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No2EU and far left election results

NO2EUFor inveterate leftist trainspotters, only one question demands an answer: how did No2EU do? (No2EU is a joint slate backed by rail union RMT, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Britain) You can find the answer below, along with any other far left also rans who paid down the hefty deposit and made their way onto the ballot. The figures in brackets are +/- 2009’s results:

East Midlands
No2EU – N/A (-11,375, 0.93%)
SLP (Socialist Labour Party, led by Arthur Scargill) – N/A (-13,590, 1.11%)

Eastern Region
No2EU – 4,870 (0.31%) (-9,069, 0.56%)
SLP – N/A (-13,599, 0.85%)

London
No2EU – 3,804 (0.17%) (-13,954, 0.84%)
SLP – N/A (-15,306, 0.87%)
SPGB (Socialist Party of Great Britain) – N/A (-4,050, 0.23%)

North East
No2EU – N/A (-8,066, 1.37%)
SLP – N/A (-10,228, 1.74%)

North West
No2EU – 5,402 (0.31%) (-18,178, 1.12%)
SLP – N/A (-26,224, 1.59%)
SEP (Socialist Equality Party) – 5,067 (0.29%) (+5,067, 0.29%)

Scotland
No2EU – 6,418 (0.48%) (-3,275, 0.40%)
SLP – N/A (-22,135, 2.00%)
SSP (Scottish Socialist Party )- N/A (-10,404, 0.94%)

South East
No2EU – N/A (-21,455, 0.92%)
SLP – N/A (-15,484, 0.66%)
SPGB – 5,454 (0.23%) (+5,454, 0.23%)

South West
No2EU – N/A (-9,741, 0.63%)
SLP – N/A (10,033, 0.66%)

Wales
No2EU – 2,803 (0.38%) (-5,797, 0.87%)
SLP – 4,459 (0.61%) (-7,953, 1.20%)
SPGB – 1,384 (0.19%) (+1,384, 0.19%)

West Midlands
No2EU – 4,653 (0.34%) (-8,762, 0.61%)
SLP – N/A (-14,724, 1.04%)

Yorkshire and Humber
No2EU – 3,807 (0.29%) (-11,807, 0.98%)
SLP – N/A (-19,380, 1.58%)

National
No2EU – 31,757 (0.2%) (-121,479, 0.9%)
SLP – 4,459 (0.02%) (-168,656, 1.12%)
SPGB – 6,838 (0.04%) (+2,788, 0.01%)
SEP – 5,067 (0.03%) (+5,067, 0.03%)
Total – 48,121 (0.29%) (-292,684, 2.22%)

By the scant electoral standards of the far left, socialist organisations can, as a rule, expect to poll between one and two per cent. Higher than this they are “doing well”. If it’s lower, then things are not so good. So, what do we have here? Utterly abysmal results. In No2EU’s case, so much for “putting down a marker” back in 2009.

More about the far left when I get round to writing about TUSC’s local election results later this week.

This article first appeared at All that is Solid

3 Comments

  1. Jim Denham says:

    My letter to the Morning Star (which, to their credit they published in today’s edition):

    Dear Comrades,

    A viciously anti-working class, anti-immigrant, hard–right nationalist party wins a majority in a UK national election, and what is the response of the Morning Star? “It is as well not to get too carried away” (M Star Comment May 27).

    Such complacency is truly breathtaking and even worse is the attempt to dress the result up as something almost progressive: “Farage and his team were able to play on the unpopularity of then EU and widespread voter alienation from the political in-crowd to pose as something new and different.” Of course, there’s some truth to that, and socialists should try to relate to such alienation, but exactly the same could have been said about a BNP electoral breakthrough (or, indeed, the Front National in France) – but would the Star have adopted a similar complacent tone in that situation?

    Maybe the Star’s extraordinary response to this highly dangerous situation is explained by its support for the central plank of UKIP’s platform: the inevitably reactionary call for withdraw from the EU – a call that No2EU tried to dress up in “progressive” garb, only to receive a derisory vote, slugging it out with the Harmony Party at the bottom of the poll.

    The Star’s suggestion that none of this really matters and that the People’s Assembly Against Austerity marches in London represent a “real challenge to the Establishment” is simply not serious class politics, comrades!

    Yours
    Jim Denham

  2. James Martin says:

    Sorry Jim, but there is absolutely nothing reactionary about socialists wanting to see the end of the political wing of NATO.

    That is separate to criticising the ineffective sects again waving their little red flags that had similar issues and problems in both the EU and local elections.

  3. Jim Denham says:

    “the political wing of NATO”?

    Not really an accurate characterisation, but even if it were …

    … why not simply campaign against NATO itself? Why the obsession with the so-called “political wing”?

    Why no campaign against the “financial wing of NATO” – the IMF?

    The Stalinist and Stalinist-influenced left’s obsession with the EU is based upon a particular form of insular, nationalist ideology that is inevitably reactionary and needs to be discarded. Hopefully, recent events will serve to wake peoples’ ideas up, just as Unite has recently broken with anti-EU dogma.

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