42 BNP Parliamentary Seats: What a Party List PR Election Would Mean

The BNP would currently have at least 42 Westminster parliamentary seats if Britain had a Party List Proportional Representation system of elections and would be one of the leading nationalist parties in Western Europe.

This simple fact is obvious from a straight analysis of election figures which I was prompted into undertaking after seeing the following ignorant remark made on the BDF forum by “Reform Group” activist Tony Ward:

[QUOTE=L= (1/2) d v2 s CL]The ineptitude of the BNP to seize the moment in what was for us a perfect storm raised my suspicions a long time ago. The dramatic rise of the right all across Europe in countries traditionally far more liberal than the UK, while we plummet to the bottom of the polls in what should have been our moment.

Is Nick Griffin state? I don't know but I will say it took someone of great skill to guide us through the last election and skilfully avoid success at every opportunity and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; even the most inept would be incapable of such good fortune![/QUOTE]

In many ways, this remark sums up why those individuals have utterly failed in their attempts to seize control of the BNP: because they simply get the most basic of facts wrong, time and time again.

There are two obvious flaws in this argument:

1. The difference in voting systems between Britain and the rest of Europe which has allowed the “right wing” to take seats in the national parliaments on the continent; and

2. The reality is that most of these parties to which Mr Ward refers are UKIP-allied civic nationalists.

To elaborate further, and because Mr Ward’s apparent ignorance warrants it, I will first explain the different voting systems.

In all but one – France – of the European nations there is have a proportional representation list system of elections.

A party list system works like this: voters vote for a list, not a candidate. Each party is allocated seats in proportion to the number of votes it receives, using the party-determined ranking order.

This was precisely how the BNP got members elected to the European Parliament.

The nations which have list systems are as follows:

Austria; Belgium; Czech Republic; Denmark; Estonia; Finland; Iceland; Italy; Latvia; Liechtenstein; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Norway; Poland; Portugal; Romania; Russia; Slovakia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; and Switzerland.

Nations which have mixed systems are:

Germany - Mixed member proportional (which are a mixture of a proportional system and a single seat district system);

Hungary - Mixed Member Majoritarian (which are a mixture of a proportional system and a straight first past the post system, much like regional elections in Scotland and Wales); and

Ireland - Single Transferable Vote (A complex system where each constituency elects two or more representatives and voters rank some or all candidates in order of their choice. A successful candidate must achieve a quota, which is "calculated by dividing the Total Valid Poll by one more than the number of seats to be filled, ignoring any remainder and then adding 1 vote. One could argue, only the Irish, but the system is also used in local elections in Scotland and Wales.)

The nations which do not have party list systems are as follows:

Britain: First past the post.

France: First past the post with first round runoff. This means that if a single candidate fails to gain a majority of votes, a second round of voting takes place in which only candidates who achieved above a certain percentage are allowed to take part. The idea is to force voters to select a candidate who will take an outright majority of votes.

Now, what effect do these voting systems have?

Obviously, the countries with “pure” list systems of PR automatically make it easier for smaller parties to gain representation, while at the opposite end of the scale (in Britain and France,) it is near enough impossible for smaller parties to break into parliament.

This is why it appears that the “right wing” parties in those list system PR nations appear to be doing so well, and why in Britain and France the BNP and the Front National have no parliamentary representation.

It is thus an utterly flawed argument and comparison by Tony Ward to ascribe the BNP’s failure to reach into national parliamentary politics to the party’s “image.”

Quite simply, that argument smacks of ignorance and desperation.

In fact, if Britain did have a list PR system like other European countries, the BNP would already have significant representation in parliament.

Consider two scenarios: 

Firstly, what the last General Election results would have translated to in terms of Westminster seats had the election been fought on a list PR system; and

Secondly, what those results would have been if the results were adjusted to allow the entire country an opportunity to vote for the BNP (as they obviously were not at the last election, because the BNP only stood in half the number of available seats).

