Whilst I take k-punk’s point, I refuse to be grateful to those fuckers.

Things look pretty bleak – the fact that we are having to scrabble around being glad that the far right vote has been split, rather than decimated, is cause for thought.

Of the results that are published so far it looks like 1,322,162 people put their cross against UKIP in the euro elections and 387,905 others did the same for the BNP.

So, not even including the plonkers of “England First” and various other “hobbyist” projects for stiff-right-armers, that means nearly 3 million people in this country are happy to vote for the far right.

Furthermore, it seems to me that the votes are being split along class lines, with middle class middle englanders voting for UKIP and traditional white working class areas voting BNP.

This is a disaster made even worse by the absolutely bizarre machinations of the weird alliance of the SWP, Geroge Galloway and the political islamists in Respect. Who got naff all seats anywhere, despite gorgeous George (the Swiss Tony of the left) boasting about “a million pounds, a million votes” before the event. However, the usual gesture politics, hectoring people and banging on about Iraq at the expense of anything else (including listening to people) has unsurprisingly not paid off.

The ONLY real good news last Friday was in the local elections, with the Greens and the Independent Working Class Association providing a serious challenge to New Labour in Oxford. From what I have read, both parties have managed to do this without the hype or hysteria of either UKIP, or Respect, but by working with people on a local level and actually trying to engage with their concerns in a creative and constructive way. From small seeds…