Blears blahs BNP

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears is giving advice about how to defeat the racist BNP.

"We must recognise that where the BNP wins votes, it is often a result of local political failure," she says.

Here is her list of diagnoses:

1 "Estates that have been ignored for decades"

Yes. So why has the Government not provided each estate with a funded community leader and a community meeting space? These act as a catalyst for local solidarity and empowerment. Click this link, scroll down to Stimulating the sense of community. The money invested will recoup itself many times over in money spent on trying (or indeed, not trying) to combat crime.

2 "Voters taken for granted"

Yes indeed. So why does the government not bring in a democratic electoral system, where every vote counts, instead of the ridiculous 18th century first-past-the-post system that prevails in this backward country, in which the Government is determined by swing voters in a handful of marginal seats, and in which voter turnout is inversely proportional to the majority enjoyed by the sitting MP. (Scroll down to the graph).

3 "Local services that have failed"
Which is an admission that after 11 years in power, the Labour Government has failed to stimulate local services.

3 "White working-class voters who feel politicians live on a different planet"

Which, of course, they do; in Planet Westminster, isolated from reality in a glazed environment dominated by Civil Service briefings, market dominance, lobbyists, and tradition.


What is lacking from Hazel Blears' paper thin 3-point diagnosis is jobs and housing.

While these are in short supply, the BPN can rally support by shouting, "Immigrants have taken your houses and your jobs" - irrespective of the truth or otherwise of their claim.

Shortage of housing and work lights the flame of anger that lifts the BNP balloon.

Homelessness is a failure of the State to provide responsibly for the basic material needs of the citizen. Joblessness is a failure of the State to provide an economy that works. Both of these result from Labour's shameful and mindless adoption of Tory free-market economics.

In Bills of Health I showed that it costs 10 times as much per year to put a family in temporary accommodation than it does to build a house, and that the reason for the failure is that the Treasury does not understand the concept of a mortgage. I also showed that there is no need for unemployment when so much good green work needs to be done.

Hazel Blears has in effect admitted the failure of Labour to tackle electoral reform, public services, political alienation, housing, and employment. The only choice we are presented with electorally is either more of Labour, or even worse, a Tory Government. No wonder that people are turning in anger and disillusionment to the heirs of the political ideology that plunged the world into an orgy of destruction and inhumanity in 1939.

A Green vote gives the same message rejection of the LabLibCon political consensus, but in every way is the opposite of a vote for the neo-fascists. Where they are hateful, we show political inclusiveness. Where they scream about symptoms, we advance preventive measures. Where they dream of right wing military coups, we dream of real democracy. Where they are given handsome media coverage, we are effectively airbrushed out of the political process.