Vote Harder: the Failed Micro-Party Strategy

Another round of elections, another abysmal set of results. The nationalist micro-parties have turned election day into an annual humiliation ritual, and for the good of the movement this must stop.

There were a lot of interesting points to take away from the recent elections in Britain, not least the fact that the country is far more polarised than it has ever been – people are clearly moving away from centrist politics and are finally more willing to vote outside of the established norms. However interestingly, despite this electoral polarisation, nationalist micro-parties polled worse than ever before. At a time when concerns over immigration are at an all-time high and when voter turnout is so low, how can these small parties be polling fewer votes than the British National Party (BNP) did in the early 2000s?

On the surface the answer is quite obvious: people are now voting Reform en masse, and Reform is now so big and so well established that they swallow up almost all of the anti-immigration vote. Reform have become a household name and they emerged from the recent round of English council elections as the party who won the most seats. However, a softer anti-immigration option is not unique to the 2020s. In fact, back in the 2000s the BNP had to contend with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which presented almost exactly the same electoral option as Reform does now, and just as Reform is headed by Nigel Farage, so was UKIP in the 2000s.

What’s more, we are talking about council elections. These elections typically take place in comparatively small electoral wards, they are easy and cheap to contest and turnout is always low. These conditions are far more favourable to smaller parties than parliamentary elections – where the constituencies are huge, costs are high, a deposit of £500 must be found to even be able to stand and any meaningful campaign is far more labour intensive. This is why it was council elections where the BNP used to excel – winning dozens of seats and even becoming the official opposition on three different councils around the country (Barking and Dagenham, Burnley and Stoke).

And the BNP managed to do this in conditions that were largely similar to the conditions that exist today. In the 2000s Labour were the party of governance, UKIP were riding high thanks to record wins at the European Parliamentary elections and concern over immigration was growing, as Tony Blair’s government had publicly opened the flood gates. The parallels are striking – but the outcome for ethno-nationalist parties is very different now, so much so that it can be said that modern day ethno-nationalist parties that contest elections are doing little more than simply engaging in an act of ritual humiliation.

This year the National Rebirth Party (NRP) – one of the newest micro-parties – managed to stand one single candidate nationwide. To put this into perspective, there are 18,811 council seats across Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) – 16,350 seats are in England, 1,227 seats are in Scotland and 1,234 seats are in Wales. This year, 5,066 seats in England were up for election, meaning that in total, the NRP stood in just 0.02 per cent of the seats being contested at this round of elections.

The NRP stood in Hull, an area that at the time of the last census was 91.8% white and 83.9% White British. This on paper presented the party with an unrivalled opportunity for success. By standing in just one ward the party could focus all of its resources on that ward, activists could travel from other areas, money could be pooled to ensure a well-funded campaign and the party’s centre could devote itself to that one ward alone. Couple this with a low voter turnout, and these are exactly the conditions that the BNP exploited in the 2000s to win its first council seats – which then acted as a springboard to greater success in the years that followed.

It’s worth noting, that in the latter half of the 2000s BNP candidates routinely polled anywhere between around 5 per cent for a ‘paper candidate’ that had no campaign at all, to over 30 per cent for candidates that put out leaflets, knocked on doors and affixed placards to lamp posts. It wasn’t uncommon for candidates to put out a single leaflet and take over 10 per cent of the vote – and paper candidates would often perform surprisingly well.

However, this year when the ballots were counted in Hull, the NRP took just 19 votes – or 0.75 per cent of the share, coming in 7th place out of 7 candidates. This result was shocking to say the least and would be indicative of a candidate that stood for a novelty outfit like the Monster Raving Loony Party (for those outside of the UK, that is a real party). But this was the vote taken by a supposedly ‘serious’ ethno-nationalist organisation that only had one seat to fight nationwide, and who by their own account put out at least one leaflet, knocked on doors and even affixed placards to lamp posts as part of their campaign.

