(I'm sticking to English parties as opposed to all UK parties as, living in England, it is primarily English parties that affect me).

Wow, blimey, where to start? I set about to briefly cover a few more England-based political parties in the run-up to our general election, but I wasn't aware of quite how many political parties we now have here. Of course, a number seem to have appeared after the last general election, so it's perhaps not surprising I haven't heard of them until now. Anyway, suffice it to say, there are a great deal more parties in existence than are represented in the house of commons. I used the list at this site as a guide. I'm not going to try and cover them all, indeed the link is a list of UK parties, so includes those exclusive to Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well as England. Here, I'm going to try and briefly cover several of the smaller fry you are more likely to have heard about at least once in the past year. They're not necessarily going to be any more successful in this general election than the last, but they make themselves heard nonetheless.

First up, is Veritas. It's a well-known fact that the truthfulness of a politician is inversely proportional to how truthful he or she claims to be*, so you'll excuse me if I take Mr. Kilroy-Silk's claims with a pinch of salt, topped off with a mountain of salt. Now, their manifesto makes for rather lighter reading than the "big three," and there's no library of support documents, or even really any details about how they'll actually achieve what they promise, how much it will cost (or save), and so on--not forgetting Silk's hardly-concealed racism. Make no mistake, even if he's deluded himself into believing he's actually not racist, he is racist. I heard his little speech about cultures, and how and how some are better than others, and some are reprehensible. He seems fond of tarring people from certain parts of the world all with the same brush, then (poorly) disguising his racist views as views about "culture." If you've read that editorial piece he wrote for... the Daily Mail? you'll know what happens when he drops any attempt at hiding his racism (apparently, all Arabs are terrorists). The Veritas website is woefully lacking in content. I can't help wondering if Silk is just too full of himself to realise no-one likes him. I mean, I remember seeing glimpses of his crapshow - sorry, chatshow - back before it was discovered just how much of a racist he is. He never really listened to people, and always came across as incredibly arrogant. Even more arrogant than is the standard for politicians these days. And coming from a semi-cynic like me, that's quite something.

The site
*this may actually be a lie. See what I did there? I'm trying to be a politician...

Next up, I was going to briefly cover another predominantly racist party - the British National Party. These guys are somewhat nastier than Veritas, with allegations over links to the National Front surfacing quite often. However, disappointingly, there's currently no "general election 2005" manifesto on their site. Don't worry, BNP lovers, there is a "Daily news update" hotline, on an 090 number, that charges £1/minute. Because, y'know, if you already have internet access, you're gonna want to pay again to get news... OK that's a little harsh. But I was expecting to be able to go through a manifesto and point out the obvious racism disguised as other things. Guess I'll just have to be happy in the knowledge that they don't seem to have got their act together. I do recall some news item a day or two ago to do with Nick Griffin and a court case. Mind you, as I type, several of the website's sections, including the "elections" bit and the "manifestos" bit, have gone AWOL (giving 404s) whilst the front page remains, so perhaps they're updating right now.