15%

A pretty impressive Labour performance in the EU elections. As Ross put it :

You have to admire Labour's strategic genius, they knew that there would be a shift in public opinion to minor parties, and so they have become a minor party in order to capitalise on this.

It looks as though the PLP is going to hold on tight to Nurse, although what they fear finding that's worse then 15% is hard to imagine.

The rebels admitted that they had faced opposition to their revolt from MPs who saw no alternative leader coming forward, and fears that a new leader would have to stage an early election, at which Labour would be crushed.

It looks as if, as so often, H.P Lovecraft had the words for it :

"There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar doom."

And while the anti-BNP effort got higher, it turns out not to have been quite enough. The BNP now have their noses in the mighty Euro-trough. Mr Griffin and a chap called Andrew Brons were elected. If I were trying to scrap the 'Nazi' tag I'm not sure I'd want to run a candidate who apparently actually was a menber of a National Socialist group, even if it was a long time ago. And apparently the chap's only been a party member for four years. Perhaps Mr Griffin feels that a fellow-zealot is more likely to devote the hefty salary and expenses to the Cause rather than personal enrichment.

For commentators like Laban, who consider mass immigration with no attempt at integration to be an exceptionally dangerous development, one which is likely to transform the uniquely civilised and peaceful political culture of the last 300-odd years into something like Fiji at best, Bosnia at worst, what we're seeing is an inevitable consequence thereof :

" ... as long as the demographics all point one way, as long as continuing immigration (and continuing emigration of natives) continue to change the cultural landscape, above all as long as our white, wealthy liberal elite refuse to even think about, let alone face honestly, some of the less palatable issues raised by a multicultural society (being themselves insulated from these issues by their wealth) - then we will see politics in the UK, and particularly in England - split upon racial lines. That is what has happened everywhere else in the world where a nation has major ethnic divisions - and while I love the English, I can't see them being immune - they're not THAT special."

But, you may say, the BNP didn't actually get many more votes this time round than they did in 2004 ? Where's this inevitable split in politics ?

Well, the BNP wasn't the only 'stop immigration now' party contesting the elections. According to Harry's Place :

The parties that focused highly on immigration - UKIP, BNP, English Democrats, United Kingdom First - received a combined 3,795,632 votes.

When that many choose to vote for anti-immigration parties, it should be clear that immigration is an issue that needs addressing.

As someone who thinks mass immigration is dangerous but doesn't hate Jews or love Odin, it's good news that other parties are carrying the torch. The three main parties are all pro-immigration - Labour because they love the taxes and the client voters, Tories because they love the cheap labour, Lib Dims for a mixture of the two. The Greens would open the borders altogether if their activists had their way - a great many of the permanent student or idiot self-hating left have moved there from the Labour party.

UKIP have been given an easy ride in the media, as the safety-valve option approved by our rulers. Their large number of MEPs last time out have been pretty invisible, save Mr Farage's savaging of GB a few months back, and I had been wondering if their voters last time round would split between the BNP on one side and Cameron's revived Tories on the other. But the expenses scandal cut down on the number of defectors to the Tories, and the unprecedented anti-BNP campaign, while not sufficient to prevent them winning seats, coupled with the undoubted damage which will have been done when their entire membership's names, addresses and contact details were put on the web, kept the defector rate low. Oh, and they magically found an ex-Tory sugar daddy to fund them, just before the elections.

You'd almost think there'd been a tacit agreement to cut UKIP some slack. They have plenty of unreconstructed old-style Tory characters with decidedly un-PC views on the Brits and immigration (not to mention cleaning behind the fridge), there have been cases of financial impropriety and expenses fraud. Yet no one in the big three parties or the media has turned their guns on them. Only Caroline Lucas of the pro-immigration Green Party switched on the abuse on 28th May's Question Time, with thinly-veiled insinuations of racism directed at Farage. Hasn't she read the script ? Even the SWP have :

UKIP candidates came to join the protesters, (against the BNP's Nick Griffin- LT) and were met with fierce accusations of racism from several anti fascists. A SWP member and UNISON steward intervened, arguing that it was not the time to be exposing UKIP.

There can be no doubt that if the BNP didn't exist, all the fire now directed at them woul be incoming on UKIP. The pro-immigration Left hate anti-immigration Tories just as much as they hate the BNP. But for the duration, the lefties have buried the hatreds and donned the "butchers apron" with everyone else. The Labour, Tory and BNP leaflets through my door all featured the Union Flag. We've seen the bizarre sight of far-left bloggers linking to the Tories - who they'd usually be accusing of being racists - or citing Churchill as the sort of decent chap who'd never vote BNP rather than his usual depiction as a racist who told the troops to shoot miners.

Instead, the BNP are a diversion and shield - perhaps even a necessary one - to the non-BNP parties wishing to stop mass immigration. Like Sinn Fein's twin-track strategy of the Armalite and the ballot box, the stoppers have the jackboot on one foot and the comfy tartan slipper on the other.