is Blue Labour?

It was Isleworth Labour councillor Ed Mayne who first introduced me to the concept of Blue Labour, in a conversation which took place between us shortly after he had been elected for the first time in 2010.

I had never heard of Blue Labour before. When I did I confess I baulked a little, because I kind of assumed that the “blue” aspect referred to a peculiarly rightist tendency within an organisation which had already moved too far to the right in my humble opinion. I envisaged a kind of ultra-Blairite movement within a movement, maybe something along the lines of the Progress grouping.

But it appeared that Blue Labour, oddly named as it was in my view, was something entirely different. Its emphasis was on fusing together “a progressive commitment to greater economic equality with a more 'conservative' disposition emphasising personal loyalty, family, community and locality”. The use of the term “conservative” is in this sense, of course, descriptive as opposed to organisational.

COMMUNITY AND LOCALITY

So it would appear that Ed had perceived my possible interest to lie with the “community and locality” aspect of Blue Labour’s outlook, as opposed to its “conservatism”. Which was fair enough, bearing in mind my deep-rooted commitment to a politics which sprang upwards from the grass roots as opposed to one that was imposed from on high.

The term “Blue Labour” was first coined in 2009 by a Labour life peer and academic by the name of Maurice Glasman, a senior lecturer in Political Theory at the Metropolitan University in London. Amongst its adherents was none other than John Cruddas, the hero of the successful struggle against the BNP in Barking and Dagenham and a man certainly associated with the left of the party rather than with any Blairite strand of thought.

It seemed to me, and still does seem, an odd choice of terminology for an idea which appears to transcend the traditional left-right divisions which engage the party at various times. Rather than taking either part in this historic debate, it instead positions itself as a champion (by Labour Party standards) of community co-operation and working class activism as opposed to the draconian “We Know Best!” mindset of the Labour Party with which I am much more familiar.

Because of its emphasis on family and locality many on the authoritarian left, as well as on the more dominant right, see Blue Labour as an attempt to shift the party in a more conservative direction on issues such as immigration. But Cruddas in particular has been clear in his thoughts on this subject, that whilst any kind of racist or xenophobic thought is rightly opposed it is legitimate to be concerned about the effects of rapid, unforetold immigration on such things as social cohesion and pay and living standards.

COMMUNITY-FRIENDLY

Blue Labour does not, as I see it, move the debate in a more leftwards or rightwards direction, but in a more community-friendly direction, to a place where the electorate whose votes are begged at five-yearly intervals are trusted during the intervening periods to hold opinions that may actually be worth listening to. It is not a left-right divide, in other words, but a Red-Green divide, Green being traditionally the colour of organic democracy alongside its other association with environmental politics.

It is no coincidence that environmentalist organisations such as the Green Party tend overwhelmingly towards a sympathetic view of localist democratic institutions, alongside small industry and ideally self-sufficiency. These are the aspirations which are most threatened by the relentless onward march of the big corporations – by the capitalism either of Big Folding Money or of the State.

I still fail to understand why such a radical tendency within the Labour Party is labelled “blue”, but whatever it chooses to call itself it seems to be one that is gaining currency.

Follow Your Convictions – This Could Be the End of the Politics of Fear

Syriza, Podemos, the SNP: the neoliberal consensus is collapsing. Forget tactical considerations in May and vote Green for a genuine alternative

By George Monbiot

Here is the first rule of politics: if you never vote for what you want, you never get it. We are told at every election to hold our noses, forget the deficiencies and betrayals and vote Labour yet again, for fear of something worse. And there will, of course, always be something worse. So at what point should we vote for what we want rather than keep choosing between two versions of market fundamentalism? Sometime this century? Or in the next? Follow the advice of the noseholders and we will be lost forever in Labour’s Bermuda triangulation.

Perhaps there was a time when this counsel of despair made sense. No longer. The lamps are coming on all over Europe. As in South America, political shifts that seemed impossible a few years earlier are now shaking the continent. We knew that another world was possible. Now, it seems, another world is here: the sudden death of the neoliberal consensus. Any party that claims to belong to the left but does not grasp this is finished.

Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP; now a bright light is shining in England too, as the Green party stokes the radical flame that Labour left to gutter. On Tuesday morning, its membership in England and Wales passed 50,000; a year ago it was fewer than 15,000.

A survey by the website voteforpolicies.org.uk reports that in blind tests (the 500,000 people it has polled were unaware of which positions belong to which parties), the Green party’s policies are more popular than those of any other. If people voted for what they wanted, the Greens would be the party of government.

POPULAR OWNERSHIP

There are many reasons for this surge, but one of them must be a sense of popular ownership. Green party policies are determined democratically. Emerging from debates led mostly by younger members, they feel made for their time, while those of the major parties appear trapped in the 1980s.

Let me give you a flavour of the political transformation the Green party seeks. There would be no prime minister of the kind we have today, no secretaries of state. Instead, parliament would elect policy committees which in turn would appoint convenors. It would also elect a first minister, to chair the convenors’ committee. Parliament, in other words, would be sovereign rather than subject to the royal prerogative that prime ministers abuse. Leaders would be elected by the whole parliament, and its various political parties would be obliged to work together rather than engage in perennial willy-waving.

