Category Archives: elections

by-elections, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, Starmer, Uncategorized

The Sliding Labour Party– What Next?

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Some months ago I blogged about what I saw as the emerging political vacuum in England and Wales. My overall view now is the same but more so.

The 2015 General Election would have broken the mould of British politics had it been carried out under conditions other than the absurd First Past The Post system, more suited to the UK of the 1920s than that of the early 21st Century. The distribution of votes in Southern England illustrates this well enough, where the Conservative Party got about half the votes but won about 95% of the Westminster seats (a similar ration to that of the SNP in Scotland).

The UKIP insurgents famously won nearly 4 million votes UK-wide (mostly in England), some 12% of the vote, yet won no seat except that of Douglas Carswell, who is really a Conservative and was previously elected as one.

It can be asserted as simple fact that, in almost any given English seat, most of the voters do not get the MP or party that they want and for which they voted. Moreover, even the typical 30%-50% received by the winning candidate often reflects more the candidates that most voters did not want: voters vote tactically in the absence of a true choice being available.

FPTP has distorted British politics, giving the incumbent party in any given seat a great advantage and –far more– giving the main System parties as a whole a like electoral advantage and an anchor against sliding into ruination. All the same, when the forces become unstoppable, that slide does happen. It happened to the Liberal Party during and after the 1920s (replaced by Labour) and it happened to Scottish Labour after 2010. This illustrates it well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Party#UK_General_Elections

Founded in 1934, the SNP often scored less than 1% of the vote in Scotland and had to wait until 1970 to get a single MP elected. Even in 2010, the SNP only got 19.9% of the Scottish vote and 6 MPs (out of 59). Then the tipping-point was reached and in 2015, its vote swelled to 50% and suddenly the SNP had (a typically-disproportionate FPTP result) 56 MPs (out of 59). Labour in Scotland was ruined and now (2017) is only the third party in the polls there (after the Conservatives!) and has only about 15% voter support.

Moving to Labour overall, we see that this is a party that has been living “off its hump” for a long time. It even managed to jettison almost every remnant of “socialism” in its policies and yet win elections under Tony Blair (via appealing to otherwise Conservative or Liberal Democrat voters in the South and Midlands). Labour, in effect, “sold its patrimony for a mess of pottage”. When one asks oneself “what does Labour stand for?”, nothing coherent comes to mind: a confusion of old history, trade unions, strike banners, post-1945 nationalization, 1960s-1970s managerial technocracy, that old humbug Michael Foot in his donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, then, from the mid-1990s, the mirage of Blairism (New World Order pro-Americanism meets the Israel Lobby meets managerial “socialism” meets Common Purpose careerism).

It is often said that Labour is now split into Corbynists and Blairites. Another fault line (closely following the first) might be said to be the pro-Israel lobby bloc and the generally anti-Zionist bloc (though most in both still feel the need to pay lip-service to the “holocaust” narrative and its faked history, non-existent “gas chambers”, the now-derided “six million” etc).

In fact, Labour is now not even two parties but three:

  • the remnant of the old trade union-oriented Labour Party, based around traditional and unthinkingly Labour communities, mostly in the North;
  • the Blairite-Brownite pro-Israel bloc, consisting largely of MPs and their staffs, together with careerists in other parts of the country. These are those who want “to win elections” by promising pie in the sky: socialism to socialists, aspiration to the voters of the suburbs, “diversity” to the ethnic minorities and the rainbow loonies, profits and low taxes to the Jewish Zionist potential donors;
  • the Corbyn  camp, which relates to a partly-imaginary Labour history from the 1930s through to the 1980s: “no pasaran!” Communist (and some syndicalist) propaganda from the Spanish Civil War; an airbrushed “anti-Nazi” and “anti-fascist” Second World War narrative; the conflicts of the 1970s such as that in Chile or those in parts of Central America; the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s (seen mainly through a London lens though). This is largely a bloc based around London, around the half-mad pseudo-socialist local council enclaves that became notorious in the 1980s: Islington, Camden, Haringey, Lambeth. It is the dominant bloc now and is supported by at least half of the ordinary Labour Party members and supporters.

