Is the BNP becoming Cumbria's cup of tea?
The far-right party is on its best behaviour in the North-west – and may win its first seat in the European Parliament. But scratch the surface, says Paul Vallely, and the familiar anti-immigrant message shines through
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Alistair Barbour is out canvassing in Carlisle city centre and he is being pretty well-received on the doorstep. In one sense there is nothing surprising about that. The 43-year-old gas-fitter is a local man. With two teenage kids and two step-children, his background is similar to those of the people on whose doors he is knocking. And he has a rough-edged charm and a good sense of when to make an easy joke, or a swift political jibe – or a diplomatic retreat when the door is opened by a bleary-eyed woman in a pink dressing gown who announces: "I'm on nights."
One door is slammed in his face as soon as the woman who opens it catches a glimpse of his rosette bearing the words British National Party. And another voter refuses to take the election envelope he proffers, saying: "I work for the NHS." But most doors are opened and Mr Barbour is given a friendly reception.
For the past six weeks, he has been pounding the streets full-time, talking to the ward's 3,500 voters ahead of a by-election this Thursday. His agenda is restoring weekly bin collections, repairing broken streetlights, filling potholes in the road, tackling litter in the street and cleaning up the dog dirt. But of those who are pleased to see him, almost all want to talk about something else: the BNP's policy of housing British people before immigrants and giving pensioners priority on hospital waiting lists.
"I've always voted Labour," says Winifred Elliott, 80, opening the door of her terraced house on Wigton Road, "but look at the state of the country. Immigration is the main thing and Labour have made that worse. I'll definitely vote for you."
"We're too small a country to take this number of immigrants," says Thomas Brecken, 85, "and as for the EU we definitely want to be out of it."
"It's really great that you are giving the area so much attention," says Amanda Fisher, 25, a programme support manager in the NHS, who sports a curved bar through her lower lip. "No one else bothers to come round. With all my piercings, I know about stereotypes and it's clear that what you stand for is nothing like the stereotype people have of you."
These are far from isolated views. At the last election in west Cumbria two months ago, the BNP came within 16 votes of overturning a majority of more than 1,000 in what used to be one of the safest Labour county council seats in the region, in the Kells and Sandwith ward of Whitehaven. Revealingly, the party drew support from both the massive run-down council estate of Kells and the village of Sandwith, a previously Tory area.
The BNP's electoral success there is part of a nationwide shift in fortunes. Earlier this month, the party captured a Labour council seat in Sevenoaks in Kent and had a near miss in the London borough of Bexley. It took 28 per cent of the vote at Thringstone in Leicestershire. And it is now beefing up its electoral machine across the country ahead of the local elections in June.
Most significantly, its national chairman, Nick Griffin, has a realistic chance of becoming the BNP's first MEP in the European elections the same day in June. He is standing in the North West region, which includes Cumbria but stretches down through Liverpool and Manchester to Chester. The BNP polled 6.8 per cent there last time. Under the proportional representation system, an increase to just 8 per cent could secure him a seat. The party, which got 40 per cent of the vote in Kells, could well achieve the breakthrough that would give it access to £250,000 from the public purse in salaries, resources and office costs. It could gain an MEP in the Yorkshire and Humberside region too. An extra 40 voters in every ward could be sufficient.
So what has brought about this change in the fortunes of the BNP, which was once regarded as an electoral no-hoper?
"Just three or four years ago when we gave out anti-immigration leaflets people wouldn't take them or just ripped them up," admits Clive Jefferson, the party's North West elections officer. "But we have offered the electorate a viable alternative, common-sense policies and candidates who are normal people who live amongst them. They can see that we're not tattooed skinhead thugs. And a lot of people agree with what we're saying."
The evidence on the streets of Carlisle seems to bear out that contention. At one point, Mr Barbour was stopped across the road from the Cumberland Infirmary by a middle-aged woman. "Until recently I thought the BNP were just a bunch of racist swine," Mandy Foster, 42, an office systems administrator told me. "But I knew Alistair, who lives locally, and knew he was a good bloke and thought if he had got involved it was worth taking a look at. When you look at the way people can't get jobs, everything is crime-ridden and there is nothing for the kids on the street to do, the BNP are the only party who are honest about all that. I think the party has really changed."
