Oddballs

[caddyman]

I ran into this courtesy of keith_london, but not on LJ, over on Twitter: The English Democrats. Now as far as I can see and if you know better, please correct me, they are not racist nutters like the BNP, but as nationalists they do seem to tend to the right (oddly unlike the Scottish National Party, who I think tend to the left...). They do seem a little er.. dodgy (at the very least base populist) on immigration. They are nut jobs in other ways, too - they support, or rather propose, a referendum on whether Monmouthshire should be in Wales or in England...

They are a federalist group who see themselves as promoting England so that it has the same rights as Scotland and to that extent they want an English Parliament with at least the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. Well, chaps, here's the news. WE ALREADY HAVE AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT, YOU PLUMS (de facto if not de jure). It's in Westminster. We just happen to share it with the UK Parliament.

We don't need another layer of corruption, we just need an answer to the West Lothian Question.

Comments

[keresaspa.livejournal.com]

You've pretty much nailed them as they are right wing, hardline anti-immigration but with token ethnic members. Effectively they're just UKIP with the whole English independence thing, the head of Fathers 4 Justice and Oi! godfather/Television X presenter Garry Bushell added in. They have a surprisingly high media profile for a party that has never even threatened to win so much as a local election but I suspect that is Bushell calling in favours from his chums in the tabloids. Other than that nothing to see there.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only English Democrat candidates I've ever met canvessing (3) were all seikhs (doubtless I've spelled that incorrectly)

[keresaspa.livejournal.com]

I read that quickly and thought it said "sheiks" and so was left with the bizarre image of the three candidates in question being Rudolf Valentino, Omar Bakri Muhammad and Ed Farhat! Well, celeb endorsements are all the rage these days.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

:-) I actually agree with your assessment. They are trying to have a USP of "England First". It sounds good, but it is rather spurious. (I thought they were fraudulent no-hopers when I last looked at them. Their campaign for the London Mayoral election was a shambles.) Their party political broadcast today portray a serious intent, and they may rope in a few voters angry with the main parties.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

My father was the founder of the Keep Monmouthshire Free Society way back in the 1960s. I have a copy of the interview he gave to TWW in 1966. This used to be the only county where you could buy Welsh and English postage stamps in the same post office - as with everything else all those little quirks have been standardised now ~sigh~