Why did the BNP do well?

Well for starters it didn't do as well as has been made out. It gained less votes than the last election, partly because turnout was down. So it inspired less people to vote for it. However, some are wondering if it represents a real underlying racism in the UK among some, or if it is just an ignorant protest vote, or if the BNP actually does say what some working class young white men want to hear. The truth is a mix of all of the above.

The explicitly racist part is only a small part of the picture, otherwise it would campaign like the erstwhile National Front, which still comes out from time to time spouting openly racist policies. They never got the National Front far in the past, so the BNP has been more clever. An ignorant protest vote? Perhaps, but then protest votes can go a lot of places - the key is the BNP is made up of people who are like its voters - poorly educated, white working class, who believe the world ignores them.

It is a constituency the Labour Party believes it is entitled to. BNP voters almost all wouldn't vote Conservative - it can't relate to a party seen as upper class, involving businesspeople, the university educated, speaking received pronunciation who send their children to private schools, drive nice cars, live in the South East and use the word chav as an insult. The Liberal Democrats are invisible to them, as are the Greens, besides neither party appeals to young men whose primary pastimes involve drinking, football, cars and women.

However in that respect, Labour isn't much different either. The party formerly consisting of men who did hard manual labour, who were in unions, who barely knew what a university was and who waxed lyrically in parochial accents has changed into one that looks more and more like a group of university graduates, who never had a "real job", who espouse what is known as "political correctness" to censure the young working class male from making inappropriate jokes or comments, and who positively gush whenever minorities get elected. Minorities being those Labour embrace, women, people of Afro-Caribbean or Indian sub-continent descent or who are of non Judeo-Christian religions.

Is it any wonder the average barely educated young male thinks the Labour party ignores him? Quite simply because it does. So the BNP rhetoric about immigrants taking "their jobs" makes sense to them, because few bother arguing the merits of immigration, and most young working class men don't think of the reverse - them emigrating, for where would men who have rudimentary literacy in only English go in Europe to work?

Furthermore, the BNP has socialist policies on virtually all other issues. Opposing privatisation, supporting renationalising the railways, supporting tight regulations of business, opposing free trade and investment across borders, opposing EU membership, embracing the NHS and public services and wanting to crackdown on tax loopholes. None of this would have looked out of place in Michael Foot's Labour Party, but in Gordon Brown's it is half-hearted and almost embarrasing to have candidates who espouse many of these views.

On top of that, the BNP takes a hardline on one of the issues that working class young men face more than most - crime. It supports the death penalty and harsh penalties for child molestors, with hard labour for other criminals. It supports taking a draconian approach to drug traffickers (with a tinge of "well it isn't our people bringing this stuff into the country"). Few working class folk would disagree with these sentiments.

By contrast, what does Labour offer? A welcoming welfare state for all, which is noticeably enjoyed by migrants in increasing numbers. Strategies and job titles for state employees to advance ethnic minority access to taxpayer funded housing, health and education all sound like "foreigners are using our facilities and taxes to benefit from our system". Given education stats show the poorest performing demographic being poor working class white boys, is it any wonder that their families feel neglected. The scale of immigration to some communities particular in the North, and East Midlands has seen the ghettoisation of ethnic minority communities, which has frightened those of other groups. While the BNP likes to make a hyperbole of it, there is some truth to comments that a few youth of non-European minorities feel free to intimidate others knowing full well that accusations of racism are rarely believed in that direction.

Now I'm not providing enormous sympathy for the uneducated young white male underclass, whose own ignorance and lack of aspiration is largely to blame for their poverty. Their resentment is partially their own lack of self esteem projected onto blaming others for their status in life.

However, as Philip Johnston states in the Daily Telegraph "for years now they have been considered an embarrassment, a low-achieving, boorish, poorly educated affront to the sensibilities of the "progressive" elite that preached the virtues of multi-culturalism, promoted mass immigration and makes up much of the political establishment, including the modern Labour Party." In other words Labour would rather talk about the poor than talk to them, especially if they are young white men. Such men who are not worldly, whose primary interest is their own lot and who don't know why they should give a damn about people of different ethnic groups, who Labour openly courts. This has only been exacerbated by the rise of Islamist terrorism and the apparent flagrant way that some Islamists can promote violence in the UK, whilst being able to benefit from the generous welfare state.

