BNP loses deposit at Oldham

Another disaster strikes the ailing BNP, with the result of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election continuing the consistently downward trend in its vote. The BNP polled just 1560 votes (just under 4.5%), which means the party can wave goodbye to yet another lost deposit, and was roundly beaten by UKIP (2029, or 5.8%), which will annoy pretty well everyone in the BNP.

It's worth remembering that Oldham was at one point an extremely important seat for the BNP - back in 2001 the party mustered up 11.2% and in the General Election last year they still managed to scrape together 5.7%. So what went wrong? Maybe it was the fact that the few local BNP activists left in Oldham refused to come out to support a candidate who had been foisted on them by Nick Griffin, who had already announced himself as a candidate only to back off rapidly when he realised how embarrassing (and likely) a low vote would be.

Or maybe it was the fact that Derek Adams, the BNP's candidate, is yet another bad-tempered, rude and arrogant shit along the lines of Lee Barnes (though probably not quite as insane). Certainly, Adam's behaviour at the hustings last week, where he took the stage and refused to leave until escorted off by the plods, didn't exactly endear him to the packed audience who booed him as he was hauled off.

Or maybe it's just that the BNP is crap and more people are realising it.

Labour: 14,718 (42.1%)
Lib Dems: 11,160 (31.9%)
Conservatives: 4,481 (12.8%)
UKIP: 2,029 (5.8%)
BNP: 1,560 (4.5%)
Green Party: 530 (1.5%)
Monster Raving Loony Party: 145 (0.4%)
English Democrats: 144 (0.4%)
Pirate Party: 96 (0.2%)
Bus Pass Elvis Party: 67 (0.1%)

It's just as well that many BNP members are delusional - no matter how you look at it, coming fifth and losing the deposit is not a good result. Or it isn't unless you're prepared to spin the result so much that reality doesn't get a look in. Here's a BNP supporter (Nick Griffin himself, I suspect) writing on the British Democracy Forum following the result being announced.

'Onwards and Upwards - Oldham was a good result for the BNP...With Nick Griffin standing we would undoubtedly have saved our deposit but he very selflessly stood aside for Derek, who with Clive's expert guidance fought a very good campaign...dig deep for the greater good of the party and for a just and noble cause...I'm sure genuine, loyal BNP members will join me in congratulating Nick, Clive and Derek, as well as everyone else who put it so much effort, on a fine result.'

Like I said, delusional.

This Time, The BNP Blow It In Oldham East & Saddleworth: Those Excuses In Full...

BNP 1,560 (4.4%)

As confidently predicted by everyone apart from the BNP's National Officer In Charge Of Making Stuff Up, the Saviours Of The Nation ™ have, yet again, failed to make any headway at all (and lost their deposit!) in a target seat.

“How could this have happened?” wail the disconsolate BNP Faithful of Oldham. “How could we fail yet again?”

And so the excuses begin...

There Was A Large Postal Vote

That Democracy's a sod, isn't it? Why, it's almost as though the LibLabCon Marxist BBC NWO Elite wanted to give people the chance to vote (for whoever they like, mind you!) in the comfort of their own homes, rather than queuing up at a draughty church hall to put their cross on the paper with the same stub of pencil on a bit of string they've been using since 1974.

It Was Raining

Doughty and steadfast your Oldham Nationalist may be: unfazed by taunts and untroubled by threats. The brightest flowering of our Nation's stouthearted spirit, equally ready to speak out against the myriad foes ranked against these islands as to take to the streets in protest at an injustice to a fellow Kinsman.

Unless it's raining. They hate it when it's spitting.

The Controlled Media Gave Hardly Any Coverage To The BNP Candidate

If only the Electorate had been given the chance to see Derek Adams displaying his statesmanlike demeanour, incisive grasp of political discourse and Shavian command of his mother tongue (or just seen him bang on, yet again, about how his pub being knocked down represented the most sinister exemplar of State Repression since the Stalinist Terror); that would've swung it. Oh yes. (Or, failing Derek Adams (as he will forever be known), we could at least have been treated to yet another sight of Griffin looking like the “before” bit in “The King's Speech”...)

The Nationalist Vote Was Split

I ask you; what's the point of having a democracy when any Tom, Dick & Harry can start up another so-called “Party” and get people to vote for them? It'd all be different if that nice Mr Griffin was in charge...

Massive Vote-Rigging Was To Blame

I suspect the operation by the LibLabCon Marxist BBC NWO Elite involved something as simple as this: After the polls close and the ballot boxes are sealed, they are driven at high speed to a secret depot, where dozens of handpicked lefty Council Staff (all of whom can be relied upon to remain silent about the whole affair until the day they die) lie in wait to open them, count every vote, filter out the ones for the BNP (the vast majority, I'll be bound), replace them with votes for the three (so-called!) “main” parties, reseal the boxes and drive them at breakneck speed to the “official” count. As we know from Barking & Dagenham, this entire operation would only have taken a few minutes. Bloody fast workers, those handpicked lefty Council Staff.

