From a new trio of videos for the election. Love the animation. The rest are on the other side of this link.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0PhmnyFVrk

Still, there is more to hope for next year than simply the alleviation of economic problems. Something that marked 2009 with a great big grimy smudge was the success had by the far-right, especially the British National Party in the North West and Yorkshire, where the good Lancastrians and Yorkshire-folk are now represented in the European Parliament by fascist MEPs. The problem though, is not that people are thinking horrible things about anyone who is a little bit different, but that they have little alternative but to think that. I firmly hold the opinion that the vast majority of the BNP’s voters are not nasty people, but simply forgotten people. Every major political party has neglected these constituents, and every major political party has been on the back foot in the debates on the far-right’s core issues.

I’m not just talking about immigration and racism, the BNP, with its new, clean image (laugh if you want, but not everyone is a liberal lefty with a built-in disgust of the BNP), champions a distortion of traditional values and morals that are just similar enough in image, though little else, to the traditional values that used to form part of British society in the ‘50s. Guess where the political mainstream is (and I include the green movement in this)? Nowhere is the answer; Mr Cameron might make some inconsequential moves to offer financial incentives to getting married, and Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson might talk about Britishness in a few speeches, but the debate on values, morality, and the question of what it means to be from Britain has been firmly grasped by the likes of Mr Griffin.

Morality has, of course, traditionally been the realm of the Church. I think the best way to describe my attitude to religion would be “actively agnostic”: I don’t currently believe in any particular god or religious structure, and I don’t think it is really possible to prove the existence of God, or even of gods, but I would never say for definite that these things cannot exist; I might one day be struck with a spiritual revelation, leading to a belief of the religious kind, so it would be foolish to keep a closed mind. The advantage of this convenient fudge is that I can do stuff that atheist can’t do, while not feeling guilty for being half-hearted as an apathetic agnostic might: in short, I can go to the Watchnight Service at St Giles Kirk on Christmas Eve, and pay attention to the sermon, without a Dawkinsian complex of any kind. In this particular sermon, the Minister took the time to praise Atheists and decry agnosticism: to paraphrase him, atheists present worthy opponents in debate, whereas agnostics are responsible for the downfall of society. I’m sure he didn’t mean to present such a sharp message, but I think it goes back to what I wrote about the far-right’s grasp on debates. For a debate to be had properly, all sides must be confident enough to make pronouncements on all ideas. Bad ideas must be exposed for what they are, and good ideas must be brought forth on sturdy legs.

In the Green Party, and indeed, in all major political parties, we need to grasp the debate and say what we think about Britishness, morality, and all the other issues which are held so tightly in the fists of fascists. We need to truly talk with all of the electorate, and we need to realise that the way that we can prevail in our political ambitions is through honest and fair discourse, not through aggressive confrontation with English Defence League, or by sneeringly mocking the BNP.

For all the apparent futility in the campaign to push Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name to the Christmas number one spot (sure, the profits from sales of the song went to the same musical multinational that McFabricated’s profits would have gone to, but did anyone notice that the Facebook group used to orchestrate it also managed to raise over £90,000 for Shelter?), it did raise my hopes for 2010, simply because it demonstrated a desire for a more honest and less fake way of doing things. If we can keep that spark of dissatisfaction with plastic society, then I’ll be a lot more confident that debate can be had, and perhaps even the statistics presented below might have nudged towards improvement in the next edition of this special post.

Here’s to 2010, an honest, argumentative, real, and better year!

Click here for an archive of past new year posts.

Looking elsewhere in Europe, the state of the greens is rather good. In France, we saw a gain of 8 seats, taking us to a total of 14. In Belgium, Groen! (Dutch-speaking greens) suffered at the hands of Vlaams Belang (far-right), but Ecolo (French-speaking greens) won two seats in the EP (up one from last time), and are also the third largest party in the Brussels Capital Region Parliament. Not all results are in, but by my estimates, we’ve gained 13 seats across Europe, making the European Greens a stronger force in EU politics. I’ll try and keep that pan-European thought in mind, rather than the UK results.

