http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/Monday, May 25, 2009
Understating the threat
Despite the strenuous cross-party campaign against it, and the attempts to "puff" UKIP in the hope that it will Hoover up the protest vote, the BNP continues to make steady progress in local authority by-elections. It has also produced a "shock" poll result which worries The Sunday Express, pulling 38.4 percent of voters' support compared with 19.2 percent for Labour.
As to the latest local authority by-election result, this was at Irwell Riverside in Salford MBC to the north west of Manchester. There, in a safe Labour seat, the incumbent held with 38 percent of the vote, losing 13 percent compared with the 2008 result. The Conservatives, in an election it was never going to win, polled 12 percent, losing nearly five percent of its share.
Of the minority parties, UKIP and the Greens both picked up 8 percent of the vote but the BNP took 17.1 percent, the only party to increase its share of the vote, up nearly four percent.
The BNP claim a "solid performance" in a ward with over 2000 students registered on the electoral role. The National Union of Students, the party says, had lobbied via the internet to get the student vote out to oppose the BNP, but their efforts met with only a lukewarm response.
It also claims that "the result was a big blow to the Tories" who not only worked hard in the ward and also had their campaign boosted by the arrival of the party's euros election address, delivered just 24 hours before the polls opened.
Coincidentally, the Sunday Express poll was carried out in the Salford constituency, currently held by communities secretary Hazel Blears. The survey of 500 voters showed that Ms Blears would lose her seat, but it also suggests that a disillusioned 55 percent would not vote at all.
But the "shock" is that the BNP picked up 38.4 percent support compared to 19.2 percent for Labour. Tories took 13.4 percent of the poll, the Lib-Dems 10.7 percent and the Greens and the UKIP 7.1 percent each – uncannily similar to the by-election vote. If the result is repeated across the North-West in the euros, says the paper, Nick Griffin will be elected as an MEP.
It is unlikely though that this level of support will be repeated throughout the region. Although BNP is showing strong cluster of support, it does not have the spread enjoyed by more established parties. Nevertheless, inrecent elections in two Carlisle wards, the party scored 9.5 and 19.7 percent of the vote.
Then, in Moston in April, there was a closely-fought contest between Labour and the Tories. This resulted in a near 11 percent drop in the Labour vote, but a catastrophic drop of 14 percent for the Tories – with BNP getting 23 percent and coming second – in its first appearance in the ward.
The spread of results, on the back of the Salford poll, does suggest that BNP is indeed in with a chance in the euros and, on the basis of that performance, Griffin is set to become the BNP's first MEP – possibly displacing UKIP.
However, with the Archbishop of Canterbury worried that the current furore over MPs' allowances could "play into the hands of unpleasant fringe parties like the BNP", The Daily Telegraph is today warning of the dangers in constantly talking up the "threat" of the BNP.
Similarly, The Independent is cautioning: "We must stop exaggerating the threat of the BNP", yet also noting the powerful online presence of the party, reporting that figures from Alexa show the BNP registering more traffic than highly publicised political blogs such as Guido Fawkes. (We reported that on 12 April.)
For once though, Rowan Williams might be getting it right. If anything, both the Telegraph and the Independent seem to be understating the threat.
COMMENT THREADSunday, May 24, 2009
The crowd is always wrong
One of my abiding memories as a very young child was when I was out with aged parent, about to cross the main road – at a point where there was a central reservation.
On that reservation was a lady, herself about to cross the second half of the road. She looked in the direction of the oncoming traffic, saw it was clear and stepped from the safety of the kerb … only to get smacked by a speeding ambulance driving on the wrong side of the road, on its way to an emergency.
I never did know whether she lived, but the ambulance was one of those funny-shaped Austins with a fibreglass body (pictured) – it was a mess, so I guess not.
Anyhow, it is memories such as that which shape attitudes. Even crossing one-way streets, one tends to look both ways … you never know, and you only have to get flattened once. There isn't a second time.
