Great news for the Green campaign in Brighton Pavilion. Dr David Bull, celebrity candidate for the Conservatives, has announced he won't be standing. The comments on Conservative Home don't really buy the story, so in the words of some of the posters on there:
"I suspect the Greens may have polled very well in the Euros around this area. May be worth a bet"
"Green gain Brighton Pavilion?"
"In other words, he didn't want to fight the seat any more and the Tories have concocted this "review" so he can bow out without it looking like he's just bogging off."
"This policy review smells like a fig leaf"
26 June 2009
Nasty Nick?
We are very familiar with Lib Dem smear leaflets here in Liverpool, so much so that we keep a tally chart on our own newsletter to keep count. Unfortunately the smear tactic is part of the Lib Dem tactical hierarchy in dealing with a Green electoral challenge.
In St Michaels that has taken the following pattern:
2007 - Green Cllr John Coyne stands for re-election. The Lib Dems try to completely ignore us and pretend we don't exist, to the extent that they reproduce the 2006 result with the Lib Dem and Labour totals, but omitting the Greens who actually finished 2nd. Greens win.
2008 - Largely, the Lib Dems again ignored us, but acknowledged this was between the Greens and the Lib Dems for the seat. They instead emphasised that voting was about who ran the council after 2008. Greens win with an increased share of the vote.
2009 - In the Euro Elections, smear leaflets were delivered in St Michaels, which were rapidly rebutted by us. We keep a record online.
2010? - I think it is fair to say that we are expecting the smearing to continue right up to polling day. We won't get sucked into tit for tat, but every time the Lib Dems go negative, we'll work out a response to be delivered in Wavertree, where a great deal more is at stake for the Lib Dems than just a council seat.
One could be forgiven for thinking this is just the Liverpool Lib Dems, who don't exactly have a glowing reputation even with their colleagues elsewhere. But now we have the Lib Dems opening up a smear campaign against the Greens in Norwich, although clearly they haven't really thought this through.
Lib Dem candidate April Pond sends a letter to the Tory candidate promising to "run a positive campaign", which is subsequently published by the Lib Dem campaign team. Just hours later, the Lib Dems smear the Green candidate - they simply just can't help themselves.
These unfortunate actions coincide with another Nick Clegg visit to Norwich, with Nick (who usually wants to present the Lib Dems in a positive way) forced to say:
"We should and we will run this as a positive campaign, but we also need to be plain and straightforward in explaining the differences between the Liberal Democrats and the other parties."
I think Clegg is embarrassed by the reality of his party's campaign tactics, but he sets the tone. If you tolerate this kind of stuff around the country as acceptable, then you can't be "Nice Nick Clegg".
And why are the Lib Dems so worried? This really isn't about Norwich North, but it is about Norwich South and Brighton Pavilion. Just look at this poll for the byelection:
Tories 34%
Labour 30%
Lib Dems 15%
Greens 14%
This is now about whether the Lib Dems can hold onto third place. If the Greens beat the Lib Dems in a much weaker constituency for us, probably only spending 1/10th of the money, then come the General Election in Norwich South the Lib Dems are out of the running, increasing the prospects of a win for our Deputy Leader Adrian Ramsay.
Norwich South and Brighton Pavilion are both winnable seats for the Greens, and if we were to elect two MPs to Westminster, we would qualify for a fraction of public funding currently shared out between Westminster parties with more than two MPs. A Green group at Westminster is a long term strategic threat to the Lib Dems. Hence their willingness to plumb new political depths in the Norwich North byelection.
In St Michaels that has taken the following pattern:
2007 - Green Cllr John Coyne stands for re-election. The Lib Dems try to completely ignore us and pretend we don't exist, to the extent that they reproduce the 2006 result with the Lib Dem and Labour totals, but omitting the Greens who actually finished 2nd. Greens win.
2008 - Largely, the Lib Dems again ignored us, but acknowledged this was between the Greens and the Lib Dems for the seat. They instead emphasised that voting was about who ran the council after 2008. Greens win with an increased share of the vote.
2009 - In the Euro Elections, smear leaflets were delivered in St Michaels, which were rapidly rebutted by us. We keep a record online.
2010? - I think it is fair to say that we are expecting the smearing to continue right up to polling day. We won't get sucked into tit for tat, but every time the Lib Dems go negative, we'll work out a response to be delivered in Wavertree, where a great deal more is at stake for the Lib Dems than just a council seat.
One could be forgiven for thinking this is just the Liverpool Lib Dems, who don't exactly have a glowing reputation even with their colleagues elsewhere. But now we have the Lib Dems opening up a smear campaign against the Greens in Norwich, although clearly they haven't really thought this through.
Lib Dem candidate April Pond sends a letter to the Tory candidate promising to "run a positive campaign", which is subsequently published by the Lib Dem campaign team. Just hours later, the Lib Dems smear the Green candidate - they simply just can't help themselves.
These unfortunate actions coincide with another Nick Clegg visit to Norwich, with Nick (who usually wants to present the Lib Dems in a positive way) forced to say:
"We should and we will run this as a positive campaign, but we also need to be plain and straightforward in explaining the differences between the Liberal Democrats and the other parties."
I think Clegg is embarrassed by the reality of his party's campaign tactics, but he sets the tone. If you tolerate this kind of stuff around the country as acceptable, then you can't be "Nice Nick Clegg".
And why are the Lib Dems so worried? This really isn't about Norwich North, but it is about Norwich South and Brighton Pavilion. Just look at this poll for the byelection:
Tories 34%
Labour 30%
Lib Dems 15%
Greens 14%
This is now about whether the Lib Dems can hold onto third place. If the Greens beat the Lib Dems in a much weaker constituency for us, probably only spending 1/10th of the money, then come the General Election in Norwich South the Lib Dems are out of the running, increasing the prospects of a win for our Deputy Leader Adrian Ramsay.
Norwich South and Brighton Pavilion are both winnable seats for the Greens, and if we were to elect two MPs to Westminster, we would qualify for a fraction of public funding currently shared out between Westminster parties with more than two MPs. A Green group at Westminster is a long term strategic threat to the Lib Dems. Hence their willingness to plumb new political depths in the Norwich North byelection.
23 June 2009
Interesting Development
This has been talked about for some time, but not actioned.
I'm sure it will provide a suitable headache for a party that relies on a core of racist support.
I'm sure it will provide a suitable headache for a party that relies on a core of racist support.
22 June 2009
Moats, Duck Ponds and Bigoted MEPs
Brighton’s Tories have a cheek. They go on the attack about matters of public record, but have today announced they are sitting down in a Euro Parliamentary group with the Law and Justice Party, who ban gay marches in Poland.
So despite the appalling abuses of the expense system by Tory MPs, Douglas Hogg and Sir Peter Viggers, who respectively put in taxpayer claims for clearing a moat and creating a duck pond island, they have decided to go on the offensive about Green MEP Caroline Lucas’s transparent accounting about what she is paid, what she pays her staff and what she claims as a Euro MP.
You'll also note that Caroline Lucas tops the league table of British MEPs for transparency and amongst other things, attempting to reform the corrupt Brussels system.
They ask if Caroline really needs to employ seven members of staff. Some of these people are part time, and yes, if you want to do a good job of representing people in an area as big as the South East, you need the staff.