Naturally, there is overlap here and there within that tripartite split. However, what has fallen away is not only consensus among the Labour members and activists, but more, the voters. Most Labour voters now are in that first group and are only voting Labour out of traditional allegiance. When you look at, say, Stoke Central, where the by-election is about to take place, you see that voting Labour, not in 1945 but in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 has not given the people anything. Unemployment high, immigration high, large numbers of ethnic minority voters (Labour’s most reliable pawns now); little hope. Why would people in Stoke Central vote Labour? The answer seems to be that they see little choice (those that will actually vote, being probably a minority of those eligible).

In Stoke Central, the only alternative to Labour is UKIP, which is not the sort of social-national party likely to rise to power. In fact, UKIP is not social-nationalist at all, though some of its supporters are. The fact that UKIP is even being entertained (and may yet win the Stoke Central seat) is mainly a sign of Labour’s decline and not UKIP’s strength.

The industrial proletariat has gone, almost entirely. The trade unions are just a feeble bureaucratic, rainbow-coalition, “anti-racist”, Common Purpose-contaminated joke. The people who are suffering under fake “austerity” (the effect of #NWO/#ZOG globalism) and who belong to the burgeoning “precariat” (unemployed, underemployed, disabled, 50+, zero-hours-exploited, minimum-wage-exploited) are not now Labour voters but non-voters, sometime UKIP voters, potential social-nationalist voters. The Labour MPs are now mainly careerists, pro-Israel drones and “what’s-in-it-for-me?” bastards. Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt abandoned his seat and constituents because, as he said, “the offer [from the Victoria and Albert Museum] was too good to refuse.” £250,000 a year. That was his price.

When a social nationalist movement of the new type emerges, as it must, it will start to scoop up the poor, or poor and angry and frustrated, masses. Labour will then disappear. Already it seems likely that Labour will only get between 100-200 seats in the 2020 Parliament, whether numbers are reduced from 650 to 600 or not. Labour policies– pro mass immigration, “welcoming” “refugees” (not of course to the MPs’ homes and neighbourhoods but to those of the former Labour voters), pro the EU octopus etc, simply have no appeal to those left behind by a conspiratorial globalism and multiculturalism.

As yet, a suitable party does not exist. When it does exist, Labour, already weakened, will fall to dust.

Update, 24 August 2025

Well, scroll on 8.5 years and here we are. The 2017 Stoke Central by-election was won by Labour (from UKIP and Con), and the seat retained by Labour at the 2017 General Election, but lost to the Conservatives in 2019, only for Labour to win the seat back in 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.

In the bigger picture, of course, the Cons under Boris-idiot won in 2017, and won bigger in 2019, only to lose to Starmer-Labour in 2024, since which time Reform UK has arisen to prominence and, indeed, dominance. We now await events.

by-elections, elections, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Stoke-on-Trent Central By-Election

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Last week, I wrote a preview of the upcoming (23 February 2017) Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election, one of two taking place on that day

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/stoke-on-trent-central-preview/.

Now that the main candidates are declared, I am ready to expand on that and to predict the result as best one can a month before polling.

The Stoke Central constituency has existed since 1950 and the Labour Party has won every election since then. Until Tristram Hunt appeared in 2010, the Labour vote varied between 48% and 68%. Hunt’s votes have been 38.8% (2010) and 39.3% (2015). Stoke Central has moved from being a Labour safe seat to one which can be regarded as marginal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections

The Labour vote in 2015 was about 12,000, that of both UKIP and Conservatives about 7,000. The Liberal Democrats, until 2015 the second party, crashed to fifth place (behind an Independent) with 1,296 votes. In fact, the LibDem vote in 2010 was 7,000, the same as the UKIP vote in 2015, perhaps a sign that the “protest vote” bloc at Stoke Central is around 7,000 or so. Arguende. The LibDem candidate for the by-election is Zulfiqar Ali, a consultant cardiologist, who lost his deposit (vote share 4.2%) in the 2015 General Election.

Tristram Hunt, the outgoing-going-gone Labour Party MP, was never very popular in his own constituency, though London TV studios loved him. He made no bones about despising the leader of his own party, tried and failed to formulate policy of his own and was surprisingly bad (for someone of his background and education) at arguing his points when (as so often) being interviewed.