So it is with politics, as we averred in an earlier post (and some others), if the crowd is looking in one direction, you always look the other way – to see what else is coming. In thus advising, we called in aid Mark Twain and his injunction: "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
With this in mind, it is fair to say that whenever it is gripped with an obsession, or - as Matthew Parris put it – in one of its "periodic fits of moral horror", the crowd is always wrong (See Gustave Le Bon here - caution, 129 pages Pdf). We see that most often in the scare dynamic, whether the "poison eggs" of Edwina Currie, Mr Hogg's "Mad Cow disease" or the current obsession – global warming.
But the other absolute constant is that, virtually in proportion to the depth of its obsessions, the crowd hates being told that it is wrong. It resents any contrary voice and often directs more vitriol at those who dissent than at the original object of its ire. This we see so clearly with the ravings of the warmists, who attack so readily those they believe to be "climate deniers" who are seen to question their religion.
So it is with the political claque. You are either with them or agin them – there is no halfway house. This time, the first to mount the attack is thechatouilleur extraordinaire - the thinking man's reason for voting UKIP.
Conforming absolutely with the archetype, he lays into this blog with a gusto, fortified by the authority conveyed by weighty pieces such as this andthis.
The subsequent debate is entertaining, but also important. My co-editor and I disagree on many things but on one we are completely agreed. The British political blogosphere is seriously underperforming, and as we observed recently, is dominated by self-referential, introverted lightweights, of which our chatouilleur is a classic example.
The interesting thing is that, while the MSM is deemed to be fair game for the bloggers – even though in this crisis we are getting better quality input from the traditional journalists than we are the claque - the blogosphere somehow seems to feel that it should be immune from criticism and gets rather overheated when one of its own "breaks ranks".
But the trouble is that the blogosphere, by and large – but with occasional exceptions – is part of the crowd, exhibiting the range, depth and perspicacity of the eponymous "man-in-pub". That is its choice. But until it grows up and matures, it remains part of the entertainment industry rather than a political force.
COMMENT THREADLooking after their own
We smiled when we saw the story about Angela Browning paying £9,635 for her personal website. Yet, one London website designer with more than 10 years' experience in the industry said it should cost no more than £1,250 to set up and run. Philip Sweny, of Halpen Marketing, said: "It seems to be a very basic site."
Sweny is about right. The fee was for two-and-a-half years' service and we actually offered a package for MPs at £500 a year, including blogs, designed by North Jnr, who set up EU Referendum.
As it was, the seven-page website, which carries details of her constituency and parliamentary work, was instead designed by Parliamentary Liaison Services Ltd (PLS), run by Mark Fullbrook, the former head of campaigns at Conservative Central Office. Fullbrook works as a "communications adviser" for up to 20 Conservative MPs which, if they are all paying ten grand a throw, is a nice little earner for Fullbrook.
That number of "20 Conservative MPs" is one we recognise. It includes some of the Cornerstone mob. Some time ago, I was invited down to London (at my own expense - £150 train fare, etc, plus a day's work lost) to put a proposal to set up a group blog for them, plus individual member sites, all cross-linked. At £500 each, I thought it was an ambitious price, considering that North Jnr can set up a site for £120 and "care and maintenance" takes very little effort.
We even set up a very basic test site to show how easy it was to get up and running. Needless to say, we did not get the work. Individuals went to Mark Fullbrook instead and the Cornerstone Group runs its own blog - after a fashion.
Whether little Angela was aware of the deal, I do not know. She says she had followed guidance given to her by the fees office. "The contract for the website is to maintain and run it right up until the next election," she said. "I didn't get a second quote because I had dealt with the company before. That was the only claim I have ever made on the communications allowance."
Fullbrook insists that he has provided a good service. He said of the £9,635 charge: "We are a commercial company and we think the price was reasonable for the quality service we provided." We are so pleased for Mark, and equally impressed at the strenuous efforts made by our MPs to obtain the very best value when they spend our money.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Posts
