The consensus seems to be that, Europe-wide, it was a good election for the centre-right. It certainly seems as though the governing centre-left parties have taken a bit of a battering, while voters seem content with centre-right governments.

Those of a socialist persuasion may well feel disgruntled. In the midst of an economic crisis which they say was caused by the excesses of capitalism, voters seem to have lost faith in socialist parties’ ability to deal with it. The far left also took a knock. On the other hand, the Green grouping is the one grouping (aside from non-aligned) to have increased its representation in the European Parliament.

Interestingly, despite the fact that apathy was the clear winner of the election across the EU, the main Eurosceptic grouping was almost totally wiped off the map, with the exception of Ukip. Perhaps domestic issues are the cause of this. But if 2004 was the breakthrough year for Eurosceptic parties (which led to the formation of the Independence / Democracy group), 2009 was the bump back to earth. As thing stand (and no doubt they will try to woo more MEPs on board), Ukip alone now account for almost two thirds of the grouping.

The main UK parties

The UK-only picture was rosier for Ukip, but only slightly. This year will be remembered for the fact that they finished 2nd ahead of Labour. But they would be deluding themselves if they believed this was because of a rise in support. Their increase in the share of the vote was a pretty titchy 0.3 percentage points. Indeed, they gained fewer votes than in 2004, and got just one extra MEP despite the huge collapse in trust of the major Westminster parties.

In a lot of ways, the UK picture as a whole is surprisingly static. Yes, there was a massive drop in support for Labour. But none of the major parties were in a position to capitalise, so everyone apart from Labour just shuffled up a bit. In the circumstances, the Conservatives ought to be pretty miffed that they lost votes and increased their vote share by just 1 percentage point. It doesn’t exactly look like a party with the momentum to take a Westminster landslide.

The Lib Dems, who arguably weren’t hurt nearly as much as Labour and the Tories by the expenses scandal, managed to reduce their share of the vote, which almost no other party did. Of course Labour’s share decreased. Plaid Cymru’s UK-wide share decreased, but their Wales-only share went up. The only other party to reduce its share of the vote was the Scottish Socialist Party, which has cemented its place in history by being consigned to it.

The BNP

The BNP made a different kind of history by winning two seats, which became the story of the election. It was probably inevitable that people would “blame” proportional representation for this. But the simple fact is that PR doesn’t vote fascists in — fascist voters do.

6.8% is not an inconsiderable share. Almost a million voters decided to put their cross next to the BNP on the ballot paper, and they didn’t do so by accident. Gerrymandering them out of existence will only exacerbate the problem.

That’s not to say that the closed party list system used for European Elections isn’t flawed, because it is — deeply so. But the corrupt First Past the Post system would only further increase the anger that people feel at being disenfranchised by the political system.

In a lot of ways, the BNP’s “success” is pretty unremarkable. In 2004 they were the sixth most successful party. This year, they were still the sixth most successful party. In the region where Nick Griffin won his seat, the North West, the BNP actually got fewer votes than in 2004.

The BNP only got seats because Labour’s collapse was so dramatic, and those former Labour votes went to a large variety of smaller parties. 11.3% of votes went to parties that weren’t among the top eight, compared to 8.3% that went to other parties in 2004 (and that was in the days of a relatively strong Respect party).

The BNP didn’t gain seats because they caught up with those in front. They gained seats because others joined the queue behind them. Despite still having five people in front of them, the BNP effectively moved closer to the front in relation to the entire queue — just because more people joined behind them.

Nonetheless, any attempts to ignore or belittle the BNP’s success, or to gerrymander it away, should be condemned. It is important to understand why people would come to vote for a fascist party, because that is the best way of defeating the ideology.

Luckily, YouGov have done a good job at finding out (more detail here). And — surprise surprise — it seems that BNP voters are mostly racist. That rather undermines the idea that people voted for the BNP just as a protest vote. With so many potential protest parties, why choose BNP? I guess they were at the top of many ballot papers, but that oughtn’t gain them so many votes. No, people vote for the BNP mostly because they are racists.

In difficult economic circumstances, people often turn to fascism. It is totally misguided to do so though. One potential plus side of the BNP gaining a couple of MEPs is the fact that the spotlight will now be shone on them, and people will see just how rotten their ideology is.