Had this been the early 2000s, this vote would have been viewed as poor even for a parliamentary candidate who would have been aiming to gain over 5 per cent of the vote in order to win back their £500 deposit. But this wasn’t a parliamentary election with a higher turnout and a greater focus on Labour and the Conservatives – this was a local election, with a low turnout and one that took place at a time when smaller parties are performing better than ever. This was one of the worst election results in nationalist history – and certainly the worst I can remember seeing in my time of being involved in the movement.

But sadly, this result was not an anomaly. Other nationalist micro-parties like the British Democrats polled similar numbers. The British Democrats are a party that have existed since 2011 and their ranks are mainly made up of nationalist veterans who formed their own organisation after one of the more damaging splits that took place in the BNP after the party had gone into decline. The British Democrats stood just 6 seats nationwide, and in Essex and Bradford they managed to take just 1 per cent of the vote – and one of those results was achieved in a ward that once elected a BNP councillor. And again, from what could be seen online, the candidates that stood for the British Democrats worked hard, ran credible campaigns and appeared to put in a serious effort.

At this point it is worth noting: I am not knocking these candidates personally, I am sure they are all nice people, I am sure their hearts are in the right place and I am sure they all genuinely wanted to reach the electorate, win a seat and attempt to change UK politics for the better. This is not a slight at them or an attempt to diminish the work that they put in.

However, the results for these small parties – and others like them – speak for themselves. They are humiliating and represent a complete rejection of those parties by the electorate. There is no way to spin this, no way to sugar coat it and no way to place this into a more palatable context, these are some of the worst – if not the worst – election results ever achieved by nationalists. And these results didn’t just come out of the blue, they are not an embarrassing one-off unique to this round of elections, they are part of a clear and easily identifiable pattern.

At the recent Gorton and Denton by-election Advance UK put up a credible local candidate, Nick Buckley, who stood on a more ethno-nationalist ticket. Nick Buckley took just 0.4 per cent of the vote and was beaten by a candidate who went by the name Sir Oink A-Lot, this novelty candidate was standing for the aforementioned Monster Raving Loony Party. In 2024 Britain first stood in the Greater London Assembly Elections and their candidate, Nick Scanlon, took just 0.8 per cent of the vote, polling nearly 4,000 votes fewer than Count Binface, another novelty candidate.

When nationalist candidates are struggling to take more than one per cent of the vote and are being beaten by novelty candidates, it is fair to say that such elections have become nothing more than an exercise in humiliation – public spectacles in which the party in question and the wider movement gains absolutely nothing.

“But what’s the harm?” cry many supporters of this failed strategy. After all, these candidates are standing for what they believe in, they are willing to put their name out there, put in the leg work and delivering leaflets does take our message to the public – what’s more, this does at least give the electorate the option to vote for an ethno-nationalist party in a handful of seats. Surely doing something is better than doing nothing? Unfortunately, that is not always the case, as sometimes doing ‘something’ is far worse than doing nothing at all.

So why might it be a bad strategy to stand in elections? The obvious answer to this remains what it has always been: these elections are a total waste of money, time and resources. Good nationalists are spending what little resources they have on achieving what are, to put it politely, appalling results. These resources could be better spent elsewhere, engaging in activities where we punch above our weight – such as protests, banner drops and street activities. Nationalist organisations do not have to continue doing battle on the ground that is least favourable to us. We are small, underfunded and relatively disorganised, we must acknowledge this and alter our tactics accordingly.

But there is another very important reason why engaging in such electoral forays is so damaging: these results make it clear that the party in question is the loser, and by extension, it makes it appear to the public that those involved are losers too. And why would any member of the public wish to identify themselves with such a group and align themselves with people and a party that have just been utterly humiliated? Most people do not want to join losers; they want to join winners.

People follow success and they do so because human psychology and social evolution have wired the mind to seek safety, status, and growth. Let’s take a step back from politics for a moment and look at the commercial world. How many times have you seen a movie that is advertised as a ‘box office smash’ or seen a book advertised as a ‘number one best seller’? Why do companies who have had success spend so much time and money telling their target audience that other people have bought their products? How many times have you seen a product advertised as ‘Britain’s best-selling’ example of whatever particular item is being sold? This is because people flock to success, and conversely are driven away from failure.

