So, the BNP is sending an MEP to Brussels in the shape of leader Nick Griffin following last night’s election results.

It’s a small crumb of comfort that Liverpool returned a smaller percentage of votes for the hateful party than other boroughs, but only a small one.

It goes without saying that this is terrible news. The BNP are racists, whether they deny it or not, but it’s the awful stupidity I’ve witnessed from BNP supporters over the last few weeks that it is really galling.

I’m not sure whether they actually know it or not, but the popular recent claim by BNP apologists that Hitler was a socialist goes to show just how screwy they all are. Until you’ve been patronised by a thick racist you haven’t lived.

I guessed at the time this was some sledgehammer sleight of hand to deny the obvious links between Nazis and The British National Party, namely the bit about disliking people of different race, sexuality and religion.

Then again, I think the majority of them really are daft enough to peg Adolf as a New Labourite.

I’ve said before that I think the great disconnect between politics and the public is the way politicians conduct themselves, with the media as willing associates.

I simply don’t think people can be bothered wading through the assaults of information that the media offers, and I think the sight of suited white men bellowing baroque insults at each other is likely to be equally off-putting.

I console myself that the BNP results amount to a protest vote (or abstention) over expenses, and while the greedy MPs (can anyone stand the sight of Hazel Blears’ smug fat face?) are ultimately to blame, the way the media has gone apeshit over expenses has whipped people up into a frenzy.

MPs of all persuasions have been made to look like a self-satisfied, greedy elite fixing their expenses and plotting away childishly within Westminster, while the BNP has been getting on the stump, styling themselves as common people who just want to uphold British values.

Our politicians and media have conspired to create a perfect storm of discontent in the country, and the BNP reaped the rewards. We’ve forgotten how to educate people about politics in the UK, and it showed last night.

That said, I hope all the stayaway voters feel suitably ashamed of themselves now that our worst fears are confirmed.

The fact that all of this has come on the anniversary of the D-Day landings is particularly sad. What those veterans must make of the North West’s decision to send Nick Griffin to the European Parliament doesn’t bear thinking about.

They went to fight a man like Griffin 65 years ago, only for him to sneak in the back door draped in the union flag. We should all feel ashamed.

• Apparently there are demos across the North West today (8 June 2009) at the following locations:

I’ve not much interest in it per se, as I only ever vote tactically or negatively anyway and I’m not likely to make my mind up on the basis of a flyer that looks at first glance like a pizza menu.

But the stakes are high in the forthcoming European elections, with the prospect that Liverpool could elect a BNP MEP.

And I’ve been struck by how combative the tone of the election materials has been.

This is particularly true of the Lib Dems, who have released a pamphlet made to resemble a free sheet (presumably intentionally) that slates Labour.

The Lib Dems’ material seems to me to be the worst, slamming Merseyside Labour MPs for the failure of the fuel poverty bill because they didn’t turn up to vote (Header: “Why did City MPs Leave Elderly to Freeze?’ coupled with picture of elderly lady in hospital bed), for having their heads in the trough over expenses and ‘stealing’ cash destined for Liverpool so they can ‘bail out bankers’ instead.

It’s pretty pathetic stuff that’s easily torpedoed when you consider that there were several notable Lib Dem MPs not present for the vote on the fuel poverty bill, including Southport MP John Pugh.

On the expenses front Liberal Democrat MPs Julia Goldsworthy and Andrew George, Home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne, John Pugh again, former leader Ming Campbell and current leader Nick Clegg have all had their fingers in the expenses pie, to torture a metaphor.

John Pugh does find the time to point the finger at ‘regional bureaucrats’ for the £25m in Euro cash going astray, which suggests civil servants are to blame rather than the Labour government.

Elsewhere Labour attack the Tories and the Lib Dems and the Greens go for the Lib Dems too. It’s heartening to see all of the parties going after the BNP and The Mirror has sponsored a paper extolling hope not hate. Laudable stuff.

Negative politics puts the public off

My pet theory about why people don’t engage in politics anymore – besides class dealignment and all that stuff – is that people are simply turned off by seeing one set of suits shouting at another set of suits.

America may have been ready for a change, but Obama’s campaign eschewed the attack and smear politics of the Bush administration and focussed on addressing things that mattered to most people.

That lesson does not appear to have been learned by the political parties in the UK, who are busy pointing the finger at a time when public faith is everyone in Parliament is at a low.

Hate not hope seems to be the overriding message.

BNP in Liverpool

I’ll make no bones about it, anyone who reckons the BNP are not racists is kidding him or herself.

Rightly, most of the political parties in Liverpool have mentioned that a vote for the BNP is a vote for despair, hatred and fear.

Personally I can’t stand the sight of David Cameron, the worst political opportunist I’ve seen of late, and the most instantly-unlikeable Tory leader since Thatcher as far as I’m concerned.