I will look at the Scottish results in a separate article

The decision to vote

A series of posts

1. A pathetic situation
2. Five disturbing things about democracy
3. How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
4. How the new politics might look: part 2
5. European election leaflets: The main parties
6. European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
7. A second opinion
8. I decided! And I decided to vote

A couple of tools have emerged in the run-up to the European elections. They aim to help people decide who they should vote for.

This is nothing new — nowadays every election comes with its own similar tools. They are the cousins of Political Compass and the like. While they may not be totally scientific, they are quite enlightening in their own way — and a bit of fun whatever. So I have taken both tests to see what they say.

EU Profiler

This test doesn’t give you results for all the parties, but the big hitters are there. This has the advantage of also comparing your views with parties right across Europe, not just in Scotland or the UK. The Europe-wide results are interesting in themselves.

But first, here are my results for parties that I can actually vote for. The top party is the Liberal Democrats, which perhaps shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Ideologically, they are the only party I am closely aligned to, and I have always voted for them in the past. I am a 60.3% match. Not terribly high, but higher than the other parties.

Second is the Conservatives with a 58.3% match. The SNP are a 55.2% match, while Ukip edge ahead of the Greens to be my fourth-closest match. Labour slug it out with the BNP to be my least favourites.

If you exclude the importance I attach to issues, Labour actually rise up to 4th place. Perhaps this suggests that I agree with many Labour policies — just not ones that I think are important.

I have a much closer affinity with other political parties outside the UK. My strongest match, by quite a long way, is Sweden’s Pirate Party. This is a recently-formed party which rose up in protest at over-zealous copyright laws. Makes sense I guess.

One striking thing about the Europe-wide results is the fact that three Croatian parties appear in my top five matches! Is there something about Croatia’s politics that would make me swing that way ideologically? Are there just lots of similar parties in Croatia? The three are the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, the Croatian Social Liberal Party and the Croatian People’s Party — Liberal Democrats.

The other parties in the top ten are: Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, People’s Movement Against the EU (Denmark), Estonian Reform Party, Freedom Union — Democratic Union (Czech Republic), Humanist Party (Portugal), Liberal and Centre Union (Lithuania). To be fair, having had a glance at each of these parties, they seem to vary quite a lot, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in them.

Incidentally, the Liberal Democrats are only my 65th strongest match. So in theory, there are 64 other parties across Europe that I would rather vote for. Not very good, is it?

Vote Match

Vote Match gives me very different results. My strongest match is Libertas with a score of 51/54, which seems quite high. (I’ve taken the test three separate times now, and Libertas were the top result each time.) This is despite the fact that I chose Scotland as my region and Libertas aren’t standing in Scotland.

Joint second are the Greens and the SNP with 41. The Lib Dems, the Conservatives and Labour are all joint fourth with 39. Jury Team’s Alan Wallace has 33 and Ukip have 28.

The results page on Vote Match is very comprehensive, with a table of each party’s position on each of the 30 questions. Looking down the table, it does appear as though I agree with Libertas on a lot of issues, and all of the issues that I marked as important. On all the issues I marked as unimportant, I disagreed with Libertas. This has perhaps accentuated their score.

These results just don’t sit right with me though. The list seems wrong. It is especially odd to see the Greens so high up there. Perhaps this is where differences in policies for Holyrood or Westminster and Europe come into play. But I’m taking this result with a pinch of salt.

Political Compass

This isn’t related to the European Parliamentary election, but it is the granddaddy of online political tests, and I think it is a couple of years since I have taken it. So I thought I’d take another look. My result now is:

Economic Left/Right: 1.25

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.82

So I’m — just — on the libertarian right. But I am still more of an economic centrist, though firmly a social libertarian. This is more or less what I expected. A clear trend that I have noticed is a slow drift towards the libertarian right. The last time I took this quiz, two years ago, my economic score was 0.38 — closer to the centre, but still on the right. The social score was a slightly less libertarian -6.10.

The time before my score was 1.00 and -6.21. The time before that, in 2006, it was -0.13 and -5.08.

I still haven’t decided whether or not I will vote. However, I think if I do vote, I know which party I will vote for. I’ll report this evening on my action / inaction.

I have just retaken the Political Compass test. I have come out as:

Economic Left/Right: 1.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.21

This is the first time I have appeared on the right on the economic axis. The last time I took this test, I was just about bang-on the centre, at -0.13. This continues the slow rightward trend.