First Scenario: The Last General Election Results

The actual results of the last General Election were as follows:

Conservative

Number of seats contested: 631

36.1% of the vote

10,703,754 votes

Labour

Number of seats contested: 631

29.0% of the vote

8,609,527 votes

Liberal Democrat

Number of seats contested: 631

23.0% of the vote

6,836,824 votes

UKIP

Number of seats contested: 572

3.1% of the vote

920,334 votes

BNP

Number of seats contested: 338

1.9% of the vote

563,743 votes

SNP

Number of seats contested: 59

1.7% of the vote

491,386 votes

Green

Number of seats contested: 310

1.0% of the vote

285,616 votes

Sinn Féin

Number of seats contested: 17

0.6% of the vote

171,942 votes

Democratic Unionist

Number of seats contested: 16

0.6% of the vote

168,216 votes

Plaid Cymru

Number of seats contested: 40

0.6 % of the vote

165,394 votes

SDLP

Number of seats contested: 18

0.4 % of the vote

110,970 votes

Conservatives and Unionists

Number of seats contested: 17

0.3 % of the vote

102,361 votes

Working on the basis that there are currently 650 seats in the House of Commons, these results would translate to a Party List-elected Parliament in Westminster as follows:

Conservatives: 235 seats

Labour: 189 seats

Liberal Democrats: 150 seats

UKIP: 20 seats

BNP: 12 seats

SNP: 11 seats

Greens: 7 seats

(All figures rounded off).

From that, it is obvious just how flawed Tony Ward’s argument is.

However, that is not even the full picture.

In a proper Party List PR system, the entire country gets the chance to vote for a party, as happened during the European Parliamentary elections in June 2009.

Second Scenario: General Election Figures Adjusted if the BNP Had Stood Nationally

As BNP voters are probably the most determined and motivated voters in the country, it is fair to assume that at least the same number who voted for the party nationally in the June 2009 European Parliamentary elections, would have voted BNP once again if given the opportunity in a General Election.

Of course, they were not, as the BNP only stood in half the available seats. As a result, the total brought out BNP vote in the last General Election was smaller than in the June 2009 Euro Election.

The BNP polled 943,598 votes in the European Election of June 2009, or 6.2 % of the vote.

Assuming that this vote would have stayed intact had the entire country been given the opportunity to vote BNP again in a Party List General Election, this would have meant that the BNP would now have 42 seats at Westminster.

The BNP vote actually increased by 1.2% in the General Election compared to the last result, so it is tempting to say that the BNP would have actually been more, but that is speculation.

One interesting fact about the European Parliamentary elections is that UKIP polled an impressive 2,498,226 or 16.5% of the vote in June 2009.

The bad news for UKIP is, however, that although they stood in almost the entire country again in the last General Election, and therefore the “can’t vote” argument is not valid, their vote did not hold up at all and crashed by around 1.5 million. 

This is, of course a reflection of the fact that UKIP is in reality a one-issue civic nationalist Tory splinter group, rather than a real party. One could speculate if their vote would have held in a PR election, but given the nature of that party and the fact that they did stand nearly everywhere in the General Election, it is unlikely.

Which brings me on to the last point, namely the civic nationalist nature of many of these European “right wing” parties.

Mr Ward has obviously been taken in by the recent media hype over “right wing advances” in Europe and is obviously heading in the direction currently in vogue amongst many in the “Reform Group” to start a new party.

In fact, Mr Ward goes on in his BDF post to say:

[QUOTE=L= (1/2) d v2 s CL] We could start a new party along the lines of the PVV in Holland who went from nothing to 15% of the vote in five years, how did they do it?[/QUOTE]

Therein lies the crunch: the PVV (Geert Wilders’s party) is a civic nationalist organisation, in formal alliance with UKIP in the European Parliament.

Actually, the PVV is not even a party, which reveals even more about Mr Ward’s ignorance. The PVV is the name under which a privately incorporated association called the Stichting Groep is run – and Geert Wilders is its sole member.

But that aside, the PVV, just like the Swedish Democrats, are in reality civic nationalists like UKIP.

Is it possible that the “Reform Group” wants to form a UKIP-style civic nationalist party?  

Possibly. 

But then they would probably be better off joining UKIP which at least has an established base, rather than trying to do it from scratch.

And, of course, it would really help if stopped getting even the most simplest  of facts wrong.

