The national mass media were in shock last year when Peter Davies of the English Democrats became the town’s directly elected mayor. Attacked as populist, xenophobic and homophobic, he wasn’t bothered by any of these slights. Nowhere else had the tiny party achieved anything recognisable, so perhaps it is unsurprising to find that the English Democrats are standing a candidate in each of the three seats in the Doncaster area: Lawrence Parramore (Doncaster Central); Bernie Aston (Don Valley) and Wayne Crawshaw (Doncaster North). Presumably, Davies’s exposure will have given the English Democrats a high profile amongst local people so it is in these seats that we are likely to find them garnering most votes.
Unfortunately, the English Democrats will probably take some share of the nationalist vote from the BNP which is also contesting each of the aforementioned seats. Furthermore, to complicate the situation for those of a nationalist inclination UKIP are also standing in all three. If any of them take upwards of 10% of the vote in these seats, they’ll be doing extremely well. However, I don’t expect radical breakthroughs for any of them here owing to the nationalist vote being split and this being Labour’s heartland.
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