Local authorities would set the taxes they chose. Local currencies, which have proved elsewhere to have transformative effects in depressed areas (see Bernard Lietaer’s book The Future of Money), would become legal tender. Private banks would no longer be permitted to create money (at the moment they issue 97% of our money supply, in the form of debt). Workers in limited companies would have the legal right, after a successful ballot, to buy them out and create cooperatives, with help from a national investment bank.

The hideously unfair council tax system would be replaced by land value taxation, through which everyone would benefit from the speculative gains now monopolised by a few. All citizens would receive, unconditionally, a basic income, putting an end to insecurity and fear and to the punitive conditions attached to benefits, which have reduced recipients almost to the status of slaves.

POLITICS OF FEAR

Compare this vision of hope with Labour’s politics of fear. Compare it with a party so mesmerised by the City and the Daily Mail that it has promised to sustain the Tory cuts for “decades ahead” and to “finish that task on which [the chancellor] has failed”: eradicating the deficit.

Far too late a former Labour minister, Peter Hain, now recognises that, inasmuch as the books need balancing, it can be done through measures such as a financial transaction tax and a reform of national insurance rather than through endless cuts. These opportunities have been dangling in front of Labour’s nose since 2008, but because appeasing the banks and the corporate press was deemed more important than preventing pain and suffering for millions, they have not been taken. Hain appears belatedly to have realised that austerity is a con, a deliberate rewriting of the social contract to divert our common wealth to the elite. There’s no evidence the frontbench is listening.

Whether it wins or loses the general election, Labour is probably finished. It would take a generation to replace the sycophants who let Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rip their party’s values to shreds. By then it will be history. If Labour wins in May, it is likely to destroy itself faster and more surely than if it loses, through the continued implementation of austerity. That is the lesson from Europe.

Fearful voting shifts the whole polity to the right. Blair’s obeisance to corporate power enabled the vicious and destructive policies the coalition now pursues. The same legacy silences Labour in opposition, as it pioneered most of the policies it should oppose. It is because we held our noses that there is a greater stink today. So do we keep voting for a diluted version of Tory politics, for fear of the concentrate? Or do we start to vote for what we want? Had the people of this nation heeded the noseholders a century ago, we would still be waiting for the Liberal party to deliver universal healthcare and the welfare state.

MARGINS

Society moves from the margins, not the centre. Those who wish for change must think of themselves as the sacrificial margin: the pioneering movement that might not succeed immediately but which will eventually deliver sweeping change. We cannot create a successful alternative to the parties that have betrayed us until we start voting for it. Do we start walking or just keep talking about the journey we might one day take?

Power at the moment is lethal. Whichever major party wins this election, it is likely to destroy itself through the pursuit of policies almost no one wants. Yes, that might mean five more years of pain, though I suspect in these fissiparous times it won’t last so long. And then it all opens up. This is what we must strive for; this is the process that begins in May by voting, regardless of tactical considerations, for parties offering a genuine alternative. Change arises from conviction. Stop voting in fear. Start voting for hope.

Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Guardian.

Why I'm Excited by the Rise of the Greens

For the first time in quite a few years I am coming to the view that, far from gaining an overall majority, Labour may actually not even be the largest party following this year’s general election.

No matter how great our loathing of the austerity project forced upon us in the name of “reducing the deficit” by the ConDem government, and how unscrupulous Labour has been in positioning itself as the natural opposition to this government’s policies even though in the small print it is pledged to continue them, the various factors which come into play are beginning to conspire against Her Majesty’s opposition in a very serious way.

Of course it is difficult, even for expert psephologists (which I am certainly not) to get a handle on this year’s contest because it will be a contest unlike any other, in which the date of the election will have been known for years beforehand and the campaigning period will have been uniquely long. It could be that come May the country will be so fed up with politics that the election itself will be more poorly supported than usual. Or conversely, the intensity of the debate might just drag a few more souls along to sign up to the ritual in a way that keeps the system limping on with its credibility retained, at least for another five years.

THE GREEN SURGE

I am excited, if it is possible to be excited by anything that occurs at the circus that is British politics, by what has become known as the “Green Surge”. That is the emergence of a party which would appear to have been in relative slumber for as long as Rip Van Winkle as a serious player at the contest to come. This week the Green Party announced that its membership had surpassed those of both UKIP and the Liberal Democrats, and was growing at a rate of 500 per day. For the benefit of any Martians or recently released solitary confinees who may be reading this, this is the party which the powers that be have decided should be excluded from the forthcoming televised election debates in which Nigel Farage and his party are to participate.

I am not a member, nor a doctrinaire supporter of the Green Party. For many years I have prided myself on my independence from the whole shebang and have stood in elections as an independent in which the Greens have been listed amongst my rival candidates. I served for twelve years as a local councillor, three of them as a member of the borough executive, without once feeling the need to be involved with any political party and I remain of the view that the adversarial party system lies at the root of most of the problems which afflict our politics. I have long foreseen with a sense of impatient expectation the demise of the establishment parties and look forward to seeing their woes compounded on May 7th, or whenever the results of that contest become known to us. It would appear that, for the short term at least, my erstwhile belief that voters would turn their backs on party politics entirely has proved to have been overly optimistic in that they would seem to be looking to smaller parties instead. I’ll settle for that, for now at least.