The note of the release is almost apologetic, as though they just had to put this on their site. They say much lower down the release that:
“To be fair to Caroline Lucas, all MEPs are entitled to the same amounts and some claim more.”
So which Conservative MEPs opted in to claim a second Euro pension at an exorbitant cost to EU taxpayers? That would be, er, all of them, with the possible exception of Christopher Beazley, who for some reason scores 1 out 3, when 3 out of 3 indicates that you have opted out.
If the Conservatives really do think this line is going to help them win Brighton seats, please do continue. I think what will be much more relevant to the electorate not just in Pavilion where I once lived, but also Kemp Town and Hove, despite a more gay friendly image, when it comes down to the crunch and political manuoevring, they have still been willing to form a political group with homophobes.
So despite the appalling abuses of the expense system by Tory MPs, Douglas Hogg and Sir Peter Viggers, who respectively put in taxpayer claims for clearing a moat and creating a duck pond island, they have decided to go on the offensive about Green MEP Caroline Lucas’s transparent accounting about what she is paid, what she pays her staff and what she claims as a Euro MP.
You'll also note that Caroline Lucas tops the league table of British MEPs for transparency and amongst other things, attempting to reform the corrupt Brussels system.
They ask if Caroline really needs to employ seven members of staff. Some of these people are part time, and yes, if you want to do a good job of representing people in an area as big as the South East, you need the staff.
The note of the release is almost apologetic, as though they just had to put this on their site. They say much lower down the release that:
“To be fair to Caroline Lucas, all MEPs are entitled to the same amounts and some claim more.”
So which Conservative MEPs opted in to claim a second Euro pension at an exorbitant cost to EU taxpayers? That would be, er, all of them, with the possible exception of Christopher Beazley, who for some reason scores 1 out 3, when 3 out of 3 indicates that you have opted out.
If the Conservatives really do think this line is going to help them win Brighton seats, please do continue. I think what will be much more relevant to the electorate not just in Pavilion where I once lived, but also Kemp Town and Hove, despite a more gay friendly image, when it comes down to the crunch and political manuoevring, they have still been willing to form a political group with homophobes.
18 June 2009
Some Good News
There doesn't seem to be much time for the BNP even amongst the other far right groups in the European Parliament. They have failed to get enough support to form a group. This is good news as it means they won't get access to a share of additional funds worth up to a million euros a year.
The Green group in the European Parliament will, on the other hand, be bigger and stronger than it was before the Euro Elections.
The Green group in the European Parliament will, on the other hand, be bigger and stronger than it was before the Euro Elections.
16 June 2009
Migration - Leading the Debate
Quite rightly, the Greens have a liberal policy on migration. You would expect nothing else and it fits with our ethics and our global outlook. We can point to a truly internationalist perspective on this issue, but here in Britain we continue to suffer because of media scaremongering.
I have to highlight this excellent piece from Liberal Conspiracy. Look at the coverage from the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph about “immigration”. It is no surprise that their readerships will be concerned about the issue.
Is Britain a culturally richer and better place today because of migration? Yes. There isn’t a debate on this. We need leadership to challenge the current framing of the media coverage of migration, and as usual it will be up to the Greens to show how it is done. We have an internationalist outlook for climate, for trade and for sport, so why does a section of our international media obsess with a narrow and nationalist view of migration?
You have international cuisine competing with the best of traditional British food. Our steak and ale pies are not under threat because of Mongolian barbeques or vegetable korma. Where do the BNP stand on bananas? I think we need to know. These yellow fruits have been coming to our land for hundreds of years.
This is a business reality, it is international trade, and how those bananas end up on our shelves is an international story. It is often a story of exploitation and misery, with producers unable to afford to send their children to school when international prices drop.
As a Green I’ll argue for Fair Trade ahead of unfettered free marketeering, which records its wealth only in terms of balance sheets, and ignores the human costs of the transactions. We do have to recognise the reality of international trade – people are going to continue to eat bananas. What we must advocate is a respect for all people involved in the supply chain, from producer to consumer, not a narrow nationalism that demands we have the lowest possible cost to British consumers, but screw the consequences for people elsewhere in the world.
We can’t implement global legislation to demand Fair Trade. What we can do is level the playing field a little, in giving European consumers the real story behind the goods they buy. Given the choice, more people will pay a little extra for goods that were not produced in sweat shop conditions. If you really start to think about it, if all that is on offer in the rest of the world is sweat shop working conditions, people will then be more likely to try to migrate to countries with better terms and conditions. The dots join up if you take the time to look at them.
I’ll bring sport as another example. In the English football leagues in the 1970s and 1980s, international players were unusual. A lot of the migrating talent was from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. A brief look at the dominant (and all White) Liverpool side of the early 1980s is revealing:
Clemence, Kennedy, Hansen (S), Lawrenson (I), Neal, Kennedy, Lee, Souness (S), McDermott, Dalgleish (S), Rush (W)
Within a decade, the Liverpool team includes Craig Johnson (Australia) and a Black player, John Barnes.
Fast forward thirty years, and you have a multi ethnic dominant Manchester United team at the end of the 2009 season, with the following internationals:
Van der Saar (Dutch), O’Shea (Ireland), Ferdinand (England), Vidic (Serbia), Park (Korea), Giggs (Wales), Carrick (England), Ronaldo (Portugal), Rooney (England), Berbatov (Bulgaria), Tevez (Argentina)
Does this mean that the English national team is under threat, or that England has somehow been lost? No. We fully accept international player transfers. The Bosman ruling has tipped the scales in favour of bigger and longer contracts for the top players. I’m as appalled as anyone by the huge disparity in wealth between the footballing elite and the working class supporters, but in terms of communicating an alternative to “immigration is bad” attitude that prevails, sport has a key role to play.
The key to understanding migration and challenging the attitudes on the doorstep is connecting with people in terms they understand. During the 2009 European Election campaign on a busy high street, one of our activists was surrounded by five young lads, all first time voters, who were going to vote BNP. I stepped in to talk with them.
The language used by these young men was racist. They said they were voting BNP because of all the “pakis” that walked round their town acting as if they owned it, and the fact that white English people couldn’t get jobs because of all the people coming into the country. I wasn’t going to get a vote out of this conversation, nor would I want to given the language they used, which I challenged each time.
It would have been wrong not to try to at least get some movement or small change to their thinking and let them walk away without something to give them pause for thought. My question to them was a simple one, “Is Amir Khan British?” Even these young men, despite their clearly racist attitudes, would not go as far as the BNP. They said, yes, Amir Khan is British, because he picks up the union flag and fights for Britain.
Their attitude to Asian British people living in their area is not unusual. Communities are often divided, with schools and geography reinforcing those divisions, not breaking them down. These men felt they had something in common with Amir Khan, someone they had never met, because of the way he conducts himself and reaches across racial barriers. But their racist attitudes and pro-BNP views come from what they perceive as injustice against their community.
If you visit Derry in Northern Ireland, you can see the logical conclusion of divided and segregated communities by walking around the city walls. Enclaves of unionist and nationalist communities still exist, divided by huge fences. We don’t want that to ever be repeated in Britain. We cannot allow the hatred and the bitterness that divided communities in Northern Ireland for generations to become a reality in England. The divisions in Northern Ireland are better described as sectarian, rather than racist, but the root causes are the same – a sense of injustice.