Simon Bennett Quits Reform Group Site Editorship

And the good ship HMS Reform springs another leak.
An impeccable source has informed me that last Friday (17 September 2010) Simon Bennett formally told Eddy Butler that he was quitting.
Bennett, unquestionably one of Butler's biggest mistakes, seems to have at last understood that he is now the most hated person in BNP ranks and was only damaging Butler's case.
Bennett's official line is apparently that he is "disillusioned with nationalism" and that there is "no hope" but the truth is more likely that the pressure of reality has been building to the point where not even he can deny it anymore: his presence in the BNP reform movement was a disaster.
Doubtless Butler will now try and lure some party officials and members who objected to Bennett's presence and withheld their support from the reform attempt for that reason.
This is however, unlikely to wash as Butler's chronically poor judgment in allowing Bennett to become involved in the first place (particularly after Bennett colluded with the Mirror newspaper in an anti-BNP story) has shown that Butler is as likely to make disastrous strategic decisions as anyone else.

When Lee Barnes Wanted to Suspend All Leadership Challenger Nomination Signatories and Put Them on Trial for “Conspiracy and Treason”

It is funny how the wheel turns within the ranks of the BNP. Only two years ago, in May 2008 to be exact, Lee Barnes issued a formal statement as “Director of [sic] BNP Legal Department” announcing that anyone who even dared to sign the perfectly legitimate nomination forms of then would-be-leadership challenger Colin Auty would be suspended from the party for “conspiracy and treason.”

Now of course suspending anyone for signing a perfectly legal nomination form would have been highly irregular, and charges of “conspiracy and treason” would have been preposterous, to say the least.

But the strange thing is that nowadays, Mr Barnes has spent voluminous blog posts attacking Nick Griffin and spreading the most astonishing made-up stories about the “dictator Griffin”  yet, as his own email from May 2008 reveals, Mr Barnes was far more of a “fascist” than anyone else when it came to dissidents.

Mr Barnes’s full email is as follows:

Dear Fellow Nationalist Activist

Following a senior high level conference between senior high level BNP officials earlier today to discuss among other issues the security of our new MP Richard Barnbrook in the wake of serious threats to his person by far leftist cowards as he travels to and from the London Assembly I have been instructed to inform you of a bogus and illegal leadership challenge and the disciplinary measures we are now putting in place to squash this diversionary and divisive activity in the bud. This is a deceitful and cynical attempt to divert the party’s attention away from the historical victory last week in London and to derail the activist’s attention away from the all important European Elections next June.

This is a sham nothing and more than a forged challenge devised by the liars, thieves and splitters who tried to wreck the party in December 2007 before their unsuccessful coup was successfully thwarted by quick action from the Party’s own security, legal and intelligence departments. The challenger claims is to be Councilor [sic] Colin Autty [sic] from Kirkless in Yorkshire, a decent man who is known to many of you but he is being used as a puupet [sic] by the gang of malcontents who stole party emails, stole party property, stole thousand [sic] of pounds of party monies, spread malicious rumours about the Chairman, myself and other senior party officers on bogus Blogs and through a series of bogus bulletins which they prepared using stolen membership lists which they then passed on to our enemies in MI5, The Special Branch, The Labour Party and the Searchlight organisation. They then tried unsuccessfully to set up a rival political party. It is a cylical [sic] attempt by our enemies to try and derail the Party and to stop activities to get BNP members electd [sic] to the European Parliament.

The Party is on the edge of a historical victory in Europe next year. Nothing must stand in the way of getting the democractically [sic] elected Chairman and others elected to the European Parliament in Europe next year.

Aiding and abeting [sic] these people is an offence under the Party Constitution 10th edition.

Anyone who has already signed or is thinking of signing or intending to sign the nomination forms for Colin Autty [sic] will be suspended from Party membership pending an internal dispclinary [sic] tribunal where members will be tried for conspiracy and treason as per the Constitutition [sic] Section 6. (3) Section 7 – failure to use the correct channels to express concerns, 8 - spreading false and malicious rumours about Party officials and members, and behaviour likely to bring the Party into disrepute. Those found guilty of conspiracy and treason will be expelled from the Party and proscibred [sic] for life.

The laugable [sic] attempt to portray themselves as trying to 'save the party' is directly contradicted by the fact that they have spent since Christmas undermining the party, attacking the party, spreading lies about the Chairman, myself and other party activists, inciting dissent in the party and actively encouraging party activists not to stand in elections or assist party candidates in the elections.

This is not a game we are playing, this is a war and in times of war unquestionable obedience and loyalty to the commander in the field must come first, The 'First Law Of Nationalism' is - If you work with the enemy, then you are the enemy.

Yours for the greater good

Lee John Barnes (LLB Hons)

Director of BNP Legal Department

Now this raises some interesting questions.

