North West Euro-election Stakes - Runners and Riders

In the interests of information and fairness, I present to you below the full list of Parties (+ 1 Independent candidate) standing in the North West for the European elections. It's a long blog post, as its a long ballot paper. Presented here as they appear on the ballot, I will try to be fair in my comments...

- BNP - forget fairness, if this bunch of racists get a seat it will bring shame on Britain and the North West in particular and damage community relations for years. To greatly reduce their chances see Stop Nick Griffin website listed to the right. Nuff said

- Christian Party - a subtitle 'Proclaiming Christ's Lordship' probably tells you all you need to know for now

- Conservative Party - well known 'major' Party

- English Democrats Party - another anti-EU Party (one of many) with an added touch of also being anti-Scottish; may get some votes after the Rangers fans antics in Manchester last year

- Jury Team - this election's novelty act perhaps (but lacking the wackyness of the Natural Law Party - remember them?); probably well meaning but a Party list of candidates all with independent views is hard to swallow. And how Independent are you when you've been set up by a millionaire, who also donates to the Tories?

- Liberal Democrats - well known 'major' Party; I do notice however that their recent literature pushes Chris Davies MEP (understandably) but makes no mention of their number 2 candidate, which suggests they've given up on getting a second seat.
- No2EU: Yes to Democracy - My Manchester Green colleague Gayle O'Donovan has done a good analysis of them here. Suffice to say they are Socialism with a National streak; history suggests that's not a good combination.

- Pro Democracy:libertas.eu - another novelty act contender. Will be fun in the North West if they get a seat, their lead candidate is dumping them and coming over to the Greens! see here.

- Socialist Labour Party (Leader Arthur Scargill) - the left splinter group that even other left splinter groups forget about.

- The Green Party - 10th on the ballot paper and 10% in the polls right now; plenty more on them on this blog now and in the future; for now a couple of facts which might otherwise go unnoticed:
We are the only Party in the North West with more women than men on the list (5 women, 3 men - most other lists are overwhelmingly male)
We are the only party in serious consideration for seats in the North West, where all the candidates have addresses in the North West

- The Labour Party - well known 'major' Party

- UKIP - surprisingly popular after their shambolic history since the last Euros. That really doesn't flatter British politics.

- Francis Apaloo (Independent) don't know anything about him, but may pick up more votes than independents in previous Euros in these peculiar times.