Loughborough Hastings by-election 24.10.13 result:
Sarah MAYNARD SMITH (The Labour Party Candidate) 554 (61.4%)
Judith SPENCE (The Conservative Party Candidate) 127 (14.1%)
Andy MCWILLIAM (UK Independence Party) 111 (12.3%)
Kevan STAFFORD (Brit Dems Stop Immigration Leave EU) 85 (9.4%)
Simon ATKINS (Liberal Democrat) 26 (2.9%)
Turnout 19.84%
Well done Kevan.
Although we beat the Lib Dems, we didn’t get swept away by UKIP like most people thought and were only 26 votes behind them.
With only 42 votes separating 2nd, 3rd and 4th place and without the UKIP factor we could have beat the Cons and finished 2nd.
This by-election result is a good platform to build on for the Charnwood BC all-out elections in 2015.
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Good result!
My goodness the BDP is a small unknown party with a negligible electoral track record. Yet near beat UKIP and not so far short of the Tories. Both firmly established and media approved outfits.
Well done Kevan!
Excellent effort indeed.
This is the people beginning to wake up.
Great first time effort from nowhere. Brit Dems more popular than the Lib Dems.
Pretty damn good.
Well done Mr. Stafford.
Good effort, and a sound foundation on which to build. Plainly UKIP can poll well anywhere in England these days on national brand recognition, but we have to work for every vote, which, as a Victorian schoolmaster would no doubt say, is character building!
The BDP is and for many years will be all about hard work at local level to build up our vote. Patience and perseverance will bring their rewards with time.
A good result for a new party. It was a good idea to have that slogan on the ballot paper. Hopefully more people will stand for the BDP now.
Yes, as long as they are quality local candidates and willing to roll their sleeves up and engage with the electorate.
Yes, the slogan was inspired (and no, it wasn’t my idea, so that’s not self-praise!). We have registered the designation with the Electoral Commission, it will serve us well in the future, I am sure.
People decide who they vote for before entering polling stations. Even on the day of elections being called and during the first few days well over half of people have made up their minds already. This figure is even higher during national elections. It’s called partisan alignment. This is evident by the fact that parties that campaign in wards in between election cycles are the ones that increase their vote the most, as their message is not compromised by a plethora of literature from other parties.
Yes, that is right but as the recent advance of UKIP has shown there is more volatility in the electorate than there has ever been. Provided we get our message right and present ourselves in the appropriate manner then we can gain from that.
Good. I am sure that if that slogan hadn’t been used we would have got a lower vote. The party is effectively unknown by virtually everyone apart from political obsessives like us. The electorate need to know that UKIP is emphatically NOT the only party espousing a staunchly anti-EU policy. At the moment, there are many who believe UKIP are the only anti-EU party in British politics!
Great effort from Kevan in an extremely enriched area. Labour were always going to win but the rest will be looking at the Brit Dems as a threat, apart from the Lib Dems of course who will be glad they spent nothing in time or money on this one.
A heartening result! Great oaks from little acorns.
It’s fascinating to think that the Brit Dems and UkIP together clobbered the Tories. That’s a party which is never hoping to win another General Election outright again.
Now if we can only gather in the UKIP vote and New Labour voters who know what’s good for them….
Indeed. The Conservative Party is a dying party and the reason why is because they can’t do globalist liberalism as well as the other parties of Labour, Lib Dem, Green etc. So what do they have left in the locker so to speak? As most people aren’t in the top 10% or so of income groups in this country their one remaining political stance of being defenders of the rich isn’t sufficiently politically attractive for most people.
The best they can hope for nowadays is to be leading a coalition government and being the largest party in parliament.
Some of the UKIP vote is potentially available to us but not all of it as many UKIP voters are basically Tories who are supporters of ultra-globalist economics.
Yes a good result for the British Democrats, no doubt about it.
61.4% of 19.84% = 12.18%.
Good result, well done.
This is nothing to celebrate; a turnout of less than 20% of the voters is not a success. Neither do we know how many of those votes were postal votes
It might be an idea for the BDP to make a declaration towards highest standard of politics in England right from the start and that would include in part of the manifesto a declaration that polls of less than half of the electorate are declared a non-starts and held again and again until a proper level of voting is achieved.
That the postal vote only be approved by a recent doctors certificate stating that the voter is unable to walk or get about. Those are some suggestions
I think that Nationalist politics is the next happening thing in English politics and Nationalists should aim right from the start for the highest possible standards even though that appears a difficult thing to do.
Nationalists are either losers or winners and we may as well decide what we are here and now and if we think that we are losers and accept low standards then it would make things a lot clearer for prospective supporters so that they make their dispositions accordingly. For all that well done to Kevin Stafford.
Graham does not seem to understand how difficult it is to get votes against the main parties.
In particular, the postal vote system has been mobilised by Labour all over the place to make results a foregone conclusion in many cases unless others can mobilise voters over a long period. Can’t be done quickly. Makes the result very creditable indeed.
Nearly everyone who wins in local elections does so on tiny turnouts. Not our fault. People are disillusioned by the political system. We are not accepting low standards. We are accepting current reality.
Labour etc don’t say ‘how badly we did’ when they take over councils on tiny turnouts.
There is a very good case for abolishing the current postal vote system as you say. Re-running elections until 50% turnout was achieved would paralyse government as things are. The only way you could do it is to make voting compulsory. Good case for that maybe with a ‘none of the above’ box added to the list..
High voter turnout does not always work for radical right parties, as the higher the turn out the less ideological and radical the voter pool becomes.
You are right on postal votes they can and have been abused. Postal votes have not actually achieved much of a higher turnout anyway. I believe there were 400 postal votes in the ward. Most would have voted on block for Labour.