So at a root level, challenging and tackling racism means challenging and tackling this sense of injustice. It means that the facts are given about what it means to be Asian, Black or White in terms of your job prospects. It means Green councillors being willing to challenge assertions that one or other community is getting preferential treatment. At the same time we need sporting role models such as Amir Khan, Joleon Lescott or Rio Ferdinand to be there in the public debate to challenge the lies that the BNP peddle about who is or isn’t British.
At a national level, the debate must be moved on. Whenever we talk about “immigration” to Britain, we must do so in the context of global population movements. How many thousands are being forced off land in Bangladesh, how many ten of thousands are fleeing from extremists in Pakistan and how many hundreds of thousands are escaping from genocide in Darfur? We need a global picture of population movements, and we need global stability as a solution to what has so far been painted as an “immigration” problem.
Without a truly international perspective, addressing human rights, environmental degradation and extreme poverty, humans will continue to be pushed around the globe in ever increasing numbers. And without Green leadership on this debate, we are going to be forced to endure ever increasing knee jerk coverage.
Today’s Guardian reports that globally 42 million people had been forced to uproot and move last year. How many more are on the move because of poverty or to escape persecution? How much longer will our national media ignore the reality of the debate on migration and pretend this is an issue that can be stopped at the British border?
I have to highlight this excellent piece from Liberal Conspiracy. Look at the coverage from the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph about “immigration”. It is no surprise that their readerships will be concerned about the issue.
Is Britain a culturally richer and better place today because of migration? Yes. There isn’t a debate on this. We need leadership to challenge the current framing of the media coverage of migration, and as usual it will be up to the Greens to show how it is done. We have an internationalist outlook for climate, for trade and for sport, so why does a section of our international media obsess with a narrow and nationalist view of migration?
You have international cuisine competing with the best of traditional British food. Our steak and ale pies are not under threat because of Mongolian barbeques or vegetable korma. Where do the BNP stand on bananas? I think we need to know. These yellow fruits have been coming to our land for hundreds of years.
This is a business reality, it is international trade, and how those bananas end up on our shelves is an international story. It is often a story of exploitation and misery, with producers unable to afford to send their children to school when international prices drop.
As a Green I’ll argue for Fair Trade ahead of unfettered free marketeering, which records its wealth only in terms of balance sheets, and ignores the human costs of the transactions. We do have to recognise the reality of international trade – people are going to continue to eat bananas. What we must advocate is a respect for all people involved in the supply chain, from producer to consumer, not a narrow nationalism that demands we have the lowest possible cost to British consumers, but screw the consequences for people elsewhere in the world.
We can’t implement global legislation to demand Fair Trade. What we can do is level the playing field a little, in giving European consumers the real story behind the goods they buy. Given the choice, more people will pay a little extra for goods that were not produced in sweat shop conditions. If you really start to think about it, if all that is on offer in the rest of the world is sweat shop working conditions, people will then be more likely to try to migrate to countries with better terms and conditions. The dots join up if you take the time to look at them.
I’ll bring sport as another example. In the English football leagues in the 1970s and 1980s, international players were unusual. A lot of the migrating talent was from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. A brief look at the dominant (and all White) Liverpool side of the early 1980s is revealing:
Clemence, Kennedy, Hansen (S), Lawrenson (I), Neal, Kennedy, Lee, Souness (S), McDermott, Dalgleish (S), Rush (W)
Within a decade, the Liverpool team includes Craig Johnson (Australia) and a Black player, John Barnes.
Fast forward thirty years, and you have a multi ethnic dominant Manchester United team at the end of the 2009 season, with the following internationals:
Van der Saar (Dutch), O’Shea (Ireland), Ferdinand (England), Vidic (Serbia), Park (Korea), Giggs (Wales), Carrick (England), Ronaldo (Portugal), Rooney (England), Berbatov (Bulgaria), Tevez (Argentina)
Does this mean that the English national team is under threat, or that England has somehow been lost? No. We fully accept international player transfers. The Bosman ruling has tipped the scales in favour of bigger and longer contracts for the top players. I’m as appalled as anyone by the huge disparity in wealth between the footballing elite and the working class supporters, but in terms of communicating an alternative to “immigration is bad” attitude that prevails, sport has a key role to play.
The key to understanding migration and challenging the attitudes on the doorstep is connecting with people in terms they understand. During the 2009 European Election campaign on a busy high street, one of our activists was surrounded by five young lads, all first time voters, who were going to vote BNP. I stepped in to talk with them.
The language used by these young men was racist. They said they were voting BNP because of all the “pakis” that walked round their town acting as if they owned it, and the fact that white English people couldn’t get jobs because of all the people coming into the country. I wasn’t going to get a vote out of this conversation, nor would I want to given the language they used, which I challenged each time.
It would have been wrong not to try to at least get some movement or small change to their thinking and let them walk away without something to give them pause for thought. My question to them was a simple one, “Is Amir Khan British?” Even these young men, despite their clearly racist attitudes, would not go as far as the BNP. They said, yes, Amir Khan is British, because he picks up the union flag and fights for Britain.
Their attitude to Asian British people living in their area is not unusual. Communities are often divided, with schools and geography reinforcing those divisions, not breaking them down. These men felt they had something in common with Amir Khan, someone they had never met, because of the way he conducts himself and reaches across racial barriers. But their racist attitudes and pro-BNP views come from what they perceive as injustice against their community.
If you visit Derry in Northern Ireland, you can see the logical conclusion of divided and segregated communities by walking around the city walls. Enclaves of unionist and nationalist communities still exist, divided by huge fences. We don’t want that to ever be repeated in Britain. We cannot allow the hatred and the bitterness that divided communities in Northern Ireland for generations to become a reality in England. The divisions in Northern Ireland are better described as sectarian, rather than racist, but the root causes are the same – a sense of injustice.
So at a root level, challenging and tackling racism means challenging and tackling this sense of injustice. It means that the facts are given about what it means to be Asian, Black or White in terms of your job prospects. It means Green councillors being willing to challenge assertions that one or other community is getting preferential treatment. At the same time we need sporting role models such as Amir Khan, Joleon Lescott or Rio Ferdinand to be there in the public debate to challenge the lies that the BNP peddle about who is or isn’t British.
At a national level, the debate must be moved on. Whenever we talk about “immigration” to Britain, we must do so in the context of global population movements. How many thousands are being forced off land in Bangladesh, how many ten of thousands are fleeing from extremists in Pakistan and how many hundreds of thousands are escaping from genocide in Darfur? We need a global picture of population movements, and we need global stability as a solution to what has so far been painted as an “immigration” problem.
Without a truly international perspective, addressing human rights, environmental degradation and extreme poverty, humans will continue to be pushed around the globe in ever increasing numbers. And without Green leadership on this debate, we are going to be forced to endure ever increasing knee jerk coverage.
Today’s Guardian reports that globally 42 million people had been forced to uproot and move last year. How many more are on the move because of poverty or to escape persecution? How much longer will our national media ignore the reality of the debate on migration and pretend this is an issue that can be stopped at the British border?