The Green Party has positioned itself firmly to the left of the Labour Party, a development which I believe has come about organically rather than having been a mere tactical ploy. Speaking personally I dislike labels, which serve to slot free-thinking human beings into neat pigeon holes when surely the need to retain freedom of thought and of action should be of paramount importance. Nonetheless, with the Liberal Democrats having their fingerprints over far too much of the malign and inequitable legislation that has issued forth from David Cameron’s government under cover of tackling debt which has conveniently been blamed entirely upon its predecessor, I feel the Greens to be very much the most likely recipients of my vote, and my support, at the coming election.

It isn’t that I blame the Lib Dems for having gone into coalition. I do believe that, at the time, it was the correct thing to do. But the inescapable conclusion for me is that over the four and a half years in which they have ostensibly shared power with the Tories they have allowed their partners far too much freedom in which to shape the government of this country in their own image. I know from personal experience that in coalition the big parties are pre-programmed to take much and to give little, possessed as they are with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and being so very quick to forget the reasons for them having been compelled to enter into coalition in the first place, viz. that they failed to win enough votes or enough seats to be able to form an administration in their own right.

SINCERITY

There is an added attraction in voting for a minor party and that is that, on aggregate, there is likely to be more sincerity to be found within its ranks. People who enter politics in the hope of self-advancement above all else will naturally be drawn to the big establishment parties where there are jobs aplenty and hundreds of “safe” seats up for grabs. That is not to say that nobody joins such parties with honest intentions, but simply that those who have will quickly find themselves in competition for office with those whose speciality it is to tread on the heads and stab the backs of others in the uncompromising cause of the advancement of self.

As well as being a socially progressive party the Greens have the added appeal, to me, of being committed to devolving democratic participation to the people. Many of its adherents describe themselves as being of the “libertarian left”, which contrasts favourably to many like me with the authoritarianism, left or otherwise, of the Labour Party.

Of course the Greens are not the only minor party whose involvement is likely to impact significantly upon the outcome of the election to come. Much publicity and speculation has been heaped upon the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which in recent years has both topped the national poll at the European elections and won (or in some senses retained) two parliamentary seats at by-elections. As a consequence of its high profile and its clear impact upon our current body politic UKIP has been invited to the televisual ball from which the Greens have thus far been excluded.

Whilst I welcome the role that UKIP is destined to play in further helping to undermine the two-party hegemony, my problem with them is that I don’t actually support their policies. It is true that UKIP has called both for local referenda and for the recall of under-performing MPs, both of which I have no problem at all in endorsing, but it is undeniable that the party’s main policy planks are centred around a lazy xenophobia which would threaten the gains made by working people in the UK in terms of employment protection through its policy of withdrawing from the EU, and take us backwards as a society which respects cultural diversity within the confines of a cohesive whole.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY

The other smaller party which is likely to play a major role in shaping the character of the next Westminster government is of course the Scottish National Party (SNP). I use the term “smaller” here in an entirely UK context, as in Scotland the SNP is by far the largest party in terms of membership, has a majority at the Scottish Parliament and is expected to win the largest number of Scottish seats in May, mostly at Labour’s expense. Its membership in Scotland alone far exceeds those of the Lib Dems, Greens or UKIP throughout the UK and, if projected proportionately, it would by some distance be the biggest party in British politics.

It is for me a richly amusing irony that in spite of having been edged to defeat in the Scottish independence referendum by an unholy alliance of the three UK establishment parties invoking all the international and media power at their disposal, the SNP emerged when the dust had settled as the clear political beneficiary of that campaign in its aftermath. Scotland’s left-leaning electorate has found it particularly hard to forgive a Labour Party which joined with the Tories to deny them their right to self-determination for no other reason than that the union serves the party interest at a UK level. The humiliating and shameful spectacle of Gordon Brown, the son of Alba who grew into a British establishment politician, making promises to his fellow Scots which immediately after the event he admitted he was in no position to deliver, in exchange for their acquiescence, will live in Scotland’s collective national memory for a very long time to come.

Most opinion polls suggest that Labour will now lose a significant number of its Scottish seats to the SNP. It is going to be exceptionally hard for Labour to reverse this process over the coming few months. Having been stitched up once the Scottish people won’t, as the song goes, be fooled again. By ruling out the possibility of any deal with Tories post-May the SNP has very cleverly trumped Labour’s likely strategy of trying to convince Scottish voters that a vote for the Scots Nats is a vote for the Tories. In the wake of the referendum and of Labour’s betrayal it will be a brave Labour politician who attempts ever again to append the label “Tartan Tories” to the SNP. The Conservative vote in Scotland, modest though it is, is unlikely to be too much affected by the events surrounding the referendum as it is by definition a unionist party anyway. In opposing Scottish independence the Tories were at least acting according to principle.

To win even a larger number of Westminster seats than the Tories, let alone an overall majority, Labour needs therefore not only to overtake the Conservatives south of the wall, but also to gain enough seats to offset those which are likely to be lost to the SNP. Failing this, the party may still have the option of entering into an agreement with the SNP, allowing it to form a government. This could happen even if Labour is not the largest party in parliament. But the SNP will demand a king’s ransom. Any success for the Greens, who are pro-independence, elsewhere in the UK could strengthen the SNP’s hand still further if called upon to join a rainbow coalition.

