The BNP in Perspective

A valuable point from Alex Massie about the neo-fascist British National Party winning seats in the UK’s European Parliament elections:

And that success, I suspect, will be a minor blip, unlikely to be repeated. (It’s notable that this “breakthrough” election saw the BNP only barely increase its share of the vote from 2004). The way folk are carrying on you’d think that the BNP posed some mortal threat to British democracy. But they could hardly be more insignificant and the only way they can be introduced into the mainstream is if politicians in other parties start pandering to the BNP and its issues. That in turn would grant them vastly more influence than their tiny level of support would otherwise warrant.

This is right. The multiple-member constituency model that the UK uses to elect MEPs makes it possible for a party with very low levels of support to sometimes win a seat or two if the people are distributed correctly. Under the circumstances, you can’t lose sight of the basic reality that this is a party with a very low level of support. It’s also noteworthy, as Massie points out to me in an email, that the BNP’s electoral base appears to come primarily from disaffected old-school white working class Labour voters. I suppose you might analogize it to the George Wallace phenomenon in 1968, except actually much less widespread.