15 June 2009
Reflections on the NW Campaign
In the 24 hours after the BNP won their first European Parliamentary seats, I was very much in demand. BBC North West wanted to interview me in Burnley. Requests were coming through for me to sign letters and invites to speak at rallies, meetings and give interviews. All the media requests were coming in thick and fast.
It seemed felt that the penny had finally dropped with the media that the Greens had been incredibly close to denying the BNP the final North West seat – they were just a week too late.
I had to pass on these requests and ask others to step up. Simply put, the exhaustion and strain from the campaign followed by the devastation that we had been beaten by the BNP proved very hard to bear.
The Result
The Greens campaigned hard on our positive policies for three months – 100,000 new jobs in the North West in green technologies – but also made it quite clear that there was a tactical anti-racist part to our campaign, right up to and including the fact that our ballot paper description was “Say No to Racism”. In the North West we gained backing from Respect, the Community Action Party, Mosques, Synagogues, Sikh groups, Ben Tallis (Libertas lead candidate), Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Alexei Sayle and too many others for me to mention here. All of us united to try and prevent the worst possible outcome, Nick Griffin as an MEP.
I am sorry we failed. To all the readers of my blog, I share your sense of anger, frustration, and at times despair, that we have all experienced. I used to box at middleweight as an amateur, but the feeling I have in my stomach even today is worse than the most sickening body blow. But rebuilding must begin and a smarter opposition to the BNP must follow. Despite the biggest anti-fascist effort in history from Hope Not Hate, against a far right party that ran out of money and was on its knees after a hostile media onslaught in the closing stages of the campaign, somehow Griffin sneaked in.
The Analysis
Did the we as NW Greens get our tactics right on stopping the far right? I think we did. The opinion polls from YouGov were the only ones that accurately reflected national and regional BNP support prior to the election. In “the north” regional breakdowns for two of the polls, the BNP and Greens were neck and neck. It was there to see if you were willing to look. Our arguments clearly made the case that if we could finish ahead of the BNP we would keep Griffin out of Europe.
It was an accurate prediction before the election and in the light of the results. A few thousand more votes for UKIP might also have denied both us and the BNP a seat, but the fact remains that had the Greens beaten the BNP, Griffin would not be sitting in the European Parliament for five years, irrespective of whether we had won a seat or not.
We needed less than 5,000 votes extra votes to finish ahead of the BNP. The Lib Dems would have needed an extra 30,000 and the Labour Party an extra 50,000 votes to have the same effect by winning an additional seat to the ones they already had gained. We had argued that Green votes would have been 2 or 3 times more effective than tactical votes for Labour and the Lib Dems, but in the end they would have 5 or 10 times more useful.
We publicised www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk heavily with last minute targeted advertising and hundreds of thousands of leaflets. Advertisements ran online with BME publications, regional newspapers and other targeted publications such as the Big Issue in the North. It should have been enough, but it didn’t work. We are looking at why internally, but there were external factors as well. These include the self interest of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.
The Lib Dems, even on the night of the election, were massively overconfident they would win two seats once again in the North West. They argued on one of their leaflets that “election experts” thought the Lib Dems were the best tactical vote to beat the BNP. While we might have disagreed with them (or queried who these “election experts” might be) I don’t dispute that the Lib Dems were as entitled to make their case for a tactical vote as we did at stopnickgriffin.org.uk.
My criticism is that Lib Dem literature delivered in target Parliamentary seats presented the choice at this election like a First Past the Post contest, with bar charts showing Lib Dems v Labour, and lots of claims that others “can’t win here”. If as in Liverpool, the only choice of a winner you have on offer is a morally bankrupt government and a morally bankrupt council, the result is that many voters will simply end up staying at home. No wonder Liverpool’s turnout was one of the lowest in the North West.
I reserve my real anger for the Labour Party. Their literature was not just self serving but actually damaged overall anti-fascist efforts to keep out the far right. In one leaflet, they claimed that “only” a vote for Labour can stop the BNP. At a time when the government was in an unexpected pre-election meltdown and a third seat was no longer a realistic result for Labour in the North West, they were distributing leaflets that made a demonstrably false claim. What effect could this have had on traditional and anti-racist Labour supporters, many of whom were angry with the government, receiving that message from Labour through the door? I think there are three potential outcomes:
- An outright rejection of a message that smacks of desperate electioneering
- Those who might have stayed at home, unwilling to vote for any other party, actually went out and voted Labour because of this message
- Angry with Labour, but also strongly anti-BNP, it persuaded some voters that might otherwise have supported the Greens, Lib Dems, NO2EU, SLP or someone else, to switch back to Labour
Party hacks know that in First Past the Post Elections, using the line that they are, “the only vote to stop the BNP”, has the effect of enabling the incumbent party to attract tactical support from other parties if the BNP is the main challenger. This can be in spite of being nationally unpopular. But to use it in this Proportional Representation election was cynical, appalling and exposes that the Labour Party is rotten, not just at a centralised level, but also regionally. If I was to choose a pivotal effect in this election campaign, this would be it.
A lot of decent anti-racist voters simply don’t understand the D’Hondt system for Proportional Representation. But they do understand what the BNP is. “Only a vote for Labour can stop the BNP” was a lie told directly to the electorate by Labour. The question must now be asked whether there were at least 5000 voters (out of a Labour total of nearly 337,000) who switched back to Labour who might otherwise have voted Green? Our research showed nearly 34% of voters were considering the Greens as one of their possible options. In our door knocking and regular campaigning over the coming months, we are going to identify how many of these potential Greens were deflected back to Labour by this statement.
My conclusion is that Labour used an immoral and misleading campaign claim to shore up its own failing support, rather than considering the wider implications of the election of a far right party to represent our region. I’m not attacking those activists and councillors who delivered it – many of them will also have trusted that they were being told the truth – but I am putting it on record that those responsible for writing and approving that literature must forever wrestle with their conscience. Had they put the interests of Britain ahead of Labour, I believe that Nick Griffin would not have been elected.
There has been a lot of debate about the effect of NO2EU and SLP votes on the Green vote. As I’ve said previously, NO2EU and the SLP, like any other parties on the left, are entitled to stand against the Greens at any election. There is no reason for the Greens to expect any particular political favours. In light of the results, I obviously wish both had chosen not to stand against us, but once nominations closed it was our job as the Greens to attract enough support to beat the BNP.
Judging by the reaction of many of the online comments from supporters of NO2EU and the SLP on Socialist Unity, most will vote for an explicitly socialist party if one is on the ballot paper. We should therefore look forward rather than picking over the bones of this election. This won’t change the result, it leads to sectarian arguments and does nothing to further the calls for left unity. Many voters on the left have made clear they will make a choice to vote socialist on principle rather than “holding their nose” and voting Green to stop the BNP, even under the circumstances of this election. Green Party future planning will have to reflect what is simply a political reality, even if a “left” Green candidate is standing.
The Dangers of Wishful Thinking
What is concerning is the amount of self-consolation talk going on by bloggers on the left, arguing that the BNP will now be subject to greater scrutiny, will be exposed for their true views and suffer the electoral consequences. I don’t buy into that and I think it is an excuse for our collective failure to halt the rise of the far right.
