Your response has been only of 8 hours delay. That is fairly quick for the standards of an internet forum, where it can delay days if not weeks or months. Mind you, sometimes responses arrive even after a year.
I had seen before this
England Democrats party, but I must admit that I didn't pay it much attention.
I had always thought that a nationallist-like (though not quite Nationalist) alternative would come through a split up from the ranks of the Tories. Obviously for such a thing to have happened there are facts that can't be missed.
For one, the political parties scenery in England is no different from that of many other countries in so-called Western Europe in that there exists a bi-polarization where the battle for political power takes place between two main parties, one leaning to the right and the other to the left. With third parties as secondary players always hoping to scratch the discontent voters from one of the two main players or of the two.
This bi-polarization makes it extremely difficult for an alternative to hope for a cutting-edge break-in into the political arena. It is often the case that the two main players have two different type of voters: one group of faithful voters who vote for the party policies and another group of voters who vote against the other party's policies.
It is from this second group that secondary parties can hope to scratch a few votes.
Going back to the Conservative Party, the long term stay of Blair in office makes it unlikely for members of the Conservative Party to set onto any adventurous enterprises.
Another fact is that the Conservative Party is impregnated of britishness, and thus a change of mind towards englishness is highly unlikely for others but the more moderate wing of the spectrum of party voters.
Again, here, bi-polarization is a big problem.
For a party like the England Democrats there is still another place left from where to to scratch support, which is the abstentionists and blank voters, which I don't know the percentage in England.
At a glance, it looks to me that they have positioned themselves right in the middle of both the Tory and Labour parties, in a place where they can hope to gain some support from the moderate and discontent voters from the two main players. Their key for success in the
center of the stage place may lie in playing right the card of English "identity".
On a quick look at their manifesto, their approach to the ethnic question is not as well defined as one would have expected. On the other hand, this is hardly surprising given the apparent attraction to a moderate public that the party wishes to make. While they reject multiculturalism, it is unclear if this rejection is accompanied by a will of ethnic nationalism or, on the contrary, of ethnic integration and assimilation. The manifesto points to the latter:
The English Democrats:
The People of England
The people of England are all those UK citizens who live in England. In electoral terms, the people of England are all those UK citizens who are on the electoral roll of an English constituency. The people of England therefore includes the people of many nations, all of whom share a common UK citizenship. |
... Or to leaving the issue unresolved.
This is hardly surprising given the advanced stage of ethnic dissolution in England. Not talking of numbers of immigrants here, but of well established different ethnicities of generations long, as well as the offspring of mixed couples.
Even the BNP has come to realize of this after waking up to reality, however with little credibility and rather clumsy steps towards a change.
At any rate, I would say that the English Democrats can easily achieve, at the very least, what the British National Party hopes for and which is the support of a moderate voter and not the hooligan type classical of the BNP.
A small to medium break-in success of a party like this one would in the future, in my opinion, grow further easily through breaking bi-polarization and getting wider support from current Tory voters. But their difficult part at present lies in making this entry break-in.