Who should we vote for?

Introduction

There are two important elections taking place in the near future and, for the first time, I find myself participating in discussions with other nationalists about which party it is best to vote for and whether it is actually worthwhile to vote at all.  

I believe that these questions deserve addressing in some detail because they are important ones; voting is one of the few ways in which British nationalists can influence the politics of our country, and given the severity of our nation's condition, we ought to exert as much influence as we possibly can.

Therefore, I have composed this short article presenting my views about the best voting strategy and the arguments in favour of them.

As with many of the articles that I hope will appear on this site, the views and arguments I wish to put across here may be seen as controversial by many nationalists.  I ask that readers approach them with an open mind and remember that I am on the same side as they are, striving to achieve the same objectives but perhaps through different means.  If I am wrong, then I would like to know why I am wrong so that I might discover more truth and improve my arguments, but as my intentions are the same as those of any good nationalist, and as being wrong is not a crime, I ask that I am not simply labelled a traitor or an establishment operative in lieu of actual criticism and debate.

The current state of nationalist political parties

For many British nationalists, the question of who to vote for used to have an obvious answer: the British National Party.  The BNP had thousands of members and activists, was growing, had an Internet presence which was arguably superior to that of any of the other parties, was able to field candidates in elections up and down the country and had a reasonable chance of winning seats in local government elections and eventually European Parliament elections.  No other party ideologically acceptable to nationalists was capable of coming anywhere near the BNP's success and therefore it could generally be considered pointless to vote for any other nationalist party.

However, all of that has changed in recent years.  The BNP is a shadow of its former self; several thousand of its members have left, leaving it with a depleted activist base and a reduced income, one of the two MEPs it secured in the June of 2009 has defected and the other is almost certain to lose his seat in this year's elections, most of its councillors have lost their seats and it has proven unable to garner anything even approaching an impressive share of the vote in recent by-elections.  The party's chairman, Nick Griffin, with whom so many nationalists have become utterly disillusioned, looks unlikely to ever be replaced.  In other words, the BNP is a spent force.

In case that the BNP does manage to continue fielding candidates, I would like to immediately rule out voting for any of them on the basis that doing so would breathe further life into the party and prolong the agony of its inevitable demise.  Consider that the BNP continues to collect precious funds from members and donors and takes up valuable activist time in pointlessly contesting elections it has little chance of winning.  Furthermore, it remains the most publicly visible nationalist party and is therefore both a colossal embarrassment to the movement and a magnet for would-be nationalists who might otherwise engage in a more worthwhile political activity.

No party has yet been able to replace the BNP as the unchallenged premier nationalist party in Britain, and nor is any party even close to doing so.  It seems very likely that the May 2014 European Parliament elections, the May 2015 general election and following local government elections, as well as any forthcoming Parliamentary by-elections, will be totally devoid of any nationalist candidates with a realistic chance of being elected.  Therefore, voting for a nationalist party, while it may sound like the obviously best option to nationalists, will likely turn out to be a pointless exercise or even an impossible one for the majority of people in our movement.

In any case, since voting is one of the few ways in which we can exert any influence, we should aim to use it as effectively as possible and I therefore believe that it is important to be frank about what has actually been accomplished by voting for nationalist political parties in the past, what might be accomplished by doing so in the future, and additionally – but perhaps most controversially – what might be achievable by exploring the possibility of voting for other parties.  I would argue that, emotional considerations aside, there is no good reason to vote for a nationalist party if it does not further the nationalist cause, or if voting for a different party would be of greater benefit.

What has been achieved by voting for nationalist parties?

The highest level of nationalist electoral success in the recent history of this country undoubtedly occurred in 2009, when the British National Party won two seats in the European Parliament elections.  At this time, the party had nearly fifteen thousand members and over a hundred council seats (but no MPs) and enjoyed the publicity (such as it was) of regular television appearances.  It could be argued that the later decline of the party was avoidable or caused deliberately by external or internal forces, and that the party would therefore have reached greater heights, but nonetheless the fact remains that this was the peak of the success of nationalist political parties in Britain.

To put this peak into context, let us compare its height with the heights reached by parties which are in a position to form governments.  The least successful of these parties by any measure is the Liberal Democrats, but even so it currently has a membership of just over forty thousand people and holds fifty-six seats in the House of Commons, ninety-nine seats in the House of Lords, two seats on the London Assembly, twelve of the UK's seats in the European Parliament and more than two and a half thousand seats in local government.  The success of the Liberal Democrats, even at a time when they are routinely beaten by UKIP in opinion polls, dwarfs that of the BNP as its height.

Despite that, the Liberal Democrats are not even routinely in government, but its coalition partner the Conservative Party is – and that party has more than one hundred and thirty thousand members and more than eight and a half thousand local government seats, making the BNP's limited successes look even more trivial than they already did and highlighting the need for a large membership and local government base if a party is going to aim to be in power.  Such a large base has never been built in nationalism and so it is hardly a surprise that no nationalist parties have managed to come to power.  This brings me to my next question: could it happen in the future?