The Other Parties Had Billboards

Because, as anyone who knows anything about modern political campaigning will tell you, nothing, and I mean nothing, wins hearts and minds like a big poster of a fat bloke in a cheap suit leering like someone who wants to rape your cat. As amply proven in Barking and Dagenham.

Where Was The Truth Truck?

As a seasoned observer of Democracy's Rich Pageant, I can authoritatively say that nothing swings an election like a second-hand lorry with a poster and a loudspeaker. So where was it? No doubt there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, Mr Griffin wouldn't raise thirty grand from his Members to buy a Brand New Lorry and then not use it at every available opportunity, would he?

People Voted For Other Parties

There's just no pleasing some people, is there? You give them a shabbily racist party run by a crook who would just as likely sell his own family for cosmetics testing as hand over the Accounts, putting up a candidate with all the polish, easy charm and quick-witted electoral nouse of Arthur Mullard on a particularly slow day, and STILL they won't vote for you.

What do they want? Real politics?

(Please Note: These same excuses may also be used for the forthcoming failure in Barnsley Central.)

BNP's Griffin Adams Corbett Adams to stand in Oldham East by-election (possibly)

There are times when I worry about Nick Griffin and his happy band of idiots. On the one hand, they claim to be able to run an entire country, while on the other they are clearly unable to organise a piss-up in a pub.

Take the coming Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, called following the eviction of former Labour MP Phil Woolas for telling porkies about one of his opponents. Seeing an opportunity to get his ghastly face before the public again (and seemingly unconcerned at the bewilderment of his Euro-constituents, to whom he is expected to have some commitment) Nick Griffin promptly announced that he was intending to stand at the invitation, he claimed, of the local BNP branch. Though not according to the people in the BNP who communicate with us, who claim that he had parachuted himself in, in the same way that he did in Barking at the General Election, where he won a derisory 4,916 votes despite a full-on campaign in the constituency.

Presumably Griffin has realised that standing and losing in every seat in the country is not likely to enhance whatever credibility he thinks he has, because just a couple of days after the party announced his candidacy, rumour suggested that he had changed his mind and that Derek Adams, a favourite of the idiotic Clive Jefferson and a stooge candidate in the most recent (and most farcical) BNP leadership election, was to stand instead, to the fury of the local group.

Just a day later, long-time activist and liaison to BNP-friendly far-right groups in Germany, Chris Beverley, wrote on his Morley Patriot blog;

'I was in Oldham this afternoon with Andrew Brons and two Leeds activists to help with an activity in the town connected with the upcoming by-election in the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency...Our candidate in the election is long-term local activist Anita Corbett who has stood for election in Oldham on a number of occasions.'

Now, a mere two days after this announcement, former BNP elections officer Eddy Butler has further news for us. He writes;

'Clive Jefferson would seem to have got his way and has ran roughshod over the local branch and imposed Derek Adams as the BNP candidate in the forthcoming Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. I expect Derek Adams to be announced as the candidate at the press conference due to be held later today (Monday).

It appears that Clive believes that UKIP will out poll the BNP which is why he persuaded Nick Griffin not to stand. It is also apparent that neither Clive Jefferson nor Nick Griffin trust the local officers and activists in Oldham which is why they are imposing Derek Adams.

Clive Jefferson is busy upsetting everyone who he sees as getting in his way. There are a number of senior officers who he is busy denigrating. That is how he operates.'

Generally speaking, when it comes to having a pop at Griffin or Jefferson, Butler tends to be on target. And if true, how embarrassing for Griffin's fellow BNP Euro MEP Andrew Brons, who was out campaigning on Saturday with Chris Beverley and Anita Corbett in the latter's bid to take the seat.

Personally, I don't think Griffin has backed off from the seat because of any threat by UKIP or anyone else. Rather, it's that the BNP's disastrous financial situation has got in the way and the party can't afford to get a decent campaign up and running. This is more or less confirmed by Butler, who pointed out in a post on his blog yesterday;

'Most printers used to dealing with such orders have not been paid following the last election. Several of our most reliable printers are taking the BNP to court over unpaid invoices involving in total six figure sums...In short there will be a major problem in getting the leaflets printed in time.'

So who is actually going to stand for the BNP in this entirely unwinnable seat? A local candidate with no leaflets or a leafletless stooge parachuted in by a moron? Either way, it should be a laugh for us.

BNP leader Nick Griffin to stand in Oldham East byelection

Far-right figurehead is latest candidate to confirm bid for seat left empty following Phil Woolas court case

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, will contest the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection, the far-right party confirmed today. Griffin, who currently serves as MEP for the North West, is the latest candidate to confirm his bid to enter the race for the seat left empty by Labour's Phil Woolas.