Hunt stepped down as MP in order to take a job as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. MP pay is about £74,000 (plus generous expenses); the V&A Director presently gets a package worth £230,000. Hunt may be getting more. No wonder that he said that “the V&A offer was too good to refuse.” So much for political conviction, vocation and, indeed, loyalty (whether to party or constituents). Stoke Central is well rid of him.

The Labour candidate in the by-election is Gareth Snell, a still fairly young former leader of the Borough Council of Newcastle-under-Lyme (3-4 miles from Stoke-on-Trent). His selection indicates that Labour are going to play on local roots and try to pretend that God is in His Heaven and Jeremy Corbyn far away, Corbyn being (arguably?) an electoral liability (seen as a credible future Prime Minister by only 16% in a recent poll).

The Conservatives have not been even the second party at Stoke Central since 2001. This by-election is one which will be decided between Labour and UKIP. The recent Theresa May Brexit speech may well have shot UKIP’s fox overall, but at Stoke Central no-one is expecting a Conservative win or even a Conservative second. The Conservative candidate is Jack Brereton, 25, who was elected at age 19 to Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

Since the 2001 General Election, the second and third-placed candidates at Stoke-on-Trent Central have received very similar numbers of votes (behind victorious Labour).

UKIP, joker in the pack. Paul Nuttall, a Northerner who was recently elected leader of UKIP, is the candidate. He must have a chance despite his partly-“libertarian” views (of which Labour is making the most, of course, claiming that Nuttall believes in NHS privatization). UKIP has a steep climb in the by-election, but it is possible. This is a by-election. The result will not affect who governs the UK. People can protest with their votes. Labour is now seen as the pro-mass immigration party and the pro-EU party. Stoke Central voted nearly 70% for Leave in the EU Referendum.

If turnout is low, if the 2015 Labour vote halves to about 6,000, if the 2015 UKIP vote mostly holds up at 7,000 or not much less, then UKIP can win. If.

It is not credible to imagine a win for the Conservatives or LibDems and they will vie for most votes not going to Labour or UKIP, but this is very much a Labour/UKIP contest. If enough people (eg 2015 Conservative voters) vote tactically for UKIP, UKIP has a good chance. On the other hand, many 2015 LibDem or Green voters may also vote tactically for Labour.

In 2015, an Independent got over 2,000 votes. Will those votes go to UKIP, now that that candidate has not renewed his candidature? Open question.

Unemployment is high, immigration is high and having had Labour MPs for 66 years has not prevented either in recent times. There is strong cultural resistance in the seat to the Conservative Party. UKIP is the insurgent here.

Prediction

The bookmakers still have Labour as odds-on to win the by-election and it would be tempting to call it as a Labour-UKIP-Conservative 1-2-3, but I am going to be bold and say that Paul Nuttall and UKIP can crack this. The seat must be one of the best chances UKIP has had or will have: anti-EU, pro-Leave, anti-mass immigration, disenchanted with the System parties and very much a “left-behind” area. Also, Tristram Hunt abandoning the seat for a quarter-of-a-million-pound job must sit badly in an area which is one of the poorest in England. In addition, Nuttall has the cachet, such as it is, of being his party’s leader.

In sum, I see the 1234 as: 1.UKIP; 2.Labour; 3.Conservative; 4.LibDem.

Effect

If the result is as I have predicted, it will push even more anti-Corbyn Labour MPs to jump ship and it will weaken Labour even further in the North (it being of little importance now in Scotland or most of the South of England). If Labour hangs on to win, then everything depends on the majority obtained but it might well be just a slower car crash.

Update, 30 May 2019

I blogged twice more about that Stoke on Trent by-election:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/stoke-central-by-election-final-word-before-polling/

and

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/stoke-central-and-copeland-the-aftermath-for-labour-and-ukip/

by-elections, elections, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Copeland By-Election: Watershed?

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Three weeks ago, I wrote a preliminary blog post about the upcoming Copeland by-election

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/the-copeland-by-election-the-blog-before-the-blog/

in which I examined the history of the constituency. I also took a look at the factors influencing the present by-election. The time has now come to attempt a prediction with reference to wider political trends.

The Copeland constituency has been in existence on its current boundaries since 1983. The previous constituency, Whitehaven (created during the electoral reform of 1832), was rock-solid Labour (often over 60%) from 1935 until the boundaries were changed in 1983

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehaven_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

The Copeland constituency has continued Labour since its creation: the Labour vote reached its high-water mark in 1997, in the Tony Blair landslide. In that year, the Labour candidate achieved a vote of over 58%:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_1990s.