The Greens have seen a 12% jump in national membership in the month running up the election. This could be worth about £25,000 in additional national funding after taking out costs for communicating with these new members. That works out at about £2,500 per region annually. However, in the North West alone, the new European funding for the BNP will be worth £310,000 annually, including Griffin’s £80,443 salary, a staff budget of up to £182,000 and £40,000 for office expenses. They may also be able to get a share of a £22.8 million allowance that is given to parliamentary groups if they find 25 other far right MEPs from seven different member states that are willing to form a bloc within the European Parliament.
What changes will we see from the BNP? We can expect the following:
- A massive increase in the number of BNP candidates contesting the General Election next year, and a heavy impact on Labour’s electoral prospects as many unemployed white working class voters desert them. The result will probably be a greater swing to the Tories and Lib Dems than we might have seen otherwise
- The BNP potentially overtaking the combined total of Green and Left candidates contesting General Election seats in 2010
- A huge increase in the number of local council seats being contested by the BNP from 2010 to 2014. It will not matter where you live in the North West, or Yorkshire and Humberside, there will be BNP candidates coming to your local area soon
This may sound pessimistic but it is realistic. What I can tell you is we would have been able to transform what the Greens do politically here in the North West, if we had gained those extra 5,000 votes. The BNP are going to try to do the same and we should be extremely wary of what they can potentially achieve. Griffin does not view his election to Europe as the final achievement, but it is actually a stepping stone for him on the way to national power. They will right now be assessing where best to mount a huge General Election challenge, concentrating the resources they have gained so they can try to win a single Westminster seat.
The reality for us is that the Green regional press operation will have to continue to rely heavily on local volunteers. Letters in response to articles are fine in maintaining a level of local visibility, but reacting quickly to media opportunities across a huge region, in a way that ensures you are part of the main story is very difficult to do. With a full time MEP press officer, the BNP are now in a position to plan stunts, lobby for coverage and improve their efforts to project a veneer of respectability onto their party.
Another contrast will be the ability to assist local community groups, outraged by a decision by their local council about an unsuitable development project that has often gone forward against the wishes of working class local people (you’ll find that unsuitable projects never get off the ground in suburban areas). I can tell you that when this happens, there is often a great deal of anger and hostility to all three main parties in the council area where development is taking place. People turn to us as the alternative and with only volunteer advice and a lack of practical resources to help, often they can be disappointed. Euro staff for Griffin are now in a position to offer that support and to address genuine working class concerns with resources we haven’t got.
The Path Forward
There is absolutely no doubt that the BNP gaining not just one, but two Euro seats, is a huge blow for progressive politics. We’ve seen the electoral growth of the far right accelerate in the North West despite fewer people voting for them. It was preventable. The mainstream political parties, the Greens, UKIP and the left are all partly responsible for this failure.
The Greens have shown that we are willing to work with others here in the North West and in other regions. I want to go on record and thank those members of Respect and the Community Action Party in the North West who supported our campaign to try and keep out the BNP. Many of them worked just as hard as our own activists.
We have to learn the harsh electoral lesson from this campaign. Even in a clear race for a final seat between the Greens and the BNP, we are not going to be able to attract tactical anti-racist votes from those who will always vote for a socialist platform on principle. We have to plan accordingly for the next significant set of PR elections in London in 2012 and for the European Parliament in 2014.
In 2014 the BNP will be bigger, better financed and far more difficult to beat than they were this year. It may be that only with a radically new approach to PR list elections that we can succeed. For that reason, I am a signatory to a motion going to Green Party Conference in autumn of this year that opens the possibility of us formally working with other parties in elections. Remaining divided in the face of this common threat is unacceptable.
I will work with the Left, Liberals, Labour members and even the Tories or UKIP to defeat the racist far right. The lessons from history are there for us all to see and our task is far harder than it was just one week ago. No more picking over the entrails of this election defeat. This discussion must now be about building an electoral force that can defeat the far right.
It seemed felt that the penny had finally dropped with the media that the Greens had been incredibly close to denying the BNP the final North West seat – they were just a week too late.
I had to pass on these requests and ask others to step up. Simply put, the exhaustion and strain from the campaign followed by the devastation that we had been beaten by the BNP proved very hard to bear.
The Result
The Greens campaigned hard on our positive policies for three months – 100,000 new jobs in the North West in green technologies – but also made it quite clear that there was a tactical anti-racist part to our campaign, right up to and including the fact that our ballot paper description was “Say No to Racism”. In the North West we gained backing from Respect, the Community Action Party, Mosques, Synagogues, Sikh groups, Ben Tallis (Libertas lead candidate), Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Alexei Sayle and too many others for me to mention here. All of us united to try and prevent the worst possible outcome, Nick Griffin as an MEP.
I am sorry we failed. To all the readers of my blog, I share your sense of anger, frustration, and at times despair, that we have all experienced. I used to box at middleweight as an amateur, but the feeling I have in my stomach even today is worse than the most sickening body blow. But rebuilding must begin and a smarter opposition to the BNP must follow. Despite the biggest anti-fascist effort in history from Hope Not Hate, against a far right party that ran out of money and was on its knees after a hostile media onslaught in the closing stages of the campaign, somehow Griffin sneaked in.
The Analysis
Did the we as NW Greens get our tactics right on stopping the far right? I think we did. The opinion polls from YouGov were the only ones that accurately reflected national and regional BNP support prior to the election. In “the north” regional breakdowns for two of the polls, the BNP and Greens were neck and neck. It was there to see if you were willing to look. Our arguments clearly made the case that if we could finish ahead of the BNP we would keep Griffin out of Europe.
It was an accurate prediction before the election and in the light of the results. A few thousand more votes for UKIP might also have denied both us and the BNP a seat, but the fact remains that had the Greens beaten the BNP, Griffin would not be sitting in the European Parliament for five years, irrespective of whether we had won a seat or not.
We needed less than 5,000 votes extra votes to finish ahead of the BNP. The Lib Dems would have needed an extra 30,000 and the Labour Party an extra 50,000 votes to have the same effect by winning an additional seat to the ones they already had gained. We had argued that Green votes would have been 2 or 3 times more effective than tactical votes for Labour and the Lib Dems, but in the end they would have 5 or 10 times more useful.
We publicised www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk heavily with last minute targeted advertising and hundreds of thousands of leaflets. Advertisements ran online with BME publications, regional newspapers and other targeted publications such as the Big Issue in the North. It should have been enough, but it didn’t work. We are looking at why internally, but there were external factors as well. These include the self interest of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.
The Lib Dems, even on the night of the election, were massively overconfident they would win two seats once again in the North West. They argued on one of their leaflets that “election experts” thought the Lib Dems were the best tactical vote to beat the BNP. While we might have disagreed with them (or queried who these “election experts” might be) I don’t dispute that the Lib Dems were as entitled to make their case for a tactical vote as we did at stopnickgriffin.org.uk.
My criticism is that Lib Dem literature delivered in target Parliamentary seats presented the choice at this election like a First Past the Post contest, with bar charts showing Lib Dems v Labour, and lots of claims that others “can’t win here”. If as in Liverpool, the only choice of a winner you have on offer is a morally bankrupt government and a morally bankrupt council, the result is that many voters will simply end up staying at home. No wonder Liverpool’s turnout was one of the lowest in the North West.
