Election 2010

There were high expectations for the BNP going into yesterday's general election.

A lot of people had convinced themselves that Nick Griffin would be elected as the first BNP MP.

That was never going to happen.

Our first past the post electoral system makes it very difficult for smaller parties to breakthrough the stranglehold of the big two. Though it's not impossible as the Greens proved in Brighton. The ever increasing numbers of African immigrants moving into Barking and Dagenham also made a breakthrough there unlikely.

Beyond the Barking seat, in which it was very disapointing to come third with a reduced share of the vote, the party had a fantastic election getting 563,743 votes which was an increase of 1.2% overall. And if that doesn't sound a lot remember than the Conservative vote only went up by 3.8%.

Listening to the election coverage on Radio 4 at 3am they asked their politics expert his opinion on how the smaller parties were doing. He said that the BNP was having the best performance of the smaller parties. At the time the BNP vote was up 2% in constituencies that the party had fought at the last general election.

His opinion was proved correct by the final results. The BNP's vote was the second best performance of any party contesting the election after the Tories.

Again refering back to the election coverage on Radio 4 both Shirley Williams and Vince Cable stated that their party, the Liberal Democrats, would end up with between 80-90 seats. Despite all the media hype the Liberal Democrats could only increase their vote by 1%, their seat total is 57 which is down by 5.

The other smaller parties: UKIP's vote increased by only 0.9% and the Green vote went down by 0.1%.

Labour's vote fell by 6.2%.

Overall a very good election for the party. Well done to all the candidates, agents and party workers.

The BNP's best six results were:

Barking - Nick Griffin 14.6%
Dagenham & Rainham - Michael Barnbrook 11.2%
Rotherham - Marlene Guest 10.4%
Stoke on Trent South - Michael Coleman 9.4%
West Bromwich West - Russ Green 9.4%
Burnley - Sharon Wilkinson 9%