Firstly, it has not gone unnoticed that a number of people involved in the Eddy Butler leadership challenge have been suspended from the BNP.  Has this action been taken in terms of Mr Barnes’s master plan for dealing with dissidents?

I suppose only the fullness of time will tell, but I strongly suspect that everyone who has been suspended has suffered that fate not for supporting a leadership challenge, but for actually doing something which was quite genuinely contrary to the BNP’s code of conduct (rather than Mr Barnes’s astonishing “treason and conspiracy” fantasies.)

What would these actions have been?  Maybe the abuse of party data to send out partisan material?  Possibly the deliberate dissemination of false information?  We shall see in due course, and I, and many others, will wait with anticipation to see.

On another related issue, I think I have also solved the ongoing question of whether Mr Barnes was ever a member of the BNP.  It seems not, at least according to Mr Barnes himself.

In a particularly typical foul-mouthed rant against someone on his blog, Mr Barnes made it quite clear he was not a member:

Why The Eddy Butler Campaign Flopped

Despite ideal conditions (less-than-expected election results, financial woes and widespread distrust of Jim Dowson’s role in the party), the Eddy Butler leadership campaign flopped because he made two critical errors: (a) exaggerating his case to include outright lies; and (b) aligning his campaign to some of the worst incompetents and traitors the BNP has ever seen.

Under normal circumstances, a leadership challenger should have had an easy ride to displace Nick Griffin in 2010. Although the party’s vote went up by a few percentage points nationally, overall the election results were not as good as many had hoped.

It is a British political tradition for a party leader to step down after an election defeat, and the BNP should have been no different. Griffin’s refusal to step down should therefore have been grist to the challenger’s mill, and should have galvanised party members to agitate to change.

Another factor working in a challenger’s favour should have been the financial problems encountered by the party during the election.

There was clearly no financial control of note and the BNP’s campaign overspent dramatically, with as much as £80,000 being spent in Barking alone.

In addition, the court case with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has probably cost the party a fair few pennies (estimated to be between £30 and £50K) and many have rightly asked if this was necessary in the first place.

Although the “Marmite saga” actually did not cost the party very much at all (contrary to what many believe, there was actually no court case, merely an injunction and an agreement to pay around £6K to a charity), the unnecessary fuss raised by that incident should also have helped a leadership challenge.

Finally, confusion, distrust and general gossip over Jim Dowson’s role in party affairs added to what should have been an ideal brew. If ever there was an ideal time for a leadership change, it should have been in 2010.

So why did it all flop?

Butler’s campaign flopped for two very simple reasons: he grossly exaggerated his case, which allowed him to be shown up to be a liar, and then he associated himself with some of the worst incompetents and traitors the BNP has ever seen – with predictable results.

Exaggerations and Lies

The first critical error was to overstate the issue of finances. If Butler had stuck to what were real concerns about party finances (overspending in the election, the EHRC court case) then his credibility would no doubt have remained intact.

Unfortunately, for some reason, he could not leave it at that.  The anti-Griffin camp simply over egged their case, heaping wilder and more extreme allegations of financial abuse till the sheer preposterousness of the claims destroyed Butler’s credibility.

For example, at a (now famously) recorded meeting in London, Butler claimed that the financial irregularities amounted to Nick Griffin taking “hundreds of thousands of pounds” illegally.

Ironically, Butler added at the same meeting that if Griffin had taken “only a few thousand” he would not have said anything, which was an interesting comment.

However, what utterly destroyed Butler’s claims was a further admission that he actually had “no proof” at all for any of these allegations and that the whole thing was a “red herring.”

These admissions were nothing short of catastrophic for Butler’s campaign, and certainly in my eyes (and many others I spoke to) completely undermined the whole financial abuse case which Butler proffered.

The second batch of lies centred on Jim Dowson’s role in the BNP. While he most certainly does have a major backroom role, Butler and his supporters could not restrain themselves with allegations in this regard either.

The accounts show that Dowson earned around £70,000 per year for his fundraising efforts, for which he generated some £2.4 million in total.

Butler and supporters could not leave it at that and make a point of this: rather, fantastic allegations of Dowson being paid to be party manager were invented, and then, incredibly, Dowson was morphed into being in charge of party expenditure as well.