What could be achieved by voting for nationalist parties in the future?

In my mind, there are three valid reasons to promote and vote for a nationalist political party: either because you believe that it will one day be able to win a general election and take over the reigns of government, or because you would like there to be a strong nationalist party already in place to pick up the pieces after an economic collapse or revolution, or because you expect the rise of a nationalist party to intimidate the political establishment into enacting policies you would like enacted or becoming nationalists themselves in order to survive.  I say 'valid' reasons because a nationalist party should, I think, exist in order to achieve something rather than for its own sake.

I find fantastical the idea that a nationalist party using electioneering alone could one day win a general election under the current system.  Despite decades of electioneering during mass immigration, cultural and moral decline and more than one recession, we have failed to win a single Parliamentary seat even in so-called strongholds, but more than three hundred seats are needed to form a majority.  Winning this many seats would almost certainly entail taking seats off all three main parties which would require their support to have collapsed across the country.  Unfortunately, it is simply not plausible that this could happen within the space of a few general elections.

There are at least three huge obstacles in place for any nationalist party striving for a general election victory.  The greatest of these is simple demographics: with every passing year, the ethnic make-up of our country changes in such a way as to make it less and less easy for an apparently racist candidate to be elected.  The greatest support for nationalist candidates is often in areas which have already been heavily impacted by multiculturalism and mass immigration (or 'enriched' as nationalists often like to say) – but ironically these areas are also the least electorally favourable for a nationalist candidate because of the very factors which created the support in the first place.

The second obstacle is that any moderately successful nationalist party is likely to just be banned as soon as it begins to threaten to win a few seats, particularly if it is the kind of party which appeals to the hardcore of nationalism by refusing to tone down its rhetoric on race, history and Jews.  Recovering from the banning of a political party is not as simple as just registering a new one and carrying on as normal: a proportion of members of the old party may fail to join the new one, party funds may be confiscated or made otherwise inaccessible, and the respected and recognised brand that was the old party's name is lost and a new one must be built almost from the ground up.

The third obstacle, and one which applies not just to nationalist parties but to all forms of nationalist organisations, is that the vast majority of the establishment-supporting mass media coverage of nationalists is designed to discredit and vilify us as soon as it becomes impossible to ignore us.  The establishment is holding all the cards where propaganda is concerned; the establishment parties have been courting public opinion successfully for far longer than we have and they are proven experts at it.  We stand little chance of competing with them without the same resources – for example, enormous amounts of funding and highly-trained spin doctors and speech-writers.

For these reasons I think that to vote for a nationalist party in the expectation that it will one day win a general election is to be extremely unrealistic.  The idea that it is important to have a strong nationalist party in case of a collapse has slightly more credibility, but the prospect of a collapse actually occurring is by no means guaranteed (it is certainly not in the interests of the political elite for one to take place if they are succeeding perfectly well without one, and if their enemies are banking on one) and it would be foolish to invest further millions of pounds and decades of hard work into a party on the assumption that it will pay off after a hypothetical future event.

In my view, the most realistic outcome from voting for a nationalist party is the exertion of pressure on the political establishment to make concessions such as a reduction in immigration or a referendum on membership of the European Union.  While, as I have said, it is in their power to simply ban a rising nationalist party, making concessions is a far more useful option for them because it removes some of the grievances which lead people to support nationalist parties in the first place rather than creating sympathy for nationalists and making a rod for their own backs in admitting that their respect for democracy is conditional on the right views being expressed.

This brings me back to an earlier point.  If the only realistic and useful purpose in voting for a nationalist party at this point in time is to put pressure on the establishment, then imagine that there is another party – not necessarily a nationalist one – which is currently in a much better position to create that pressure.  In that case, perhaps a sensible option would be to think somewhat outside the box; instead of considering which nationalist party to vote for, we might consider voting for this other party so that we might have a better chance of actually furthering our objectives.  One party which I believe fits the criteria is the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP.

The UKIP pressure valve

The debate in nationalist circles over the role of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, has intensified in recent times.  Nick Griffin and the British National Party had conclusively decided that UKIP was an establishment-sponsored 'safety valve' which was being presented as an acceptable alternative to the BNP to members of the electorate who were disillusioned with mainstream politicians and their doctrines of multiculturalism, globalism and mass immigration.  Under this view, there was no need to consider supporting UKIP at all: the BNP was the real nationalist party offering the only real solutions, and  moreover it seemed successful.