"Rightly or wrongly, this group of voters believes that the people who suffer most discrimination in modern Britain are "white people". This is the response of 77 per cent of BNP supporters; but it is also the view of 40 per cent of voters overall. They don't like the way that Muslim extremists appear to sound off with impunity while anyone defending their country's heritage and traditions is denounced by the progressives as a fringe loony. Hence the BNP's heavy reliance on wartime imagery to appeal to this nostalgic sense of a lost past."

So in essence, you take a bunch of disenchanted young white men, who witness an ever straining socialist health, education and housing system, enjoyed extensively by immigrants, a barely shrouded embarrassment among Labour activists for the culture and concerns of the underclass, an ongoing cultural cringe in the UK about what it means to be British and what the values of British society are about, whilst Islamists happily preach their own vision of the future damning what most people think British society IS about. Poorly educated white men who think the world owes them a living, a socialist housing, health, education and welfare system that is open for anyone in the EU and any new migrant to enjoy, a fear of expressing a British socio-political cultural identity whilst no such fear from those from outside Britain, including those who wish to destroy some of the bedrocks of the British system. Add a lot of socialist economics and social policies, and you have the BNP - it is a lot of old Labour, with some carefully shrouded proud nationalism.

The only difference with old Labour is that the BNP is socialism for one skin colour only. Traditionally, that end of British politics has been filled by barely competent inadequates, it has only been with Nick Griffin corralling his barely literate troops of racists (after all, who participates in the BNP if it isn't to let off some racist steam) to talk of racism working the other way, to talk of immigration straining public services and talk anti-capitalism, that has given it some credibility. Griffin is careful to oppose racism publicly, and to treat insults as water off a duck's back - knowing that the best way to respond to mainstream media baiting is to look tired at it.

As long as he leads, the BNP can maintain this veneer of credibility among a small minority of voters, but as long as Labour continues to treat what are its core supporters with barely shrouded contempt, it wont get them back. Indeed it created the dependency culture that its former supporters want to deny those of others races, it create the myth that for the working classes to progress, they needed Nanny State to advance, it also created the drive for "equality of outcomes" that have bizarrely resulted in bureaucracies and councils focusing on groups other than poor white males.

In short, the BNP did well because it exploits a culture of statism and dependency that the left have long promoted - blaming the failures of the system on immigration. The problem is not that, the problem is the system itself - and Labour will never ever tackle that.

What to wear on your feet in summer

Giles Coren from the Times has written lucidly on what is wrong with much that people wear in summer - basically stop showing your feet off!

Men's feet of course are vile: "Men's feet, in particular, make me squirm and gag: the mottled colouring, the sparse hair, the little toe that has been crushed into the one next to it over the years so that it has turned and bent and cuddles up against it now, sadly, as if trying to spoon an unwilling lover, the yellowed, cracked toenails, and the fully blackened one on the right biggy from toe-punting a goalpost 14 years ago. How can bringing these out in public be considered acceptable?"

Women's feet fair only slightly better: "all women's open shoes are revolting. Those strappy mules where the sole rolls out of the end of a wide, asymmetric toe-hole so that the shoe looks like it is vomiting toes. Toes that are all pointing to an imaginary origin just in front of the middle toe because of being crammed into closed, pointy shoes all winter. And heels all red and covered in Elastoplasts because in early summer the bare skin is not yet used to the rub of the strap.

Worst of all are these quasi-bondage shoes of which, among others, Louis Vuitton does one called a "Spicy", which involve a vertiginous heel sloping down to a 2in platform and the foot tied in with all sorts of ribbons and chains. I think it's meant to be a nod to fetish, but the effect is to make the wearer (who is paying maybe a grand a pair) look as desperate and slaggy as a pole dancer, while at the same time reminding us of the horrors of ancient Chinese foot-binding."

Quite. Only foot fetishists disagree and of course the men who design the shoes who "are not into women, and cannot bear to think too much about any part of them more intimate than their feet."

Hereth end the lesson. btw Giles Coren is one of those on a list of "reasons to live in the UK". He writes restaurant reviews like no other.

Is the UK facing another 1922?

It is far too early to say, and the issue had been raised in 1983 following that general election. Is the Labour Party facing being sent to the political wilderness to come third place at the next general election?