SCAREMONGERING

One of the many things which unite the two major parties is their dependence upon scaremongering as a means of hooking in what they perceive to be their straying sheep. A vote for anybody other than Labour is a vote for four more years of Tory austerity, Labour tells us, with the curious inference that Labour austerity will in some undefined way be an altogether more enjoyable experience for us. It’s a two horse race, the Tories insist. A vote for anyone except the Tories will plunge us back into debt and consign us all to eternal damnation. Yawn.

The desperation of the establishment and its need, above all else, to preserve the old duopoly has led to some amusing sideshows. Presently the Prime Minister David Cameron is refusing to take part in the forthcoming televised debate unless the Green Party is involved too. Correct though his position is on this, does anybody seriously believe that it is one inspired by altruism towards the Greens? Rather than one taken by a politician who sees the Greens as being a potential thorn in Labour’s side, unlike UKIP, which will be a bigger thorn in his own?

And what should we make of “progressive” Labour’s implicit endorsement of the decision to include the hard-right UKIP but not the Green Party in the TV debates? Possibly the same as I made of the same party’s much-publicised alliance with UKIP in my own little part of the world during the local elections of 2014, in opposition to a moderate independent residents’ group. Namely that here is a party devoid of any semblance of scruple, a party which will say or do anything in naked pursuit of organisational power at all costs. The same party which, like the Tories, is currently trying to out-UKIP UKIP on matters of immigration.

UNITY COALITION

For all the permutations and possibilities there is of course one potential coalition which certainly would achieve an overall majority and which, politically, would make perfect sense. In case anybody thinks my argument is far-fetched, the Guardian covered it recently in an article by Ian Birrell entitled A Tory-Labour unity coalition may be the only way forward after 7 May. The subject matter speaks for itself. It is an unavoidable truth to any who care to scratch and look beneath the surface that of all the parties which are likely to have any meaningful impact at the election, the two with by far the most in common are the Conservative and Labour parties. For this reason, Birrell argues, it would be a logical step for the two major parties to come together in a unity coalition in order to avoid a “constitutional crisis” (which evidently would be the outcome of voters having the audacity to support parties outside of the big two in significant numbers).

Of course if could never happen. The reason is that the voters, supporters and members of neither party would stand for it. Whatever the similarities between the two major parties in practice, preserving the façade of “British democracy” depends entirely upon maintaining the illusion of choice, and it is simply astounding how many otherwise intelligent people still buy into the notion that these two organisations represent two distinct social constituencies and bodies of opinion in the face of increasing evidence that the real power is wielded behind the scenes and that British governments of whatever hue are merely the public faces behind which lurks an amorphous and entirely self-serving financial elite.

Although they will get my vote I am not convinced that under First Past the Post, and with all the forces that are ranged against them as well as against the other small parties, the Greens will increase their representation in Parliament by much if at all. Ditto UKIP. The SNP will certainly inflict some damage on Labour. But the system parties will still occupy the overwhelming majority of the seats on the green benches.

The challenge to their near-monopoly will be in terms of credibility, with a heftier share of the vote going to smaller parties than ever before as well as individual outcomes within the constituencies being thereby affected. It is beginning to happen, at long last. Aslan is on the move.

Leaders’ TV Debates: Middle-Aged, Rich, White Men Telling Us What’s What, Again

Excluding the Greens and other parties in favour of Ukip will leave the election debates devoid of even a modicum of diversity

by Alex Andreou

Broadcasters yesterday announced their proposed format for televised election debates. Sky and Channel 4 are opting for a presidential style, David Cameron v Ed Miliband head to head; the BBC will repeat its 2010 format which included the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders; and ITV will have the same three, plus the surprise inclusion of Nigel Farage, probably holding a pint of bitter.

This structure has caused much reaction from the four parties involved about the inclusion of Ukip. Farage – displaying the same sort of one potato two potato mathematical complexity that yielded “29 million Romanians and Bulgarians” – reckons if one MP means inclusion in one debate and Ukip wins the Rochester byelection, then surely two MPs means inclusion in two debates. The other leaders have expressed anger at Ukip’s elevation.

What is less clear is what any of them believe should be the position regarding parties that hold the remaining 28 seats in the House of Commons and their exclusion from the debates. The Green party has threatened legal action over its leader Natalie Bennett’s omission. Good on them.

COMPLETE NONSENSE

The inclusion of Ukip to the exclusion of others is complete nonsense whichever way one cuts it. If one goes by number of MPs, questions regarding the exclusion of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parties loom large. The answer is, I suspect, that these are not national parties, followed by the non-sequitur that they must therefore have nothing to offer to a national debate. For a triumvirate that only a month ago was pleading with Scotland not to break up this “family of nations”, relegating all non-English parties to the children’s table is unfortunate in the extreme.

If one goes by how parties did at the last general election, then the exclusion of the Greens – who had an MP elected – in favour of Ukip is irrational. Perhaps convincing a constituency that electing the same MP wearing a different rosette represents real change is a magic trick worthy of TV. And how about the Social Democratic and Labour party that has twice the number? The broadcasters have cited the recent European election as a measure of Ukip’s popularity and irrefutable evidence of its worthiness for inclusion. But if that is the criterion, one must question the inclusion of the Lib Dems, who polled lower than the Greens on all measures and came a joint sixth with a host of other parties in terms of MEPs.

