Tuesday 26 January 2016

British National Party to field London mayoral candidate

From the BBC:

Image captionDavid Furness will be the party's 2016 candidate

The BNP has said it will enter the race to be mayor of London, after acknowledging a "scaling down" at the general election.

The candidate will be David Furness, the party's organiser in west London, who stood in the 2011 Feltham and Heston Parliamentary by-election.

A spokesman for the BNP told BBC London the party had been "rebuilding and modernising" since May.

The BNP fielded eight candidates at the general election.

Steve Squire, the London regional organiser for the BNP, said the party was not worried about lack of resources: "We didn't bankrupt ourselves by standing in too many seats in May, unlike UKIP."

Reports to the Electoral Commission show it had a total income of more than £600,000 in 2013, the latest year for which complete figures are available, down from more than £1.2m in 2010.

He said the party had been "rebuilding and modernising through the support of our members after a recent scaling-down in activity".

In 2012, BNP candidate Carlos Cortiglia finished last in the mayoral contest, with 28,751 votes or 1.3% of those cast.

This represented a sharp decline on its 2008 result, when its candidate Richard Barnbrook finished fifth and polled 69,710 votes, ahead of UKIP and Respect.

Mr Barnbrook was at one time a member of the London Assembly for the BNP, later sitting as an independent before retiring.

Other party candidates announced so far include:
Conservatives - Zac Goldsmith
Green Party - Sian Berry
Labour - Sadiq Khan
Lib Dems - Caroline Pidgeon
Respect - George Galloway
UKIP - Peter Whittle





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