This is why when the BNP won its first council seats in Burnley in 2002, the party went on to win more the following year – taking the total number of BNP councillors in Burnley from three to eight. People clearly wanted to vote BNP, but weren’t quite willing to do so until they saw that the party had proven it could win. The same was true in Barking and Dagenham in 2006, that year’s election campaign saw 12 BNP councillors elected and overnight the party became the official opposition on the local council. This was largely thanks to the local MP, Margaret Hodge, who gave a disastrous TV interview where she claimed that 8 out of 10 people were considering voting BNP. Once people were told that the BNP was going to win, they felt comfortable voting BNP and the results reflected that – granting the party its largest ever council election victory.

I am well aware that at this juncture some will ask the valid question: how did the BNP win those first three council seats? After all, a party has to start somewhere. That seems like a simple question, but the answer is quite complex. In short; it was due to the convergence of a series of different events that would be nigh-on impossible to replicate. Between May 26th 2001 and May 28th 2001 serious race riots involving Muslims took place in Oldham, a town in Northwest England. On June 7th 2001, just ten days after the Oldham riots, the general election took place and Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, happened to be standing in Oldham West and Royton. This was an unbelievable stroke of luck; Nick Griffin had not planned this and was already on the ballot before the riots took place.

As a result, Nick Griffin took an incredible 16.4 per cent of the vote, an impressive high-water mark for a nationalist candidate. The other parties took this badly and Nick Griffin was banned from making a speech after the results were declared. Nick Griffin seized upon this and took to the stage wearing a gag and a t-shirt that bore the slogan “gagged for telling the truth”. This became major national news with the picture of Nick Griffin in the gag being published in every national newspaper. As a result, almost overnight the BNP became a credible alternative in every racially divided northern town in England. When the 2002 council elections came around, the BNP were still riding high and had seen an uptick in support, yet only managed to win three seats nationally – all of them were in Burnley, a town situated next door to Oldham.

But there is more to this; these wins were also in part due to a quirk of the electoral system. In 2002 there were boundary changes in Burnley and the entire council was up for election, meaning every voter had not one, but three votes. The BNP stood a single candidate in each seat – and the party asked voters to give the BNP a chance by lending them just one of their three votes. This, along with a well-run local campaign, pushed the party over the edge. The election of those three councillors made national headlines for days and showed the public that the BNP could win. Those three councillors were soon joined by two more, one in Blackburn and one in Halifax (two other Northern mill towns) after two successive by-election wins. At that point, the party had proven itself, but the conditions that brought about those initial wins were largely the result of a convergence of events that were unpredictable and outside of the BNP’s control.

So, if the psychological effect of the BNP winning seats was to ensure that more people were willing to vote BNP, what sort of psychological effect does it have when a party polls just 0.75 per cent of the vote? And if success is important in business, if people flock to buy the number one best-selling book or to see the film that has topped the box office, how does such psychology affect politics? Well, the effect of perceived success is actually far more pronounced in politics than it is in the business world. If you are selling a product, quality alone can garner sales, so can a reduction in price, but in politics; the perception of success is far more important – especially in Britain.

Voting for the candidate that wins is not just a matter of feeling good due to the perception of being on the winning team. Voting for the winning candidate is actually the smart thing to do because of the way the British electoral system is structured. The vast majority of elections in Britain are fought on a first-past-the-post basis, meaning that the election is a winner-takes-all contest where the candidate with the most votes is elected. This naturally creates a system where the only votes that count are the ones that are cast for the winning candidate – whether this is fair or equitable is another issue. This corrals the electorate into voting for candidates who are perceived to be able to win. This means that when choosing a candidate to vote for, the decision does not merely rest on that candidate’s pledges, but instead on the perception that they actually have a chance of winning.

This has led to a system where people choose to vote tactically, or in effect, for the lesser of two evils. A real-world example of this phenomenon is when a voter wishes to unseat a particular party or candidate. The voter will often decide that the best way to remove an unpopular politician is to vote for the challenger that is most likely to beat the incumbent. Eventually, this can lead to a completely broken system where the voters ‘hold their nose’ and vote for the party they dislike the least, rather than the party they agree with the most. This is often referred to as voting with your head instead of your heart, as the voter is not actually casting their ballot for the party whose policies align with their own opinions.