The only way to justify the inclusion of Ukip in these debates is by somehow extrapolating its future popularity in the next election by looking at meaningless opinion polls. Essentially the broadcasters are saying, “We think they will do well, so we are pre-emptively including them”. It is not up to a TV executive to be making any such subjective assessment. If you want to open the debate, then do so properly. Make it a panel discussion that includes genuinely diverse views.

I am certain that the expectation the inclusion of Ukip might make for salacious TV has also not been far from TV executives’ thoughts. It is the natural extension of the bizarrely dominant idea that if you include a person saying something sensible in any debate, you must also include the polar opposite, even if inflammatory and illogical, “for balance”. Which is precisely what has secured Ukip its popularity in the first place.

MONOCHROME PALETTE

However, the exclusion of parties such as the Greens, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru has another deeper effect. It excludes anyone who could lend a modicum of diversity to these debates; who might challenge the status quo on the environment, on devolution, on constitutional change, on free-market economics, on gender politics. What we have ended up with – again – is a platform of two, three or four rich, privileged, white, straight, middle-aged, male, career politicians from a tiny part of south-east England telling the rest of the country what is what.

This monochrome palette, this disturbing example of what Grayson Perry recently described as “the default man”, is bad for political engagement and grossly unrepresentative of the country. It ensures that large swaths of the voting population will flick on to the debates, see a pictorial representation of the same dull grey suits talking in soundbites and switch back to Britain’s Got Talent, secure in the knowledge that, if Britain does indeed have talent, politics is carefully sealed from any hint of it.

Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Guardian

Some further thoughts from last Thursday

Trying though I honestly am to get a real life, I have to admit that I still find myself dissecting last week's local election results and looking for pointers to where the borough might be heading when "real" voting conditions are restored in 2014.

One interesting number that keeps coming back to me is 8816. This is the minimum number of voters who opted for independent candidates in preference to any of the established parties. This figure was reached by taking the highest independent vote in each ward in which non-aligned candidates were standing. In practice of course, because not everybody votes in blocs, it is likely that at least 10,000 voters in Hounslow placed at least one cross beside the name of an independent candidate. I would venture that is the most ever.

Then there was a minimum of 8336 voters who supported Green Party candidates. And if we want to think outside the "big two" as opposed to the "big three", there is the small matter of at least 11,824 voters backing the Liberal Democrats in spite of the fact that they were not contesting every ward.

As "third forces" go, the support of 30,000 - 35,000 voters in the London Borough of Hounslow is not a bad base to be starting from. But of course it should not just be assumed that every Green voter would have supported ICG candidates in the absence of a Green, nor that every ICG voter would have opted for a Lib Dem, and so on. If we are to think in terms of a third power in Hounslow politics to challenge the sterile hegemony of the tired old parties (and I should stress it is no more than a thought at the moment, I still believe the new administration should be given an opportunity to prove itself), we must explore what unites those of us who choose to think outside the establishment box and who consciously take the more difficult path towards realising our aspirations.

This is something I intend to research over the coming months, if only to keep a promise to those caring souls in my community whose new-found freedoms were so prematurely dashed, at least for the time being, by the "Gumby" vote herded out last week by the media circus that was the general election.

For the benefit of younger voters (and councillors) who are too young to remember the Gumbies, the following amusing little clip pertains:

The rise of the Indies?

I know from personal experience that independent candidates seldom perform well in general elections. The are of course exceptions - Dr. Richard Taylor in Wyre Forest defied the odds to be elected in 2001, and then again to hold onto his seat at the following election. Then there was Martin Bell, the man in the white suit. And in 2005 the late Peter Law took a seat in Wales, which was held by his agent Dai Davies at the subsequent by-election.

But in most of these cases there were exceptional circumstances. Dr. Taylor was elected on the back of a massive campaign to save Kidderminster Hospital. Martin Bell's election at the expense of former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, who had been dogged by controversy, was assured when Labour and the Liberal Democrats agreed to step aside. And the Welsh situation came about following a reaction against the Labour Party's policy of all-women shortlists, in other words the split in the vote could be expected to reflect the split that existed locally within the then ruling party.

So some of the odds in the individual constituency betting list issued by the bookmaker Ladbrokes for the next general election make interesting reading. At Castle Point one Bob Spink is quoted at 11/4 to win the seat, behind the Conservative favourite but considerably ahead of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In Dewsbury Khizar Iqbal is showing as a not impossible 12/1 underdog, well favoured over the Lib Dems at 100/1. An unnamed independent in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath is reckoned to be the most serious challenger at 16/1 in what would admittedly appear to be a very safe Labour seat. In Luton South TV celeb Esther Rantzen is quoted at 6/1 despite the intervention of at least two other independents. In another Labour stronghold in Mansfield the Mansfield Independent Forum are second favourites at 10/1, as is Steve Kidd - an improbable victor at 33/1 in Normanton Pontefract Castleford. Plus of course there is Dr. Richard Taylor, standing once more in Wyre Forest and reckoned to be a close second favourite to the Conservative candidate at 11/8, and Dai Davies who is 8/11 favourite to retain his seat in Blaenau Gwent. And that's just the independents that have declared so far.

