Tag Archives: bnp

BNP accused of fraud over false invoices

The BBC reports:

The British National Party is under investigation by the European Union and the Metropolitan Police for alleged fraud and breaches of electoral law.

The dual investigations come as a former BNP administrator told the BBC’s Panorama programme that she was instructed to falsify invoices.

Those invoices were then submitted by the BNP to the Electoral Commission.

The BNP has strongly denied any suggestion of wrongdoing…

Former party worker Marion Thomas said after the 2010 general election she was instructed by the party’s treasurer, Clive Jefferson, to alter invoices and in at least one case stamp an outstanding invoice as “paid”.

The invoices were

Posted in Election law | 1 Comment

Who joins the BNP and who votes BNP?

Matthew Goodwin’s new book, New British Fascism: Rise of the British National Party, expands on one of his previous works on political extremism to look in-depth at just the BNP.

New British Fascism: Rise of the British National Party has at its heart an extensive set of interviews with BNP members. His conclusion is a nuanced one – that the BNP has carved out a strong base in a narrow niche, meaning both that it is not likely to disappear any time soon nor is it likely to break through to major levels of support.

That base is made …

Posted in Books | Also tagged | 3 Comments

LibLink: Nick Clegg… AV got the Mayor elected – now he’s voting against it

Nick Clegg wrote an article for the Evening Standard yesterday aimed at London voters, who’ll only be voting in the AV referendum on May 5th as London does not have council elections* this year.

As well as outlining the reasons for voting Yes to Fairer Votes, “I believe most Londoners want a new way of electing MPs that cleans up politics, makes MPs work harder and makes every vote count,” Nick busts the myths about AV: “vote-counting machines that don’t exist and won’t be needed. Claims that the alternative vote is too complex for the British people to understand, as …

Posted in London, News | Also tagged , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Switch to AV would not boost BNP

The British National Party has featured surprisingly prominently in the AV campaign so far, since their introduction into the debate by the NO campaign. The BNP are, of course, firmly positioned in the NO camp, not least because they know that they wouldn’t have a hope of winning a Parliamentary election under the system – as their deputy chairman Simon Darby acknowledged to Channel 4′s FactCheck team yesterday.

This comes on the back of a report by the IPPR think tank which analysed the claim of the NO campaign that under AV, second preferences of BNP voters would be decisive …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , | 13 Comments

Dominic Carman writes: Barnsley Central – a call to action

Six weeks ago, my son Charlie and I travelled up from London with Simon Hughes – to leaflet on behalf of Elwyn Watkins in the Oldham by-election. The campaign was fantastic: dozens of Lib Dems in a well-equipped campaign office and many more leafleting and campaigning on the streets. It produced an excellent result in difficult circumstances: Elwyn even increased his share of the vote to 31.9%.

On Saturday, I was selected as the PPC for the forthcoming Barnsley Central by-election, to be held on March 3rd. At the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems came second to Labour in …

Posted in Op-eds, Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

So almost no-one agreed with Nick – and he doesn’t understand why?

It has certainly been a bad week for Nick Griffin. The party polled badly in the General Election, with Griffin’s much-hyped bid to win Barking constituency ending in a poor third place. The BNP’s already tiny local council base took a pounding, with total wipe-out in Barking & Dagenham, a council they hoped to control. Most damning for the future of the party itself, there has been huge damage from defections and scandal, resulting in the BNP main web site being taken down just a week before the election.

Nick Griffin has sent an email out to party members, attempting to justify the truly terrible results of last week’s elections to BNP members.

So the election dust has now settled, and from our point of view there are four key outcomes: First, the resulting hung Parliament and political instability will rapidly add to Gordon Brown’s economic disaster. The Bank of England prediction that whoever won this election will end up being “out of power for a generation” is now going to apply to two of the three old parties. That’s bad news for Britain, but good news for us.

So the British National Party doesn’t really care about Britain – just itself?

Posted in News | Also tagged | 12 Comments

Opinion: The linked vote shares of UKIP and the BNP

The 2010 General Election was a failure for Britain’s two openly xenophobic parties.

UKIP stood in 556 constituencies and lost their deposit in 459 (83%). Their vote share varied between 0.65 and Nigel Farage’s 17.3 in Buckingham where none of the three main parties contested the Speaker’s seat. No other UKIP candidate hit double digits.

The average vote share per UKIP candidate was 3.54.

The BNP stood in 338 constituencies and lost their deposit in 267 (80%). Their vote share varied between 0.4 and Nick Griffin’s 14.6 in Barking. Only two other BNP candidates hit double digits.