But has it? The night before I had travelled to Whitehaven to a gathering of BNP supporters in a pub in the ward in which the party's candidate, Simon Nicholson, 35, in December recorded the highest percentage ever polled by the BNP.
His agenda too had been resolutely local. "I stood because I was fed up of the way Labour had treated us because they had always got 80 per cent of the vote in Kells," he says. "It is a sink estate and yet it never got the attention they gave to marginals. It was 20 years since anyone knocked on my door and the kids' swings were getting wrecked, there were potholes in the road, dog shit everywhere and anti-social kids hanging around with no one doing anything about them. And there were other issues like paedophiles." About 20 of his supporters had gathered in the pub. What other issues, I asked, and set off a cataract of indignation from the assembled company: "British jobs going to immigrants";; "My dad is a Normandy veteran; I want the borders back that he fought for"; "The teddy bear called Mohamed"; "My wife was spat at at a bus-stop in an Asian area"; "The higher birth-rates of Asian families are putting stress on maternity services".
The emphasis was more on what they are against rather than what they are for, though they were keen on capital punishment for murderers of children and policemen. A 94-year-old ex-paratrooper called Gordon Savage, who had fought at Arnhem, wanted the EU "to give our fishing industry back to our fishermen".
One of the things they were most against was Islam. Preachers of hate, veiled women, and the dual allegiance of British Muslims like the "Leeds lads who bombed London" drew particular criticism as did the Archbishop of Canterbury's statement that the advent of some sharia law in Britain was inevitable: "The Church of England is all Marxist rubbish with no traditional values left in it"; "I'm not really a religious person but the fact that we can't celebrate our own religion in our own country annoys me."
But most scorn was reserved for the Labour Government: "Gordon Brown is throwing billions at the banks but can't help the old people dying in Whitehaven because they can't afford to heat their houses"; "HBOS was worth £240bn but they can't find £2,000 a month for my mate's cancer drugs."; "Brown is just a Conservative, protecting the banks and privatising the Post Office."
"And they've just spent £160,000 on a private jet to bring that bloody black over here," says one supporter referring to the repatriation of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released from Guantanamo Bay. "That's enough of that language," admonishes Mr Jefferson. "You're right in what you say but be careful of your language when there's a journalist here."
But if attitudes remain unchanged, the tactics are not. Next day, back in Carlisle, Mr Jefferson teams up with Mr Barbour and two other BNP activists. "In 2006, when we first stood in Cumbria, we got 88 votes in a county council seat," he says. "At the last by-election we got 40.2 per cent of the vote – the largest percentage we've ever had. We are learning fast."
The change is down to Mr Griffin. "He has modernised the party and made it electable," he says. "We have shifted from marches and protests, which are merely expressions of anger and frustration, to elections through which we can actually achieve change. We're organised; we're committed; we believe in what we're doing."
Mr Barbour is so committed that he has taken six weeks off work to canvas Castle ward in Carlisle. By voting day, each home will have received 10 BNP leaflets or newspapers. It is paying dividends. At the end of Wigton Road a middle-aged woman opens her door. "My old dad always said to have nothing to do with the BNP," Maureen McArthur told him. "But I've read all your stuff and I have to say I agree with a lot of it. I'll definitely think about voting for you."
Those for whom the idea of the British National Party as a part of mainstream politics has always been unthinkable would do well to start thinking about it.
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Comments
Thanks for taking the time to research and write this article. I believe you actually may have the honour of writing the first unbiased piece about the BNP in any mainstream media.
The author has violated the censorship Guidelines
of the EU funded common purpose 'charity' MediaWise Trust,
by not including words such as 'odius' or 'fascist' before the name BNP,
and not portraying them in a suffiently negative light,
as required by the State.
The author, having violated the States censorship rules,
exposes himself to the possibility of being reported to MediaWise for thoughtcrime.
He is being monitered under rule 8, and could face sanctions and expulsion from his job.
Doubleplus ungood.
Of course, it couldn't possibly be, COULD IT, that NuLabours
'PRIOR RESTRAINT' (worst kind of) censorship
violates the most fundamental tenet of democracy--freedom of speech?
DEFINITION: Fascism--when the authority of the State
takes precedence over the rights of the people,
and the State uses it's authority
to squash the rights of the people.
Labour are the fascists, using the State to squash free speech and a free press, and to squash our ancient sovereignty, rights, and liberties.