His successor, Jamie Reed, started off in 2005 with a Labour vote of 50.5%. However, the Labour vote share has steadily declined since then, most recently to 42% in 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

The Conservative vote has been more volatile, ranging in various elections from 29% to 43%. The Conservatives achieved nearly 36% in 2015, only one point down on their 2010 showing.

The UKIP vote in Copeland has mirrored in a modest way that of much of the country: 2.2% in 2005, 2.3% (beaten by the BNP, which got 3.4%) in 2010, jumping to 15.5% in 2015.

The Liberal Democrats have never done very well in Copeland, their vote share flickering around the 10% mark, not exceeding that in 2010 (one point down from their 2005 showing in fact), then crashing to 3.5% in the 2015 debacle.

In 2010, the Green Party stood for the first time since 1987 but received a vote of less than 1%. That improved to 3% in 2015.

There are several factors which do not bode well for Labour:

  • Jamie Reed may be seen as a “rat leaving the sinking ship”, having taken a potentially lucrative position with the company which operates the constituency’s largest employing entity (by far), the Sellafield nuclear plant. That may seep into perceptions of Labour MPs as a whole;
  • recent polling shows Labour nationally as having the support of only 25% of voters;
  • the same polling shows that Jeremy Corbyn is seen as a potential Prime Minister by only 16% of voters;
  • Copeland voted heavily for Leave in the EU Referendum;
  • Copeland is believed to be hostile to the mass immigration which Labour and its embattled leader seem unwilling to criticize, let alone promise to halt.

Labour has now selected as candidate a local councillor, Gillian Troughton, a former medical doctor and supporter of the nuclear industry, in which her husband works. That may help Labour’s campaign, as will her support for the NHS and the local hospital, but Labour’s problems locally stem from its general decline nationally and its generally pro-EU, pro-mass immigration positions.

Traditionally, the Conservative vote in Copeland comes from particular communities along the coast and inland and that vote seems to be rather solid. There is no reason to suppose that the Conservative vote will not hold up fairly well, bearing in mind Theresa May’s recent stance on Brexit and also the immigration question.

Recently-stagnating UKIP can probably expect a surge in its vote, though it seems that the party will probably not be able to do well enough to win, which would require its 2015 vote to increase by at least 50% and probably more. However, UKIP will probably be able to garner votes from disaffected 2010 and 2015 Labour voters.

Turnout is key. In 2015, the Labour vote was 16,750, the Conservatives received 14,186, but UKIP’s vote was only 6,148. It is quite likely that former Labour voters will not so much vote Conservative or even UKIP, but simply stay at home and refuse to support Labour. If turnout slumps, particularly among those former Labour voters, then the Conservatives might well pull ahead of Labour , especially if the UKIP vote increases .

Prediction

Conservatives to win Copeland, with UKIP second and Labour third.

Effect

Only once in 35 years and twice in 60 years has a by-election seat been lost by the official Opposition party. If that happens in Copeland (even leaving aside the result of the simultaneous by-election at Stoke-on-Trent Central), Labour will go into a tailspin.  If Labour is pushed into third place, that effect will be magnified immeasurably.

Corbyn has made it clear that he will not resign whatever happens. Failure at Copeland would lead either to a second attempt to depose Corbyn via leadership challenge or (more likely) to a mass exodus of anti-Corbyn careerists, Blairites, Brownites and Zionists following Jamie Reed and Tristram Hunt out of the House of Commons and possibly out of the Labour Party. If that exodus, in turn, leads to the loss of further Labour seats, then it is hard to see Labour recovering. Ever.

We may be seeing the death of one of the two major (i.e. long-established, sometimes governing) political parties, something that has not occurred since the collapse of the Liberal Party in the 1920s.

Update, 3 March 2019

Well, two years on, looking at the article and its predicted result, I can feel content that I did OK. The Conservative Party candidate, Trudy Harrison, did win, as I thought at the time she would, getting a 43.3% vote. Labour’s candidate, Gillian Troughton, came second on 37.3%. A major factor was the collapse in the UKIP vote, from 15.5% to 6.5%. The vast majority of those votes probably went to the Conservatives.