There are a few other battles worthy of mention. In Bethnal Green & Bow Respect are not thought to be completely out of the picture as 11/4 second favourites in spite of all their problems, and they are also quoted at 7/1 in nearby Poplar & Limehouse. In Brighton Pavilion the Green Party are actually 6/4 favourites to win a three-way battle with Labour and the Conservatives (oh, if only they possessed the same political nous in this part of the world!), and are not entirely out of the frame in Lancaster & Fleetwood and Oxford East, in both of which they are showing at 25/1.

The final imponderable is in Buckingham, the seat of John Bercow. Traditionally the big parties do not field candidates against the Speaker, which does of course leave him vulnerable to the challenge of a smaller party, in this case UKIP who are quoted at just 3/1 to take his seat. Given his unpopularity amongst some of his Conservative colleagues he may ironically need to depend upon the votes of traditional Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters to see off the UKIP challenge.

So what does all this mean? How many independents will make it to Westminster?

Personally, I think no more than two or three. Dai Davies seems likely and if I were a betting man (!) I'd probably back Dr. Taylor ahead of the Conservative favourite in Wyre Forest. The ex-Conservative, ex-UKIP Bob Spink is clearly not without a chance. And Esther Rantzen?

It may not seem much, but when one considers that prior to Martin Bell in 1997 the last independents to be elected from England, Scotland or Wales were Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne in the first election of 1974 the Stone Table would certainly appear to be cracking, albeit frustratingly slowly. Bear in mind the massive advantage that the major political parties enjoy in terms of organisation, publicity and finance and the fact that independents would appear to be making some headway seems more remarkable still.

This trend is certainly reflected in our local politics. In 1998 Yours Truly was the first candidate ever to be elected to the London Borough of Hounslow on an independent ticket. In 2002 there were four - three ICG members and the excellent Luke Kirton from ABeeC. Last time it was eight, and currently there are nine (ten if you count the enforced whiplessness of Bedfont's Councillor Jiwan Virk).

I am aware of course that there is a feeling in some quarters that we are all about to be washed away come the next local elections. I wonder what odds Ladbrokes would like to offer me on there being more indies elected in 2010 than there were nearly four years ago?

Out and about with our community

Well actually it was too cold to be out and about, but last night Councillor Paul Fisher, myself and some officers from Hounslow Homes hosted a very small but useful meeting of residents from Isleworth's Worple estate at the Bridge Link Centre on Ivybridge to discuss some ASB and other problems they've been experiencing on the estate.

One hears surprisingly little from the residents on the Worple. Percentage wise, little of our casework comes from there and attempts to form residents' groups amount to so much hard work. And yet at the 2006 local elections the polling district comprising the Worple estate was the most solidly pro-ICG in the whole of Isleworth ward, out-performing even the loyal Worton. One likes to think they are contented and that they trust us, but it is never wise to take people for granted and the estate needs and deserves the same TLC as anywhere else in the village.

Once that meeting was over we drove across to Boston Manor to join another gathering of residents. Boston Manor is in Brentford ward - not represented by ICG councillors - but Councillor Andrew Dakers, with whom we enjoy a good working relationship, was there are we are always happy to lend our support to Linda Massey from Friends of Boston Manor (FOBM), who does a fabulous job as a volunteer and is always so gracious and level-headed in her dealings with the local authority even when she is feeling let down. The meeting was chaired by John Bradley, of Green Party fame. I'd never seen him chair a meeting before and he is actually quite fearsome!

Then this afternoon it was back to the Bridge Link where Councillors Jon Hardy, Paul Fisher and Andrew Dakers joined officers from Housing and myself in a meeting with a large contingent of Somali residents. One can understand the frustration of families of six, seven and eight living in two-bedroom flats, but that is the reality of the housing crisis and they were surprisingly understanding under the circumstances.

On the whole I find meetings with residents more enjoyable and productive than meetings with politicians. If nothing else, it helps remind me why I am a councillor. Meetings of the Area Committee have become much more enjoyable and dynamic since the community began to play a bigger role, and this is a development that we want to encourage still further in the months ahead.

Big news from Norwich - ideas win elections

The following article was written by William Rees-Mogg and appeared in Mail Online, to whom acknowledgements. It is reproduced here as a debating point on the question of party politics and the rise of independents and single-issue parties. Publication does not imply agreement with the author on every issue.


One should not over-elaborate the analysis of elections. The central question is always the same. Who won? This is certainly true of the Norwich North by-election, where Chloe Smith turned Dr Ian Gibson's Labour majority of 5,459 in 2005's General Election into a Conservative majority of 7,348.

Allowing for all the special circumstances, that is probably a good enough result to produce a Conservative victory next year, both nationally and in Norwich North. That is what matters; it is natural for the Conservatives to be delighted with last Thursday's result as well as relieved. Miss Smith is more than entitled to enjoy her triumph.

There are, however, some interesting undercurrents revealed in the Norwich North results. First, there is one piece of excellent news, which I had not totally expected. After its relatively successful result in the European Elections, the British National Party (BNP) thought it a good idea to put up a candidate in Norwich North. It was mistaken. The BNP was beaten into seventh place with just 941 votes.

That does not mean the BNP may not become a future threat, but it does show it has limited appeal outside a few deprived areas. Seventh place in a by-election is a joke position for a group claiming to be a national party.

The result put the Conservatives in first place, Labour second, the Liberal Democrats third, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) fourth and the Greens fifth.

