One of the main planks of the new Conservative – Lib Dem coalition will be electoral reform. I have no problem with this, I am a democrat and putting my own political views aside I cannot accept that it is fair to the electors that 29 per cent of them voted Labour giving it 258 seats and 23 per cent voted Lib Dem with a resulting 57 seats.Such an imbalance has to change but beware!
After Nick Griffin was defeated in Barking where the British National Party also lost its council seats it was widely accepted this signalled the end of this fundamentally racist party. I would say far from it.
The BNP polled 563,743 votes that’s more than the party of government in Scotland – the SNP with 491,386, more than the Greens, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein, the SDLP or any of the Irish Unionist parties. Under a true p r system there would certainly be a BNP MP at Westminster now.
There are those who argue that the BNP should be banned but it is not a course I would advocate. I admit that I have shown my support for banning the Falange – the former party of Franco – in Spain but with many misgivings. For it is a truism that if you seek to ban the parties of the far right then somebody in turn will attempt to ban those on the far left?
It is by creating a fairer society that the BNP and its ilk become an anathema to all. By changing our society for the better we will snuff out the despair and despondency that feeds the BNP trough. However part of that change to a fairer society also involves creating a fairer electoral system. Fairer doesn’t mean fairer to the party we support but to all sections of the community. The fact that it could result in a BNP MP is part of the price that has to be paid – it’s called democracy.
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