Judges ordered a rerun of the constituency election after ruling last month at a specially convened court that Woolas had lied to win his seat in May by 103 votes, exploiting racial tensions in order to defeat Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins.

Watkins took Woolas to court under the rarely used section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, claiming that the outcome was influenced by Labour leaflets making false allegations in an effort to sway the white vote in the constituency by wrongly accusing Watkins of wooing Islamist extremists and of not condemning threats of violence.

Woolas was stripped of his seat and banned from standing for election for three years, in the first such judgment for 99 years. He was subsequently expelled by the Labour party and earlier this month failed in an appeal at the high court against the decision.

The Labour party is expected to move a writ in the new year confirming the byelection date. Oldham East is a three-way marginal and the election will see the Lib Dems and Conservatives fighting against each other at the polls for the first time since going into coalition together in May.

The Conservatives today announced that Kashif Ali, who came third in the constituency at the May 2010 election, will stand again.

At the weekend Labour selected Debbie Abrahams, while Watkins will stand again for the Lib Dems.

Griffin's decision to stand comes after a humiliating showing for his party at the general election, when the BNP failed to win a single parliamentary seat at the general election, despite fielding more than 300 candidates.

The BNP leader stood in Barking, where he came third after polling just 4,916 votes despite a sustained campaign in the constituency.

BNP candidate Alwyn Stott came fourth in Oldham East at the general election, with 5.7% of the vote.

The decision by the BNP to field its leader in the race comes on the day that the party came under the spotlight for breaking electoral law in 2008 by "failing to keep accounting records sufficient to explain, with reasonable accuracy, the financial position of the party at the time".

The Electoral Commission said the party was guilty of a "clear failure" to keep accurate financial records for 2008, adding that it was "frustrating" that it could not impose a penalty on the party because the law at the time did not allow it.

Guardian

Griffin Vs Hodge: The Case of the Century?

So. Nick Griffin is going to attempt to have Margaret Hodge thrown out of Parliament, a la Phil Woolas, over her statement that the BNP would chuck people out of aircraft.

Good luck, Cyclops.

Oscar Wilde made a similar tactical error, as I recall, when he, as just about the Gayest Man in England, attempted to sue the Marquis of Queensbury for calling him, well, “Gay”. (It should be noted that John Barrowman and Peter Tatchell, dressed as Julian and Sandy, coming out of a performance of La Cage Aux Folles hand in hand singing an Abba Medley could never be even a fraction as Gay as was Oscar Wilde, circa 1895.)

Although I don't have anything approaching the same vast legal knowledge and judicial education as m'learned friend (my entire legal experience being largely confined to a week's jury service in the 1980's and once seeing an am-dram production of “Witness for the Prosecution”...), even I can spot one or two weaknesses in Arsehole of the Bailey's case.

First up, unless Cyclops has access to hitherto undreamed-of technology, the whole enterprise would seem to be a non-starter anyway: Such actions can only be brought by petition before the Election Court within 21 days of the disputed Poll. Given the BNP's entertaining record with technology, I'd guess that time travel is still beyond them. For Christ's sake, keeping a website up and running is beyond them much of the time.

Then there's the matter of a small Point of Law.

Phil Woolas was turfed out of Parliament because he “knowingly made a false statement”. Given Griffin's past statements on such matters (including the fairly pertinent “Drop them out of a plane somewhere over Africa. I don't really care” and the ever-popular “I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya.”), I'd guess that Mrs Hodge would be perfectly justified in arguing that she quite reasonably believed her statement to be true.

Besides which, it only takes a few minutes browsing the comments of the Rank and File of the BNP's Membership (a group it takes less time to browse through every day...) on various comments boards and fora, to find even more insane, reprehensible and murderous statements. And, as Cyclops is so fond of saying (although he clearly believes anything but), the BNP is its Members...

Now then. I'm no cynic, but it occurs to me that Cyclops might even be seeing this opportunity as just another grubby little moneymaking exercise. An astonishing accusation to level at such a model of fiscal probity and Presbyterian thrift as Griffin, I know, but the comments from the assorted cretins on Green Arrow's site, among others,(is there such a thing as the opposite of a Brains Trust?) show that there are still people in this world gullible enough to fall for it. “I will donate with joy in my heart to the costs of this case against the perversion of democracy” says “Theoderic” (the famous King of Italy), while “Robert Weale” adds (and very cogently, too, considering that English is evidently his second language) “About time too, beg, borrow and get donating it's time we fought these dispicable characters through the courts...”.

(Note to self: Must find a way of letting these people know about my guaranteed moneymaking opportunity involving myself, their bank details and a secret Nigerian account containing a vast fortune...)

