Kaddish for the city

Ken's excellent comment at my last post made the point, which I think Duncan has also made, that the growth in the representation of all the dreadful parties was not tied to a significant growth in their actual votes, while a massive increase in the Green vote (300,000 I think) failed to lead to extra MEPs. I don't know if this is something to take heart from or not.

So anyway I started surfing around Ken's writings elsewhere. Here he analyses the results. Here he describes London in a tube strike, concluding

This is what London was like every day before the Congestion Charge. Thank God for Ken Livingstone.

And expect worse. As we move towards a government that is likely to be even more unreasonable on worker’s rights than “New Labour” has been, the chances are we will see a lot more of this.

If you find yourself fiddling at your desk or stuck at home in the strike, play this game.

And here Ken B dreams a song. Due to the joys of google and the unique way that the BBC is funded, I was soon listening to Maurice Ravel's "Chanson Hebraiques" as Ken heard it, at about 1:15 on Rob Cowan's Radio 3 breakfast show on Monday. If that dissappears or isn't available in your country, you can listen to an mp3 snippet from the record company Hyperion. A bit of information here.

Comments

ross said…
i'm confused, how can it be claimed that the actual BNP vote has done nothing, it's increased by 16.8% from 808k to 944k, not that much less, in number and percentage terms, than the greens who went from 1,112k to 1,304, a rise of 17.1% (those green party figures include the green party in scotland as well)

we can talk about how this support translates or doesn't translate into actual representation till the cows come home, but in terms of popular support, there's not that much in it between the two
bob said…
I'm confused too. I'm not very good at maths. OK. 2004 the Green vote was 1,033,093; 2009 it is 1,223,303: a growth of 190,000. In Scotland, the increase of their vote was negligible. BNP went from 808,200 to 943,598: a growth of 135,000. So, Ross is right: not an enourmous difference in the increase. However, the larger Green vote increase meant no MEP increase, while the smaller BNP vote increase meant 2 new MEPs. I need to check this, but I think that in the 2 places the BNP got those MEPs, their actual vote went down.
ross said…
yes, there's no argument about the voting in the two areas where they got MEP's (although in both cases it was a handful of thousand less), but focussing in on those two areas to draw wider conclusions about BNP support in general seems a bit odd

as to representation, on a national basis (and fairly simplistically) both the BNP and Greens have roughly a million votes each and 2 seats each, seems fair enough in those (simplistic) terms - as to the difference in representation caused by the relative increase of both parties that's just the nature of the hurdle to get a seat in the first place, the greens were in pretty much the same position in 1999 where an increase in their vote of less than what the BNP achieved in this election brought them 2 seats overall compared with none in 1994
ModernityBlog said…
I wouldn't count on the FPTP system being around forever, and any alternative will probably aid the BNP.

They'll aim for an MP at the next general election, but think on.

Imagine if the BNP can convert just 10% of their voters into members that's 90,000 extra neo-fascists. What a terrible thought.

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