There’s an electoral college which elects the Party leader: partly the unions, partly the MPs and partly, indeed, the constituency parties. So they have a say. However, in order to stand a candidate has to be backed by an extraordinary large proportion of MPs, a device deliberately devised to prevent anything untoward happening like the local parties having any influence.

Yes of course constituency parties can and do nominate their own candidates: but not only are they subject to central vetting (which of course removes anybody of any guts or interests) but, at byelections or close to general elections, when a choice needs to be made swiftly, the central office can and does parachute in a candidate of their own choice, almost inevitably a grotesque.

It’s hard, perhaps, to get over at a distance how little point there is being a member of the Labour Party. But there’s not much.

What does it say that the people attracted to anti-BNP political work don’t even consider the Party road?

It says that over the past fifteen or twenty years, the Labour Party has systematically pursued policies that are antipathetic to what such people tend to believe and that it has systematically removed such people from any influence within its own ranks and that over that period, almost all the worthwhile people have left the party in disgust and despair. It also says that over the fifteen or twenty years prior to that, people tried really very hard to make something of the Labour Party and, in the end, it all came to ruins. (Thirty, or nearly thirty years ago, almost everybody was in the party.) So they’re not really very receptive to the idea either that there’s any point to it, or that they have some responsibility to try all over again.

c) Here, you’re wrong. Constituency parties don’t have anything like the power they used to have, and they very specifically don’t have any power against the hierarchy: Conference resolutions aren’t binding and it’s not possible to get anything through the Policy Forum without support from the existing leadership.

d) It still sounds very much as if the changing of the guard at leadership level is what opens up opportunities for participation. Then again, that pattern’s hardly unknown in the Labour Party (see Benn/Heffer).

What?

a) Anti-fascism has nothing to do with social democracy. Tories and UKIP members can declare themselves to be anti-fascists & would be warmly welcomed. The broader the coalition, the better.

b) The Labour Party has nothing to do with social democracy and hasn’t done for some time.

c) Even if thousands of social democrats did join the Labour Party, they’d find that there are no mechanisms for members to change Labour Party policy. The levers have all been removed.

d) Your own inspirational story seems to be all about rallying around one leadership candidate or another – not so much “reclaim the party” as “vote Dean/Edwards/Kucinich/Kerry/Obama and hope for the best”. It sounds as if you’re starting from a lower point than we are in terms of party democracy as well as party policy.

Actually I think it’s a very good piece of evidence in that regard. All of these people – although “Over 50,000 people volunteered for our online campaign and 1,500 people donated….5,000 people took part in the on-the-ground campaigns” is rather small potatoes by American standards of political activism – are not working inside the Labour Party, even though I’m guessing that an explicitly anti-fascist organization is at least close to social democratic in ideology. They’re outside, doing their own thing trying to defeat the BNP but not trying to actively elect someone else.

Chris, I haven’t said anything in this thread about loathing the UK, I have simply given my opinion about how racist it is – an opinion it seems pretty strange to argue against when nearly 1 million people voted Nazi. Alex is probably right that it’s not a breakthrough moment for the far right, but 55% of voters voted for anti-European toryism or out-and-out xenophobia in this election, and UKIP are now here to stay. The BNP now hold more than 50 council seats, which may be a pittance but it’s a clear sign that they’re permanent, and they’ve been gaining ground since 2003. And now they have some real European money to back it up.

I agree with Alex that getting this vote out in public is a good thing, but what is the response? Sniffing huffily at these people or throwing eggs at them. It’s now time for Britain to have a serious conversation about race and immigration – something long overdue here – but the Labour party is too busy dog-whistling and the educated left is too busy being haughtily superior. And while you try to pretend that Britain doesn’t have a serious problem with race and racism, these people seem to be doing a pretty good job of harnessing just exactly that sentiment. It’s time for the British left to get real about the people they would like to represent.

Invent a straw man somewhere else.

I have no idea what motivates the Tory party but it’s a remarkable prejudice to have that anyone who has a different view from yours over Britain’s relationship with the EU must hate foreign people.