I reserve my real anger for the Labour Party. Their literature was not just self serving but actually damaged overall anti-fascist efforts to keep out the far right. In one leaflet, they claimed that “only” a vote for Labour can stop the BNP. At a time when the government was in an unexpected pre-election meltdown and a third seat was no longer a realistic result for Labour in the North West, they were distributing leaflets that made a demonstrably false claim. What effect could this have had on traditional and anti-racist Labour supporters, many of whom were angry with the government, receiving that message from Labour through the door? I think there are three potential outcomes:
- An outright rejection of a message that smacks of desperate electioneering
- Those who might have stayed at home, unwilling to vote for any other party, actually went out and voted Labour because of this message
- Angry with Labour, but also strongly anti-BNP, it persuaded some voters that might otherwise have supported the Greens, Lib Dems, NO2EU, SLP or someone else, to switch back to Labour
Party hacks know that in First Past the Post Elections, using the line that they are, “the only vote to stop the BNP”, has the effect of enabling the incumbent party to attract tactical support from other parties if the BNP is the main challenger. This can be in spite of being nationally unpopular. But to use it in this Proportional Representation election was cynical, appalling and exposes that the Labour Party is rotten, not just at a centralised level, but also regionally. If I was to choose a pivotal effect in this election campaign, this would be it.
A lot of decent anti-racist voters simply don’t understand the D’Hondt system for Proportional Representation. But they do understand what the BNP is. “Only a vote for Labour can stop the BNP” was a lie told directly to the electorate by Labour. The question must now be asked whether there were at least 5000 voters (out of a Labour total of nearly 337,000) who switched back to Labour who might otherwise have voted Green? Our research showed nearly 34% of voters were considering the Greens as one of their possible options. In our door knocking and regular campaigning over the coming months, we are going to identify how many of these potential Greens were deflected back to Labour by this statement.
My conclusion is that Labour used an immoral and misleading campaign claim to shore up its own failing support, rather than considering the wider implications of the election of a far right party to represent our region. I’m not attacking those activists and councillors who delivered it – many of them will also have trusted that they were being told the truth – but I am putting it on record that those responsible for writing and approving that literature must forever wrestle with their conscience. Had they put the interests of Britain ahead of Labour, I believe that Nick Griffin would not have been elected.
There has been a lot of debate about the effect of NO2EU and SLP votes on the Green vote. As I’ve said previously, NO2EU and the SLP, like any other parties on the left, are entitled to stand against the Greens at any election. There is no reason for the Greens to expect any particular political favours. In light of the results, I obviously wish both had chosen not to stand against us, but once nominations closed it was our job as the Greens to attract enough support to beat the BNP.
Judging by the reaction of many of the online comments from supporters of NO2EU and the SLP on Socialist Unity, most will vote for an explicitly socialist party if one is on the ballot paper. We should therefore look forward rather than picking over the bones of this election. This won’t change the result, it leads to sectarian arguments and does nothing to further the calls for left unity. Many voters on the left have made clear they will make a choice to vote socialist on principle rather than “holding their nose” and voting Green to stop the BNP, even under the circumstances of this election. Green Party future planning will have to reflect what is simply a political reality, even if a “left” Green candidate is standing.
The Dangers of Wishful Thinking
What is concerning is the amount of self-consolation talk going on by bloggers on the left, arguing that the BNP will now be subject to greater scrutiny, will be exposed for their true views and suffer the electoral consequences. I don’t buy into that and I think it is an excuse for our collective failure to halt the rise of the far right.
The Greens have seen a 12% jump in national membership in the month running up the election. This could be worth about £25,000 in additional national funding after taking out costs for communicating with these new members. That works out at about £2,500 per region annually. However, in the North West alone, the new European funding for the BNP will be worth £310,000 annually, including Griffin’s £80,443 salary, a staff budget of up to £182,000 and £40,000 for office expenses. They may also be able to get a share of a £22.8 million allowance that is given to parliamentary groups if they find 25 other far right MEPs from seven different member states that are willing to form a bloc within the European Parliament.
What changes will we see from the BNP? We can expect the following:
- A massive increase in the number of BNP candidates contesting the General Election next year, and a heavy impact on Labour’s electoral prospects as many unemployed white working class voters desert them. The result will probably be a greater swing to the Tories and Lib Dems than we might have seen otherwise
- The BNP potentially overtaking the combined total of Green and Left candidates contesting General Election seats in 2010
- A huge increase in the number of local council seats being contested by the BNP from 2010 to 2014. It will not matter where you live in the North West, or Yorkshire and Humberside, there will be BNP candidates coming to your local area soon
This may sound pessimistic but it is realistic. What I can tell you is we would have been able to transform what the Greens do politically here in the North West, if we had gained those extra 5,000 votes. The BNP are going to try to do the same and we should be extremely wary of what they can potentially achieve. Griffin does not view his election to Europe as the final achievement, but it is actually a stepping stone for him on the way to national power. They will right now be assessing where best to mount a huge General Election challenge, concentrating the resources they have gained so they can try to win a single Westminster seat.
The reality for us is that the Green regional press operation will have to continue to rely heavily on local volunteers. Letters in response to articles are fine in maintaining a level of local visibility, but reacting quickly to media opportunities across a huge region, in a way that ensures you are part of the main story is very difficult to do. With a full time MEP press officer, the BNP are now in a position to plan stunts, lobby for coverage and improve their efforts to project a veneer of respectability onto their party.
Another contrast will be the ability to assist local community groups, outraged by a decision by their local council about an unsuitable development project that has often gone forward against the wishes of working class local people (you’ll find that unsuitable projects never get off the ground in suburban areas). I can tell you that when this happens, there is often a great deal of anger and hostility to all three main parties in the council area where development is taking place. People turn to us as the alternative and with only volunteer advice and a lack of practical resources to help, often they can be disappointed. Euro staff for Griffin are now in a position to offer that support and to address genuine working class concerns with resources we haven’t got.
The Path Forward
There is absolutely no doubt that the BNP gaining not just one, but two Euro seats, is a huge blow for progressive politics. We’ve seen the electoral growth of the far right accelerate in the North West despite fewer people voting for them. It was preventable. The mainstream political parties, the Greens, UKIP and the left are all partly responsible for this failure.
The Greens have shown that we are willing to work with others here in the North West and in other regions. I want to go on record and thank those members of Respect and the Community Action Party in the North West who supported our campaign to try and keep out the BNP. Many of them worked just as hard as our own activists.
We have to learn the harsh electoral lesson from this campaign. Even in a clear race for a final seat between the Greens and the BNP, we are not going to be able to attract tactical anti-racist votes from those who will always vote for a socialist platform on principle. We have to plan accordingly for the next significant set of PR elections in London in 2012 and for the European Parliament in 2014.
In 2014 the BNP will be bigger, better financed and far more difficult to beat than they were this year. It may be that only with a radically new approach to PR list elections that we can succeed. For that reason, I am a signatory to a motion going to Green Party Conference in autumn of this year that opens the possibility of us formally working with other parties in elections. Remaining divided in the face of this common threat is unacceptable.
I will work with the Left, Liberals, Labour members and even the Tories or UKIP to defeat the racist far right. The lessons from history are there for us all to see and our task is far harder than it was just one week ago. No more picking over the entrails of this election defeat. This discussion must now be about building an electoral force that can defeat the far right.
