The Guardian's writers never check their facts do they? The example of Richard Seymour

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Too much of our politics is dominated by the discussion of class – working-class, middle-class, upper-class and so on. These terms mean almost nothing – is the multi-millionaire builder working-class? How is all this defined? So my apologies for writing about the psephology of class in response to a rather poor article by some chap called Richard Seymour:

The relentless, long-term narrowing of the Tory base since the 60s – as it has become more explicitly the vehicle of financial and monopoly capital, and less willing to articulate popular working-class concerns – has seen Tory support recede from working-class areas.

Arrant nonsense – support for the Conservatives among C2DE social classes has risen since that time not fallen. Here are the facts for C2 voters from Ipsos MORI:

	Oct 1974	1979	1983	1987	1992	1997	2001	2005	2010
Con	26	41	40	40	39	27	29	33	37
Lab	49	41	32	36	40	50	49	40	29

And for DE voters:

	Oct 1974	1979	1983	1987	1992	1997	2001	2005	2010
Con	22	34	33	30	31	21	24	25	31
Lab	57	49	41	48	49	59	55	48	40

The truth is that the Conservative Party’s problem is with AB voters not working-class voters – the reason for the Party’s failure to win overall last year lay in getting just 39% of AB votes not in getting the votes of the working class English.

But that truth wouldn’t suit the Guardian, would it! The biggest demographic shifts in British politics have been the shifts of the skilled working class from Labour to Conservative and the loss of Tory AB votes to the Liberal Democrats.

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BNP strongest in places with large muslim populations? Er...nope.

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Various folk have been going on about how the BNP are strongest in Muslim areas. The very lovely Al Jahom quotes Melanie Philips saying that these racist prats are strongest...

"...in areas of high Pakistani and Bangladeshi concentration — but significantly, not where there are concentrations of Indians. Strikingly, BNP support actually falls away steeply in Afro-Caribbean areas."

The evidence for this is an old Manchester University study that (quite crucially) contains no current psephological data relying instead on an old Ipsos-MORI poll and a literature search.

All this suits the agenda of folk like Melanie Philips who want us to believe it's all about Muslims but while that is a big element the statement above is false.

1. The BNP's biggest success has been in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham where they won 12 seats in 2007

2. Other areas where the BNP has performed well include Rotherham, North West Leicestershire, Nuneaton and Barnsley. None of these areas (perhaps with the exception of Rotherham) have large Muslim populations.

3. The BNP's first breakthroughs - in Bradford, Oldham & Burnley did reflect a response to rioting in largely Muslim areas. But since this time the BNP has declined in these areas.

We can keep sticking our fingers in our ears and singing la-la-la if we like but I take the view that simply saying; "it's muzzies innit" doesn't stack up - that is a factor but has to be set against a host of others like housing policies, unemployment, a crap Labour government and a dreadful bunch of lying MPs.

Finally the BNP will not get 5% of the popular vote come the general election and their best performances are unlikely to see them exceed 15%.

Oh and Melanie, where is Nick Griffin going to stand at the General Election? Oh yes...Barking - right bang in the old NF East London heartland.

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Update: This link - in the comment below - is interesting (although it doesn't answer the question) in that it maps non-white population against BNP membership.