The BNP claim to be the only party unafraid to stand up for Britain and ordinary British working families. While the ‘LibLabCon’ is in thrall to the global elite, the BNP will put Britain first. They’ll restore us to a disciplined society, with plenty of manufacturing jobs to be proud of and protect us from the instability of the wider world.

If only we were to stop giving money to bankers and foreigners, the BNP promises, then everything would be alright. There would be plenty of jobs to go already, and higher wages. The British brands from our childhood like Woolworths or Cadbury’s wouldn’t have to shut down or change. When there wasn’t so much swearing on our tv or crime on our streets. Everything could return to the good old days, the days when Britain was strong, successful – and white.

It’s not wrong to say that things have changed, or that some people have been left behind in the new Britain. But by rushing to pick out easy villains, the BNP have missed the real causes of the tensions we’ve seen, and in the process they’ve landed on exactly the wrong solutions.

To maintain their racial and national separatism, the BNP would shut us off from the wider world. But it’s a profound mistake to believe that that would make our lives safer or more stable.

But as we’ve seen over the last four weeks, our country and people are too integrated into the wider world to just turn back the clock. The end result of the BNP’s policies would only be to splinter our country, and the cost would fall disproportionately on the worse off.

Let’s remind ourselves of the key effects:

-          their protectionism would cost each of £1300, cause long waiting lists for the latest gadgets, clothes and medicines and create a blander, poorer Britain

-          their tax break for the rich would be funded on the back of a massive increase in the prices of goods for ordinary British families

-          their authoritarian crime and immigration polices would tear our communities apart, and pour assault rifles onto our streets

-          their isolationism would turn Britain into a pariah in the world,  with no influence on the big cross border issues such as terrorism and climate change

-          their lack of credibility would send the cost of debt soaring, and lead to cuts in schools, hospitals and the army

As long as the BNP realise their dream of turning the clock back on Britain to the 1950s, of restoring us to a whites only country, they can probably live with the resulting economic devastation. To the hardcore ideologues at the heart of the BNP, racial purity comes first.

But you if want a party that cares about the same things you do, that’ll stand up for interests and your jobs, you should vote for someone else.

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The BNP’s policies us everything about

-          Populism. Nick Griffin and the BNP will promise everything to everyone, and are careful always tell their audience what they want to hear. Taxes lowered, spending up, deficit down. Restore law and order, and bring back the death penalty. The only people to lose out supposedly are foreigners, bankers and welfare scroungers. It is not easy, but in the long run politicians have to be honest with the British people, and say who will lose out.

-          No credibility or detail. In order to get away with this cheap populism, the BNP are carefully never to go into exact detail as to how their priorities would be implemented, or how much they would cost. They don’t expect to be in power, so why should they worry?

-          Inconsistency. Even so, occasionally this populism leads them into being inconsistent. Will the BNP protect only key ‘strategic’ industries or will they make sure every company remains British? They want to strangle the city with new red tape, and yet are against strangling regulation. They’re worried about peak oil and fuel shortages, but vow never to raise the duty on petrol. They attack socialists, but would nationalise vast swathes of British industry. What exactly do the BNP believe in?

-          The scapegoat strategy. To the BNP the source of whatever problems we might have are always easily villains: the pigs or banksters, foreign workers or immigrants. In the BNP’s head, all you have to do is get rid of the villain to get rid of the problem. Complex socioeconomic issues don’t seem to exits.

-          Nostalgia. The BNP hates modern Britain: hates its culture, its art, its people and its business. It is easy to moan that everything is going downhill, but not all change is bad.

-          Lack of patriotism. And at its heart, this represents the fact that the BNP isn’t really a patriotic party. If you’re proud of your country, you don’t want to hide away from the rest of the world. If you’re proud of your country, you don’t think we have anything to fear from opening ourselves up and competing with the best in the world. If you’re proud of your country, you believe our best is still to come, not retreat into the past.

Voting for a political party is not just an expression of your anger or identity. It is about endorsing a specific programme for the country, an agenda of change.

The BNP is trying to portray itself as a modernised serious party, but its political programme shows otherwise. This is not a question of ideology, or even their racial separatism. There is about a basic bar of credibility that any political party has to meet to deserve the voters trust, and the BNP falls far below it.

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The BNP promises voters that they can both increase spending on our public services and cut your taxes at the same time, all the while restoring the nation’s finances to a sound footing.

But their plans for the nation’s finances simply don’t add up. A BNP government would almost certainly have to raise taxes, cut spending and bankrupt the public services.

Here’s why:

-          No credibility on spending. The BNP have made no attempt to cost their policies, or choose priorities. As discussed yesterday, the BNP plans to spend hundreds of billions on buying up foreign companies and our utilities, while all the while boosting spending on the NHS and education and quintupling border controls.

-          A preference for printing money. If this wasn’t enough to make international investors take flight, the BNP’s own attitudes to inflation is all too clear. Their 1997 manifesto went so far as to argue that all government expenditure could be fair for by printing money. With the structural deficit looming, it seems unlikely that the BNP government would resist the temptation to inflate away some of the debt.

-          The risk premium rockets. With understandable fears about inflation and default looming, the cost of Britain’s borrowing would jump. The BNP want to turn back the clock on our economy, and the resulting worry is that our interest rates would go back up to those we had in the 1970s, at about 12%. The cost of our debt could triple to £90 bn, more than education, defence and transport combined.

-          The new era of cuts. With £90 bn added to the structural deficit, the BNP would have no choice but to start massive, across the board cuts. Soldiers would lose on equipment. Hospitals short of doctors, the rationing of drugs clamped down on. Schools would grow tatty and overcrowded, all building work shut down. Teachers, nurses and squaddies would see their wages fall.

-          Inflation returns. But that is unlikely to be enough to close down the gap. Inflation will have to take some of the burden. The prices of ordinary goods will start to rocket, the value of wages will go down and everyone in Britain will find themselves suddenly a whole lot poorer.

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