In the meantime, I have moved even further towards the ‘libertarian’ end of the chart. The result makes me look like a bit of an extremist, or at least an outlier.

Of the four quadrants, mine is probably the most deserted. For perhaps obvious reasons, ‘left–libertarian’ and ‘right–authoritarian’ tend to have the highest concentration of inhabitants, because these ideologies are often — lazily — seen as going hand-in-hand.

The authoritarian right contains just about every major political party and almost all the governments of the EU. The libertarian left contains green and socialist parties. Meanwhile, the authoritarian left contains such delightful characters as Stalin, Robert Mugabe, Pope Benedict XVI and the BNP.

Going through all of the pages on the Political Compass website, it is difficult to find any allies. I feel a bit lonely. Worse still, I can’t tell which party I am closer to between the Lib Dems and the Greens. But they are both very distant.

It seems as though I am destined to be the third corner in a triangle between the Dalai Lama and Angela Merkel.

Boring update: I found out by chance that this post contains the 400,000^th word that I have written on this blog. Blimey. Someone needs to get a life.

Scottish bloggers continue, even after all these weeks, to stare at Councillor Terry Kelly’s blog with astonishment. If anybody wants to know what I mean when I say parts of Scotland are just one massive rotten borough, just take a look at this incredible blog and remember that a plurality of voters actually elected this man.

Luckily, via Clairwil comes news that he is gaining notoriety beyond Scotland — he has been featured on Labour Watch.

Councillor Kelly’s only support in the blogosphere appears to come from his own daughter, Rayleen Kelly. Ms Kelly’s latest post slams BLOGGING BULLIES. Which is quite funny given that a couple of months back she called Martin Kelly and David Farrer “madmen” under the heading “PEOPLE ARE STRANGE” and implied that they actually needed psychological help (yes, the profession that Ms Kelly deleted was “psychologist”).

As Clairwil has found, Councillor Terry Kelly also likes to imply that people are mentally ill — simply for disagreeing with his viewpoint. It is this pious attitude that really pisses people off about Labour.

The Kelly clan’s blogs give off that familiar air, the claim that Labour is the only party worth supporting — or else you must be some kind of horrific freak (such as a right wing nationalist, a label that Councillor Kelly astonishingly managed to indirectly attatch to me). But they never actually manage to explain why, instead resorting to personal attacks and bullying. This is behaviour which appears to mirror certain real life encounters, oh, and this one as well.

Terry Kelly’s favourite trick seems to be to accuse the SNP of being homophobic — a claim which takes a lot of brass neck for a supporter of a party that put Ruth Kelly in charge of equality. And not very sensible when one of the Scottish blogosphere’s biggest voices is an SNP member who happens to be gay. Oh dear.

It really is time people like this were booted out of office. I’m not referring specifically to the Councillors Kelly. I mean Labour as a whole. As Clairwil says in the comments to her post:

I work in a fairly grim part of Glasgow and a Labour stroghold to boot and I am at a total loss as to what they have done to inspire such loyalty. I look around and see everything at best staying the same and still out they troop and vote Labour. Why?

The stick with Labour no matter what mentality has done nothing but create career opportunties for tenth raters. If I had the time I’d put together a tactical voting site to unseat Labour in the May elections. They really are hopeless.

As Will P says, the STV voting system being used in the upcoming local elections will surely help. As things stand, Councillor Terry Kelly is a walking advertisement against Labour (as if the we really needed another one!) and against the First Past the Post electoral system. If he is still a councillor after the third of May I would actually advocate the scrapping of representative democracy; it would clearly be doing us no good. We’ll have to make sure his blog gets as much publicity as possible before the election to prevent this.

Update: Will P launches Terrywatch!

Update: Clairwil: Terry Watch- A Call To Arms!