But the prospect of the Tories gaining power again in the run-up to a general election next year pales against the idea of the BNP becoming stronger, especially in multi-cultural Liverpool.

So, even if you have to hold your nose, go out and vote. Vote Labour or Lib Dem, cos the Tories don’t have a chance in Liverpool. If they did I’d even urge you to vote for them if it meant keeping the BNP out.

That’s how important it is.

Jones was a giant of trade unionism and born in Liverpool long ago enough to be a walking talking record of most of the historic movement in the UK. Originally a docker, he rose through the ranks of the Transport and General Workers Union and became a spokesman for the TUC.

He fought in the Spanish Civil War – which is an experience so far from the vast majority of most people’s experience and imagination these days it almost sounds absurd.

He was principled and undoubtedly tough, giving both Labour and Conservative governments a hard time in the 70s. Agree with him or not, he represented an old-fashioned style of politics that doesn’t really exist any more.

It would be easy to draw parallels between the likes of Jones and Liverpool’s current politicians, seemingly locked in an endless bout of tit-for-tat power struggles and point-scoring, but I think that would miss the point.

I decry the behaviour of Liverpool’s politicians and wish they’d sort themselves out – the empire-building, personality cults and ego trips are all too obvious to everyone – but politics should always have an element of the knockabout and the passionate.

If every name called in the Jack Jones era of politics had resulted in a resignation, there wouldn’t be anyone left to run the tiniest and most obscure worker council, student body or pressure group, nevermind city, region or country.

So, while slagging off your opponents on a blog may not be the smartest move, I really can’t see the problem.

The slightest slip by a politician these days is grasped by media and opponents and used to bang them over the head and hound them out of office.

It makes for an unseemly spectacle. It’s childish and it puts people off politics when the opposition cries foul over trifling matters and, like the enduring popularity of John Prescott, a little colour can be a benefit, allowing people to connect with the real person behind the media-managed mask.

It’s a rather significant irony that the comments by Baldock apparently deemed offensive by Councillor Steve Radford (himself under investigation over some pointless complaint) related to Liberals and Lib Dems being ‘opportunistic bastards’.

Would it be absurd to suggest that making a formal complaint over some innocuous comments made on a personal blog nearly two years old could be deemed a little, er, opportunistic?

It’s no wonder the Tories have been keeping their mouths shut over the last couple of years, when the likes of Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling can propose Manchester United and England defender Gary Neville as a good role model for Liverpool youngsters.

It’s such a mind-bogglingly strange thing to say, even before you factor in the fact that Neville plays for the most hated football club in the country, and the fact that there is probably no-one more hated by Reds and people in Liverpool generally. Here’s why:

“I can’t stand Liverpool, I can’t stand Liverpool people, I can’t stand anything to do with them.”

Grayling went on to admit that he shouldn’t have said Gary Neville, he meant to say Ryan Giggs instead. Liverpool fans are unimpressed.

Apparently Grayling had been out and about on the mean streets of Toxteth, where I lived for some time, and was struck by the lack of male role models.

This is probably a reasonable point, but short of Gary Neville turning up and fostering some of these kids, ploughing a few hundred grand into the Florrie and becoming some sort of latter-day Pied Piper, I don’t see how he could much help.

David Cameron has apparently dispatched the hapless Grayling, who doubles as ‘shadow minister for Merseyside’, to Liverpool to cultivate Tory voters – all three of them – in the region. Let’s remind ourselves why people in Liverpool, and the North more widely, don’t tend to vote Tory.

You could choose the wholesale dismantling of the manufacturing industry. Perhaps the war on unions. Maybe the sale of council houses that has left traditionally close-knit communities at the mercy of profiteering slum landlords.

All of these factors have left places like Toxteth shattered, with few meaningful jobs available, drug-use rife and community spirit broken by transitory occupancy.

‘There’s no such thing as society’, was the 80s’ lasting socio-economic legacy. Well, now there isn’t it’s a bit rich to visit places like Liverpool bemoaning that fact.

Almost as if to prove that Labour and the Lib Dems don’t have the monopoly on going for each others’ throats, the local party has found its members taking each other to court and being beastly to each other.

Basically Dick Calver, former chairman of Wirral West Conservative Association, is sued for libel and slander by Bahram Noorani, a ‘Greasby-based Iranian Conservative’ for (allegedly) alleging that Noorani made a series of bizarre and threatening phonecalls to Calver and his family.

In turn Noorani accuses Calver of directing racial slurs at him. Eventually Noorani’s case is thrown out and the Judge labels Noorani ‘responsible’ for the calls, but not before a former Wirral councillor giving evidence on Noorani’s behalf is revealed to be due in court to plead guilty to ‘making indecent images’.

Even the notorious British libel system, something with which I’ve no desire to become more familiar, didn’t think much of this one, which is really saying something and it’s strange that the case was ever taken to court.