In 1922, the Liberal Party was in disarray, having previously been the party of Opposition in the UK, and as it had split into two, it lost enough votes to Labour that it rose from only 57 seats to 142, becoming the official Opposition. It was a blow to the Liberal Party that it never recovered from, but which it nearly broke through in 1983. With the help of a breakaway faction from Labour, the Liberal/SDP Alliance gained 25.4% of the vote, narrowly beaten by Labour on 27.6%, although the Tories won handsomely on 42.3%.

This time the local and European elections show Labour doing far worse, coming third in both. With the Liberal Democrats ahead in the local elections, and UKIP in the European elections (and Lib Dems close in fourth), it looks like many core Labour voters are going elsewhere, although it is clear that local and European elections are different from a general election - and a general election could be nearly a year away.

However, there is a sense that maybe things have changed. The Labour spin is that it has lost support purely because of the Parliamentary expenses row, but it goes beyond that. It has been polling poorly for many months, and Gordon Brown has looked indecisive on such a regular basis, expenses being the most recent example - but it started with him teasing for a general election and then deciding not to have one.

The Conservatives have done well rebranding themselves as a party of middle England - which is what was needed to recapture the South and centre, and even make inroads in the North, Wales and Scotland. The Liberal Democrats have moved to the left, and have captured some of the traditional Labour vote, by promoting more government, and opposing some of the intrusions on freedom that Labour have promoted, whilst embracing a statist vision with more tax. Labour now presents nothing.

The Conservatives have inherited the gentle reformist agenda of Blair, with a somewhat different philosophical direction, seen in supporting education vouchers and being more sceptical about the EU and bureaucracy. The Liberal Democrats are partly old Labour, so what is Labour now? The tired spent force, which has lost the will to reform the economy, which ran deficits during the good years and has poured money into state services to see little real gain - except for unionised labour. Many of its traditional supporters are sceptical about Europe, partly due to the net loss that the UK endures from funding it, but also a more malignant xenophobia against continental European labour.

You see Labour's supporters have been an odd coalition. Up till recently, it included middle class aspirational families, and some small to medium sized businesspeople. It included most of those dependent on the state - welfare beneficiaries and bureaurats. Pensioners, who have long been bribed by Labour with other people's money, and of course the working class envy pack - the ones who despise businesspeople, and happily voted Labour in 1983 to shift Britain towards a Warsaw Pact style way of running the economy. Labour has also courted ethnic minorities, spreading bile that the Tories are racist - although the war in Iraq and war on terrorism has cost the Islamic vote somewhat.

Who is left? The middle classes have gone Tory or Lib Dem. The working classes are bitter at so many Labour MPs ripping off expenses, and don't like the EU (and foreigners). So it is bureaurats and welfare beneficiaries - the ones Labour pillages taxpayers to pay for. It isn't enough.

So without a change in leader, Labour seriously faces a groundbreaking defeat in the next UK general election. Could it put Labour third? Well it would be a huge hurdle to cross. It would require the Conservatives to win a decisive majority, a swing of around 15%, but also for the Liberal Democrats to do well- without losing to the Conservatives much. That also requires a relative gain of over 12%, which would be an enormous effort, but not inconceivable.

My money is that this wouldn't happen. Nick Clegg isn't enough of a figure to attract that amount of a swing, but if it makes itself the place where a protest vote can be safely made, it may make enough gains that put Labour in Opposition for many years as it needs to fight on two fronts.

Whatever happens, it is becoming increasingly clear that the only British Labour leader to win an election in the last 35 years will have been Tony Blair (or 50 years if you consider the 1974 win to be half hearted given Labour didn't get a clear majority).

What does that say about how British politics has changed over a generation?

Does Rodney have a secret agenda?

I can only hope.

I was thrilled to read a Green press release that there is apparently a Cabinet Paper to reduce the powers of local government "This Cabinet paper wants to implement ACT Party policy by narrowing the powers of local government and making it easier to sell Auckland's $23 billion in public assets. The paper proposes to do this without public consultation" says an exasperated Russel Norman.

Russel is upset that Rodney Hide wants to remove special requirements to consult when contracting out council services or privatising, special requirements that don't apply when councils want to grow their activities - which of course, Russel wholeheartedly welcomes, as the Greens pretty much just love government growing.