----------------------------------------
PARTIAL CUT-PASTE FROM NuLabours press censorship quango, MEDIAWISE TRUST:
NUJ guidelines on race reporting
Guidelines ratified by the National Union of Journalists (UK and Ireland) for all its members to follow when dealing with race relations subjects.
Statement on race reporting
1. The NUJ believes that the development of racist attitudes and the growth of fascist parties pose a threat to democracy, the rights of trade union organisations, a free press and the development of social harmony and well-being.
2. The NUJ believes that its members cannot avoid a measure of responsibility in fighting the evil of racism as expressed through the mass media.
3. The NUJ reaffirms its total opposition to censorship but equally reaffirms its belief that press freedom must be conditioned by responsibility and an acknowledgement by all media workers of the need not to allow press freedom to be abused to slander a section of the community or to promote the evil of racism.
4. The NUJ believes the methods and lies of the racists should be publicly and vigorously exposed.
5. The NUJ believes that newspapers and magazines should not originate material which encourages discrimination on grounds of race or colour, as expressed in the NUJ's rule book and code of conduct.
6. The NUJ recognises the right of members to withhold their labour on grounds of conscience where employers are providing a platform for racist propaganda.
7. The NUJ believes that editors should ensure that coverage of race stories should be placed in a balanced context.
8. The NUJ will continue to monitor the development of media coverage in this area and give support to members seeking to enforce the above aims.
Reporting racist organisations
When interviewing representatives of racist organisations or reporting meetings or statements or claims, journalists should carefully check all reports for accuracy and seek rebutting or opposing comments. The anti-social nature of such views should be exposed.
Do not sensationalise by reports, photographs,. film or presentation the activities of racist organisations.
Seek to publish or broadcast material exposing the myths and lies of racist organisations and their anti-social behaviour.
Do not allow the letters column or 'phone-in' programmes to be used to spread racial hatred in whatever guise.
It should be "their customs" not "there customs". If you feel that you want to have authority over the customs of other people, perhaps you might like learn to spell in your own language first? It is not your country, it is our country. Didn't your mother teach you to share?
"the labour government have takenall these things form the indiginos people of Britain the government and the pc brigade are racist towards british white people, i have voted labour all my life but no more it's BNP fo me"
Again, the word is "indigenous", not "indiginos". If you love your culture so much, perhaps you wouldn't mind treating it, and other people, with a bit more respect?
It's interesting that the label 'racist' is applied only to white nationalism.
No one calls black, brown, or yellow nationalism racist--Fjordman
------------------------------
Everyday, people stand up to support the right of...
Tibetans, to resist subjugation by the Chinese and
Palestinians, to resist subjugation by the Israelis and
Israelis, to resist subjugation by the Arabs and
Kurds, to resist subjugation by the Turks and Arabs and
Albanians, to resist subjugation by the ethnic Serbs and
Georgians, to resist subjugation by the ethnic Russians,
Moras, to resist subjugation by the Filipinos and
Aborigines, to resist subjugation by the white Australians and
American Indians, to resist subjugation by the white Americans and
Kashmiris, to resist subjugation by the Indians and
Zimbabweians, to resist subjugation by Rhodesians and
Uighers, to resist subjugation by the Han and
Sami, to resist subjugation by the Swedes and
Basques, to resist subjugation by the Italians and
Bangledeshis, to resist subjugation by the Pakistanis and
Indians and Africans to resisted subjugation by the British and
...then, those same people
turn around
and demand that
the British should stand down and let our culture be subjugated because to preserve WHITE BRITISH culture is racist.
Has it occured to any of you multiculti folks out there that it makes NO SENSE to support multiculturalism if no other groups support it?
You're setting up your grandchildren to be subjugated by others, i.e. it's pointless for the sheep to agree to be vegetarians if the wolf has other ideas, eh?
I hope the BNP do very well in June, early indications suggest they will. Maybe a few BNP MEPs would convince papers like The Independent to report more fairly on the BNP without adding the obvious 'anti-BNP' stance to every article they write on them. The truth about the BNP is very different to what the media portray and I just hope more people realise that by doing their own research.
Good luck to both the BNP candidates in their upcoming by-elections. I don't live in the North West so I don't have the opportunity to vote for Mr Griffin this June, but I shall lend the BNP my vote in the South-East.
