Two of Britain's leading authorities on the BNP have written for NothingBritish.com about What The BNP Breakthrough Means For British Politics.
Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin, both of Manchester University, note that the BNP intend to target Labour seats at the next General Election:
"The forthcoming general election will almost certainly see BNP strategists turn their guns with renewed vigour toward Labour’s industrial heartlands. We now know that the BNP performs strongest in economically deprived areas that have - or are close to - large Muslim communities and where there are large numbers of less skilled and less educated working class males (in other words, traditional Labour Party supporters). The BNP will have been emboldened by their ability to make gains at Labour’s expense, will take comfort from the fact that UKIP have no ‘ground game’ and seldom perform as well in national elections, and so the party will look toward constituencies such as Barking (where they polled 17% in 2005), Burnley, Dagenham, Dewsbury, Dudley North and those around Stoke-on-Trent as prospective sites for a second place finish or, quite possibly, the election of the first BNP Member of Parliament.
Griffin will seek to learn from the mistakes of the earlier National Front (NF), which in the general election of 1979 got ahead of itself by standing over 300 candidates (polling a meagre 1.3 per cent). The BNP are more likely to run a smaller but more targeted campaign focusing on areas where they know they will do well, and drafting in footsoldiers from other areas in an attempt to exploit Labour’s disarray at the grassroots."
Read the full piece here.