This is why so many people regard supporting a smaller party as a ‘wasted vote’. Why cast your vote for a party who cannot win? And this is not just a psychological quirk – it’s actually a means of ensuring that an individual is more likely to affect the outcome of the election. People are much more likely to vote for a party that has a credible chance of winning, and when a party proves it can win, its fortunes can see a rapid and noticeable improvement.

The Green Party did extremely well in last week’s elections, and it is no mere coincidence that their strong showing came hot on the heels of their huge by-election win in Gorton and Denton. That high-profile win proved to many that the Greens could do it, and all-of-a-sudden more people were willing to vote Green. Similarly, Reform’s popularity truly exploded after Nigel Farage was elected to Parliament; this year Reform’s council election results were extremely strong and for the second year running they emerged as the party that took the most seats.

People wish to be on the winning side, and it feels good when you see the candidate you voted for coming out on top. But let’s consider the reverse; take a moment to imagine how the public perceives a candidate or party that can only muster 19 votes. And whilst these recent results were particularly dismal, sadly losing elections is nothing new to nationalists. Many veteran nationalists, including myself, understand what defeat feels like. I like many others have come out of an election count where the nationalist candidate has performed poorly. To come out of these campaigns with nothing but humiliation is deflating and takes the wind out of the sails of supporters, activists and members. Such results don’t just deter the public from voting for nationalist parties, but they also deter potential members from joining, and often make supporters and members re-evaluate their involvement in the wider movement.

After spending weeks or even months putting out leaflets, often taking time off work, and sometimes facing some form of social consequence – even if that is just the wife complaining that you are not at home enough – when evaluating if that was all worth 19 votes and the associated public humiliation, most will conclude that it was not. And again, I have seen this personally; I have witnessed candidates and activists walking away from a party due to disappointing results. I have witnessed nationalists who once were described as ‘super activists’, people who were out almost every night of the week leafleting, call it quits and go back to ‘normie-land’ once the votes were counted and the disappointment set in.

So, if elections aren’t the way forward, what do we do? Well, I am not writing elections off entirely. Reform have just won a second round of English council elections, taking 1,453 seats in a single day – 28.7 per cent of all those up for grabs. Restore Britain are a new party that have momentum online and are taking a harder stance than Reform on immigration, deportations and citizenship. Both of these parties are ripe to be infiltrated – and if you are a nationalist that is committed to getting elected, then you can always scrub your social media, put on your suit, shirt and tie and sign up as a candidate for a party that has a credible chance of helping you to claim a seat on a local council.

However, if you aren’t interested in cleaning up your image and attempting to fly under the radar as a means of getting elected, then there are still many things that can be done to move the Overton window and change the political climate in Britain that don’t involve spending hundreds of pounds and hundreds of man hours in order to be beaten into seventh place by Sir Oink A’lot.

The micro-parties have endured another humiliating round of electoral drubbings – yet for some the message doesn’t seem to sink in. The idea that we will eventually win over the public with the tactic of coming back again, year-in year-out, for another public thrashing is flawed to say the least. This is clearly a case where doing nothing is actually better than doing something! Those who are wedded to engaging in such electoral activity are not only wasting time and money, but they are making the movement a laughing stock – and doing so at a time when there are multiple far more appealing options on the table.

Repeating the nationalist electoral successes of the early 2000s is not an easy feat – not least because ethno-nationalist candidates now face not one, but two much better-established competitors in the form of Reform and Restore. What’s more, the conditions that saw the BNP make its breakthrough in Burnley are unlikely to come about again. This of course doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel, it just means we have to reassess how we proceed and decide upon a course of action that doesn’t result in nationalist parties and the wider movement ending up as a laughing stock.

We can effect change; but that change will never come from repeating the same mistakes time-and-again, nor will it come from presenting ourselves as the whipping boys who are routinely beaten by the novelty candidate who wobbles onstage dressed up as a dustbin.