Who gets my vote: part 4

As I explore the outer reaches of the ballot paper that has been assembled for the Holborn & St Pancras constituency in which I live, I'm terribly excited to find that Natalie Bennett is not the only party leader standing. 

Because look, here's Vanessa Hudson of the Animal Welfare Party. She may not get invited onto the leaders' debates on television, but she's the big boss of the AWP. And she can call on the endorsement of 1960s model Celia Hammond. Unfortunately most of the policies that the party are putting forward relate to animals - apart from calling on the government to promote 'plant-based diets', there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at us humans.

The AWP is fielding candidates in a total of four constituencies, which is twice as many as the Socialist Equality Party. I'm not fully up to speed with developments in the world of Trotskyism, and the SEP is a new name to me. but - having checked - they turn out to be a rebranded version of the International Communist Party, who split from the Workers Revolutionary Party back in the 1980s.

They are also - as their leaflet boasts - the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Not the actual Fourth International, of course (in which we are represented by Socialist Resistance), nor the Fourth International (ICR) nor the Fourth International Posadist. And certainly not the International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Renegeneration of the Fourth International, the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International or the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International. And, just while I'm clearing up these confusions, there is another rival International Committee of the Fourth International as well, but that's not the one that the SEP are part of. Don't be fooled by the name.

Despite all of which, their election leaflet insists: 'Only the SEP speaks for the working class.' But only in two constituencies, apparently. And one of them, happily, is mine, with a candidate named David O'Sullivan.

These are minor parties, though. Just six candidates between the two of them across the whole nation. Much more substantial is the list of 32 constituencies being contested by Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol. That's a statement of intent. Somewhat peculiarly, however, the central demand of CISTA is not the immediate legalisation of cannabis, but merely the setting up of a Royal Commission to look into drug laws. They want government drug policy to be 'evidence-based, cross-party, humane and non-partisan'.

I think they're underselling themselves. They're not even competing properly with the Green Party of England and Wales, whose manifesto promises 'Radical reform of our drug laws'. No mention there of a Royal Commission. And as Peter Lilley pointed out back in 2001: 'Royal Commissions are just a way of playing issues into the long grass.' He added: 'Perhaps appropriate for cannabis.'

Still, good luck to Shane O'Donnell of CISTA. If all the potheads in Camden could get themselves together to vote for him, he'd do alright.

And that's it. The English Democrats and the British National Party - both of whom fielded candidates last time - have abandoned us. And there are no independents like we had in 2010. Still, no doubt we'll survive somehow.

Who gets my vote: part 3

Moving on from the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats, I come to the right-wing parties who are fielding candidates in my constituency, Holborn & St Pancras.

Ukip are sticking with Maxine Spencer, a 51-year-old former immigration officer. She got all of 587 votes last time round, when she was beaten into sixth place by the BNP. (In an area not short of luvvies, it is possible that the BNP benefitted from having a candidate named Robert Carlyle).

Since the BNP aren't standing this time, and since Ukip have been receiving much more national media attention, Spencer will presumably improve on her 1.1 per cent share of the vote and might even (though it's unlikely) save her deposit.

I think it's fair to say that - even though Spencer claims she's getting less abuse than in the last campaign - this isn't natural Ukip territory. It's also fair to say that the party won't be getting my vote.

I've probably written too much about Ukip on this blog and its predecessor (most recently here), but I would just make one further point: I'm really rather glad that Ukip exist.

The ex-communist turned Tory MP Eric Forth used to say: 'There are millions of people in this country who are white, Anglo-Saxon and bigoted, and they need to be represented.' He was quite correct on both counts. Any decent democracy worthy of the name needs to allow minority voices to be heard, because the alternative - of suppressing dissent - is immoral and dangerous.

Just to be clear, I'm obviously not suggesting that the Ukip vote is solely comprised of bigoted white Anglo-Saxons: Spencer herself, for example, is the child of a Trinidadian mother and a Welsh father. But it would be daft to deny that there's a strong element of Forth's section of the Conservative Party in there, having been made to feel unwelcome by David Cameron. And, sadly, they're not going to be represented.

