Even now, in the varied and diverse postmortem of this General Election, the disaster that’s befallen these parties isn’t getting mentioned at all. So, lacking anything else to write about I thought I’d mention it now.

Revealing for me was a fairly local result. In the BNP stronghold of Mixenden Illingworth in West Yorkshire, the Nazis came third. Third! It’s mostly housing association territory, so of course Labour won, but the Conservatives came second, much to my astonishment. There was a time when they polled only hundreds of votes there. In fact, this was the first council seat the BNP claimed in West Yorkshire, after enjoying visits from the full weight of the BNP campaigning machine.

A friend of mine had a run in with Nick Griffin at the time during what was a very dirty and aggressive bi-election. “You’re a Lib Dem?” Griffin is supposed to have said. “Your logo is yellow, the colour of piss.” My friend claims he replied, “No, it’s the colour of the sun.”

This personal presence from Griffin did win the area over, much to my dismay (because, it has to be said, I lived there at the time). Eventually the party machine moved on, leaving it to the local supporters and activists to continue the work, and, inevitably, the BNP support drifted away as the glamour and naughtiness of voting BNP faded, the reality of the same small number of names appearing on ballot sheets over and over again and the track record of the goons who do actually make it has sunk in.

This experience of wild, enthusiastic support for the BNP evaporating over time appears to be repeating itself across the country. In Barking, where Nick Griffin got the best result of any BNP politician with 6k votes, they lost all their councillors.

How much of this was due to the freeze out in the media? And how much did the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats benefit from a very welcome absence of hysterical, “YOU MUST VOTE LABOUR TO KEEP OUT THE BNP!” messages?

UKIP, too, seemed to have had a very disappointing election judging from the stream of very glum looking faces on Election Night coverage.

Perhaps Alix Mortimer is right to suggest that Cleggmania was the reason the Lib Dems still have at least 57 seats, instead of being crushed into oblivion by the biggest squeeze on non-Tory, non-Labour votes for years?

There’s no doubt that without the debates, if this had been a normal election, the media would have focused on the threat to Tories from UKIP, the threat to Labour from the BNP and, in doing so, have given both parties the publicity they crave. The story could so easily have been “voters to punish the big three for expenses scandal” but as it happened it was those individual MPs that chose to stand for re-election with a blemished record that got a very specific, targeted booting.

If the predictions about the future of the Lib Dems in a post-coalition world hold true, we could be returning to an era of real two party politics. What next for these minor parties, struggling not just to make some sort of breakthrough but now, it seems, find themselves in a fight for their survival?

UPDATE: What’s the price of failure? For UKIP, it was £237k in lost deposits. The Greens threw away £151k and the BNP pissed £133k of hard earned fascist pounds up the wall. H/T, Matt Wardman via Twitter

After yesterday’s delightful contribution to the election from Labour (“You’re going to die of cancer if the Tories get in, but not before you watch your children starve to death”), today sees Norman Tebbit in top form to give you yet another thing to be scared of.

If Clegg gets his way, the BNP will win 60 seats in the House of Commons, and not just that – Hitler’s National Socialist party won power through Proportional Representation. Oh yes. Vote Clegg, Get Hitler.

It’s a load of bollocks, of course. The rise of National Socialism in Germany was the end result of decades of anti-individualist, anti-British Liberalism, pro-collectivist thought in Germany, not a voting system. If you’ve got your brain plugged in, try Hayek’s “The Socialist Roots of Naziism” for more information on that. It’s not voting systems that give fascists power, it’s people being… you know…. fascist.

And on the specific point that PR is how Hitler rose to power? Try this from STV Action: Did PR bring Hitler and the Nazis to power?

No. As Enid Lakeman wrote in How Democracies Vote, “Once public opinion had turned to the Nazis, an election under a majority system [e.g.First Past The Post], would have resulted in a landslide in their favour. Under proportional representation, the party never won a majority in the Reichstag in a free election.” The Nazis seized power in a Putsch. Miss Lakeman adds that Hermann Goering gave evidence in his war crimes trial that, under the British system, the Nazis would have won every seat in the 1933 election. (h/t Sara Bedford and James Graham)

If you think you can stop the British Nazis from winning by rigging the voting system, you absolutely fail at politics in every way possible, and that goes double for Old Psycho Tebbit.

The Undemocratic Nature of the BNP

By Matt Wardman

This article is an introduction to a paper I have published showing that the BNP is dangerously focused on, and controlled by, the single person who happens to be the National Chairman, and is therefore unstable as a political party. You can download the PDF here, or read the full text on the Wardman Wire .

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has taken legal action to force the British National Party to change parts of its Constitution to prevent discrimination on the basis of race or religion. The BNP has agreed to use “all reasonable endeavours” to revise its constitution so it did not discriminate in contravention of the Equality Bill.

The debate has moved on to Nick Griffin’s ability to “persuade his party to allow the change“, with Griffin positioned as a leader attempting to persuade the “General Meeting” of his party to moderate its position.

This is the wrong focus, and it seriously misses the point.

The organisation of the BNP is unrecognisable from the democratic model used by other UK parties; rather, it is heavily dominated by the “National Chairman” himself. Rather than watching the party being gently reformed away from a racist constitution by its leader, we should be questioning the way in which the party itself is controlled from the centre.

The BNP Constitution reveals the party organisation and governance, just as it revealed the racial basis of the BNP’s politics.

Nick Griffin is the “National Chairman” of the BNP. As such, under Section 3 of the Constitution, he has full power over appointments to all other executive offices in the party (except the Party Auditor), routine executive, administrative, policy and tactical decisions, all organisational structures and how they are governed, and determine all policies to implement the basic objectives set out in the Constitution.

The National Chairman also exercises comprehensive control over the “General Members Meeting”, under Section 5.6 of the Constitution. This is the Meeting he needs to “persuade” of to change the Constitution in November. Such a meeting can only be called by two parties: the National Chairman at any time he wishes, or the “Advisory Council” after a two-thirds majority vote.

The Advisory Council can call a General Members Meeting over the head of the Chairman, but that Council itself is a creature of Nick Griffin. It consists of the “National Chairman, Deputy Chairman, the national officials of the party and the organisers of the partyís five most effective regions”; all of these are personal appointments of Mr Griffin. In the event of any disagreements, the decision of the National Chairman is also final. Just to be tidy, the Party Auditor – the only official not appointed by the National Chairman – is appointed by the Advisory Council, all of whom are appointed by the Chairman.

Section 13 of the BNP Constitution controls how General Members Meetings are called. It is all quite informal: “No rigid rules shall govern the holding of internal meetings of the party but such meetings will be held as the occasion demands.” And all Members can attend if their party dues are up to date.

Anyone can submit a motion (28 days in advance through the National Chairman), and if the motion is a proposal to change the way the party is governed, it can only go on the agenda with the National Chairman’s consent.

In contrast to the requirements laid on members wanting to submit motions to a General Members Meeting, there are no requirement for the National Chairman to give members a set amount of advanced notice of such a meeting taking place, or indeed to tell them that it is taking place at all.

In short, there is nothing to prevent the BNP National Chairman holding a General Members’ Meeting by inviting a few friends of his own faction round for tea and buns tomorrow, and voting through any changes they wish to make.

The BNP Constitution is more than 6,000 words long. That is a lot of verbiage to summarise organisational arrangements which I’d summarise as “Nick Griffin and a bunch of fig leaves”.

I’d suggest that the undemocratic nature of the BNP Constitution is every bit as crippling to its credibility as is its racism, and that scrutiny of the BNP should now focus on these aspects.