In the North West, the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, was elected with only a 0.3% lead over the Greens. Whenever things are that tight, the first question most activists in the North West will probably be asking is, “could we have done more?” I suppose we have to remember that, while we could have done more, and things didn’t turn out as we’d hoped, we made a tremendous effort which we can build on for next time, and use in national and local elections in the region.

The second I heard about the BNP’s gains, my mind jumped to all the things it could blame: the media for reporting the election on national issues instead of making it a European election; the voters for being such blithering idiots as to be taken in by the new face of the BNP—I don’t for one minute believe all those BNP voters are proper racists, just cretinous fools; the other parties for being so arrogant as to forget the people and their underlying ideologies; and us for not campaigning harder. The simple fact is that, as much as I desperately wish it were otherwise, the BNP have two seats in the next European Parliament, and we just have to get used to that, and do everything we can to make sure that it is us with at least a 1% lead over them in 2014.

02h46 CEST: Well, that’s all I can manage for now. It seems that the European Greens have so far gained 12 seats against the 2004 session numbers. With the fresh light of day, I’ll hopefully be able to complete my results spreadsheet and put together some coherent comment on things, but just now I have mixed feelings. I’m happy for the overall gain, but the far-right’s gains in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, our losses in Austria and Italy, and our failure to increase our number of seats in the UK is very disappointing. Goodnight.

02h27 CEST: So in the last two results from UK South East and UK South West, Greens have beaten the Labour Party. Shame we aren’t managing to increase our seats.

02h25 CEST: UK South East results: 4 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Green, 1 Labour, 2 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 12%, 4% ahead of Labour.

02h21 CEST: UK South West results: 3 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 9%, 1% ahead of Labour.

02h01 CEST: Apparently there is a recount going on in Manchester. That explains the delay in results.

01h53 CEST: East Midlands results: 2 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat. Greens on 7% with no seats.

01h41 CEST: London results: 3 Conservative, 2 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 Green , 1 UKIP. Our first Green to be re-elected this time round.

01h32 CEST: BBC are now predicting that the BNP will win 2 seats, and Greens will also win 2 nationally. So UK North West could easily go to the evil nazis, while we just manage to hold our two existing seats.

01h25 CEST: Re-Tweeting @AdamRamsay “Report from NW count: Greens 5,000 behind in final tally ”

01h22 CEST: And there is a computer failure in the count for UK South East. Wonderful: more delays.

01h20 CEST: BBC are predicting that we will take a 9% share of the vote UK wide.

01h03 CEST: Italian result seems to have sneaked past the BBC. According to the European Greens, we’ve lost our MEPs from Italy. Federazione dei Verdi down to 3% of the vote.

01h01 CEST: Irish results forthcoming. No seats for the Greens.

00h54 CEST: So to tot up UK results so far, we have 7 Conservative, 4 Labour, 3 Liberal Democrat, 4 UKIP, 1 Plaid Cymru, and 1 evil fascist BNP nazi.

00h47 CEST: Greens on 6% with no seats in UK Wales, and Plaid Cymru will join the Greens/EFA group in Brussels.

00h46 CEST: UK Wales results: 1 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 Plaid Cymru, 1 UKIP.

00h41 CEST: Welsh results should be through shortly.

00h32 CEST: Greens on 9% in UK Yorkshire & Humber.

00h29 CEST: Fascist BNP have their first seat in UK Yorkshire & Humber. Horrible

00h28 CEST: UK Yorkshire & Humber: 2 Conservative, 1 Labour, 1 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 BNP.

00h22 CEST: UK Yorkshire & Humber result should be through shortly.

00h10 CEST: Greens on 9%, no MEP from us for East of England.

00h09 CEST: 3 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 Labour from UK East of England.

00h05 CEST: UK East of England result just coming through.

23h58 CEST: Apparently the Italian result is about to be announced. Also, there is a potential for BNP seat in UK Yorkshire & Humber.

23h36 CEST: Worrying news from the count in the UK North West, BNP may be 2,000 votes ahead of the Greens with 14 out of 39 areas in the region announced.

23h04 CEST: Argh, maddening religious population of Western Isles in Scotland refuses to count votes on a Sunday. Northern Ireland also waiting until Monday.

22h58 CEST: Tweets are suggesting the BNP are going to do badly in the UK North West. Still could be very tight, and still big chance Greens might not get a seat there.

22h45 CEST: 1 Labour, 1 Conservative, 1 Liberal Democrat in the UK North East region. Greens were up 1% to 5.8%.

22h43 CEST: First results coming in from the UK North East. Will post results very soon.

22h32 CEST: Discrepancies between the BBC’s reporting of results, and what I’m getting through SMS, Twitter and European Greens. We may have 1 or 2 MEPs from Spain.

22h15 CEST: RT @patrickharvie Rumours of 18% Green vote in Glasgow.

22h09 CEST: Finally getting some proper results in. Great results from France, and Germany.

21h08 CEST: Will be taking a short break in live-blogging to cycle to an election party now. Back online in half an hour or so.

20h56 CEST: Lebanon has apparently also voted in national elections today, so I’ll try to slot those results in as a little bonus when they come through. I’m not sure how strong the green party is over there.

20h53 CEST: Apparently low turn-out in France (surprise, surprise!), but Europe Ecologie (Les Verts and Regions et Peuples Solidaires) seems to be on 14.8%.

20h39 CEST: Closer to home, I’m also hearing good things about the Scottish Greens in Edinburgh. Let’s hope it’s enough to get Elaine to Brussels!

20h36 CEST: I’m hearing word that we may have our first MEP from Οικολόγων Πράσινων (Eco-Greens) in Greece. Looking for more information just now.

19h45 CEST: Getting mixed information from Belgium. Ecolo (French-speaking greens) seem to be doing quite well with 16 seats in the regional parliament for Brussels. Groen! (Dutch-speaking green), on the other hand, appear to be suffering, with few gains, and lots of far-right gains for Vlaams Belang. Very worrying, and I hope not an omen for our performance in the North-West region of the UK.

I haven’t really got much of an idea what to do now though. Parliament is having a day off so there isn’t much to do in the office there, and I’ve done pretty much all I need to do before the time I’d normally have finished eating breakfast, with my only remaining commitment being the collection of A-boards from polling stations at 22h. I wonder how many other party activists are like this across the country.

Considering that at no point had I given any personal opinion on the issue, simply a piece of advice, I find this, not insulting, but certainly annoying. Annoying, because it demonstrates that the knee-jerk reflexes and lack of rational, reasoned analysis of the conflict, and its long-term implications on the region extends into the Green Party.

The debate on Israel and Palestine needs to be removed from this hot-headed approach, and considered properly and calmly. Any resolution to the present conflict must either set the stage for the development of a long term programme for peace, or be that very programme.

Conflicts in Israel and Palestine will continue so long as inequalities and discrimination continue. A peaceful resolution can only be achieved if both sides in this conflict (and I show no preference for Israel or Palestine here) lay down their arms and realise that they are all people. They have the same needs: food, water, shelter, social contact. Yes, they practice their religion in different ways, but that is no excuse whatsoever for the divisions in Israeli/Palestinian society.

The essential point I wish to convey with this post, is that I think there is a need to step back for a moment and make reasoned consideration of the full complexities of the conflict, and what can be done to resolve it and provide a sustainable peace. Accusations flying around help no-one, least of all those suffering in Gaza and Israel.

I support peaceful, non-violent protests to call for an end to conflict on both sides. What I don’t support are protests or actions which take sides with either the Israeli government, or the Palestinian Hamas government. Now is the time to bring peace for everyone living in Israel and Palestine, not peace for some, and punishment for others.

Comments are moderated on this post. My blog, my rules.