The result is disastrously bad for Labour. Undoubtedly, Labour voters resented the brutal dismissal of Dr Gibson, a popular and independent-minded local MP. The Labour vote fell by 70 per cent from 21,097 in 2005 to 6,243 in 2009. The opinion polls have been reporting that Labour support in the country has fallen from 36 per cent at the last General Election to a figure in the mid-20s now. Norwich has confirmed the opinion polls reflect reality.

The Conservatives won the seat largely because Labour has become so unpopular. In 2005, the Tories came second in the Norwich seat with 15,638 votes; in last week's by-election they came comfortably first with 13,591. The Tories would have been able to win the seat simply by retaining the support of their past voters, though they did well to increase their share of the votes.

The Lib Dems also had a lower vote in 2009 than they had had in 2005. At the by-election they came third, but they had only 4,803 votes to the 7,616 they had won in 2005. Although Labour did by far the worst, all three traditional parties won fewer votes than they had won at the last General Election.

The three leading parties, taken together, saw their vote fall from 44,300 in 2005 to 26,700 in 2009. Resentment over parliamentary expenses may have partly caused the decline, but an analysis of the vote for the new parties suggests there is more to it than that.

Two of the new parties came just below the three traditional parties in the ranking order. Both had performed reasonably well in the European Elections. UKIP increased its 2005 vote from 1,122 to 4,068 at the by-election. That put it in fourth place. Indeed, UKIP was fewer than 1,000 votes behind the Lib Dems. The Greens increased their General Election vote of 1,252 to 3,350.

Both parties are perceived by the public as single-issue parties. Nevertheless, both were able to increase their votes at a by-election in which the three major parties were unable to do so. Labour's vote was catastrophically lower. Obviously, the European and Green issues are important to voters.

Last week, Labour lost some 15,000 votes, votes that Dr Gibson had won in 2005. No doubt many of these voters simply abstained, but the two new parties gained 5,000 voters.

If Britain had adopted electoral reform, which is the long-standing policy of the Lib Dems, these new parties, including the BNP, would have an opportunity to grow to the point at which they would become natural coalition partners. The parties that are the biggest threat to the established parties would also make the most attractive coalition parties.

The Lib Dems would be attractive coalition partners for Labour, as they have been in Scotland; UKIP might be a potential coalition partner for the Tories, though that would be resisted. The Greens are a threat to the Lib Dems, but could also be their partners. As we do not have proportional representation, this change-your-partners dance will not take place - yet.

Nevertheless, British politics will increasingly be influenced by the single-issue parties. It is no longer reasonable to think UKIP or the Greens are merely crankish parties, bound to fade away. The opinion polls suggest both are in the interesting situation of being single-issue parties whose issues have strong public appeal. Most voters are certainly more conscious of Green issues than they used to be a generation ago; most voters have also become increasingly critical of the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty.

The Lib Dems in the House of Lords voted with the Government against the Lisbon referendum, which the country had been promised. Obviously, Eurosceptics will hesitate before they vote Lib Dem. Support for Green issues crosses the boundaries of other parties - the Tories can claim to have been a Green party for a long time in that they were always the countryside party.

I would not particularly welcome coalitions of conflicting ideas - which electoral reform has created in Scotland - into Westminster. But I do welcome the mixture of ideas which is fermenting in our politics. The Norwich North result supports the forecast that Labour is on the way out and the Tories are on the way in.

Yet it also supports the view that the politics of ideas, which we knew in the Forties, may be coming back. It was the ideas-based parties, UKIP and the Greens, which were the only ones to increase their votes in the Norwich North by-election.

If you don't hate, don't vote for my old mate

If you are like me you will be underwhelmed by the imminence of the European Elections which are to take place on June 4th. I haven't even thought about who I might be voting for yet, and if one considers that I'm actually involved in politics on a day to day basis then what does that say for the sense of excitement that the contest must have induced in most other people?

With the recent revelations about MPs' expense claims, the public can be forgiven for being unenthusiastic about any of the main parties. To paraphrase the old poster slogan, wouldn't it be funny if they called an election and nobody turned up?

Sadly, uninspiring though the established politicans may seem or indeed be, not turning out to vote may have far graver consequences than electing some undeserving bounty hunter of whatever political hue. Under the d'Hondt system of Proportional Representation that is to be used for the purpose of allocating seats, any party that achieves more than a stated minimum percentage of votes in any given region will have at least one member elected to the European Parliament.

Even in less cynical times, British voters on the whole never cared have too much who is elected to Brussels. At the previous two Euro Elections, also conducted under PR, a large protest vote went respectively to the Green Party and to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). What is significant is that neither party was particularly in the ascendancy at the time when they achieved their success. They were just in the right place at the right time when the British voter had the opportunity to register a protest.

The party which finds itself in a similar position today is the British National Party (BNP). As an ex-member of the National Front myself (a party in which many of the current BNP leaders, including the Chairman Nick Griffin, cut their political teeth) I have been studying the BNP's recent fortunes at close quarters. Having exploded onto the scene from relative obscurity a few years ago, the BNP has hovered steadily at around its current level for the last few years. Whilst is hasn't imploded in the sensational manner of the National Front at the 1979 General Election, it has flatlined somewhat, with the odd victory being celebrated but at least as many losses being quietly recorded.

