Is the Christian Party lying or misleading in its European election material in London? For weeks I’ve been walking past adverts for the party claiming that the main parties can’t beat the BNP – only the Christians can. So when the Christian Party’s leaflet came through my letter box last night, I was intrigued to see what they had to say.
The Christian Party (which devotes 2/3 of its leaflet to anti-BNP messages) sets out a number of “facts” to support its assertion that only a vote for them can beat the BNP:
“Fact: The BNP can only win a seat in the 8th round of the London EU elections”
That isn’t a fact. That’s an assumption based on the likely number of votes the BNP will receive, compared to the number of votes it received in the GLA. Baesd on the Christian Party’s own figures, if the BNP received just an additional 15,000 votes across the whole of London, it would win a seat in the 7th round.
“Fact: Voting for Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats or Greens is the worst thing you could do if your intention is to stop the BNP winning in London .”
This isn’t a fact. The Christian Party’s data once again presumes that 1.4 million people will still vote for the main parties. In fact, if you don’t vote for the main parties, the BNP will win more seats in London. Because the ballot doesn’t allow for you to rank the parties but vote for one – and no other. The Christian Party instead hopes that most people will totally ignore its message – an absurd position for a political campaign.
“Fact: Voting Christian is the surest way to stop the BNP according to the latest figures.”
The Christian Party has a point: that after the main parties have won their seats, the Greens and one other party are likely to gain a seat. Therefore, for the BNPs to not win a seat, another party needs to get a lot more votes. That could be the Christians, or UKIP or the Greens.
Cynics may argue “what’s the Christian Party doing differently to any other party – they all lie/mislead in election material”. But my experience is different. In the main, Labour and the Tories don’t set out to deliberately mislead in their election leaflets. They may make over ambitious claims, they may give a rosy picture but they don’t produce material on a national level (there may be rogue local leaflets) which is untrue.
What’s worse, of course, is that the Christian Party should not lie and probably shouldn’t mislead. If they have any purpose or role in politics (and I’m not sure they d0), surely it’s establishing themselves as ‘whiter than white’. If the Christian Party lies to you, what hope does politics have?
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