The problems in Palestine are a consequence of immigration and can be traced back to 1882 when the first mass immigration of Jews entered the country (actually only 25,000). It was more than 60 years later when the Jews announced the state of Israel and they have been fighting ever since.
The protesters in London were mainly Asian, African and Middle Eastern Muslims who themselves are immigrants in our land. Isn't it ironic that this set of immigrants see no problem in creating violent protest in our country about the behaviour of another set of immigrants elsewhere.
The British people are at last waking up to to the mass invasion of our country. The BNP has my vote.
Not any more
After reading their website they are answering the fears of many voters.
The main parties are so ridden with greed and incompetence that the BNP are now seen as a viable alternative expressing the will of many, sick of the mismanagement wrought by Westminster
The Nazis started out sounding reasonable, and polled well in the early 1930s in Germany. Then when they felt strong enough they grabbed the levers of power, and the rest as they say, is history.
I wouldn't trust the BNP any more than I would trust a snake in the grass. I distrust nationalists, and we are such a mongrel race, whom do you term as the "indiginous population"? If you were being really pedantic about it, you'd have to say the Welsh and Cornish - the Celts who were here before anyone else. As a product of the Norman conquest, I'm definitely an illegal immigrant and should be sent back to Normandy.
As far as I'm concerned the BNP is an insult to all those named on our war memorials. Don't be fooled by the reasonable veneer. They are wolves in sheeps clothing. These fascists don't have real answers to complex problems. Elect them at your peril.
Mongrel is a derogatory and dismissive label, especially when applied by those who seek to submerge and destroy our cultural identity. Of course we have mixed ancestry, but this in no way makes us 'mongrels' , the Angles, Jutes, Saxons came from different areas of the Nordic lands, and their cultures where not dissimilar, the same breed but from different regions. The Celts also are of European origin.
The influx of Normans although highly significant to England's history was of no great amount, although the term invasion is used we could hardly call it over run can we because rather than speaking French the indigenous population continued to speak English. The immigration of Huguenots, Jews and Dutch did not overturn the basic English culture but added to it to a small extent.
There is not one major industrial nation, perhaps the exception being Japan, that can call itself nationally pure genetically so in fact the term 'Mongrel Race' could be levelled at anyone, why it is perceived that only England is a 'Mongrel Nation', is a totally misguided conception perpetrated by the left, who are indoctrinated into believing that race is an 'artificial construct' and that even gender differentiation is 'not important' in the Marxist dystopia that they are attempting to inflict upon us.
I shall certainly be voting for the BNP, I deeply resent the engineered mass immigration to these islands by people from a totally incompatible background. This has nothing to do with race,I have no wish to live in either an Islamic Caliphate, a communist totalitarian superstate or nightmarish combination of both!
Of course if they were to call themselves the ENP the racist accusations would rain down like a monsoon , the have enough trouble resisiting the racist slander as it is , just standing up for whites , but stand up for white english people ? Unthinkable!!
That said they get my vote , anyone who thinks "British" people are important as a priority over other issues is OK with me. And if extremism is a problem think how extreme the Labour party has become , they are as far away from the electorate as they can get. The balance needs to be restored and to get it back needs an opposite force of equally extreme policies, and if you wish to call redressing the ballance racism , then that's what it shall be.
But now we live in a country where Harriet HarPerson banned an MP from abroad from coming to show a video in parliament because 'lord' ahmed threatened to bring 10 000 muslims to the Houses of Parliament and cause strife....
I want my country back. And I want rid of our proto-Police state.
Labour, conservative, lib dem? None of them listen. Normally I would vote green in this situation but I suspect that wouldn't have the same effect.
So the BNP and nick griffin are getting my north-west region vote come june. If that's what it takes to make them listen.
You know how pissed off people are getting when they start to notice that their hard earned pensions are mightily screwed by one of their own - the Gordon the Great Robbing Hood. Then when you lose your savings and your job because you - Gordon the Great - were asleep at the wheel.
Yes - are are angry enough to kick you - and that kick will come in the shape of the BNP. They are unlikely to win but their voice is growing louder - and it is being listened to. So wake up Gordon...it's not a dream.
Appears to me the governments racism toward the indigenous population is beginning to rub off on the Inde...Shame on you
What a pity you cannot or will not see this for what it is, the introduction and encouragement of a plethora of different and sometimes conflicting cultural dynamics that systematically not only dilutes the indigenous social culture, but also divides and weakens society. And failing to remove the violent and threatening adds fear.
