Propaganda blunder by BNP's Simon Darby

The late Mike Reid with daughter Angela

The BNP's deputy leader Simon Darby today faces accusations of mismanaging what could have been a propaganda coup for the party after announcing a couple of days ago that Angela Reid, daughter of the late East Enders star Mike Reid, was to stand next month for the British National Party in the Witham West for Braintree District Council, only for her to pull out at the last minute, leaving the party with no candidate at all.

It has already become clear from communications received by Lancaster Unity that Ms Reid has been carefully groomed by the BNP with the clear intention of maximising publicity - in much the same way that the party almost capitalised on dancing dope Simone Clarke, former ballerina and now something obscure in the near-dead BNP union Solidarity.

In much the same way that Clarke's disastrous fake engagement to Dickie Barnbrook, the BNP's incompetent and incoherent London Assembly member, was completely stage-managed, the party obviously hoped to use the connection to Mike Reid to give it some spurious respectability, to the extent of Ms Reid using her maiden name for the by-election. Or perhaps it was simply nostalgia - Mike Reid played car dealer Frank Butcher in East Enders, which might have sparked some interesting reminiscences for former second-hand car dealer and now BNP leader Nick Griffin.

Happily, it seems that Darby jumped the gun when he announced Ms Reid's candidacy on Tuesday, for it only took her twenty-four hours to change her mind, claiming, according to her husband Kenneth Gamble (or Gamblin, depending on which newspaper you read): 'She’s worried people would call her a Nazi — and slag her off'. Which just shows how little thought she must have given to the matter.

Simon Darby, who of course knows better than Ms Reid or her husband, insisted that she had NOT pulled out because she feared reprisals. He said: 'It has got nothing to do with politics. She is still a member and still agrees with everything we stand for...it’s personal circumstances that have come up.'

But it might have been another problem that caused Ms Reid to remove herself from the list. According to the Daily Star, a 'man who claimed to be Mrs Reid’s husband said she was "not living” at the home in Braintree where she was registered as a candidate'. This is not exactly unusual for BNP candidates despite being illegal - Barnbrook was said to be living in a different ward when he stood for Barking and Dagenham.

Rumour has it that Ms Reid is furious that Darby released her name when he did and that he immediately attempted to capitalise on the connection with her late father rather than focusing on her and her potential as a councillor, though this doesn't quite ring true to me. If she didn't want her father's name exploited, why not use her married name, whatever it is?

Whichever way you look at it and wherever the truth lies, Simon Darby has clearly cocked-up, not only angering a useful member and her branch but completely destroying a nifty propaganda coup for the BNP in the process. Well done, Darby. Keep up the good work. :-)

Barnbrook sets the tone for the future

Unaccustomed as I (hic) am...

Dickie's slightly slurry speech (and pretty embarrassing moment of forgetfulness) can be seen here.

The BNP's Barnbrook asks for £200,000 - to throw in the bin

Two of the most vital lessons learned by the newer and smaller political party is that campaigning costs money - a great deal of money - and that you should never stand where you don't at least have a realistic chance of winning. Unless of course, you have money to throw away.

Even the larger parties aren't stupid enough to spend what amounts to a small fortune if they know damn well that they're not going to win, and simply put up a token resistance by standing and either not campaigning at all or just doing the minimum amount to avoid accusations of indifference.

In politics, as in life itself, these lessons are learned through experience and by observing what is done by others. Although not by everybody.

Julian Leppert, who stood in the London Mayoral Election in 2004, managed to get only a paltry 3% of the vote, being beaten by the Respect candidate and only missing out on being beaten by the Greens too by around a thousand votes, coming sixth out of ten candidates. This time around, the British National Party has put up the leader of the party's disastrous group on Barking and Dagenham Borough Council, pornmeister Richard Barnbrook.

We discussed the possible reasons behind this peculiar choice here, where we also speculated on which address he will be using from which to launch his campaign - his real one in Lewisham or the fake one the BNP use as a storeroom for the many thousands of undelivered leaflets they have laying around.

Dicky, who has Sadie Graham looking over his shoulder whenever she isn't buggering about in Croatia, is obviously under a great deal of pressure. His Dagenham Show disaster and the complete lack of support for his mayoral campaign neatly illustrated by a recent post on Stormfront which stated; ''Most people in the party know that the choice of Richard Barnbrook to take on Red Ken in the London Mayoral election next year is a disaster in the offing...' show both his ineptitude and the level of support he's likely to get from his colleagues in the party, particularly in the Barking and Dagenham group where he's now firmly regarded as a loser.

