Election 2010: BNP fight among themselves as UKIP comes down to earth with a bump

Regardless of the outcome, General Election Day 2010 has been one of the more memorable polling days in a long time.
It even included the sight of the BNP and UKIP crashing down to Earth before voting had closed.

Prior to the polls opening there was the early morning specter of newspaper front pages forming a kaleidoscope collage of colour and vivid imagery.
To say it was a vivid picture would be an understatement, with most of it highly partisan, and some even bordering on downright propaganda.

That followed rapidly on from a late night revelation, which many say showed the BNP in their true colours.
A fight erupted on the campaign trail between Bob Bailey, London organiser for the BNP, and a local Asian teenager.
The scrap was filmed, and subsequently broadcast on the eve of the election, in what many will hope is a highly damaging revelation for the party, continuing from the all out warfare between Nick Griffin and the party’s webmaster Simon Bennett.
However, its unlikely that many people who were prepared to vote BNP prior to this scandal were likely to change their opinions, and some might even suggest that beating up an Asian boy criticising their policies would probably enhance the BNP's support from those people.

Then, mid-morning, just a couple of hours after polls opened, news filtered through of a plane crash involving ex-leader and standing UKIP candidate Nigel Farage.
Firstly its good to note that both Farage and his pilot, Justin Adams appear to have suffered only non-life threatening injuries.
Maybe more notably though, is something pointed out by The Guardian’s Roger Browning.
On his twitter feed, he identified the problem with Farage’s plan, that if following election protocol would have kept him out of hospital, though possibly out of the media as well.
“Just a thought about Nigel Farage,” he said, “you're not supposed to campaign on election day, so what was he doing up in a plane with a Ukip banner?”
So possibly a politician getting his comeuppance at last?
It has, however, come to my attention that campaigning is allowed on election day, although if the exploits of Labour candidate for Bootle, Joe Benton, is anything to go by, these candidates experiences may end it all together.
According to the BBC, Benton who has held the seat since 1990, had the tip of his finger bitten off by a dog while campaigning.

Sadly though, much of the campaign has been focused on the three leaders debates, particularly so after the kick start that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats received after the first.
It seems the other parties realised if they didn’t play things very carefully there could be a Nick Clegg steamroller heading straight for them.
The media is as much to blame for this too, centering their attentions on the three party leaders, and barely giving anyone else in the parties a second thought - as evidenced by the complete absence of Conservative candidate Phillipa Stroud’s history of claiming to cure people of their homosexuality, although there were whispers of a BBC, ITV and SKY gag on the subject.

But, as a result of the personality debate, and with the scramble for votes reaching its crescendo, the Sun proudly revealed that Simon Cowell, owner and originator of one of the most tedious TV series ever broadcast in Britain, was throwing his weight behind the Conservatives.
That the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who had also just signed a huge television deal with Cowell for his FOX network in the USA , is of little surprise.
Neither is the fact that Cowell is one of the richest men in the country, and the Conservatives have long been seen as the party of the rich.
Whereas other celebrities, such as Eddie Izzard, came out with their vocal support early in the campaign, actively promoting their choice over the past month, rather than taking one seemingly opportunistic interview to do it.

Personally, I find these celebrity endorsements do little to support the party being promoted, even in the case of Izzard if they are done with clarity and well formed and argued reasoning.
I find it reflects more upon the celebrity themselves, partly about how they conduct themselves “on party business”, and also simply on the party they have chosen.
Because in these circumstances, its not the party that has decided Izzard is particularly funny, or that Cowell’s programmes and music creations are especially entertaining – it is the celebrity that has said they agree with that party's policies.

And thus, far more can be understood about a person’s character by the political party they openly choose to support, than the party they have chosen.
The party has, in effect, no say in the matter.
And from this is something that both saddened and disappointed me.
Standing in my constituency of Richmond Park (presently held by the Liberal Democrats' Susan Kramer), is Zak Goldsmith.
His name maybe familiar to many of you.
Goldsmith is the former editor of the Ecologist magazine, a publication that by its very name, shows the intent to support the environment and nature, and he was, until recently a regular contributor to the BBC’s popular political debate show Question Time as one of the non-politically aligned speakers.

From this point of view, and his opinions voiced on the BBC, I believed he would be most closely aligned to a party with a strong ethical and societal background, perhaps the Liberal Democrats or Green Party.
Apparently I was mistaken.
He's chosen a party, the Conservatives, that has a limited environmental policy and an attitude towards the weaker and lower members of society that seems unconcerned at best and derisory at its worst.

The Conservatives have not changed in my mind, but Zak Goldsmith has.