Who do you think you're kidding?

I seem to recall a beaten and dejected Nick Griffin leaving an election count in London last year telling crowds of jubilant anti-fascists that the great city of London was "lost", beyond hope etc, etc. With him and his own electoral ambitions went out the door a dozen of the BNP's beaten former councillors with their tails between their legs.

London has always been difficult for Griffin and as he left that election count, Eddy Butler the BNP's (failed) election specialist and Richard Barnbrook the (often absent) London Assembly member were already plotting together against their leader in a side room.

Of course, Griffin is on record describing people that live in cities like London as being "degenerate" people who unlike him, don't live in rural seclusion.

Now though, with Butler and Barnbrook gone (Butler more than likely now to run the campaign of the rival English Democrats) Griffin has had to focus on London once more. Preparations are now underway for the GLA elections in London for 2012. London currently has more ex-BNP members than it does paid up members. It's fair to say that London is in fact the centre of the anti-Griffinites.

The early stages of the campaign have not got off to a good start either. Claire Khaw, a Chinese BNP supporter was initially mooted to be the BNP's "shock/surprise" choice for their candidate. But Khaw had too much of a habit of publicly promoting the policy of murdering disabled people. So extreme was Khaw that some BNP members even threatened to murder her!

So instead it would appear London will be getting "charismatic" Carlos Cortiglia a Uruguayan who once volunteered to fight for Argentina against Britain during the Falklands war. Last Sunday the BNP begun the first in a series of proposed fundraisers in the capital that they hope will fund their London campaign. Only 29 people made it to Liverpool Street in east London, and that includes his small army of thugs and pornographers that make up his security detail. The scene was so desolate and desperate, Khaw herself managed to get herself an invite under the auspices of being a photographer!

Last night I got another one of Griffin's begging emails. "Savour the idea of 25 fully equipped, ultra-professional stalls out all over London on the same day" it instructed me in bold lettering. How that is going to happen based on the turn out for their London social is beyond savouring, is actually beyond belief! The BNP has so few active members in London that they must be planning on only having one person on a stall at a time. I walked past the BNP in Dagenham earlier this year when they were manning one of their stalls. Based on that experience, the email should have read "imagine 25 stalls with BNP members swearing at the public and making racist comments at the general public". That, I can imagine.

They even have a special leaflet to go with their campaign: "And what a campaign it's going to be!" (Their bold emphasis again), "We've just taken delivery of the first 100,000 of these leaflets". Before I could query the sense in that, one former BNP member beat me to it. "Surely nobody in the printing world would touch the BNP with a bargepole" wrote Charlotte Lewis a former Croydon BNP candidate with an equally nasty viewpoint on just about everything and everyone. "If I did a job for them, I'd want cash up front".

It's not often I agree with the equally nasty Charlotte, but experience would suggest that the BNP does not really have 100,000 of any of these leaflets. Giving-as they say they plan to do- 25 pop up posters and banners "to our local activist teams all over London" they'd still struggle to shift fifty of the mysterious leaflets, let alone pay for them!

Still, we'll make sure that for every house that gets a BNP leaflet, there will be at least one from Hope Not Hate telling people the truth about the BNP.


Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate