Euro ho ho ho

Red faces for the Tories. They spent the last couple of years forming a special hard-right alliance with some antisemitic, homophobic Polish politicians in the European Parliament. They even fired one of their own MEPs for standing against Michal Kaminiski for the group's leadership, and insisted that the Law and Justice Party was a mainstream conservative party.

Oh dear. The very unpleasant Mr. Kaminski has resigned - on the grounds that the Tories' new friends are too rightwing and extremist. This must be the first time that a man who campaigned against Holocaust memorials has attacked David Cameron's mates from the left!

So: will David stick with the far-right, or dump them and leave his party entirely isolated in Europe - he pulled the Tories out of their alliance with Merkel's Christian Democrats and other 'respectable' centre-right parties.

There'll be some good spinning on this one.

Today is shrouded in gloom

I won't be around much today - 2 four-hour meetings to check every student's grade. What joy that will be.

Meanwhile, contemplate this: that the British people have largely chosen the landed aristocracy, followed by petit-bourgeois racists in the form of UKIP, and a significant chunk have voted for racial violence, holocaust denial, pigmentation-based discrimination, Nazism and moronic anti-politics.

You'll soon find out that the Tories can't blame the poor for everything, UKIP can't blame Europeans and the BNP can't blame black people, Muslims and Jews. When they start cutting public services and handing them over to thugs and wideboys (I accept this process is already under way), just remember this: you voted for it. (Not my regular readers of course).

We're doomed to a miserable, reactionary, racist, capitalist future

I'm hating the election results. BNP won a seat (I won't be holidaying in Yorkshire/Humber, Lancashire or Stoke), the Greens haven't broken through, and WALES, of all places, has gone Tory: the country which had its language mocked and often banned by the Tories, the birthplace of Labour, the home of trades unionism and Chapel radicalism. I used to be so proud of Wales's previous status as a Tory-free zone. It's ashes now.

Ireland's the only country which has gone left. One amusing detail in Spain though: Alternativa Espanola, the fascist party which has strong ties to the British Conservatives, managed 0.12%. Let's do the same to the Tories next time.

A quick plug

For two events: Cruel Brother (named after an old ballad, or the mirror of Pentangle's 'Cruel Sister' album, or Rachel Unthank and the Winterset's album of the same name?) and the Deer Friend are performing this weekend, at the Chindit on Friday night, and supporting an ex-member of Fairport Convention at the Newhampton Inn on Saturday. Highly recommended folk/rock stuff, everybody. I'll hopefully be at the Chindit, depending on whether I have to go to Cardiff that day or early on Saturday.

Before that, however: please vote tomorrow. As long as you aren't planning to vote UKIP, Tory or BNP. If you are, the elections are on Friday. I always try to vote at 7 a.m. so that the Tories are losing straight away.

UKIP's poor relations also caught cheating

Merciless Public picks up on the story that the BNP's latest leaflet turns out to feature lots of happy smiling white people who aren't, well, British - or even British resident. 'Why we're all voting BNP' headlines some headshots of, amongst others, an Italian photographer's parents - and they aren't fascists. The images were from a stock photography site. Presumably the BNP couldn't find any supporters proud enough to pose - or any without a swastika tattoo on their foreheads. Two Americans feature, as well as an unfortunate British soldier who told the press that the BNP are 'scumbags' and 'I wouldn't vote for them in a million years'.

A few weeks ago, I objected to UKIP using Churchill to oppose the EU, despite Winston's keen support for a United States of Europe. Now, a BNP campaign seems similarly deceitful. It claims, much to the fury of religious leaders, that Jesus would vote BNP and quotes this legendary figure: 'If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you' (John 15:20). Presumably they couldn't find a biblical reference for 'wogs out'.

Are they really claiming that a Jewish asylum seeker (his parents fled to Egypt as soon as he was born, if you believe all this stuff) would identify with the BNP, who seem to me to be the likely persecutors? Clearly this Jesus bloke didn't have a problem with Arabs (unlike Israel now) and would no doubt be defending Muslim families from the BNP in Stoke, Blackburn, Gaza and elsewhere. I seem to remember that Jesus's people didn't exactly thrive in various countries in which the BNP's friends came to power.

I note that they've chosen a horrible sentimental Caucasian-style image of Jesus, of the kind that abounded in my Catholic schools. Perhaps they don't know where he was allegedly from.