The Green Party got a 1.7% vote at the by-election, the two Independent candidates 2.6% and 0.4%; none stood at the 2017 General Election.

The contest was reprised only 4 months later, at that 2017 General Election. The “main” (LibLabCon) or System parties ran the same candidates with a similar result: the Con vote increased to 49.1%; the Lab vote however also increased considerably, to 45.1%. The LibDem vote slumped, from 7.2% at the by-election to 3.3% at the General Election. UKIP’s vote slumped too, from 6.5% to 2.5%.

Copeland is now a fairly tight Con-Lab marginal. It could go either way next time.

Update, 5 June 2020

Well, since the last update, there has been another general election, the General Election of December 2019. In that election, the sitting Conservative Party MP, Trudy Harrison, retained her seat, and increased her vote-share to 53.7% (from 49.1% in the 2017 General Election). The Labour Party vote fell back by over 5 points. The other two candidates (LibDem and Green) both scored under 5% of the total vote; both lost their deposits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trudy_Harrison

Update, 26 January 2025

Trudy Harrison stepped down ahead of the 2024 General Election, the Copeland constituency then being abolished and replaced by a different constituency on different boundaries.

Alt-Right, Brexit, by-elections, elections, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Stoke-on-Trent Central: Preview

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I shall blog in more detail about the upcoming by-election at Stoke-on-Trent Central when the runners and riders are fixed. This is merely an advance viewing of the contest based on the background.

Tristram Hunt, the Labour Party MP, was never very popular in his own constituency, though London TV studios loved him. He made no bones about despising the leader of his own party, tried and failed to formulate policy of his own and was surprisingly bad (for someone of his background and education) at arguing his points when (as so often) being interviewed on TV.

Hunt stepped down as MP in order to take a job as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. MP pay is £74,000 (plus generous expenses); the V&A Director presently gets a package worth £230,000. Hunt may be getting more. No wonder he said that “the V&A offer was too good to refuse.” So much for political conviction, vocation and, indeed, loyalty (whether to party or constituents). Stoke Central is well rid of him.

The Stoke Central constituency has existed since 1950 and the Labour Party has won every election since then. Until Hunt appeared in 2010, the Labour vote varied between 48% and 68%. Hunt’s votes have been 38.8% (2010) and 39.3% (2015). Stoke Central has moved from being a Labour safe seat to one which can be regarded as marginal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections

The Labour vote in 2015 was about 12,000, that of both UKIP and Conservatives about 7,000. The LibDems, until 2015 the second party, crashed to fifth place (behind an Independent) with 1,296 votes. In fact, the LibDem vote in 2010 was 7,000, the same as the UKIP 2015 vote, perhaps a sign that the “protest vote” bloc at Stoke Central is around 7,000 or so. Arguende.

The Conservatives have not even been the second party at Stoke Central since 2001. This by-election is one which will be decided between Labour and UKIP. The recent Theresa May Brexit speech may well have shot UKIP’s fox overall, but at Stoke Central no-one is expecting a Conservative win or even a Conservative second.

Can UKIP win? The answer, even at this stage, must be a qualified “yes”. Much will depend on its candidate and that of Labour. If Paul Nuttall, a Northerner, stands, he must have a chance despite his partly-“libertarian” views. UKIP has a steep climb but it is possible. This is a by-election. The result will not affect who governs. People can protest with their votes. Labour is now seen as the pro-mass immigration party, the pro-EU party (to an extent). Stoke Central voted about 65% for Leave in the EU Referendum.

If turnout is low, if the 2015 Labour vote halves to about 6,000, if the 2015 UKIP vote mostly holds up at 7,000 or not much less, then UKIP can win. If.

It is not credible to imagine a win for the Conservatives or LibDems and they will vie for most votes not going to Labour or UKIP, but this is a Labour/UKIP contest. If enough people vote tactically for UKIP, UKIP has a good chance. On the other hand, 2015 LibDem or Green voters may also vote tactically for Labour.

Unemployment is high, immigration is high and having had Labour MPs for 66 years has not prevented either.

Labour must still be odds-on to win Stoke Central at this point, but UKIP has a serious chance.