How much to launch such an action, do you reckon? £50,000? £100,000? Work out the cost of a Croatian Villa and add 10% for luck? Obviously, he's going to want to hire a crack team of legal experts to mount the action, so he'll need as much as his loyal band of followers can afford.

And such a price would be cheap, he'll tell the poor mugs - given that his assured victory in such a case would surely be greater than Agincourt, El Alamein, Trafalgar and The Battle of Minas Tirith combined.

Of course, if the Case were to fall at the first hurdle – or even in the changing room – his Donors would still be happy in the knowledge that their hard-earned money had gone to a Higher Cause (In much the same way as Mel Brooks' “The Producers” revolves around Max Bialystock's scheme of raising many times the cost of a Broadway Show guaranteed to close on the first night and pocketing the change)...

In fact, Griffin's doing quite nicely for fundraising opportunities these days: He's also announced his intention to stand in Phil Woolas' old seat.

Given that the discrepancy between what he had claimed would be spent on the May General Election and what has actually been owned up to (late, as usual) was a mere £470,000, I'd guess that the hapless goons of the BNP will find they've raised a small fortune, only to be rewarded by the spectacle of their Glorious Leader yelling at passers-by from the Truth Truck (if Dowson hasn't taken it with him), and handing out leaflets knocked out on a Gestetner and a John Bull Printing Kit (because surely no Printer who'd actually like to get paid will touch them now) between stuffing his face with the ever-present bacon rolls and slabs of cake.

Maybe this flurry of activity from Cyclops is just an attempt to keep his profile up among his dwindling band of worshippers. Or maybe it's the last throw of a desperate man (it's always interesting to remember that some of the great conmen, from Horatio Bottomley and Robert Maxwell to the board of Enron, actually increased their criminality as things went pear-shaped...).

Whatever the reason; at least we get to keep laughing at Griffin's antics into the New Year.

If Griffin Were To Stand In Oldham...

There's a rumour afoot that Griffin intends to muscle his way into the standing in Oldham and Saddleworth if it turns out that there will be a By-Election resulting from Phil Woolas being turfed out of his seat.

Lancaster Unity can now (thanks to our highly sophisticated, deep-cover network of Moles and MI5-sponsored Informants), exclusively reveal the first draft of Cyclops' Patented Multi-Use Election Address...

To the Voters of (Kieghley / Barking & Dagenham / Oldham East).
(Delete Where Applicable)

Fellow Patriots:

As a proud (Yorkshireman / Cockney / Mancunian), born and bred, it has long been a cherished ambition of mine to represent the good people of (Kieghley / Barking & Dagenham / Oldham East) at a Parliamentary level.

Many's the night I have whiled away with an excellent pint of (Theakstons / Fullers / Hydes), after a tasty dinner of (Yorkshire Pudding and Wensleydale / Eel Pie and Mash / Lancashire Hotpot and Barm Cakes); perhaps leading my fellow (Yorkshiremen / Cockneys / Mancunians) in a rousing chorus of (“On Ilkla Moor Baht 'At” / “Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner” / “Wonderwall”) to end the evening.

Wearing my (Flat Cap / Pearly Suit / Donnay Leisurewear), I will often stroll over the (Moors / Docklands / Canal Towpaths), pondering the great questions: “What can I do to help my fellow (Tykes / Cockneys / Mancunians)?”, or “How can I make (Kieghley / Barking & Dagenham / Oldham East) a better place?”, and “How much do my fellow (Tykes / Cockneys / Mancunians) earn, and what are they worth in terms of disposable income and potential donations?”.

As busy as I am, I occasionally get the chance to watch an episode of my favourite Soap Opera; (“Emmerdale” / “Eastenders” / “Coronation Street”), and I find myself wondering “How would (Alan Turner / Ian Beale / Ken Barlow) react to the current state of things in (Kieghley / Barking and Dagenham / Oldham East)?” And I find myself picturing his exclaiming (“By 'Eck!” / “Gor Blimey!” / “Skennin' like a whelk!)” at the picture of a damaged, neglected and Islamificationalised (Kieghley / Barking and Dagenham / Oldham East) spread before them.

Then I like to think of how I, Nicholas Horatio Steerforth Ironsides Griffin, can help, and my thoughts leap immediately to the Voters of (Kieghley / Barking and Dagenham / Oldham East), and how their (Yorkshire Nouse / East End Spirit of the Blitz / Mancunian Generosity) can best contribute to my (Campaign to Save Yorkshire / Campaign to Save the East End / Pension Plan).
There is hope, so long as you vote for me in the forthcoming Election. My solemn pledge to you is this: Make me your MP and my inherent (Yorkshire Grit / Cockney Wiles / Mancunian Ducking and Diving) will ensure a great future for (Kieghley / Barking and Dagenham / Me).