The above is a site which comments on other blogs, they seemed in the past to be harmless enough, if a bit pedestrian. Unfortunately I’m writing this on my blog because I’m on my own and have no computer expertise/back up and I couldn’t figure out how to reply to what they have been saying about me. I sometimes check who has visited my site and see what they have been commenting on, mostly it’s predictable right wing/nationalist drivel with a few exceptions, some of the exceptions are in fact right wing, but as yet no nationalists. Anyway I have no problem with that, there is however a pattern emerging which shows a hint of collusion which emerges when several of them accuse me of stifling debate and cutting out comments. I have tried to explain before that I will try to print comments if they are not abusive, in the past couple of weeks I have only removed three of these and printed everything else, no matter how puerile. This site seems to have joined in with these liars and is now, as far as I’m concerned not to be trusted, how easy is it to accuse me of this? they have nationalist stamped all over them, perhaps the site will put the record straight but I won’t hold my breath. I intend to print everything that’s printable. Why wouldn’t I when so much much of it makes my case for me.

Nationalist stamped all over me? Right-wing? What do you think? Has he never read anything I have to say, apart from the bit about him? Doesn’t seem like it to me.

Reckon he’ll be setting the record straight?

NB. I am posting this here because Scottish Blogging Roundup is not the place to be getting into these skirmishes.

I had been completely missing the whole Bob Piper hoo-ha that was going on over the weekend. The only reason I know about it now was because James Higham emailed me to tell me about his latest Blogfocus, and I decided to take a look. When I worked out that it was about Bob Piper, I became very interested. I don’t know if James Higham knows about my previous run-ins with Mr Piper, but the recent storm has rung a few bells.

Needless to say, I was interested to see exactly what the fuss was all about. Bob Piper in racism row? Sounds explosive. It turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Here is the offending image which was originally uploaded by Unity and then featured on Bob Piper’s blog. I think it should be obvious to anybody with an ounce of sense that the image does not intend to say anything about black people. It is clearly an attack on David Cameron and nothing more.

Labour politicians in the West Midlands must be very reluctant to try and show a sense of humour from now on! First it was Tom Watson’s ‘yoof’ page which was lambasted by many. Then it was Siôn Simon’s misfiring spoof of Webcameron. And now this from Bob Piper.

From my perspective, the storm was manufactured by some Conservative bloggers who are a little bit too desperate to become the next big things in the blogosphere. It is quite telling that the genuine big players in the conservative blogosphere had a rather lukewarm response to the whole thing.

Guido Fawkes sympathises with Bob Piper. Tim Worstall thinks it is a fuss over nothing. Meanwhile, Iain Dale — who I am sure once said that he reads Bob Piper’s blog every day, although I can’t find the quote right now — took two days to mention it at all. Either he didn’t read Bob Piper’s blog on Friday or Saturday (possible), he did read it and took two days to find it potentially offensive, or he didn’t find it potentially offensive at all and has just reluctantly joined the bandwagon.

Once the initial posts by nonentities such as Praguetory had been written, that should probably have been the end of it. But two things happened. The first one I have covered — some Tory bloggers got a little bit too excited and tried to out a Labour politician as a racist, which clearly is not true.

The second thing that happened is more interesting to me though. Bob Piper began to get involved in a debate. And that usually means trouble. Mr Piper tends to see things through a purely ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. I know from personal experience that Bob Piper likes to play the man without even pretending that the ball existed. It does not take him long to resort to personal attacks rather than actually discussing the issue at hand.

When the attacks become so personal, and often downright insulting, the stakes are raised and tempers run high. No longer is it a simple political discussion. It becomes an issue of personal pride.

Iain Dale says, “I believe him to be a thoroughly decent bloke.” He must have corresponded to a different Bob Piper to the one the rest of us have corresponded with!

I recall that the thing that always infuriated my about Bob Piper was the way that he constantly tried to make out that voting for anybody other than Labour meant that you were voting for the Conservatives or even the BNP by proxy. It’s Labour’s old “letting the Tories in by the back door” argument. Unfortunately, it’s totally nonsense. Besideswhich, voting for the Conservatives isn’t as eeevil as voting for Labour if you ask me — but that’s by the by.

For reference, here are some links to Bob Piper in action in the comments here. And, from roughly the same time, at Longrider’s blog including the priceless moment when he accused me of being “tired and emotional” when I said that I prefered the Conservatives to Labour — presumably because only people who are mentally incapable could possibly prefer the evil Tories to golden boy Blair. This is what Jawbox said at the time.

There was also this strange sentence:

I just like winding up DoctorVee with his passion for all things Lib Dem. It works too, his lights start flashing straight away… three bells… jackpot!