8 June 2009
5000 votes
I'd like to start by saying thank you to everyone in the North West who voted for us, to every party activist who helped us, to every person who endorsed us, people from other parties who supported us and to those who were instrumental in this campaign. You all know who you are.
There is nothing I can say or do now to change the result. What I can say is that it is personally very tough to take. Our analysis and tactics were spot on. Our campaign was excellent and at an intensity we've never managed before. But as the votes were counted the bottom line was that 5000 more people in the North West voted for the BNP than for the Greens.
Nick Griffin will now (apparently) represent me and millions of others here in the North West. For the next five years, both here and in the Yorkshire and Humberside region, the BNP will have European funding to build their party and organisation. For those of us in the North of England, this poses a formidable challenge. Right now I'm leaving my comments on where we go from here for a future date.
So I've changed my son's nappy this morning. I've gone in and chatted to my local newsagent, and I'm doing a radio interview for my employer, Parentline Plus at 10.30am. I'll be going out with my wife and son for lunch in a local cafe and we are going to the park this afternoon if the weather holds out.
Many, many of you have sent personal messages via facebook, email, text or on my phone. I won't be able to respond to them all but I am very grateful for your thoughts. I have three days of work ahead of me this week and probably some time to reflect on Friday, but I'll be largely quiet until then - my wife and son deserve some time and attention because the campaign has been tough on all of us.
I'm sorry we didn't get the result we deserved, but we'll pick ourselves up and move things along soon. There are highlights elsewhere in the country that we should be proud of, and our target constituencies will need our help, particularly if Brown departs and we have an October election.
A victory in the General Election is the best cure for what feels like a grim Euro Election hangover this morning.
There is nothing I can say or do now to change the result. What I can say is that it is personally very tough to take. Our analysis and tactics were spot on. Our campaign was excellent and at an intensity we've never managed before. But as the votes were counted the bottom line was that 5000 more people in the North West voted for the BNP than for the Greens.
Nick Griffin will now (apparently) represent me and millions of others here in the North West. For the next five years, both here and in the Yorkshire and Humberside region, the BNP will have European funding to build their party and organisation. For those of us in the North of England, this poses a formidable challenge. Right now I'm leaving my comments on where we go from here for a future date.
So I've changed my son's nappy this morning. I've gone in and chatted to my local newsagent, and I'm doing a radio interview for my employer, Parentline Plus at 10.30am. I'll be going out with my wife and son for lunch in a local cafe and we are going to the park this afternoon if the weather holds out.
Many, many of you have sent personal messages via facebook, email, text or on my phone. I won't be able to respond to them all but I am very grateful for your thoughts. I have three days of work ahead of me this week and probably some time to reflect on Friday, but I'll be largely quiet until then - my wife and son deserve some time and attention because the campaign has been tough on all of us.
I'm sorry we didn't get the result we deserved, but we'll pick ourselves up and move things along soon. There are highlights elsewhere in the country that we should be proud of, and our target constituencies will need our help, particularly if Brown departs and we have an October election.
A victory in the General Election is the best cure for what feels like a grim Euro Election hangover this morning.
7 June 2009
Moment of Truth
I've stood as a candidate for the Greens for each of the last 7 years, at local, General and European elections. We've all worked incredibly hard here in the North West and I'd like to thank everyone who has supported the campaign. I may not be blogging again until tomorrow, so follow www.vote-2007.co.uk, where they are likely to keep you up to date with the latest news out of the count.
Good luck to us all.
Good luck to us all.
5 June 2009
It's 999 time for Labour - Green success in Lancaster
Well done to everyone in Lancaster, and in particular to our two county councillors!
Sam Riches gained Lancaster East from Labour
Green 1502
Labour 999
Tories 583
Lib Dems 373
Chris Coates held Lancaster Central
Green 1993 (!!!!)
Tories 1581
Labour 859
Lib Dem 537
We also held a city council seat in a byelection at the same time, so the Lancaster party will be enjoying a good night tonight.
I've just rang Cllr Riches to say congratulations and to let her know that the votes in Lancaster mean that across the county we've polled 13,295 compared to the BNP's 11,778. I don't know off the top of my head the relative seat numbers (or the number compared to last time - anyone want to do some background?) Both our parties are up on 2004 though, although we have gone up a lot more. It's disappointing the BNP gained a county seat in Burnley, but not unexpected.
I've also heard from John Reardon in Carlisle. In the 6 divisions we went head to the head with the BNP, we finished ahead of them in 4. They did stand a full slate, but considering the amount of resources they poured into Carlisle in the last 2 years, we've done really well. I'm looking forward to the Euro breakdown.
We don't have enough information to make a final call, but things are certainly looking good going into Sunday's count. I think we are going to be ahead of the BNP. That is what matters. Mathematics and D'Hondt could still dictate that we won't win a seat, but if the BNP are behind us, they won't either.
Sam Riches gained Lancaster East from Labour
Green 1502
Labour 999
Tories 583
Lib Dems 373
Chris Coates held Lancaster Central
Green 1993 (!!!!)
Tories 1581
Labour 859
Lib Dem 537
We also held a city council seat in a byelection at the same time, so the Lancaster party will be enjoying a good night tonight.
I've just rang Cllr Riches to say congratulations and to let her know that the votes in Lancaster mean that across the county we've polled 13,295 compared to the BNP's 11,778. I don't know off the top of my head the relative seat numbers (or the number compared to last time - anyone want to do some background?) Both our parties are up on 2004 though, although we have gone up a lot more. It's disappointing the BNP gained a county seat in Burnley, but not unexpected.
I've also heard from John Reardon in Carlisle. In the 6 divisions we went head to the head with the BNP, we finished ahead of them in 4. They did stand a full slate, but considering the amount of resources they poured into Carlisle in the last 2 years, we've done really well. I'm looking forward to the Euro breakdown.
We don't have enough information to make a final call, but things are certainly looking good going into Sunday's count. I think we are going to be ahead of the BNP. That is what matters. Mathematics and D'Hondt could still dictate that we won't win a seat, but if the BNP are behind us, they won't either.
3 June 2009
Politician of the Year - Caroline Lucas
This news has just been announced. The timing could not be better for a last minute boost for us, particularly given the shambles that the Labour government appears to be in today.
And in my final posting before polling day, the final YouGov poll figures have gone up on the Telegraph site. The parties stand as follows:
Cons 26%
UKIP 18%
Lab 16%
LD 15%
Green 10% (+1)
BNP 5% (-2)
Much as I find it absolutely appalling that UKIP have been able to cash in on an expenses scandal after their record over the last 5 years, I am far happier seeing them reap the benefits than the BNP.
If you had asked me this morning, I would have said that Labour would have held onto 2nd place. Ask me now, and I think all bets are off. They could be fourth, or even fifth behind us, according to some of the more sensationalist comments I've heard.
Our measure of success at this election was to try and double our number of MEPs. If we do get 4 Greens elected, we should remember that fact. But if our voters go out and enough disaffected and Labour and Lib Dem voters switch, regions like the South West, Yorkshire & Humberside and the West Midlands become winnable. A second seat in the South East is a possibility, and the Scottish Greens could yet spring a surprise.