This is the well-known Divide and Rule principle being deliberately applied here.
This is also deliberate social genocide. Condemned at international level.
To use PC language to try and manipulate the validity of democracy in action is pretty low, to pick up the government mantra, would place the Inde in the sewer with them, especially given there is a mass demonstration taking place in London today about 'Putting People First'.............
Maybe these articles writers should get out more
Yes, but why do journalists not apply the same rule to statements from anti BNP groups like UAF and Searchlight?
Newspapers routinely regurgitate word for word whatever these groups say, even when it's nonsense - eg they say the BNP are "Nazis", "fascists", "haters"or "following Hitler" or other ludicrous and unsubstantiated statements. Do journalists ever ask for proof or substantiation of such statements?
No.
The best part of all this is that over the years, dispassionate observers - like me - of this process are gleefully watching the media and their hacks digging a great big hole for themselves. Keep digging, it's hillarious!!
But, I have to take issue with this:
"My dad is a Normandy veteran; I want the borders back that he fought for"
We didn't fight WW2 in isolation, to create a British enclave off the coast of Europe. We had Asians, Africans, Europens, black, white, brown, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish...all fought for king and country, many died for this land the BNP want to steal off the people. We fought WW2 to allow ALL the people of Europe to be free from a fascist tyrant. This tyrant believed layabouts should be made to work; he believed in capital punishment; he believed in tossing a few scraps to the working class at the expense of the rich; he believed in halting immigration; he believed ultimatily in making ceratin groups scapegoats for all his countries problems. He said all the things a bankrupt country full of angry people wanted to hear, but his message was very clear right from the start. His message was based on fear and hate. But, most of all, my grandfather did not fight one fascist tyrant to allow hate, fear and fascism take hold in the land he loved. He fought for a UK that was free for all, not just "indiginous" people, which is spin for "white people".
The BNP are tapping in on peoples fears; people are attacking easy vulnerable targets like they always have - Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans, Irish. Nu BNP has simply done a nu Labour, tarted itself up, sold out to the marketeers and PR groups (don't mention race guys) and embraced spin. But Nu BNP still hold dear to it's core idea, and that is based on hate, and it knows, fear sells.
"Once elected in any numbers, they tend to fall out which is what has happened in places like Burnley.
The Nazis started out sounding reasonable, and polled well in the early 1930s in Germany. Then when they felt strong enough they grabbed the levers of power, and the rest as they say, is history."
Very true: the lesson of history in dealing with the ultra-Right is that the mad dogs would really far rather be biting one another, and it's only on rare occasions that they overcome their mutual loathing and form a pack for long enough to attack the rest of us. So delay and harrass them, and before long they'll start falling out with one another. That's certainly been the history of the French Front National - and there are good grounds for supposing that if German democrats had held the line a bit longer against the Nazis early in 1933 they too would soon have fallen to quarreling among themselves (they'd not done too well in the November '32 elections and strains were already appearing between the Hitler Nazis and the Strasser ones).
I have to say that the few BNP members I've met and talked with in recent years all struck me as people with - how shall I put this? - serious mental-health issues. The smiling front very soon drops and they start banging on about what really interests them: Muslims, "cosmopolitan financiers", gas chambers and the rest of it. In a serious recession they'll certainly pick up votes among the disgracefully neglected formerly-Labour, formerly-working class voters, and they'll try the community-politics ploy. But the nature of the beast hasn't changed and don't be fooled. It's going to be a rough few years - but they must not pass!
I agree with them and your smearing them as mentally deficient will just allow the BNP to pick up even more votes. Understand that your attitude is exactly why the Working Class are giving up on the main Parties.
However, it will only be sustainable if a cradle of ideational nationalism is placed beneath it, and as yet no such cradle exists. Why is that important? Because big ideas shape all our lives in ways that we rarely stop to think about. Without them, no political movement will "change everything at once". For example, the moral foundations for the BNP's work need to be built on natural rights and genetic interests, natural justice and the freedoms of speech and association. Everything political, in the end, traces back to philosophy.
The work of intellectualising the ethno-nationalist challenge is gearing up. The London New Right may prove significant in this respect, and two American-based websites, the Occidental Quarterly and majorityrights.com.