That “passion” for all things Lib Dem passes most people by, because it isn’t a passion. I usually vote for them because I see them as by far the least-worst option. Probably, in Bob’s mind, I must be a “passionate” Lib Dem because I, like most other sensible people, oppose the Labour Past the Post voting system which currently gives Labour its thumping majority with only roughly 20% of the electorate supporting it.

You have to wonder about somebody who “likes winding up” people like me though. What a sad life he must have to have concentrated on me so much! Maybe saying that sort of thing is just part of his master debating technique though. You have to take everything he says with a pinch of salt.

After that whole incident I stopped reading Bob Piper’s blog. I had dismissed him as somebody who had plenty to say, but none of it was substantial or interesting. In short, he was a loud mouth who just ranted from his corner. Reading somebody like that is just a waste of time.

I will admit that I was sometimes rude to Bob Piper when we were debating. But in the sort of atmosphere that Mr Piper brings to a debate, it is usually the only place you can go. If you are being insulted you can either sit down and take it. Or you can respond. And most people will respond. Like I said, pride is at stake.

As I said, I didn’t follow this latest drama from the start. But it does seem as though Bob Piper played dirty in the comments once again, and that is what kept the story going through the blogosphere for so long.

For instance, you can see for youself Bob Piper attempting to “out” a blogger by using his real name, which is a breach of netiquette (see The Devil’s Kitchen, if the post ever comes back up, for more on that). James Higham, commenting on Mr Eugenides’ very sensible post, said that he had read one comment of Bob Piper’s that was “OTT. This is probably what kept it rolling as an issue.” I find that very easy to believe.

A salient point is this idea coming from some conservative bloggers, particularly Dizzy:

For me the biggest issue is that if someone from the right had produced the same “satire” the reaction would’ve been total outrage from the Left with accusations of racism. There is something worrying with this intellectual position that many on the Left have which asserts they are not capable of racism because of their ideological purity. It’s bollocks.

That is true. The left can often be unbearable when they claim that they must be correct because they’re on the left and the left couldn’t possibly be wrong. This also chimes with Bob Piper’s regular stance of, ‘It’s Labour so it must be right’. Although, as Dr Doom in the comments at Iain Dale’s points out:

It’s interesting that you die hard Conservatives are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. How thoroughly decent of you.

Which times were you wrong and where did you say so and apologise?

If somebody on the right were a victim of this witch-hunt, they would undoubtedly cry “political correctness gone mad” and tell everybody to get a sense of humour. I think that is what John at The England Project is alluding to here:

From Bob’s perspective there was a lack of judgement and no racist intent. It’s a crazy world and I for one would not like to see Bob become a victim of that craziness.

All-in-all, I think this incident reflects badly on a lot of people. And, as Mr Eugenides points out, a few people are even (considering) quitting blogging as a result of it. But that’s what happens in these high stakes games that Bob Piper likes to play. As the cliche goes, an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Now everybody has run away to lick their wounds. Hopefully this can serve as a reminder to us all that we should play nicely in the comments.

We all love to wear hats though, so the usual response to this is to create even more meaningless bogey-terms. People attempt to sum up their entire political perspective with the use of a simple chart. Questionnaires are devised, and everybody’s position on the “political spectrum” is represented on a graph with six axes.

So we have this post which has another interesting take on it. There isn’t a lovely graph with six axes, but there are “sixteen hats”. And I’m as much of a sucker for these things as everybody else is, so I have to do it, haven’t I?

A problem hits me immediately though: I haven’t decided whether humans are naturally good or evil. I think I’ve always thought that humans are evil, but that it doesn’t really matter. Meh.

In the end I think I’ve decided I’m an Augustinian Digger and a Right-Hegelian Whig.

This makes me a Communitarian Reformer. That would be the same as Shuggy. Hmm. Although if I tossed a coin (which I almost may as well have done) and it landed on ‘Pelagian’ that would make me a Hippie Reformer.

Third Avenue has another great post at The Sharpener, about what “anti-Americanism” is supposed to be exactly.

I have often felt that it is just an attempt by those on the right to label sensible left-wing critics of American politics as racist. It’s almost like a right-wing version of “fascist”, although you can probably also add the terms “anti-Semitic” and “dhimmification” to that list. Doesn’t wash with me I’m afraid.

Nosemonkey has a good follow-up.