In a posting today on LabourList, David Lammy has talked up the popularity of the BNP by misquoting and misinterpreting evidence about how many people visit their website.
The MP for Tottenham wrote:
[The BNP] it attracts more than half of all internet traffic to political party sites, according to the online monitoring firm Hitwise.
But that’s not true.
I think what has happened here is that the popularity of the bnp.org.uk domain compared with conservatives.com, labour.org.uk, libdems.org.uk and so on has been confused with “all internet traffic to political party sites”. (Thanks to Hitwise for confirming to me that looking at just these national domains is indeed how they put their data together.)
It’s true that if you look at traffic to just the central party domains, and their subdomains, then the BNP site is the most popular. But – to take the example of the Liberal Democrats – libdems.org.uk and its subdomains are only part of our “national” web presence and actually only a small part of our overall web presence. At national, regional and local level we have literally hundreds of sites in total that are not part of libdems.org.uk. Their total traffic is several times greater than that to libdems.org.uk. By contrast, the BNP’s website traffic is overwhelmingly concentrated on that domain.
In other words, if you really looked at “all internet traffic to political party websites” you get a completely different picture.
This sort of exaggeration of the BNP’s popularity (quite possibly accidental in this case, though deliberate in others such as the Labour leaflets in the Downham, Lewisham council by-election which talked of the possibility of a BNP win) only helps the BNP. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
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17 Comments
I have visited the BNP web site probably about a dozen times in the last year. That is because I have been looking for quotes from their policies etc which I can hang them on. I obviously the very opposite of a BNP supporter so it seems a bit daft that visits that I make to their site (and visits by others doing research to explode BNP’s credibility) should be included in a figure to make them look popular!
Labour have a long history of exaggerating electoral threats from the far right. I think that by now shouting “Wolf” has become a reflex.
Which is a pity when the BNP is making an electoral showing stronger than that of any extreme nationalist party that I can remember. The old rule that apart from occsional fits of exasperastion with a local mainstream party, the fascists and their successors had a ceiling of 10% of the vote, and they could only reach that in their traditional areas, seems to be in abeyance.
It is good news that David Lammy overestimated the BNP presence on the net, but I do not see that in doing so it can be argued that that in any way helps the BNP.
We should be alarmed by the rise of the BNP. In London they just need 7% to get an MEP elected on June 4th, and I have to say that it is to the credit of the left that they are leading the campaign to stop that from happening.
It is interesting that we are debating the BNP in reaction to comments from a Labour MP, and not following an initiative from a Lib Dem MP.
This despite the fact that the BNP has more councillors elected today than the extreme right has ever managed before in the history of our democracy.
Paul
Like you I sometimes visit the BNP to see what the ******s are up to; I very rarely visit the main party websites. To interpret this as support is ludicrous.
David
Sadly, Labour has a poor record of “talking up” the BNP and thus helping them (consider Margaret Hodge in Barking & Dagenham at the last LGA elections). It is the WRONG approach.
Geoffrey
re the initiative being Labour rather than Lib Dem see the above comment.
By my reckoning the BNP do NOT “just need 7% to get an MEP elected on June 4th” – under d’Hondt 7% might be enough, or might not.
For example [if my calculations are correct] a vote share of Con 31.6% Lab 22.2% LD 16.3% Green 8.4% BNP 8% UKIP 6.7% would mean 3 Con 2 Lab 2 LD and 1 Green. There are other scenarios where 7% COULD mean a seat.
crewegwyn
It may be 7% and the BNP could get that.
I don’t think you responded to the point I made, and I don’t think you explained how what David Lammy said would in any way help the BNP.
Fundamentally we need to understand why people consider voting BNP, and what kind of politics may persuade them not to do so. It is the left that pays attention to this more than anyone else.
I think that Geoffrey Payne is right.
The left are doing more and in a more sophisticated way in some, most perhaps but by no means all cases.
And one might argue that the Lib Dems calling this the “wrong approach” such as crewegwyn above are in a party where the wrong approach to fascists is a fairly regular occurrence.
In Swanley St Mary’s Lib Dems did not stand, although they had done in the 07 all out. In Atherstone this week the Lib Dems are not standing although they did in the 07 all out. One could make an argument for “standing aside” in such cases, but it is generally a naive one.
Both Tory and Labour are incumbents at some level in these places. Giving voters a non-incumbent offering that is not the far right is better than standing down – particularly if the main thrust of the campaign is urging an anti-fascist vote and offering a home for those who will not or cannot support the big two.
At least having a paper candidate, even perhaps a paper candidate urging a vote for the party most likely to. This worked in Oldham with Lab and LD each standing throughout but clearly understanding which party could beat the fascists in each blighted ward.
There is of course a danger of driving the BNP vote with alarmism – which is where Hope Not Hate, UAF, Searchlight, local coalitions, NAAR etc can do better than an incumbent party perceived to be using the fascist threat to retain power.
But the BNP are I think succeeding more than previous fascist groups because they have succeeded in in separating their boot boy/nutter elements from their suits and because mainstream parties appear to be leaving more and more areas with little activity. Lib Dems should understand this because this is also the opportunity many local LD parties are exploiting.
The independent left and the Labour left and indeed the Labour whole have improved the message in many cases, But there are cases – dare I say Lammy might be one – of people with little or no practical experience of defending against the BNP or the NF mouthing off about it. And of some frankly silly materials. I’ve not seen those in Lewisham though from what I’ve read I think the LDs perhaps protest too much. Letting the fascists own the union flag is not good politics.
In the last Euro campaign in the NW, Lib Dems masterminded a campaign which echoed Nazi rhetoric and was I feel hugely unhelpful. With what amounted to an opportunist, communalist call to “vote brown” (not Brown!) from Chris Davies with Sajjad Karim as his running mate.