Not necessarily. If you are on a roll a high turnout can be voters who are enthused.
I was talking about supporting a policy where an election is not valid until 50% have voted or more and elections then being ruled non-starts – which will mostly benefit the main three parties.
To get the ‘None of the Above’ issue rolling, why not whip up a campaign to get people to stand as ‘none of the above’ candidates’.
This is why we are doing it all. Don’t anyone forget it!
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/439051/Another-wave-of-immigrants-will-be-a-catastrophe
(Party Member) In what appears to be a traditional Labour ward and with the old party regularly getting 1.5% to 2.5% it’s a great start for the British Democrats!
(Party Member) The point ‘Deputy Dawg’ above is making is that the calculation shows Labour that their support is way below that needed for a General Election win. This is how they will look at it.
As a beginning it is a good result but we all suffer in local areas from, whichever side of the so called political divide, the ‘keep them out’ policy. I sit on two NHS boards but ill health forced me out of my Parish Council seat. Too late for an election, the Tory elite held a secret meeting. There are no checks or balances on a parish council, so Swales Tories will not investigate discrimination.
We must get our branches and local operations in place so we can respond quickly to local issues and elections. We help ourselves.
(Party Member) Indeed the Conservative Party is dying. The main reasons are the Party bringing in civil partnerships and immigration. Being the sort of people they are they will not admit this when asked by an opinion pollster, but it is true. Half of their membership has left and those that remain will not help or contribute financially to their Cameron-led Party. The fact that they have to pay people to put their leaflets out says it all! We are the Party of FAMILY VALUES and I look forward to the time when these people realise this and Join us.
I certainly agree the Conservative Party is dying but it is dying for many reasons. I would say the principle reason is because most people do not see the Tories as defenders of our nation or our national independence. Whatever else could be said of them in the past ie ‘party of the rich’ etc most people did see the Tories as the most ‘patriotic party’ (out of the big three) and thus voted for them even if they were not particularly wealthy. This is why the Tories always had a fairly large number of working-class people voting for them. Today, they have lost the label of the ‘patriotic party’ and are suffering electorally because of that. It was a political saying that the Tories were the ‘national party or nothing’.
Their more inclusive stance towards homosexual and bisexual people isn’t a big reason why they are losing support. The polling evidence is that most people nowdays are fairly relaxed towards those who are gay or bisexual and support civil partnerships if not gay marriage.
If the Tories were to adopt a much more hardline stance towards immigration and the EU they would gain support even from those parts of the electorate that are more socially conservative about gay issues. The gay issue is a very small issue in British politics (ie it tends to not change people’s voting intentions in a substantial way and how they regard each party) and those who do have strong opinions tend to be supportive of gay rights not hostile to them.
Yes, that’s why I won’t vote Tory, probably never again. They are not the patriotic party any more. Doubt if Cameron understands it – he is happy to allow the sell-off British businesses to foreigners on a scale not seen in any other country. If economists are advising him, you should be aware that economists in other countries do not think selling off national businesses is a good idea. Royal Mail will be sold to foreigners so that the greedy investment bankers can make more easy, no risk, money
I have voted Tory in the past due to this reason as well and undoubtedly many other people have done so too. However, John Major put me right on the true nature of the Conservative Party when he committed treason at Maastrict without so much as a by your leave and without allowing the British people to have a referendum on the subject!
Indeed, one of the most repellent features of ‘modern’ Tories is their fanatical devotion to economic globalism. This really belongs in the old Liberal Party of the 19th Century!
Germany would never sell the pride of Germany ie Mercedes-Benz to any foreign country let alone us yet they own Bentley and Rolls-Royce which BMW is making a complete dog’s ear out of. Their latest lunacy is a 4WD Roller!
Our policy of moderate economic nationalism can be one of our main policy planks to combat the globalists of Lib/Lab/Con AND the equal economic globalists of UKIP for the fact is there would be little sense in a UKIP government taking Britain out of the EU if we couldn’t take full advantage of our new independence because they would adhere to economic globalism in its most extreme forms!
During much of the 19th century Britain was top dog in coveted manufactures which other countries would pay dearly for.
So liberal tradition free trade was to our advantage.
Nowadays it is just denuding us of well-paid jobs.
Indeed that was the case. What Labour/Tory/Lib Dem AND UKIP don’t understand is that international free trade will mostly benefit the country which is ‘top dog’ in the world as we were in the 19th Century and once your country has a massively denuded manufacturing base and can’t compete effectively because of that ie like we sadly are today it won’t benefit you. It is time economic nationalists like us injected some commonsense into the argument. Indeed, it is time the argument actually started in this country over this!
Agreed. Liberals, even Tories, in Britain in the early 20th century clung onto free trade long after it was helpful to the U.K. We didn’t have duties but other countries had duties against us. Despite this stupidity these politicians still came up with crazy arguments in favour of free trade, including Churchill at that time. Cost Britain billions.
(Party Member) Just read the Express article from the link provided by our Mike Newland above. How can they write the truth like this and yet, just like the Daily Mail, savage Nationalism the way they do? Maybe we should approach them and ask them to officially endorse the British Democratic Party. A large donation to party funds as an apology for unfair criticism of Nationalism, that has been proved right, would also be appreciated.
If you want to work in the mainstream media you must never forget who your masters are.
For a new (unknown) party the first time out and given the area it was a very good result, one to build on. I got into politics because of a planning application which I opposed and while not a councillor or even in politics, whilst door-knocking on the issue, got a massive local response which at the next local election saw me swept into the Parish Council with a large majority; this momentum kept up and led to District Council success. So, if the party is not well known or popular, find a serious LOCAL moan people have, concentrate on it, get known as the ONE who is fighting it on YOUR behalf. People who feel strongly will come to help and things will take off.
Hope this helps.