What are the BNP polling numbers looking like? I heard they are down which is surprising as usually extremist parties tend to do best during bad economic times rather than good ones. Is this true? And did they have any bad publicity to cause it as certainly every time they are in the news they look bad and may make some think twice about going for them.
They're down, yeah. They've been plagued by infighting since 2010 when Nick Griffin failed to get elected and they lost every council seat in Barking, their strongest council, and then they were trashed, across the country, last year as well. They lost their one London Assembly Member (he became an independent) after a pretty slimy leadership election and Griffin announced he's going in 2013. They're apparently drowning in debt as well.
Catalyse that with a lot of their working class voters going back to Labour as they realise that the Tories were everything everyone thought they'd be. The far-right never really has much success when the Tories are in government, look at the NF in the 80s.
The far-right's gone back into its box, for now, their councillor base is getting slaughtered and it's doubtful they'll even win their EU seats again in 2014.
Good to see. It seems though throughout much of continental Europe the far right is on the rise, although true they often go in cycles. Unfortunately, I think it only a matter of time before the BNP makes a comeback. In every European country there is at least 10% who are outright racist and another 30-50% who are somewhat prejudiced towards people different than them so it is not as though they don't have a large pool of potential voters. Off course immigration is not the only issue people care about and they also want competent leaders too.