Davies will have changed his tune on this now of course. ‘Twas pathetic. Unsustainable. Good chance it helped Griffin. Davies couldn’t give a monkey’s when challenged on this nonsense.
He has also refused to stand up against Red Watch, yet he was and is a UAF signatory. A mess of contradictions, principles, and opportunism.
Geoffrey: the more popular people think a party is, the more people are willing to vote for it. Hence exaggerating the BNP’s popularity helps increase its support (just as it would for any other party). Saying “look how popular we are” is a regular staple of political campaigning across different parties. Saying “look how popular the BNP is” (and getting your facts wrong) is helping the BNP do their own work.
“In Swanley St Mary’s Lib Dems did not stand, although they had done in the 07 all out.”
Not so as you can find from the Sevenoaks DC website. Swanley St Marys is a 2-member ward and in 2007 there were 2 Labour, 2 Tory and 1 UKIP candidate
Mark, I think you overestimate the impact of David Lammys comments. I find it hard to imagine that voters will be persuaded to vote BNP on the basis of his comments alone. His comments do not in any way tap into why so many people are considering voting BNP in the first place. His comments have not hit the headlines, most people, including potential BNP supporters, are completely unaware of what he said, and have never voted BNP because they thought they would win anyway.
If anything, Gordan Brown’s comments “British Jobs for British Workers” will have a far bigger impact, particularly now that unemployment is going up.
What we do need is a sense of urgency on this issue, and at least David Lammys arguements have caused us to debate the issue.
I am not really interested in using the issue to settle political scores as Chris Paul does, but I am concerned that New Labour’s close affinity to Rupert Murdoch and his media organisations have caused Labour to be somewhat incongruent in tackling this issue. As far as Lib Dems are concerned, the BNP are about as anti-Liberal as you can get in British politics and we should be taking them much more seriously, which I think was the purpose behind what David Lammy was saying.
I think you’re exaggerating what I said Geoffrey. For example, I never talked about voters being persuaded to vote BNP “on the basis of his comments alone” (your words). If you look back at my wording, I didn’t say that this one incident was catastrophic or awful. The wording in my last paragraph is actually quite mild – “… only helps …” – and that’s because I think the serious damage is from the pattern, even if one individual comment doesn’t make a big impact on its own. It’s a bit like leaflets – one on its own through a letterbox rarely has a big impact, but if it is part of a pattern of regular communication then that’s a different matter.
It’s also the case that, regardless of the impact on voters, I think errors like this should be pointed out. Imagine if I tried that argument over, say, something Nick Clegg had said – “Oh Geoffrey, that only appeared in Liberal Democrat News, so no voters are going to have their votes swayed by that, so why are you bothering commenting about it?” 🙂
I agree with Mark and cregwyn that talking up the BNP will help increase their vote. I think that Labour do it because talking up a ‘fascist’ threat used to be a way of getting out their vote. Now that the people who run Labour have lost contact with their voters. they do not realise that talking up the BNP is likely to get out the people who used to be their marginal voters as BNP voters.
I do not intend to respond to Chris Paul at the length he managed !!
But,
1. I agree with him that Lib Dems should not stand down in wards being contested by the BNP – it merely feeds their rhetoric of a LibLabCon conspiracy, and elevat6es their status as being the non-establishment choice.
2. As explored by Mark Pack “talking up” the significance of the BNP is grist to their mill.
3. I was (reasonably) involved in the NW in the 2004 Euro Elections – don’t recall Lib Dem nazi rhetoric. Perhaps just a tiny bit overstated?
Chris Paul,…, overstated?
I’m shocked! Shocked!
If you visit the BNP website, at the bottom of the home page, you will see the alexa ratings, which rank in order of traffic to the political websites.
You will find that the worldwide rankings of our political websites currently stand at:
BNP: 48099
Conservatives: 199673
Labour: 238018
LibDems: 255684
UKIP: 806489
The numbers do seem to indicate much greater interest in the BNP than all the other sites, wouldn’t you say?
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Two things: (a) the Alexa rankings are notoriously unreliable, and people have often pointed out that their own data on how sites’ traffic has changed is the opposite of what Alexa claims, (b) the Alexa figures are only for the one national political site from each party, so even if they are accurate, that doesn’t contradict the point that looking at just one site from each party gives a very misleading idea of what each party’s overall web presence is like.
“How David Lammy has exaggerated the BNP’s popularity”
Do you think so?
Brits’ are finally going to vote for a Political Party that will give the U.K. back to us, and stop all the handouts to
every ETHNIC Tom,Dick,& Harry who asks for money for some crazy scheme or other.
THE BNP just tell the truth- I know this is very strange in this day and age,and remember:-
THE BNP DID NOT GET US INTO THE MESS WE ARE IN with respect to Financial Situation and other the other problems too numerous to mention. Q.E.D
Regards W.A.S.P
I often visit the websites of the ‘mainstream’ political parties for amusement and ammunition concerning their policies. In no way should these visits be taken to indicate support for the mainstream parties.
I believe that politically astute browsers of the web will, in fact, visit the sites of their opponents for these reasons.
It is difficult to draw any conclusions from these figures – oh, except for the fact that the BNP website is much more popular than those of its rivals – thanks mostly to their common sense policies and general disillusionment with the status quo. To try and claim that this is not really the case is trivial.
Yes… I support the BNP and will be voting for them in the coming election – I suspect we shall see the emergence of a new force in politics and will be interested to see how you explain that one away.
No… I’m no ‘knuckle-dragging waycist’ – I’m a professional middle-aged former Tory family man and Infrastructure VP of a Global Finance company.