Although Sue Kedgley hysterically waxes on that "This paper reveals Act's secret agenda to castrate local democracy. He is trying to reduce local government's powers to the point where they are unable to deliver social and environmental services, which are surely their core business." she has often been the mistress of hyperbole. I can only dream she is right.

For the Greens to believe local government's core business is delivering social and environmental services, when most people would say it is roads, footpaths, rubbish collection and perhaps libraries and handling complaints of nuisance, is nonsensical.

It exposes the Green's agenda for local government which is for "democracy" to mean whenever someone wants local government to interfere in something, it should. For Kedgley to claim cutting local government down drastically is "extremely dangerous" shows she isn't taking her pills. However, Sue thinks burgers, cellphones, foreign TV programmes, cars and most things imported are bad.

It begs the question though - if Rodney DOES have a secret agenda for the new Auckland mega city to have drastically curtailed powers, wouldn't it be helpful if he told us? How many ratepayers would welcome with open arms councils no longer able to set up businesses, subsidise businesses, set up hospitals, schools or radio stations?

His press release is a teaser for more "Cabinet has authorised a review of the Local Government Act 2002 to improve the transparency, accountability and fiscal management of local government. I want the Act reviewed to ensure ratepayers and citizens have better tools for controlling council costs, rates and activities. I will be looking at ways of ensuring local government operates within a defined budget and focuses on core activities"

Here's a start Rodney - get local authorities to send you a list of all of the activities they do, and then sit down for a day and cross off those that are unnecessary and absurd - then whatever is left should be what is statutorily defined as what local authorities can do.

Anything else councils do will have to be undertaken by companies that councillors themselves, and willing citizens (or anyone) have shares in by voluntary contribution. You see that would be truly democratic - on the one hand, small tightly constrained councils, and on the other hand the power (which has always existed) for those who want more to be done, to do it themselves and pursuade others to pay for it.

Somehow, I don't think the Greens (or Labour for that matter), really believe in democracy that is about voting with your own money, rather than voting to pilfer someone else's.

UK Labour gutted at local elections

In the UK, there are local elections virtually every year, although they are for different parts and levels of local government. This year it was for counties and unitary authorities in England, which are equivalent to regional councils in the NZ context. Most counties were up for grabs, and in most it was for all seats. London was not included.

Given the scandal over Parliamentary expenses, and the slow response of Gordon Brown, it was always going to hurt Labour - but few could have known the scale of the defeat.

34 councils were up for grabs. Labour lost control of all of the three councils it held, including Staffordshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire, all counties of the north - Labour's former heartland. The Conservatives picked up control of ten councils, including some previously run by the Liberal Democrats.

In terms of councillors, the results were even more devastating for Labour. Labour lost 291 councillors, out of a previous 469, losing more than half of its seats. The Conservatives picked up 244 seats, now holding 1531. The Liberal Democrats lost a couple by comparison. The Greens did well, particularly in Norfolk picking up five seats from Labour. The racist BNP picked up three seats, less than many expected. However, more surprisingly the anti-EU UK Independence Party picked up 7 council seats.

So Labour has been absolutely gutted, it came third in share of party vote, behind Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Admittedly, one needs to be careful about that on a national scale - because it is ONLY England, and without London and some other parts of the country it is a distortion.

What was Gordon Brown's response? To reshuffle his Cabinet, but he wanted to replace Alastair Darling, but got rolled. He appointed Sir Alan Sugar - yes the TV star property developer - to be an advisor on small business. Sir Peter Mandelson, a peer, is now effectively deputy Prime Minister. So Brown now is putting people in positions of responsibility who are unelected, he is "taking action" on Parliamentary expenses - though of course, he wouldn't have done so had the Daily Telegraph not outed the issue in the first place. He says he will move on constitutional reform - whatever that means - and to reform public services to put patients and parents first in the health and education systems.

In other words, he is trying to be the man for ideas - but he is running a government on life support. Ministers have resigned, and most recently an MP, he had taken Labour to a stunning third place defeat in the local elections. Brown now has his last chance, but it is not over yet.

Tonight the European election results come through, if, as some predict, Labour could come fourth - then surely Brown cannot last. If Labour gets beaten by UKIP - which doesn't even sit in the House of Commons, then you must wonder what future it has.

The scale of Labour's likely defeat could be as groundbreaking as the change in the early 20th century that saw Labour beat the Liberal party as a major party in the UK.