The most recent revelations about the BNP's troubles make it plain that nothing is working out financially or in any other way for the party. A much-reported fall in membership and the likelihood of having to bail out such disasters as the fast-collapsing Great White Records are causing havoc with the already late accounts and Nick Griffin's casual dismissal of problems with the finances in a recent blog post hasn't apparently inspired the membership with confidence - or not the many BNP members who communicate with us, at any rate.

No surpise then that Barnbrook himself, rather than the Leader of the party, is handing round the begging bowl to raise funds for his campaign. Dressed in his smartest suit though looking a bit ragged around the edges (Barnbrook, not the suit), he clumsily and with apparent difficulty reads off the idiot board the outrageous call for £200,000 to be donated for a campaign that the BNP is clearly and easily going to lose. This video, obviously made by a bunch of third-years at the local comprehensive, is about as bland as it's possible for a video to be, but if you really feel the need to inflict it upon yourself (you masochist) you can download it from here (20MB).

One wonders (again) precisely what the membership fees are meant to pay for. Last year's accounts showed a membership of 6502 - the £200,000 represents membership fees for nearly 6700 and there are still the General and European elections to come - each of which will cost considerably more than a fifth of a million quid. Griffin's ambition to conquer the world and make himself rich in the process may not actually achieve anything except to bankrupt the entire BNP membership. It certainly isn't going to win the London Mayoral Election for the BNP.

[Just to cheer you up in case you're a member of the BNP, here's Mr Fister's presentation of Dicky on a night out. I'm not quite sure how but Dicky looks like he's really enjoying himself]

Updated: BNP leadership election result - no surprises

The British National Party leadership election results are in at last and, according to a post on the nazi Stormfront forum (and eventually the BNP web site), the results are as follows:

Griffin: 3363 (91%)
Jackson: 337 (9%)
Turnout: 43%

No great surprise there except that a large number of people chose to deliberately abstain.

The numbers are all important in this contest. The BNP has (it claims) a total voting membership of 8604, which means 4904 chose not to vote, leaving 3700 who did. 337 BNP members voted for Chris Jackson - substantially more than the 100 signatures he had to gather simply to be allowed to stand in this patently rigged contest.

For a virtual unknown - or at least unknown outside the North-West of England - Jackson did remarkably well, particularly when one considers the short period between announcement and election and the many limitations placed on him regarding anything to do with having direct access to the membership. Had it been a fair fight, we would have expected Jackson to easily double his votes. In fact, in our opinion he could have done a lot better had he actively campaiged. We wonder why he didn't.

Griffin is now in the peculiar and uncomfortable position that has affected every real party leader for decades - he's a minority leader, chosen to lead the BNP by a minority of the available votes in his party. In fact, working on the percentages alone, he only has a mandate from 39% of the party - hardly 'a resounding mandate', as one idiotic Stormfronter put it.

It's pretty clear from the immediate reactions to the result that we can expect something of an old-fashioned purge in the BNP in the near future - a clear-out of those undesirables who don't seem to appreciate either Nick Griffin's dictatorial style of leadership, the numerous dodgy deals he has on the go at any given time or the energetic expansion of the BNP into an apparently limitless number of bizarre and disparate business ventures. The Night of the Long Knives beckons and the supporters of Chris Jackson had better watch the shadows for a few months. Despite having absolutely no loyalty to the BNP membership himself, Griffin demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates and the leadership challenge has already been labelled an act of treachery a number of times.

Griffin staggers into a new year as leader with none of the spring in his step that he should be feeling after a failed leadership challenge. The result - or rather, the turnout - was lacklustre, reflecting the party's performance at the council elections back in May. The troops are demoralised, the income, we are assured by people who certainly know, is drying up and the membership is stagnating as it waits for triumphs that never arrive and holiday camps that will never materialise.

In fact this leadership challenge seems only to have left bitterness and recrimination behind it. Possibly the next one will be better - it's rumoured that pornmeister Dickie Barnbrook has his eye on Griffin's seat (so to speak), which might explain why he's recently been pushed out to challenge the unbeatable Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. A challenge from Barnbrook might just be a challenge worth watching.