We are, in lots of ways, living in interesting times, and the most interesting thing about them is that it is not inevitable that European Man will be swept out of his ancient homelands by the greed of the elites and the fecundity of the Third World.
That's such a powerful self explanatory statement do i need to expand further.
To say it's because the BNP actually offer a viable vision is absurd, but that's the reality the dissaffected in this country are slowely manifesting.
To say it's a symptom of decades of centre right free market based politics that has saught to systematically dismantle the identity of society & base it on an aggressive sense of Nationalism imposed from the top down rather than respect, preservation and development of the roots for those at the bottom is much closer to the truth.
It's troubling because New Labour are so corrupted by their own double standards and the Tory's, though wet to the point of being almost liberal remain essentially tory & from the domain of extreme previldge in outlook and neither offer credible identification to the now dispossed (working classes) nameless underclass.
Either we live in a democracy or we dont. Protest is part of democracy. Minor parties who challenge the cosy political consensus are part of democracy. It enables the people to threaten political parties that ignore them. So existence of BNP should be welcomed as the only route available currently to frighten the scum who are leading this country and shock the useless official opposition .
Instead of people fearing the government the government should fear the people.
If you insist on misrepresenting the facts, how do we your readers ever know when you have printed the truth?
By its economic policies the BNP is a Socialist party. That puts them alongside Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in terms of industrial policy.
In terms of social policy, yes, they are Nationalist as opposed to New Labour Internationalist Socialist. To illustrate this better;
Brown will come out with a slogan he thinks will play well with the people who actually vote his party into power.
"British jobs for British workers", knowing full well that his internationalist Socialist connections with the European Union prohibit him from carrying out such a promise. Brown deliberately lied to his constituency.
"British Jobs for British workers" was a cynical play by Brown for the BNP vote. Why? How easy is it for socialists of one flavour (international Socialists) to jump ship to Socialism of another flavour (Nationalist Socialists). "British jobs for British workers", is a straight forward play to arrest the haemmorrhage of Labour support to the BNP.
As people reject the manifold lies of the Labour establishment. "Spin" is one such lie, pretending a lie is not a lie just an alternative version of the truth. People are sick and tired of 'Spin', but it is all New Labour know.
The tragedy is, the BNP is not the answer to the problem. Socialism is a lie, no matter what form it is presented. The Tory party is no better, infiltrated as it is with people like Ken Clarke and the other Euro socialists.
Once upon a time the Tory Party might have provided a haven for the disaffected, but not any more. Since Cameron took the party to what is laughingly called the 'centre ground' but in reality is simply New Labour Socialist territory, potential Tory voters see no reason to support the Tories.
In short, (right of centre) Tory voters have no where to go.
Whereas the threat to Labour comes from the BNP and is why Gordon Brown tried to bamboozle the labour constituency into believing International Socialist New Labour, was really National Socialist BNP but nicer.
To combat these evil bastards we must end Britain's ridiculous policies of multi-culturism which encourage ignorance and separatism and encourage the concept of 'one nation together.'
In the 1970's, as a member of the Anti-Nazi League, we followed the example of the Jews of Cable Street and resorted to violence to combat the National Front. It worked. These people are not interested in only removing 'undesirables' . Their interest is the complete destruction of everything that actually makes this country good and turning into a State not ruled by Parliament but by dictatorship because they know political aims such as theirs can only be realized through totalitarianism.
bedebyes wrote:
Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 09:52 am (UTC)
They are fascists, pure and simple who would think nothing of enacting laws similar to that of Nazi Germany resulting in the destruction of our liberal democracy.
In the 1970's, as a member of the Anti-Nazi League, we followed the example of the Jews of Cable Street and resorted to violence to combat the National Front. It worked.
Is bedebyes so blind that the inherent contradiction between these two excerpts from his post does not occur to him: or is he actually BNP troll intent on revealing the basically anti-democratic nature of the Anti-Nazi League's UAF successors?
Now suddenly Nu Labour wants to get back some of the controls they relinquished so they can win and inflict another 5 years of misery and mayhem? Sorry, the emperor has no new clothes, their day is done and we need the two opposition parties to start coming up with sensible and viable plans to regain what has been lost. They must have the courage and intelligence to remove from the statute books all theses terrible Nu Labour laws which are against our hard won freedoms and common sense.
If they cannot do that then they do not deserve to govern and into this power vacuum will step parties with ideas that do not bear thinking about.