Update, 27 November 2020

Looking at this post nearly 4 years on, I have to say that my prediction was accurate. The Labour Party won convincingly at the 2017 by-election, with 37.1% of votes cast. UKIP came in second with 24.7%, narrowly ahead of the Conservative Party on 24.3%. LibDems 4th-placed, with 9.8% of the vote.

The less-serious candidates all captured less than 2% of the vote; indeed, all except the Green Party got less than 1%: two Independent candidates, BNP, Christian People’s Alliance and the Monster Raving Loony (who actually beat the BNP, CPA and one of the Independents). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s.

The Conservative Party candidate, Jack Brereton, did not stand again at Stoke Central but was adopted by the Conservatives at Stoke South, where he was elected at the 2017 General Election and re-elected in 2019.

The 2017 General Election saw the Labour Party MP, Gareth Snell, a seemingly rather unpleasant individual, re-elected with a greatly-increased vote-share (51.5%). However, the 2019 General Election saw Snell lose to Jo Gideon of the Conservative Party in a close result (45.4% to 43.3%).

As for the one-time MP, Tristram Hunt, he is at time of writing still Director of the V&A, still getting that hugely-generous salary and expenses, and has, no doubt, long ago forgotten the people of “his” once-Labour constituency at Stoke-on-Trent…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristram_Hunt

elections, historical, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, Russia and Russian relations, society, Uncategorized

Tipping Points in Politics and Life

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We have all heard of the theatrical cliche of the actor who achieves “overnight success”, having in fact worked hard against all the odds for years. The same is often true of writers, painters and other artists. Not forgetting scientists. It was Edison who, on the failure of his (supposedly) 2,000th lightbulb experiment, is said to have said: “I have not failed. I have just discovered the 2,000th way not to invent the incandescent lightbulb.” At a later time, he of course succeeded. Many things follow the pattern: a long period of non-movement, then sudden success (or sudden failure of something, often after long stagnation).

One can call this a tipping-point, or characterize it by some other metaphor. The aircraft which suddenly fails by reason of metal fatigue, the ship which finally turns over after ice has built up on its external structure in Arctic waters, the huge empire which “suddenly” staggers and falls. On the other hand, there is that actor with his “overnight” success, that composer whose works suddenly find favour, the small political group which “suddenly” rises to prominence and power.

The Bolsheviks were a small group of societal rejects mostly living in internal or external exile, or in prison. Many were not even Russian. Jews predominated in their higher councils (despite forming only 10% of the entire membership), but there were also Georgians and others. In fact, the Bolshevik Party only had 8,400 members in 1905 and, though that increased to 46,100 by 1907, by 1910 the numbers had slipped back to about 5,000. Few would then have imagined either that the mighty Russian Empire would collapse or that the tiny faction of Bolsheviks could seize control of what was left. We know the rest: a failing war and an impoverished population, an initial attempt by others at “moderate” revolution and then a coup d’etat by one small group in one corner of a vast empire.

The lesson: a small and marginalized group, disciplined ideologically and practically, can both seize power and institute an entirely new form of society, once that tipping point or crisis point has been reached.

In post-WW1 Bavaria, Adolf Hitler became the 7th member of the German Workers’ Party [DAP], which may also have had an unknown number (estimates vary from mere dozens to as many as 15,000) of loose supporters in the beerhalls of 1919 Munich.

By 1923, this tiny and marginalized group was able to attempt the Beer Hall Putsch [aka Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch], but it is important to note that, despite the support of Ludendorff and a few other notables, the actual number of putschists involved was small: the main march headed by Hitler was only 2,000-strong (immediately after the putsch failed, 3,000 students from the university also marched in support and to lay wreaths). Indeed, even had the putsch succeeded, Hitler would only have taken power in one city of one region within the German state as a whole.

The membership of the NSDAP grew steadily, reaching 108,000 by 1928. Electorally, however, the NSDAP was doing worse in 1928 (receiving only 2.6% of the national vote) than it had done in 1924, no doubt a reflection of the growing prosperity in the intervening years (i.e. since the infamous hyperinflation finished in 1924). Despite that poor showing, once the Great Depression started to affect Germany after 1929, the NSDAP was able to gain the trust of ever-more voters: the vote in 1932 was 37% and then 33% (in the two elections of that year), growing to 44% in 1933. Adolf Hitler then took full power, having been appointed Chancellor in 1932.

