Euro Election Deal

It will be mainly middle class liberals that will vote for Respect or the Greens, and white working-class that will vote for the fash. So it won’t matter either way if the middle-class liberal vote is split. If the fash are to beaten there has to be a coherent working-class alternative, and the North West is extremely fertile ground for such a project.

 http://www.iwca.info/

NW region Respect did try to reach an accommodation with the Green Party for the Euro elections. The proposals which were not unfavourable to the Greens were nonetheless rejected by the Green Party, possibly wary of doing a deal with a new and unproven political organisation. The failure to come up with a joint slate makes it less likely that a leftist Euro MEP will be elected in the North West, though hope springs eternal. It does NOT mean that the BNP are more likely to get elected. The Euro elections have a complex PR voting system. Basically each of the parties (BNP, Greens, Respect) will have to pass a threshold of around a certain percentage of the total vote to get their first Euro MEP. If more people vote for ANY parties other than the BNP, this will reduce the BNP share of the vote. So if Greens standing against Respect means that more people end up voting, this will hinder the BNP not help it.

It's important that everyone who cares about stopping the BNP registers to vote and casts a vote in the Euro elections, as this will reduce the BNP's chances of getting elected.

Good constructive comments, thanks.

bolshevik is right when you say more people voting means less chance of the BNP getting in. If 700,000 people vote and they get a 10% share of the vote, NG will get elected. If 1 million vote and they get the same 70,000 votes, it will be only 7% and they won't.

The main problem (as I see it) occurs if the BNP vote is in the 8% to 10% range (Searchlight predicts 9%). As pointed out, the D'Hondt system for calculating votes is pretty complex. Their election will then depend on how the other parties do, not just Greens or Respect. ( http://www.cix.co.uk/~broadway/pr95/)

A collapse in the Labour, Lib Dem or Tory vote makes it easier for the BNP to get the last seat. If they finish as the 4th largest party in the 8 to 10% range, this also increases their chances of getting elected. I hope Greens get 10% and Respect get 10%, and both parties get Euro seats in the NW, beating the BNP into 6th place. But I really don't think this will happen, and that the Greens will end up with 9%, Respect with 5% and the BNP finishes ahead of both parties, with NG getting elected.

As you say, Greens met with Respect in the NW to discuss this specifically, even after Respect decided to stand against sitting Green MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert. NW Greens delayed their (multi million) NW leaflet production run by a week to do so. The meetings were evidently cordial but nothing was agreed other than to avoid directly criticising the other party, as that would be counterproductive.

Respect are voted yesterday to select their candidates in the North West and that is a democratic right. If I don't have a Green council candidate or parliamentary candidate, I would be likely to vote for Respect. However, Greens are still offering a deal similar to the one agreed with Mebyon Kernow in the South West where parliamentary and local endorsement is on the table for the years that follow.

bolshevik's point about Respect being unproven is also true. Mebyon Kernow do have a proven base of local support in the SW with 6 District Councillors and 13 Town Councillors, which is actually more than the 9 elected Green councillors in the NW, the Greens' best represented region! Discussions were not easy, as Mebyon Kernow would have seen real benefits from standing a Euro list.

Results in 1999 suggest that Respect's will attract baseline support of 15,000+ voters in the NW, will attract some disaffected Labour supporters and may motivate socialists unhappy with the choices available to them 5 years ago. What I can't see is the kind of mass turnout for Respect envisaged by George Galloway, who talks about just half of the 2 million people who marched against the war voting for Respect and transforming British politics. Nationally 600,000+ voted Green in 1999, compared to 120,000 "socialist" votes. The rest of the anti-war majority may well be voting Liberal Democrat (unfortunately).

Respect set a vital precedent by standing down in favour of the Scottish Socialist Party, so it can be done, however painful this may be for NW members of Respect. Unlike the many times principled socialists have voted for New Labour as the best of a bunch of bad options, there is something tangible offered in return for the "pain" of stepping aside and endorsing the Greens. But time is running out.

Comments again?

I manually worked through the d'Hondt permutations for the North West, and if there is a swing from Labour to the Lib Dems this would favour a fourth party candidate being elected.
A summary of my analysis, for what it is worth, is published here:
 http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/activate/elections.htm

Pete's idea of RESPECT standing down assumes that this would benefit the Greens. This is not necessarily the case, RESPECT is an unproven electoral formation, and it may take more votes from Labour than the Greens, which would also increase the chances of a fourth party gaining a seat. Ironically a weak RESPECT vote could actually help the Greens get elected, provided the Greens get more votes than the BNP and UKIP.

Arguably the most likely fourth party in the NW might be the BNP. This is a challenge for all the parties to not only promote their own policies, but also to tackle head on the lies of the BNP. This is particularly a challenge for Labour party supporters - it is the racism of David Blunkett and the scapegoating of refugees that is creating the climate in which the BNP are growing. Labour Party members must reject this and throw their weight behind an anti-racsist campaign that celebrates the ethnic diversity of modern Britain.

The BNP feed off the disillusionment with the three main parties, so if the Greens and RESPECT fight strong campaigns in my view this is the best way to undermine the Nazis.

I don’t think that Andy and I disagree on the major points here. As rightly pointed out by Andy, Respect taking more votes from Labour than the Greens would make it easier for a 4th placed party to get elected. What I believe is that tactically we should make it as difficult as possible for a 4th placed party to get elected and I say that as someone who will probably vote Green. I’d rather have no 4th party win a seat than run the risk of letting in the BNP.

The UKIP in my opinion (and most others it seems) are out of the reckoning this time. We must hope that at least some of their right wing “nationalist” protest vote from 1999 does hold up, otherwise it will almost certainly be cannibalised by the BNP.

That leaves the Greens and Respect. If Respect’s votes do come at the expense of New Labour, but Respect finishes below the BNP, those anti-racist votes just won’t count. Unlike using a transferable vote, the D’Hondt system starts with the larger parties. Votes cast in June for the old Liberal Party (for instance) who polled 22,000 last time, will not be useful in keeping out the BNP.

Last year, before Respect was a gleam in George Galloway’s eye, I heard that the Greens had discussions and made an offer to the Liberals to try and broker a deal to keep out the racists. The Liberal Party vote only comes from here in Liverpool and is fairly easy to predict. They definitely won’t get enough votes to enable them to get an MEP and they will almost certainly lose their deposit in the NW. They arguably, had a lot less to lose (and more to gain) from having joined up with the Greens.

The 6% level of the Green vote is likely to remain intact (I’ve only actually heard of 1 Green member in the whole of the NW that has actually switched to Respect), as environmentalists are unlikely to be (initially) tempted by an unproven new party with similar policies. The fact that the Greens are a lot stronger in the NW region now than in 1999 (8 councillors - 1 in Manchester and 15% share of the vote in some bits of Liverpool) means that you can probably expect them to nudge upwards a couple of %age points.

A lot will actually depend on GM crops. There may be a substantial middle class and liberal anti-GM vote for the Greens. Baseline support for Respect is difficult to predict but I personally can’t see them getting close to the Greens in this region (read Andy’s article for into on other regions). The problem them becomes one of anti-racist voting.

Do Respect supporters vote for Respect because they believe they can win? Or do they weigh up the likely outcome and think, ok, we are not going to get an MEP, so I’m going to hold my nose and vote Green or Liberal Democrat, while hoping that GG gets elected in London.

I agree that racism is becoming a feature of our political landscape, and that New Labour has to take a lot of the blame. This is a challenge beyond these elections, but right now we need to keep advancing this serious discussion on how anti-racists on the left should vote, in this region, in this election, to keep out the BNP.