I’m not going to detail the entire episode, as the relevant parts of the story are laid out by David, but let me just give you the following phrases:

• A leading Conservative in Wirral is facing a libel and slander trial after allegedly calling a party colleague an Islamic terrorist.• Two of the calls were from a male describing himself as ‘an acid expert from Widnes’.• Mr Calver’s solicitors have alleged in papers to the court that Mr Noorani had asked a 16-year-old boy to phone Mr Calver and give him a “hard time”.• “No wonder you have depression, married to an Islamic terrorist,” Mr Noorani alleges Mr Calver said to his wife and daughter.• “I had an appointment with Esther McVey, then I had a message saying ‘Sorry, I can’t make it’.”• Summing up, Mr Justice Coulson told the court Mr Noorani’s own evidence “demonstrated” he made the calls.• “You don’t embark on High Court litigation on the basis that if you lose it’s a free ride.”

I’ve known a couple of acid experts from Widnes myself, but they weren’t the kind to make threatening phone calls.

Indeed, if the acid expert had turned out to be some whacked-out 60′s trip casualty, the case could hardly have been any stranger.

The Tories will be hoping to take Wirral West at the next election but, in true Murkeyside politics fashion, they seem to be doing their level best to screw it up.

You see, Liverpool CC has received two stars out of four from the Audit Commission for 2008, along with the judgment that as a council it is ‘improving well’ and is no longer ‘the worst financially performing city council’. While this rating still leaves LCC in the bottom 20 per cent of the UK’s councils, it’s a distinct improvement on the slamming it received last year.

Housing, funding and governance were in the firing line for 2007′s Comprehensive Performance Assessment, whereas the number of people quitting smoking (it seems my efforts count for nothing) and recycling are the only areas highlighted in this year’s report as under par.

In fact, the report is fairly glowing, and includes this pleasing passage.

More young people are gaining GCSE qualifications, crime levels have fallen, more people are being helped to get jobs and recycling has increased. Improvements to services for older people have been made. The Capital of Culture has had a positive impact on the city, particularly the local economy. Services are easily accessible and neighbourhood working is having an impact.

The Council has a strong focus on continuing improvement. There are clear priorities for improvement and the Council is working well with partners to develop long-term plans up to 2024.

The Council has improved its corporate governance and financial management arrangements. The Council provides adequate value for money and is strengthening its arrangements to secure continuous improvements in cost and quality.

It’s not all good news: there seems to be a lot of work to be done on housing and ‘use of resources’.

But on the day when the council also announced a rethink on plans to introduce parking charges in the city at night-time and old enemy Jason Harborow – who has managed to hover over the city like Banquo’s Ghost over the last year – finally landed himself another job, Warren Bradley must be fairly pleased with himself.

Bradley received a qualified clean sheet last week by an investigation – which called him ‘naive’, ‘unwise’ and showing ‘a lack of good judgement’ – into whether he conspired with Deputy Mayor Mike Storey to bully Culture Company boss Jason Harborow out of his job and make him a scapegoat for the failed Mathew Street Festival.

In the email Bradley reveals that he nearly quit during the investigation and, in time-honoured fashion, takes a pot-shot at the media for its ‘vitriolic’ coverage.

In even more time-honoured fashion – for Liverpool City Council anyway – the email was subsequently leaked, though it is not clear whether by friend or by foe. After the last two years Bradley probably doesn’t know which is which anyway.

Anyway, I’m sure Bradley will see the funny side – it was a leaked email that kicked off the last 18 months’ worth of nonsense.

Although quite what was so vitriolic about press coverage, apart from pointing out that Bradley had been stupid to host a clandestine meeting with a former council employee who was in the process of suing the council, is debatable – barring the decidedly damning host of blogs that sprung up around the original Evil Cabal website.

Nevertheless, some of the coverage is almost valedictory: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, says Dale Street Blues. I’m not sure I agree. As the Standards Board report notes, Bradley may have damaged his reputation with the Harborow affair.

It seemed clear that as of last year’s elections his star wasn’t exactly riding high, after a desperate marriage of convenience was required to keep the Lib Dems in power. After this affair Bradley may limp along for another year of absurd photo opportunities, but the sharks will be circling.

From: Bradley, Warren (Leader of the City Council)
Sent: 05 February 2009 13:34
Subject: PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL – Standards Board

Dear All,

In case you haven’t heard already, I have today been informed of the outcome regarding the allegations that were made about me to the standards board for England.

The outcome is that I have NOT breached any of the ‘code of conduct’ and NO further action will taken against me.

Can I thank my colleagues who stuck by me throughout the last 18+ months; it has put a tremendous strain on me and my family, and at times I was minded to throw my hand in.

The press coverage has been vitriolic against me and I now hope I am given the opportunity to a response.

Thanks again, I feel slightly relieved to say the least.

Best wishes

Warren