A different example: UKIP grew from a few people in a pub in 1991 to a peak in the 2012-2015 period, but has not the ideological discipline or revolutionary intent to “seize power” even by electoral means. It missed its chance and will probably not get any further. Still, its growth, in the UK context, is interesting. Its founder, Alan Sked, was a former Liberal candidate who stood as “Anti-Federalist” candidate for the seat of Bath in 1992 (i.e. after UKIP had been formed), receiving 117 votes [0.2%].

UKIP had virtually no members until the late 1990s, though by 2015 the membership had grown to nearly 50,000 (now 30,000). As for its vote share, that grew to nearly 13% by 2015, but the UK’s unfair “First Past The Post” [FPTP] electoral system meant no gains.

FPTP voting itself illustrates the “tipping point” idea, as happened in Scotland: the SNP had fairly good support for decades, but few MPs until the tipping point was reached. Now it has 50% support, but almost 100% of Westminster seats. Why was the tipping point reached? Cultural identity rising, living standards falling, entrenched Labour failing. The point was reached–and the Labour vote collapsed.

UKIP has the same problem. So long as it has only 10% or even 15% of votes, it cannot get more than one or two MPs. Were it to get to 25% support, the situation would tip and UKIP would have perhaps 100 MPs. Except that that will probably not happen…

In fact, the Bath constituency mentioned above is instructive: Alan Sked got only 117 votes (0.2%) in 1992; in 2015 the UKIP candidate received nearly 3,000 votes (over 6%), but was still only 5th (Sked came in 6th in 1992)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

The difference between UKIP’s situation and that of the Bolsheviks or NSDAP is that UKIP has no really firm ideological or organizational structure. Even if society came to a political tipping point, UKIP might well be unable to take advantage of that.

A new and properly-run social nationalist party could take most of the votes of UKIP as well as those which formerly went to the BNP and others. That however, could only ever be a foundation for electoral success. That success itself would depend on the rising star of the new party meeting the fading star of the old parties. It is a question of timing and of Fate. The tipping point for the whole society would be key.

Alt-Right, Brexit, elections, ethnostate, Party Politics, society, The Great Replacement, Uncategorized

A Floor or a Ceiling?

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The Front National in France, other broadly social-national parties of the European mainland and (in England and Wales) UKIP are not “ceilings” (end results) but “floors” (starting points). Their function is to disrupt the political status quo and to awaken as far as they can the voting populations of the various European states. Naturally, that is not how they themselves see their role.

The case of UKIP is telling. UKIP came into a political milieu in Britain where (in the 1990s) there were only “three main parties” and a high majority of those who voted voted for them. Below the surface, though, there was growing but unfocussed discontent and alienation. Turnout in general elections, which peaked at 83.9% in 1950, fell (on the wider franchise after 1966) to a low of 59.4% by 2001, though it recovered slightly to 66.1% by 2015. An equally-telling fact is that the proportion of voters who voted and who voted for one of those “three main parties” fell steadily and is still falling. In broad terms, a third of eligible voters did not vote at the 2015 General Election; of those who did vote, about 75% voted for LibLabCon (UK-wide results), with another 12.6% voting for UKIP.

UKIP peaked in 2014, failed to break through in 2015 and is now declining fast in every way. Its 2016 by-election results have been poor, its donors are going and its membership falling. I addressed the UK political vacuum in an earlier blog post. However, UKIP has succeeded in a more major way than did the BNP and not only because UKIP scored 21 MEPs as against the BNP’s 2.

UKIP created an atmosphere across the country in which social nationalism might start to thrive, despite the fact that UKIP, as a party, is not really social-national.

UKIP, despite being now more or less washed-up, is a floor. On that floor a movement can be built. The Front National in France is not at all in decline (au contraire) but is also a basis for a movement, rather than the movement itself. The FN is, however, likely to become or coalesce with such a movement, whereas UKIP will just fade away even if it can score a few election victories in the 2016-2020 period. The importance of both parties, however, is that they have changed the atmosphere. Social nationalism is now not a fringe ideology. It stands ready, once the right vehicles arrive, to take command across Europe. In Britain (specifically England and Wales), there is a crying need for such a social national movement and I believe that it will emerge, will arise and will, eventually, seize power.