Local Election Special -- the results

The first results of the Southwark local elections are in including my ward of Peckham Rye which Labour held against a strong Lib Dem challenge. Greens have failed to get elected in the Lane and Camberwell Green.

More details here:

The Nation has Mumbled

I'm kind of reminded of what happens when a stewards enquiry is called after a horse-race. The bookies tell all the expectant punters to go for a walk while The stewards decide the outcome behind closed doors. Difference is that this time we already know the outcome (give or take three seats).

And here it is: roughly one in three people who voted wanted (or said they wanted) the Tories. The other 64 per cent said they wanted some other party. Given that hundreds of people in Lewisham, Hackney, Sheffield and elsewhere were told that they couldn't vote at all, I'm not sure if its even worth talking about democratic outcomes in this country. But it is worth mentioning that it takes 284,566 votes (and some chance confluence of minds in Brighton) to get one green MP.

Anyway, while you're waiting for the final result, enjoy this rather nice film from the Guardian about three of the candidates for Camberwell & Peckham who won't be representing us this time round.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing

You may have missed an item on the London news showing the BNP candidate for Romford, Bob Bailey demonstrating the time-honoured method of political persuasion favoured by parties of that ilk. Here it is again:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8663681.stm

In case anyone might suggest that Bailey is acting purely in self-defence, watch how one of his 'aides' kicks a man on the ground towards the end of the clip.

But you don't have to be Asian to be on the receiving end of the BNP's form of forceful argument. It is enough to be a journalist on a national newspaper as a Times reporter recently discovered.


In 1930, an obscure right-wing party secured 18.3 percent of the votes in the German elections, becoming the second largest party in the Reichstag. Three years later, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany. The picture shows stormtroopers outside a jewish-owned Department Store in Berlin. The signs read: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews." The store was ransacked during Kristallnacht in 1938, then handed over to a non-Jewish family.



I heard on the radio this morning that in the last general election 4 out of 10 people didn't bother to vote. It is true of course that whoever you vote for the government gets in. Maybe you feel that all the parties are the same.

But, with the BNP fielding hundreds of candidates in local and parliamentary elections, the stay-at-home voters could be the ones that hand them power. However, cynical we might feel about the parties, the electoral system or the human race in general, there is still a very good reason to turn up and vote.


Footnote: Apparently the quotation that I've used for the title of this post is a misattribution. What Edmund Burke really wrote was:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."