Because I think one of the big stories of the coming election may well be a wave of dissatisfaction with a system that rewards the Scottish National Party so disproportionately when compared to Ukip. On current polls, and assuming a similar turnout to 2010, the SNP are in line to secure around 1.1 million votes and are predicted to get somewhere around forty-five seats; Ukip, on the other hand, will receive twice that level of support and will be doing well to win three seats.

This is palpably unjust. But it still doesn't make me want to vote Ukip.

For the last general election, the Conservative Party had a very strong candidate in George Lee. His election address made great play of his back story: Hong Kong Chinese, born in a semi-converted pigsty, child labourer in a toy factory at the age of five, came to Britain, joined the Metropolitan Police, rose to rank of chief inspector, subsequently became vice-president of T-Mobile - this was compelling stuff. He had no hope of winning, of course, but he cut a convincing figure and he got the Tory vote back into five figures for the first time since 1992.

He was so good (the Labour Party had reportedly been chasing him as well) that I assumed he was working his political apprenticeship, and that he'd move on and get a winnable constituency this time to become Britain's first Chinese MP. Regrettably I can find no trace of him having done so.

Maybe Lee was a bit too exciting for the local Conservative Party, because this time they've got a much blander looking candidate:

I'm probably being unfair to judge him solely on his looks, but I know very little more about him, apart from what I read in his literature and in a single newspaper interview. He's thirty years old, he grew up in Dorset, he joined the Conservatives at the age of fourteen, he studied history at Oxford, he's worked for an MP, he lives in Kentish Town, he's gay, he looks pleasant enough.

Oh, and he's called Will Blair. That's Will Blair. Doesn't stand a chance with a name like that. But I bet he turns up in another constituency next time.

Why Ukip?

One of the most striking aspects of British politics in the last twenty years has been the absence of a left-wing party.

With both post-Thatcher Conservatives and post-Foot Labour gradually shuffling towards the centre, space has opened up on either flank for new political forces. But there has been nothing on the Left, save for George Galloway and a feeble little Green growth in the last few months. Meanwhile the right has been very handsomely served. First by the Nick Griffin incarnation of the BNP, and then by Nigel Farage's Ukip.

In one sense this is entirely predictable. The British left has been fixated on incoherent, internecine squabbling since the 1970s and is clearly incapable of finding a popular voice. It can mount the occasional single-issue campaign but only in response to initiatives on the right: Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League in response to the National Front, the anti-Poll Tax campaign, the Stop the War Coalition. When it tries anything with a broader frame of reference - the Socialist Alliance, say, or the TUSC - no one really notices.

But in another way, the lack of a left party is a bit odd. Because my impression is that there is a left-of-centre consensus in Britain, waiting to be expressed and not finding itself articulated by the Labour Party. (It was there in the mid-1990s, had Tony Blair only recognised it.)

What has been missing, maybe, is the one overarching issue, the thing that catches the attention and encapsulates a wider view of society. Which is where the right has been so successful, of course, since it has, at its core, a deep dislike of immigration.

Why have right-of-Tory parties done comparatively well in the last decade? Perhaps these figures tell the story:

That steep rise in non-EU immigration under New Labour, followed by the steep rise in EU immigration - combine that with a government that failed to defend its policies, and that's the reason for Ukip.

Put another way: If you add up the net migration figures for each of Margaret Thatcher's eleven years in power, you get a total of 26,000 people. If you do the same for each of the thirteen years of New Labour, you get 2.8 million.

But that's net migration. That might be relevant in terms of concerns about the capacity of the infrastructure to cope, but we all know that's not the real issue. The underlying concern is about culture and identity and about the number of foreigners. So, if you add up the total of the immigration figures in each of Thatcher's years you get 2.5 million people. And in New Labour years: 7.25 million.

These are not, of course, the numbers remaining at the end of each period. Many of those recorded entering the country (students, for example) stay for only a fixed time. But the figures have a certain, comparative function. The scale of immigration under the Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown really was quite exceptional, and - as far as I can see - there was, and has been, little attempt to explain the phenomenon.