This was done in an attempt to blame Dowson for the debt into which the BNP has found itself. This allegation is patently untrue, as the fact remains that Dowson was not, and has never been, in charge of how the money was spent.

It did not pass unnoticed by observers that Eddy Butler was in charge of the election campaign until two weeks before polling day, and therefore would have been involved in all the major expenditure decisions taken for the campaign.

It was therefore, really rich for Butler to blame Dowson for the debt, when it is likely that Butler himself, running as he did the Barking campaign, was at the very least co-responsible for the national debt, and most certainly for the £80K Barking bill.

Another example of the outrageously untrue – and obviously so – allegations around Dowson centred on the “Truth Truck” and the “laptop” stories, all of which were propagated by Butler’s supporters.

As it transpired, the laptops in particular were ordered and authorised by Emma Colgate, not Dowson. It is therefore strange that Butler counts Colgate as a supporter but still allows Dowson to be blamed for the cost of those laptops.

These, and other allegations, seriously undermined the credibility of allegations against Dowson to the point where they simply did not ring true.

If Butler and his supporters had once again just been slightly temperate in their allegations and had not resorted to outright lies, it is more than likely that they would have got substantially further.

Butler’s Choice of Friends

The second factor which destroyed Butler’s campaign was his choice of friends and allies.

Without any doubt the single worst error he made in this regard was to recruit Simon Bennett to run his websites. 


Bennett is without doubt the single most hated person amongst rank-and-file activists, for, despite whatever he says, he will always be known as the person who sabotaged the BNP website at the critical point in the election campaign.

The BNP will never know how many votes it lost as a result, because even though Bennett now lamely claims that he “only took it down for ten minutes” the reality is that he knew his actions would be used by the media to make the BNP look silly for years to come.

As if this was not enough, Bennett then went on to give an interview to the Mirror newspaper, the BNP’s arch-enemy.

Incredibly, Butler kept Bennett on as part of his team even after this gross act of treason and this incredibly stupid decision cost him many potential supporters’ votes.

Bennett then set up a forum on his website and invited the absolutely shocking Sean Hadley from “North West Nationalists” to be a moderator. 


This was the same Hadley who in 2008 had attacked Eddy Butler as a “joke BNP official” and who then posted up the most shocking and awful comments about Butler and Emma Colgate. 

Amazingly enough, Butler still seems to think there is nothing wrong with Bennett, and had him as a guest speaker at the recent conference held recently in South Yorkshire.

Next on Butler’s catastrophic list of friends was Mark Collett, who accompanied Butler to his disciplinary hearing. One can only wonder at what Emma Colgate thought of that move, not to mention a host of others in the Butler camp (Lee Barnes included) who all hate Collett with a passion.


As if this was not enough, next on the Butler list of friends appeared the truly dreadful Shelley Rose, who proceeded to humiliate the entire leadership challenge with what seemed to be an endless list of lurid sexual tales which became so bizarre that even the News of the World stopped believing them.

Hated people aside, Butler then saddled up some of the most incompetent people yet to darken the doorstep of the BNP. Probably the foremost recruit in this regard was Nick Cass, who, as everyone knows, is a real nice guy but utterly incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery.

His short-lived tenure as “party manager” (during which time he failed to even get employment contracts out despite being given them by John Walker) was no less disastrous than his “management” of the Voice of Freedom and Identity subscriber lists.

It took Colin Goodgroves in excess of three months to sort out Cass’s disaster, and everyone in the party knew this to be the case, including Butler. So why did he chose Cass to be a running mate in his leadership bid?

Maybe Butler was desperate for allies. So desperate, in fact, that he even had the frightful idea that Richard Barnbrook could be his running mate.

Once again, however, Butler and his supporters could not contain themselves, and were recorded at a meeting calling Barnbrook a wretch alcoholic (Rowena Savage’s words) and a knob (Lawrence Rustem’s words).

When Barnbrook heard the tape, he turned on Butler and so ended another bumbling attempt to create a serious leadership challenge.

It is true that Butler does not have any charisma of note, but that (and even the famous brothel incident) should not have harmed his campaign to such an extent. In fact, the brothel probably had almost no effect on his standing in his supporters’ eyes at all.

So why then did Butler make all these catastrophic errors?  


Who knows, but whatever the reason, the whole leadership campaign was directed in such a way that observers cannot help but think that it was a kamikaze mission from the very beginning.