In case you are still wondering why ex-Labour voters are turning to the BNP, the events since the election should explain it.

I mean, what a brilliant finish to Labour's week or so of chaos!

The bloke who has been running the country for the last two years has said that he will start listening to other people's opinions and that he will spend the next 11 months learning how to do the job.

So that's all right then!

Meanwhile, we were wondering how Labour MP's would be spending their time now that they won't be building up their property empires or having meetings with their accountants to discuss tax avoidance.

The answer apparently is to hold an enquiry into how we got into a war 6 years ago.

Well, that's worth it! And if that finishes before next May, perhaps we can have an enquiry into the Suez war in 1956 or the slaughter on the Somme in 1916.

Because we wouldn't want them worrying their pretty little heads about 1000's of people from LDV and its suppliers losing their jobs in the West Midlands, would we?

After all, what have factory workers and unions got to do with the Labour Party?

I have voted Labour in virtually every General Election, By-Election, European Election and Council Election since 1970 so you might well argue that I must be pretty stupid if I've only just worked out that it's a waste of time.

Obviously, there is no point in voting for a party that would rather be in opposition than take the difficult decisions required by a government.

Well, it may be late in the day, but I shan't be making that mistake again.

I haven't yet got round to voting BNP but I can understand how people looking for a party to represent working people think they have run out of options.

"the right-wing press, who have stoked the flames of the immigration issue"

Ah, so the PBW (the Poor Bloody Workers) can't actually think for themselves. They're incapable of looking around their own cities and towns and seeing the influx of strangers, noticing that these newcomers get priority on housing lists, that they add to the crowding in their local hospitals, and that the schools are swamped with children who cannot speak English. No, no, they can only work this out by reading the tabloids who tell them to be angry - and presumably their lips move as they read, eh, Councillor?

Only a middle-class Leftie could be quite so patronising - it comes from reading the Guardian too often!

I don't generally agree when politicians blame the media, too often it would seem to me they're angry at the public hearing the truth.

However, last night I heard on the BBC, a report about somebody who was a lifelong Labour supporter who voted BNP and gave her reasons. The reasons were why shouldn't we be able to celebrate St. George's Day, Christmas, and similar. I realized that, there at least, those PC Gone Mad stories had an effect, and not a good one.

Is the media all to blame? No. The BNP exploited those PC Gone Mad stories, made it seem as if only the BNP would let you fly an English flag, and no other politicians had managed to counter that. Clearly though, those stories, often untrue, do cause trouble. It's also sad people think that a white liberal pen pusher, as if often the case, "banning Christmas", would lead to a party against minorities.

As for Cameron, of course he needs to work harder at getting these voters, but you know as well as I do, a lot of these Labour voters have been "groomed" to never, ever vote Tory. It's in their blood that they hate the Conservatives, that has the unfortunate effect of making the BNP seem like a credible option. Cameron could offer them each £50,000 and they'd still not vote for him. Labour's collapse would always have happened like this, whoever the Tories' leader was.

Mick, I wouldn't dream of agreeing that you must be pretty stupid, although the fact that you are considering voting BNP indicates you haven't got far to go.

Duffers, you right-wingers never cease to amaze. On one had you squeal like stuck pigs about propoganda from the BBC, and Spin Doctors on behalf of the government... and on the other hand you argue that none of it makes any difference. My Ward is in one of the poorest boroughs in the country. Our schools aren't swamped. Our e`housing lists are full, but not of foreigners, but British people who can't get a local authority house because Thatcher's mobsters gave them away at bargain discounts. Sadly, your mentality is a Sun reader. Am I surprised. Noot a bit of it.

Bob, I agree. In fact it was the point I was making. The Tories have not won them over, and hopefully never will again. Working class people remember living under the Thatcher jackboot, and they don't think much of Labour, so they vote for UKIP, Fascists, Nationalist or a variety of other basket cases.

If I recollect my history of Europe between the wars and I look at UKIP, I see the sort of fellow travellers with the far right wing which gave more than passive support to Hitler and Mussolini. The respectable bourgeois nationalists were far more dangerous to democracy than the originally small coterie of nazis Hitler assembled. They fed on the betrayal of Germany and destabilised the Weimar republic through swallowing Hitler's big lies.