Eight out UKIP’s …

Posted in General Election, Op-eds | Also tagged | 15 Comments

Opinion: Nick Griffin destroyed his parents and failed his family

On Wednesday’s Today programme, BNP leader Nick Griffin told the Radio Four audience that “Liberal economics… have utterly bankrupted this country.” It’s laughable. The truth is that Nick Griffin was himself declared bankrupt in 1991. Over several years thereafter, he destroyed his parents financially as well. In this link, Griffin’s parents tell the story of how their son ruined their lives.

It is the story of a man whose gross personal financial incompetence brought significant misery to his entire family. Griffin racked up debts of several hundred thousand pounds through a series of disastrous property investments, which he describes …

Posted in Op-eds, Opposition watch | Also tagged | 6 Comments

Two councillors accused of breaking election law; one political party investigated

A quick round-up of stories in the news recently:

In January 2010 the Electoral Commission, the independent party finance watchdog, began a case review following concerns raised in the independent auditor’s opinion about the adequacy of the 2008 statement of accounts of the British National Party.

The case has now become an investigation. However, it is important to note – particularly during an election period – that no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the rules has occurred. (Electoral Commission)

A [WALSALL] CONSERVATIVE councillor has been suspended and is due in

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“You’ll be found dead on the streets” – the message from a BNP supporter

‘You’ll be found dead on the streets.’ That was the message I received a few weeks ago from an identifiable BNP supporter. Why? Because I was taking a stand against Nick Griffin. When someone writes this to you because you’re fighting as a Lib Dem in a parliamentary campaign against Griffin and the BNP, it makes you think very hard about your political opponent and the campaign they intend to fight. It also makes you think about how you should respond.

I reported the threat immediately to the police. They came to my house and have since referred the matter to …

Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , , , , , | 22 Comments

BNP hit by allegations of coups, infighting and sabotage

Extract from a leaked BNP email bulletin:

For several months the party’s internal security team has been running an extensive and long-running investigation. This was initially tasked to investigate:

  • Alleged financial irregularities and ‘scamming’ concerning the procurement of print, especially large election print run, leaflets and regular publications including Identity magazine.
  • The leaking onto the internet of sensitive party information.
  • The ongoing, co-ordinated and sustained hate campaign, feeding lies to certain anti-BNP blog sites.

More recently, its focus has moved on to the catalogue of recurring and seemingly inexplicable ‘gaffes’ being made at various stages in our preparations for the general election by certain

Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , | 19 Comments

What’s up with Nick Griffin’s expense claims?

Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies has spotted some rather odd entries in Nick Griffin’s expense claims from the European Parliament. Nick Griffin had previously stalled on publishing his expenses but now he’s given in to the pressure there are some distinct oddities:

a) Nick Griffin claims to have donated £5,575.91 to a fund that has only declared income of £4560.65.

b) Nick Griffin has previously said he employs three members of staff, one of whom is shared with another MEP. However the expense claims list eight people, give no names and only one of their job titles matches previous public statements about …

Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , , | 2 Comments

Total Politics: Dominic Carman responds to the Nick Griffin interview

Following Total Politics’s controversial decision to interview Nick Griffin, the magazine’s website is also running responses to it, including one from Dominic Carman (Lib Dem candidate for the same Barking constituency as Nick Griffin):

Take three of Griffin’s answers from the Total Politics interview and contrast them with what he told me privately:

On Afghanistan: “The only way you could win there is if you nuked it, which can’t be done.” He told me: “We should send (British) troops in to Afghanistan…and we should obliterate as many cities as it takes.”

On VAT: “We’ve never said we’re increasing VAT.” He told me: “Income

Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Tory tangle over non-white candidates

The Observer today carries a story about the curious lack of photos of the Conservatives’ black and asian candidates in Barking and Dagenham.

The candidates exist (to the Tories’ credit) and their names and contact numbers are on the leaflets, but the photos are all white.

The Conservatives denied that the move amounted to deliberate “airbrushing” of ethnic minority candidates. They insisted that the lack of photographs of their non-white candidates on all campaign calendars dropped through letter boxes was because their list of candidates had not been completed when the material was published. But they could

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Book review: The new extremism in 21st century Britain

The new extremism in 21st century Britain, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin considers both far-right and Islamic extremism, their causes and possible responses. It is unusual for a study to look at both these forms of extremism, and as the books editors explain that is not just a publishing phenomena; academics and experts predominantly focus on one or the other with as a result relatively little opportunity to learn from comparing and contrasting different extremist movements.

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