9 seats would be unbelievable, so let's remember. Beating the BNP and doubling our seat numbers will give us the national boost we need ahead of the next General Election.
Good luck to us all tomorrow. I've just delivered over 1000 eve of polls and I'm up at 5am to meet other Liverpool members to deliver a "good morning" remember to vote Green leaflet. Every action in the next 23 hours will help and I hope we get the result that we deserve.
Thank you to everyone for your work so far - one last push!
And in my final posting before polling day, the final YouGov poll figures have gone up on the Telegraph site. The parties stand as follows:
Cons 26%
UKIP 18%
Lab 16%
LD 15%
Green 10% (+1)
BNP 5% (-2)
Much as I find it absolutely appalling that UKIP have been able to cash in on an expenses scandal after their record over the last 5 years, I am far happier seeing them reap the benefits than the BNP.
If you had asked me this morning, I would have said that Labour would have held onto 2nd place. Ask me now, and I think all bets are off. They could be fourth, or even fifth behind us, according to some of the more sensationalist comments I've heard.
Our measure of success at this election was to try and double our number of MEPs. If we do get 4 Greens elected, we should remember that fact. But if our voters go out and enough disaffected and Labour and Lib Dem voters switch, regions like the South West, Yorkshire & Humberside and the West Midlands become winnable. A second seat in the South East is a possibility, and the Scottish Greens could yet spring a surprise.
9 seats would be unbelievable, so let's remember. Beating the BNP and doubling our seat numbers will give us the national boost we need ahead of the next General Election.
Good luck to us all tomorrow. I've just delivered over 1000 eve of polls and I'm up at 5am to meet other Liverpool members to deliver a "good morning" remember to vote Green leaflet. Every action in the next 23 hours will help and I hope we get the result that we deserve.
Thank you to everyone for your work so far - one last push!
Alexei Sayle Stuff
I've just received this in an email from Alexei Sayle:
"One of the great things about Britain is that, unlike in a lot of Europe, we have never let extremist parties of the right get anything but a tiny toehold in our electoral system. I'll personally be voting Green this time but whoever you support you should use your vote to continue our noble tradition and keep the BNP out."
It is going to be close, but things are moving our way and the BNP have financial troubles. If we beat them they are going to need close to 10% to win a seat (and vice versa) in the North West. Every vote counts.
David Bartlett has covered today's ComRes opinion poll and the Lumley effect on voters.
"One of the great things about Britain is that, unlike in a lot of Europe, we have never let extremist parties of the right get anything but a tiny toehold in our electoral system. I'll personally be voting Green this time but whoever you support you should use your vote to continue our noble tradition and keep the BNP out."
It is going to be close, but things are moving our way and the BNP have financial troubles. If we beat them they are going to need close to 10% to win a seat (and vice versa) in the North West. Every vote counts.
David Bartlett has covered today's ComRes opinion poll and the Lumley effect on voters.
2 June 2009
Polls, TV and Campaign Bus Touring
Everyone is talking about it, and so we should. A ComRes poll that we commissioned shows support as follows:
CON 24%: LAB 22%: LDEM 14%, UKIP 17%: Green 15%: BNP 2%
For us in the North West, we should take the BNP figure with a pinch of salt. The YouGov polls, with their larger sample sizes and different methodology are likely to give the best indication of the situation here, and their last two polls have had the Greens and the BNP neck and neck in the North West.
TV: Caroline Lucas has had a slot on Sky.
Campaign Bus Tour: We've been everywhere (at least it feels that way). Chester, Wirral, Liverpool, Preston, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Lancaster, Preston (again), Bolton, Heywood, Rochdale, Manchester, Stretford and Altrincham - all in the last three days. We are expecting some really good media coverage on the back of it.
1 June 2009
YouGov today
Polls are coming thick and fast. I was on the campaign bus yesterday, but am working from home and doing my day job for half a day this afternoon. Although we are not included in the report in the Telegraph today, the poll data is here.
Con 27
Labour 17
UKIP 16
Lib Dem 15
Green 9
BNP 7
SNP/PC 4
Other 6
There is no detailed data available, but the sample size is 5000, which means it likely to reflect a far more accurate picture of the national situation. The fact that it shows 6% for "other parties" is one indicator that it is the most accurate poll yet.
What this does mean is that both Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas will be re-elected. We regularly beat the national polling average in London and the South East and we saw both of them re-elected when we were polling at 6% just before the 2004 Euros.
UKIP also do better in regions like the South West and South East. In the North West they were well below their national average in 2004, which points to them polling 11 to 12% here and means that the UKIP surge scenario applies on our www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk website.
In 2004, the BNP averaged 4.9% nationwide, but got 6.4% in the North West, so we can clearly expect them to do better than 7% here. If they poll 1.5% better as they did last time, it would mean 8.5% - enough for Nick Griffin to win a seat if they beat us.
What that means is that here in the North West, we have to be hitting or beating our national vote share if we are to beat the BNP. There is no time to let up - we must work all out until polling day. Every vote is going to count.
We can't guarantee that us beating the BNP is going to keep them out. The expenses scandal has damaged Labour so much that they are now only going to win 2 seats in the North West.
I'm currently forecasting:
3 Cons
2 Labour
1 Lib Dem
1 UKIP
This leaves one seat up for grabs. If we beat the BNP, with both parties finishing in the 8 to 9% range as the polls suggest, we'll win the seat. If they beat us, Nick Griffin gets elected and we will have a racist representative in the North West for five years.
Keep going everyone. This is the most important election we've ever fought. More regional advertising is going out this week. We are putting everything we've got into the campaign and let's get every last leaflet through doors in the next few days.
Con 27
Labour 17
UKIP 16
Lib Dem 15
Green 9
BNP 7
SNP/PC 4
Other 6
There is no detailed data available, but the sample size is 5000, which means it likely to reflect a far more accurate picture of the national situation. The fact that it shows 6% for "other parties" is one indicator that it is the most accurate poll yet.
What this does mean is that both Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas will be re-elected. We regularly beat the national polling average in London and the South East and we saw both of them re-elected when we were polling at 6% just before the 2004 Euros.
UKIP also do better in regions like the South West and South East. In the North West they were well below their national average in 2004, which points to them polling 11 to 12% here and means that the UKIP surge scenario applies on our www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk website.
In 2004, the BNP averaged 4.9% nationwide, but got 6.4% in the North West, so we can clearly expect them to do better than 7% here. If they poll 1.5% better as they did last time, it would mean 8.5% - enough for Nick Griffin to win a seat if they beat us.
What that means is that here in the North West, we have to be hitting or beating our national vote share if we are to beat the BNP. There is no time to let up - we must work all out until polling day. Every vote is going to count.
We can't guarantee that us beating the BNP is going to keep them out. The expenses scandal has damaged Labour so much that they are now only going to win 2 seats in the North West.
I'm currently forecasting:
3 Cons
2 Labour
1 Lib Dem
1 UKIP
This leaves one seat up for grabs. If we beat the BNP, with both parties finishing in the 8 to 9% range as the polls suggest, we'll win the seat. If they beat us, Nick Griffin gets elected and we will have a racist representative in the North West for five years.
Keep going everyone. This is the most important election we've ever fought. More regional advertising is going out this week. We are putting everything we've got into the campaign and let's get every last leaflet through doors in the next few days.
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