Listen to Nigel Farage and you hear a self pitying barrage of misinformation and distortion. They pander to the anti immigration ticket and put a respectable facade on the racism the BNP scarcely conceal.

Come off it, Bob! I agree that the result in Wales is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Tories, but the most telling statistic is that only 6% of th electorate actually voted Labour. And had its vote been only 10% of the electorate it is unlikely the BNP would have got one never mind two seats.
When the governing party starts to address the immigration issue the BNP will fade away just like it did in France (where's Le Pen now?).
And another thing, if the right-wing media are stoking up the flames of immigration issue it surely doesn't affect Labour voters as they don't read those papers, do they?

Sadly, ifabloke... they do. The Daily Mail is far too downmarket for your Tory middle class, and its diet of salacious gossip, scandal and right-wing propaganda is consumed by hundreds of thousands of people who want a tabloid without tits.

France has an immigrant population (not counting illegals) of about 8%, so I'm not sure the reason for Le Pen's decline is as you describe.

Free movement across European borders was one of the 'four freedoms' of the EU delivered to us by Maastricht via the Single European Act, and I'm fairly sure you will find France signed those, as well as Thatcher and Major.

I'm sorry you free marketeers don't get it. It was designed to allow the free flow of cheap labour to maximise profit for our capitalist friends.

Can't disagree with anything you say there Bob, but we also have to recognise the role Labour has played in fanning the flames of racism.

Whether it's individual ministers like the pig-ignorant and bigoted Phil Woolas or government policy like the Iraq war and the terror hysteria agenda Labour does not have an entirely unblemished record on promoting racial harmony.

Duff, you live in a west country village, are you talking from experience? The only 'strangers' you see are well-heeled city types buying their holiday homes.

Too true, Ian. Trying to win over the Tory or BNP vote by pandering to racists is despicable.

Prior to retirement I lived close to, and did a lot of business in, Slough, also a fair amount of dealing in Southall. Why? Because many of the second-hand car dealers I dealt with were Indians or Pakis. I enjoyed dealing with them even if they were tricky - even by our normally low standards - and the mutual 'racism' they evinced towards each other would have caused poor Polly to faint away! However, the fact was that both those areas were completely and utterly swamped by Asians, it was, and still is, like visiting a foreign country. Where did all the whites Brits go? And what do they think about it?

The more you Lefties ignore it, the more, and more, and more, votes the BNP will pick up. Suckers!

Poor, poor Duffy. The world has moved on, leaving him stuck in some sort of time warp, befuddled and bemused. There are very little immigration these days between the UK and the Indian sub-continent. Much tougher restrictions, and an Indian economy which has left ours as far behind as Duffy's thinking has seen to that. Most of the immigration in recent years has been from... Europe. You can thank the blessed Margaret and her toy boy John Major for the SEA and Maastricht which initiated this new federal Europe. And the sad thing for the likes of Duffy is that when you look at them (Nick Griffin's test for membership eligibility)... you can't even tell that they are immigrants.

I live in Smethwick, with a very high immigrant population, Irish, Indian, Poles, Romanians... and guess what? No riots, no 'rivers of blood', no more Tory 'if you want a nigger for a neighbour'... and no BNP representation either.

And there, in all its smug blindness and uncaring disdain, is the reason the BNP has just broken the barrier into mainline politics.

I say again - suckers!

Good old Duffers.

He's driven through the inner city, poked a stick through the bars at the natives, and now he's a friggin' expert.

Sad really.And you thought the dinosaurs had died out, eh?

Duff's lack-of-a-clue brainpower reaches new heights. He visits two places with some of the highest levels of non-white residents and then seems surprised when he sees some, er, non-white residents.

I had the same thing happen to me once when I drove through Surrey - Tory-voting stockbrokers everywhere and plenty of them looked tricky too. The difference is that tricky Indians didn't screw the UK economy; the stockbrokers, bankers and their ilk are the ones Duff should be whinging about.

So, in what passes for your mind, Bob, there is either no problem at all, or, if there is a problem it is all the fault of the Daily Mail.

Brilliant!

In the meantime the BNP is on the march ...

Duffy... do you keep a box of frogs?