Anybody who takes reassurance from this that the BNP will not present a major threat on June 4th, as some anti-racists seem to have done, is a fool. The general public do not know about the internal issues that trouble the BNP, nor will they have a sophisticated handle on its recent election results. The simple fact is that the BNP, like the Greens and UKIP before them, are the ones who are strategically poised to take advantage of the low voter turnout and the wave of quite understandable disillusionment that is sweeping the country at the moment.

In a certain respect as observers go I am in a unique position. It may be nearly twenty years since I abandoned the ideology (or more precisely the ideologies, for they changed like the wind) that I had pursued along with my former NF comrades back in the 1980s, but I have seen many of the current BNP leaders and their methods at close quarters. Along with one or two others I actually pioneered the electoral strategy that much later brought the BNP its limited successes.

Although he is older, bigger and has one eye fewer than he did when I knew him, the Nick Griffin I see on Newsnight and the equally slick performer who graces our various news bulletins is the same guy that I have enjoyed many a curry and a beer with, visited at his home, been entertained by his family (and he by mine) and talked politics and strategy with on countless occasions. Because I believe I always got along well with Nick Griffin and because our parting was political rather than personal, I have difficulty seeing in him the swivel-eyed monster of traditional anti-fascist folklore. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the election of BNP MEPs on June 4th would be an unmitigated disaster for our community.

As an NF activist in the 1980s one of my pet hates was the media. No matter what the NF did any coverage received, as I saw it then, was hostile and inaccurate. It was so unfair. Worse than that, it was a plot. A Jewish plot. The possiblity that the complexities of the obscure and irrational ideology that I followed in those days might have been innocently misunderstood was not to be contemplated in the black and white world of the fanatic. The whole world was against us. They were wrong, and we alone were right.

And so it is that, rather than rely upon media interpretation to inform my opinion of the BNP today, my instinct is to look at the publications and the public pronouncements of the BNP itself. In recent years the BNP has gone to a lot of trouble trying to remodel itself as a legitimate and mainstream, if still very right wing, political party. It has dropped its lunatic commitment to "the compulsory repatriation of all non-white immigrants along with their dependents and descendants" and has instead adopted an ostensibly more reasonable policy of "voluntary repatriation". It isn't about race any more guv, it's only about numbers.

I giggle slightly wickedly when I read about all this, because having been there amongst the people involved I know the perpetual juggling act that Nick Griffin will have been forced by his own "conversion" to the BNP's new "Civic Nationalist" values to perform, reassuring his own loyal followers that he remains privately "of the faith" whilst simultaneously trying to impress the wider world that he is a changed man. It isn't easy, and the reason it isn't easy is because it isn't honest.

I believe it was this dichotomy which backed Nick Griffin recently to into an ideological corner, compelling him to spell out the old racist values that still underpin the "new" BNP. Speaking to the BBC, he declared that Asian Britons and black Britons "do not exist" and that people from African-Caribbean backgrounds and Asian backgrounds should be regarded as "racial foreigners", irrespective of whether they arrived yesterday or whether their ancestors have lived in the UK for generations. Somehow Nick Griffin and the BNP still insist on trying to square this with their protestation that they are not a racist party.

It is vital that voters who may be disillusioned with the mainstream understand that the BNP are not a benign protest party. People have every right to be discontented in the current climate. It is perfectly legitimate to question the size of the population and the various social consequences of excessive immigration. But the BNP's concerns, as evidenced by Nick Griffin's comments, are not about numbers, nor for that matter about jobs, housing, education nor anything else of that kind. They are about race. Just as they were when I was involved with the far right. All that has changed, essentially, is the packaging.

So if you are of the belief that the hard-working, friendly and decent family living next door to you, born in the UK of Asian parents or decended from Asian grandparents but thoroughly Anglicised, cannot be British due to an accident of birth - or If you believe that the black guy who drinks in your pub and speaks with a London accent and goes to watch football is not as good as you, or the same as you, because his grandfather came to England on a boat from Trinidad to work on the London buses - then the British National Party is maybe the party you should be voting for.

But if your concerns are merely those that we all share, especially at a time of economic privation, or if you are simply angry that so many of our "leaders" seem to more content with filling their faces and living like kings while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet, then there are easier ways of making your protest than by voting for a supposedly "non-racist" party that by its own admission judges people's Britishness according to skin pigmentation.

The beauty of the d'Honst system is that, just as it makes it easier for extremist parties to gain a foothold in our political institutions, so it also provides us with an easy means of keeping them out. Just vote for someone else. Anyone else. If none of the big parties float your boat at the moment there will be plenty of green parties, yellow parties, purple parties, rainbow alliances and Baron Bucketheads putting their fortunes to the test. A vote for one of them will do just as nicely to keep the BNP out.

If you vote for the BNP and it gains seats at Brussels on June 4th you will have done more than register a protest. You will have handed an openly racist party hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding which effectively comes with every Euro seat. The knot you tied in the establishment's shoelaces as a lesson may prove very difficult indeed to undo.

Even if you are as uninterested in the Euro elections as I am, and as uninspired by the large majority of the people who inhabit or seek to inhabit the European Parliament on our behalf, it is in the interests of our strong and united local community that you go out and vote. The Sunday Sport Party might yet see power.