Sutton West by-election result nothing for BNP to write home about

Just one contested by-election to report on this week, in the Sutton West ward of Ashfield District Council, where a vacancy arose following the resignation of a sitting Independent for abusive conduct.

Sutton West ward is part of Sutton-in-Ashfield, which sits hard by Mansfield and is just to the north of the BNP's Sadie Graham's Broxtowe stamping ground. In May it returned three Independent candidates - though - curiously - four vied for the three available seats, all of them coming ahead of the three Labour candidates, who in turn pushed the lone Tory into last place.

The lack of equilibrium in the number of candidates taking the field (4-3-1) as against the number of seats contested for (and the not exactly united platforms of the Independents) makes vote-averaging something of a nonsense, but the bald figures for May were as follows (percentages in right column):

Ind	1359	19.18
Ind	1119	15.79
Ind	1006	14.20
Ind	845	11.92
Lab	748	10.55
Lab	747	10.54
Lab	644	9.09
Con	619	8.73
Total	7087

Independents loom large on Ashfield District Council, forming the biggest voting bloc with 12 seats (though two Independents account themselves as "Selston Area Independents Putting People First"). Labour and the Liberal Democrats follow with nine seats each, and there are just three Tories.

Though the BNP did not fight any of Sutton-in-Ashield's four wards in May, they did contest six (out of fifteen) other Ashield D.C. wards (most of them multiple vacancy), fielding a single candidate in each. Their results were mixed but far from discouraging:

Hucknall West 10.8% (8th of 8)
Jacksdale 24.3% (3rd of 3)
Kirkby Central 27.0% (4th of 5)
Kirkby East 20.7% (3rd of 7)
Kirkby West 19.0% (3rd of 7)
Underwood 16.1% (3rd of 5 - complicated by the presence of an English Democrat candidate.)

Kirkby-in-Ashield, where the BNP fought all three wards, is just to the south of Sutton, and - though we cannot be entirely certain - is perhaps the best guide to the BNP's hopes in Sutton West, where their candidate was Michael Clarke, who contested Kirkby West in May. Publicly, the BNP has been uncharacteristically mute on its Sutton West expectations, but we do know that 15% is the target figure - a nice, artificial safe-zone figure put about purely with the morale of the BNP membership in mind: something to shout about if exceeded, and easily explained away if not.

Ashfield D.C. Sutton West ward result:

LibDem	873	37.02
Lab	560	23.75
BNP	321	13.61
Ind	275	11.66
Con	257	10.90
Green	72	3.05
Total	2358

The turnout was 26.5%.

The intervention of the winning Liberal Democrat was clearly catastrophic for the Independent candidate, losing badly in a ward with a history of electing non-party candidates, but was there anything here for the BNP to cheer about?

Their 13.61% puts them firmly in that nice, safe zone, and they can (and will) trumpet the fact that they bested the Independent (though his defeat came mainly at the hands of the LibDems), and particularly that they bested the Tories. But though third place is all well and good, the party still fell short of its own expectations - and in a week when immigration has been so much in the news their hopes of exceeding 15% must have been high.

If less than 14% is the best the BNP can do in Sutton West in these circumstances then it's unlikely they will ever be in a position to mount a serious challenge for the ward. Last night's BNP result suggests not so much the creation of a voting a base to build upon (which is how BNP members tend to reason away this kind of uninspiring performance), but something of a peak.

The torrid news climate of the past week should have played directly into the BNP's hands. It didn't - and it's gratifying to know that whatever concerns folk might have over immigration, they aren't prepared to be panicked into voting for the odious British National Party.