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There are 658 results entered into our database. Last record added on 02 May 2008 at 5.29pm

BNP and far-right election results: UK local elections 2008

last updated Sunday, 4 May 2008, 20:06

The BNP now has 55 councillors. It went into the polls with 45, down from 50 immediately after last year’s elections and made a net gain of ten.

Although the BNP gained 13 new council seats, the party’s average vote was down in many areas.

The gains were in Nuneaton and Bedworth (2), Rotherham (2), Amber Valley (2), Stoke-on-Trent (3), Thurrock (1), Three Rivers (1), Pendle (1) and Calderdale (1), where the BNP has retaken a seat in Illingworth and Mixenden, a ward from where the party had previously been routed.

Despite the one gain in Thurrock, the result there is disappointing for the BNP, which threw serious resources into the borough, as it did last year without success.

But in Stoke-on-Trent the three new councillors join six others, giving the city the largest BNP council group nationally after Barking and Dagenham, which has 12.

An excellent result came in from Epping Forest District Council, where the BNP has lost two of the three seats it was defending. Pat Richardson appears to have got it right by moving to her husband’s safer seat as her old seat was one of those lost. The BNP is now down to four seats on the council. The good news was slightly tempered by the fact that the BNP took five seats on Loughton Town Council, but at least the party has stayed confined to the three wards where it has previously won seats.

In Burnley the BNP has retained a seat it was defending in Hapton with Park, but failed to make any gains in the borough. Another piece of excellent news is that David Exley lost the seat he was defending in Kirklees.

In London Richard Barnbrook received just 69,710 first preference votes in the mayoral election, which amounted to 2.89%. The only BNP candidate in the constituency part of the London Assembly election, Robert Bailey in City and East, received 18,020 votes – 9.6% – in what is the BNP’s best area. Unfortunately however the BNP passed the 5% threshold for election to the London Assembly in the London-wide top-up vote with 5.33% (130,714 votes) but has only gained one seat, which will be taken by Barnbrook.

The results are a far cry from the BNP’s announced expectation of 40 new councillors and three members in the 25-seat London Assembly. The BNP is now suggesting “vote tampering” deprived it of a better result.

At the latest count we think the BNP stood 612 candidates in district and county elections in England and Wales, of whom 584 were in England and 28 in Wales.

In desperation the BNP is claiming it now holds over 100 council seats for the first time ever. The party is being disingenuous. If it is correct at all, the figure includes a large number of parish, town or community councillors, most of whom were elected unopposed to this lowest and usually non-political tier of local government.

Other far-right parties standing were: the National Front (5 candidates), England First Party (7 candidates + 1 parish candidate) and Democratic Nationalists – the new party registered by the rebels who fell out with the BNP over the December 2007 January 2008 period (9 candidates, all in Bradford). None of these parties achieved any success and some of the Democratic Nationalists seem to have had difficulty even persuading their friends and family to vote for them.