The Crown and the BNP

The other day I wrote an article explaining how the British Crown was doing everything in its power to help get the fascist British National Party (BNP) elected. For an article that was thrown together after eight pints I thought it was rather good however it did omit one import detail.

If you count the BNP as a legitimate political party then here in the UK we have three right-wing political parties. The Conservatives who are very much a centre ground party and only really distinguishable from the Labour party by virtue of the fact they seem more competent. The BNP who are just fascists in the mould of Hitler or Mussolini with no real polices to speak off. Between the two sits the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who were set up to bring about a full withdrawal of the UK from the European Union. As the name suggests UKIP are a nationalistic party but their nationalism is defined by whether or not you have a British Passport not the colour of your skin or even where you were born. While the party itself is not racists I think it's fair to say that a significant number of the people who vote for them are the sort of casual racists who live in constant fear of the day Johnny Foreigner is going to come over here and force us all to eat frogs legs.

On Monday October 19th the Court of Appeal (the Crown) ruled that UKIP were guilty of a very technical breach of the rules on party funding from a UK citizen who was not on the electoral register*. As punishment UKIP were ordered to repay £367,697 along with a £1500 fine and the legal costs of bringing the case. In the financial year ending 2009 UKIP only managed to raise £200,000 in political donations. So even considering other sources of income such as EU money this bill of £400,000 is going to dramatically reduce the amount that UKIP is going to be able to spend campaigning at the General Election even if it doesn't completely bankrupt the party and consign it to the history books. If that happens UKIP share of the vote will be spilt with the majority going to the Conservatives and possibly as much as 30% going to the BNP. Depending on the geographic distribution of these votes this should be more then enough to let the BNP win seat(s) in the House of Commons alongside a Conservative government.

Also, whilst talking about the BNP's now defunct constitution, I said that referring to ethnic groups such as "the Celtic Scottish Folk Community" only made the BNP look stupid because these groups never existed and bore no resemblance to the ancient Celtic tribes. That was understating the fact because there weren't even ancient Celtic tribes. In ancient times (400BC) there were groups of people in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, France and the Balkans who spoke a similar language. In the 18th Century researchers termed this the Celtic language and determined that it had managed to spread over such a wide area because the people who spoke it travelled and didn't divide themselves along ethnic of tribal lines so the language was born out of the melting pot. That means the Celtic folk tradition that the BNP claim to be defending is one of immigration and multiculturalism.

Anyway the BBC are planning to record tonight's edition of Question Time at 18:30 and there have already been clashes outside the studio. With the postal strike starting today I think we can safely describe the mood of the nation as well up for it, whatever it may be. So over the next 24hrs feel free to use the term Royal Mail as creatively as possible.



*The donor in question is a man called Alan Bown. He is a UK citizen and as far as I know currently not in prison so the only bar from being on the electoral register was his apparent failure to send in the form.