Overview
The next UK general election must be held by mid-2022 at latest. Pundits have suggested every time between Autumn 2018 and that date. I myself incline to the view that the next general election will be in late 2018 or Spring 2019, but I have no great faith either way.
What interest me are the prospects for social nationalism and I assess them, at present, as close to zero, assuming a general election in 2018 or 2019. Why? Primarily because there is not only no credible social national party, but in effect no social national party at all.
UKIP
What is left of UKIP is being pushed as a fake “alternative” by those who have no interest in actually having a social national government in the UK: conservative “nationalists”; “alt-right” “social media” weirdos (who never criticize Israel or the Jewish Zionist lobby, or put forward any policies for a better society) such as “Prison Planet” Watson and “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin; as well as various others who actually wish to prevent a social national movement developing.
Does UKIP have any chance of resurgence if, for instance, Brexit turns out to be a fraud (as seems likely)? If what is meant by “resurgence” is an increase, perhaps even a doubling or tripling, of its vote percentage, yes; if what is meant is a breakthrough and the election of a bloc of UKIP MPs, no.
At present, after 25 years of activity, UKIP has no Westminster MPs (out of 650), 2 members of the London Assembly (out of 25), and 4 members of the Welsh Assembly (out of 60), as well as 17 MEPs (out of 73 in the British contingent). The last will of course disappear next year even on a nominal Brexit. In 2015, UKIP managed a Westminster vote of 12.6%, which fell back to 1.8% in 2017. In order to get back to the 2015 position, UKIP would have to increase its vote 7-fold (and even then probably be unable to get even one single MP elected).
UKIP has been a winner for the System: it took votes and attention away from the BNP prior to 2010 and has taken the wind out of the sails of social nationalism by, to mix metaphors, diverting the waters of popular discontent angry at mass immigration, the EU, globalism etc. All that popular discontent was diverted into a “safe” channel– not “anti-Semitic” and, in fact, not really even anti-immigration. UKIP after 2010 fielded numbers of ethnic minority candidates. At one point, the favoured candidate to take over the party leadership was one Steven Woolfe MEP, of both Jewish and “African-American” descent. Woolfe had become an MEP in 2014 (UKIP’s peak year) after having come third (with only 13% of the vote) in the North West, which result points to the essentially shallow support that UKIP had even at its peak.
As to the small parties trying to swim in nationalist waters, none has any weight or credibility.
For Britain
“For Britain”, the narcissism vehicle of Irish lesbian ex-secretary Anne Marie Waters, is an anti-Islam one-trick-pony and one, er, woman band, pretty much. Not only has it few members (at an educated guess a hundred or so), but its popular support is effectively non-existent: leader Ms. Waters managed a derisory 1.2% (266 votes) at the Lewisham by-election of 2018, coming 7th in the poll. “For Britain” actually expelled a local election candidate because of alleged links to both National Action and Generation Identity. To make matters worse, that information had come from the partly-Zionist-funded “Hope Not Hate” “antifa” snoop-group. The conclusion is obvious: from every point of view, “For Britain” is a waste of space.
Britain First
Britain First is the most important broadly supposedly nationalist party and is said to have perhaps 1,000 members. It is not, to my mind, credibly social-national, being pro-Israel and expressing support for Jews in the UK. Its leaders are not known for intelligence or cultural depth. Its actions, such as invasion of mosques, throwing bacon at mosques etc are little removed from a Monty Python level of tactics and activity. It has done abysmally in all elections contested to date and in fact has (since 2017) been deregistered as a political party. Another waste of space from an electoral point of view.
Others
All other “nationalist” parties and groups (English Democrats, the rumps of the British National Party and National Front etc) are tiny and not worthy of consideration. One possible exception is Generation Identity, but that is not a political party. Other small but non-nationalist parties and groups are of no importance.
System Parties
It is clear that the next general election will be fought among the long-established System parties. Even UKIP will play only a walk-on role: its likely vote of 1% or 2% is unlikely to make an electoral impression in any but the few most marginal seats.
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party can now be characterized as “donkeys led by donkeys”, with not a lion in sight, unless is included the moth-eaten toy lion called Boris Johnson. The Conservative Party’s best electoral argument is that it is not the Labour Party.
Britain teeters on the brink of social breakdown. The “Conservative” governments since 2010 have slashed spending on police, the legal and justice systems, social security, housing etc. In the past, “law and order” was the Conservative Party’s trump card. Now all that is left is a barrage of empty words.
Who now votes Conservative as a natural thing? The few percent of very wealthy individuals? The –maybe– 25% of the population who are relatively affluent? Buy-to-let parasites? I get a sense that formerly loyal groups —pensioners, ex-military, Brexit supporters, anti-immigration small-c conservatives, suburban homeowners— are deserting the Conservative Party in droves. They may not vote Labour or even LibDem, but are not going to make much effort to vote Conservative. If the Conservatives are only going to get their core 25%-30% vote out, they are in trouble.
Labour
Labour is damaged by being seen (and all the more under Corbyn) as the party of mass immigration, though that is not entirely fair: the Conservatives first triggered the post-1945 immigration trickle that became a flood much later; the Conservatives have presided over enormous volumes of immigration, most obviously since 2010 (despite –again– empty words against the invasion). In fact, the Labour Party that deliberately imported millions of non-white immigrants was that of Tony Blair, not that of Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour’s strength is that its present policies, such as rail nationalization, utilities regulation, building social housing etc, resonate with a population that has seen living standards fall for a decade.
Labour may lose 30 seats in the 2022 boundary changes, but 2022 seems a long way off at present…
Liberal Democrats
The LibDems were mortally wounded by joining with the Conservatives in the 2010-2015 Con Coalition. At present, their only strength is that some voters in the South of England will vote LibDem rather than Conservative, when they would not vote Labour.
The LibDems presently have 12 MPs, but the boundary changes set for 2022 will cost them as many as 8 seats. The LibDems have been there before, but not for many decades and that was in a political milieu where the typical election in a constituency would be a three-way split; now five or six parties, plus minor and joke candidates, contend. If the LibDems lose 8 seats, that will be close to the end. It was noticeable that their recent Conference was attended almost exclusively by the over-60s and indeed over-70s.
Conclusion
If a general election is held in 2018 or 2019, the likely result is a hung Parliament, probably with Labour as the largest party. If a social national party can be founded within the next two years, it has every chance of attaining power within a decade.
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