Maybe UKIP did function as a safety valve – perhaps, had it not existed, the BNP would have risen to greater heights on the back of a larger share of anti-establishment votes and support than it did in fact receive.  In any case, that speculation is not useful to us.  With the BNP all but out of the picture, I tend to view UKIP more as a valve to ramp up the pressure on establishment parties than one to alleviate it.  This is chiefly because UKIP threatens to split the Conservative Party's vote, potentially costing it seats, but despite the popular conception that it exclusively harms the Conservatives, it also threatens the Labour party who now seem quite concerned about it.[1,2,3]

The EU referendum and a Conservative majority government

UKIP is often labelled a 'single-issue party' and while I do not agree with the accuracy of that label, it is true that bringing about a referendum on British membership of the European Union is one of its core objectives.  Britain exiting the European Union is likewise a core objective for most nationalists for reasons which are obvious and need not be explained here.  Furthermore, it is conceivable that if a government actually held a referendum, UKIP's support would almost completely dissipate, removing any threat it posed.  Therefore, UKIP is an ideal party to use to put pressure on the establishment parties in aid of accomplishing this key nationalist goal.

This is likely to already be the intention of much of UKIP's existing support base albeit for non-nationalistic reasons; some may genuinely believe that UKIP can form a government, but I would consider people with that aspiration to be as deluded as those who think the same about the BNP.  We as nationalists can assist by voting for UKIP in any coming Parliamentary by-elections, local government elections and, of course, the European Parliament elections which they already look likely to top.  Some wards elect councillors on the basis of a few hundred votes and a few dozen can make the difference between one candidate winning and another, so we can have an impact.

At the general election, I believe that wherever possible, we should vote in a way which increases the chance of the Conservative Party forming a majority government.  By 'wherever possible' I mean that there is no point attempting this in a safe Labour seat, for example, and it is also unnecessary to do so in a safe Conservative seat; in those seats, it would be better to vote for UKIP or for another 'protest party', or for whichever nationalist party seems most worthy of a vote, in order to send a message – but in seats where the Conservatives came a close second at the last election or where they might lose a currently-held seat, my strategy requires voting Tory.

The reason for this is that the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, has promised a referendum on the European Union in 2017 if his party wins a majority of the seats in Parliament and forms a majority government.  The Labour leader Ed Miliband has expressly rejected the possibility of a referendum unless further powers are to be transferred to the EU and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats has described his party as 'the party of in'.  Therefore a Conservative victory represents our best and only chance at having a referendum and therefore our best and only chance at getting the United Kingdom out of the European Union; any other outcome would be worse.

It is true that David Cameron has already broken one promise to hold a referendum on the European Union, but this alone does not condemn my strategy.  First of all, his party did not win a majority in the last general election – it had to enter a coalition with the extremely pro-EU Liberal Democrats in order to govern, and that almost certainly is the reason no referendum was held.  Secondly, if he breaks his promise again, it will damage the credibility of the Conservative Party on this issue to such an extent that UKIP's support is likely to surge even higher and threaten the party to an even greater extent.  It is not likely for the promise to be broken, and if it is, it will damage our enemies.

Some people have told me that even if we are given a referendum on Europe, and even if the electorate votes to leave, we will not be allowed to leave.  Again, I must accept that this is a realistic possibility, but the results of it would not be entirely negative; if the political elite put an important question about the future of our country to a vote and then ignore the outcome, it will generate a wave of public dissatisfaction so high that it may sweep that establishment away for good.  Our enemy is not all-powerful and cannot make good of any situation; it is genuinely possible to force their hand if we try hard enough, and we must try hard if we are to win control of our country.

Many nationalists will understandably have apprehensions about voting for the Conservative Party, not just because of the fact that it is a multicultural establishment party, but because of the legacy of Thatcher and the damage that it wrought on our country.  Consider, however, that the chances of a party we would actually like to see in government being elected in 2015 are precisely zero.  That means that whichever party is elected will be an establishment party in favour of mass immigration, multiculturalism and the destruction of our nation.  If we have to choose between the three of them, or simply do nothing and let one of them win anyway, let us choose one which may benefit us.

The long term

If the Conservatives do not win a majority in 2015 then it is likely that no EU referendum will be on offer again for at least one more Parliament and probably much longer, or even ever – but whatever outcome the election has, we are practically guaranteed to have Labour governments, Tory governments and perhaps even Lib Dem governments for a great many decades to come.  In the scheme of things, then, a Conservative majority existing in Parliament for an additional five years will make no discernible difference at all.  That is why I believe that this is a chance worth taking however unpalatable we might find it to vote for a party which is essentially our enemy.

While nationalist parties do not yet stand a chance of winning, they will one day be needed, and so I would further advocate that in the long term nationalists follow the path set out by the articles on the Western Spring website written by Max Musson.  As I said in my opening post, Western Spring's publications are consistently excellent, but most pertinent to this discussion is an article called 'The Great White Hope' which sets out six prerequisites for a nationalist political party to have a good chance of winning a general election.  We should consider short-term voting strategies only to buy us time so that in the long term, the Movement of National Salvation can triumph.

References

1. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/douglas-alexander-ukip-poses-a-challenge-to-all-parties-i-take-it-very-seriously-9205997.html

2. http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/category/ukip

3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20490937