Anti-Fascist Network

The far right are finished as an electoral force. The election results for the BNP and others could not make this clearer. In 2010, the BNP stood and won 563,743 votes. In 2015, eight BNP candidates scraped together 1,667, in what must rank as one of the most humiliating collapses in British electoral history. Not a single one of their candidates polled over 1% of the vote. Anti-fascists should be congratulating BNP leader and Rotherham parliamentary candidate Adam Walker, who managed to reduce the BNP vote in the constituency from 3,906 in 2010 to 225 in 2015, on the way he has run the party’s election campaign.

It is encouraging that the BNP has no understanding of how catastrophic these results have been for them. For a long time, the BNP were capable of offering a worryingly astute analysis of British electoral politics. They now appear to have lost touch with reality as Walker’s post-election report talks about “just how successful our strategy has been” and claims the party is “in the strongest position we’ve been for many years.” If this is a success Adam, them keep them coming. The BNP leadership are fooling no-one and even their most thick-headed supporters should be capable of recognising that this is delusional.

Election results from the rest of the far right were equally positive. No candidate even came close to saving their deposit and only four parliamentary candidates polled over 1% of the vote: Ian Sutton in Barnsley Central, Kevin Riddiough in Barnsley East, David Allen in Doncaster North (a town where the English Democrats won the 2009 mayoral election election) and National Front chairman Kevin Bryan in Rochdale.

That the English Democrats best result was 1.3% speaks for itself and it is an open question whether the party will survive. Even self-described elections guru Eddy Butler, a former national organiser for the BNP, could only win 115 votes in Harlow. The English Democrats lack the kind of cohesive ideological core that has enabled other far right formations such as the National Front to survive decades of political failure and will hopefully cease to be a going concern.

The council election results reveal a slightly different picture and show that fascist parties still retain pockets of support around the country which should not be overlooked. In 2014, anti-fascists took their eye off the ball in Pendle where BNP councillor Brian Parker retained his seat by six votes. This year almost exactly the same thing happened as Cathy Duffy came very close to retaining the council seat she has held in Leicestershire for the last eight years.

Some council candidates for the English Democrats and British Democratic Party received disappointingly respectable votes. Most did not. The prize for the best result goes to former BNP activist Paul Rimmer who got 9 votes in a Liverpool council ward standing for the English Democrats. Presumably couldn’t even persuade all the people who nominated him to actually vote for him. Even the best results achieved by the English Democrats are a far cry from what they previously achieved and, tellingly, the party did not even try to defend the two council seats they won in Boston.

One thing that hasn’t gone away are the voters for far right parties. The hundreds of thousands of voters who turned out for the BNP and their ilk have evidently switched en mass to UKIP, who have been able to do what fascist groups in Britain have never been able to: break through into the political mainstream. The success of UKIP and the huge votes won by the party across England and Wales heralds an even more poisonous political climate. Fascist groups have so far been unable to take advantage of this, but this state of affairs may not last.

Check out your local fash losers with our elections results list: