Updated: BNP leadership election result - no surprises

The British National Party leadership election results are in at last and, according to a post on the nazi Stormfront forum (and eventually the BNP web site), the results are as follows:

Griffin: 3363 (91%)
Jackson: 337 (9%)
Turnout: 43%

No great surprise there except that a large number of people chose to deliberately abstain.

The numbers are all important in this contest. The BNP has (it claims) a total voting membership of 8604, which means 4904 chose not to vote, leaving 3700 who did. 337 BNP members voted for Chris Jackson - substantially more than the 100 signatures he had to gather simply to be allowed to stand in this patently rigged contest.

For a virtual unknown - or at least unknown outside the North-West of England - Jackson did remarkably well, particularly when one considers the short period between announcement and election and the many limitations placed on him regarding anything to do with having direct access to the membership. Had it been a fair fight, we would have expected Jackson to easily double his votes. In fact, in our opinion he could have done a lot better had he actively campaiged. We wonder why he didn't.

Griffin is now in the peculiar and uncomfortable position that has affected every real party leader for decades - he's a minority leader, chosen to lead the BNP by a minority of the available votes in his party. In fact, working on the percentages alone, he only has a mandate from 39% of the party - hardly 'a resounding mandate', as one idiotic Stormfronter put it.

It's pretty clear from the immediate reactions to the result that we can expect something of an old-fashioned purge in the BNP in the near future - a clear-out of those undesirables who don't seem to appreciate either Nick Griffin's dictatorial style of leadership, the numerous dodgy deals he has on the go at any given time or the energetic expansion of the BNP into an apparently limitless number of bizarre and disparate business ventures. The Night of the Long Knives beckons and the supporters of Chris Jackson had better watch the shadows for a few months. Despite having absolutely no loyalty to the BNP membership himself, Griffin demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates and the leadership challenge has already been labelled an act of treachery a number of times.

Griffin staggers into a new year as leader with none of the spring in his step that he should be feeling after a failed leadership challenge. The result - or rather, the turnout - was lacklustre, reflecting the party's performance at the council elections back in May. The troops are demoralised, the income, we are assured by people who certainly know, is drying up and the membership is stagnating as it waits for triumphs that never arrive and holiday camps that will never materialise.

In fact this leadership challenge seems only to have left bitterness and recrimination behind it. Possibly the next one will be better - it's rumoured that pornmeister Dickie Barnbrook has his eye on Griffin's seat (so to speak), which might explain why he's recently been pushed out to challenge the unbeatable Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. A challenge from Barnbrook might just be a challenge worth watching.

Lancaster UAF