The battle for Fourth Place

It's nearly the end of the football season and the title might suggest a football piece (after all its the main topic of conversation in Manchester this weekend), but no - I'm talking politics.

Everyone knows about the 'Big Three' but other Parties such as UKIP, the Green Party and even the BNP often like to claim fourth place (I'm excluding the SNP and Plaid Cymru as they only stand candidates in their respective countries; I'm also excluding Northern Ireland).  So who should be fourth (or top of the Championship if the 'Big Three' constitute the Premiership)?.



Let's work on the basis of 20 points for an MP (on the basis that they are so hard to get under first past the post), 15 points for an MEP, 10 points for a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), the Wesh Assembly or the London Assembly (GLA) and 1 point for each primary authority councillor (parish and town councillors not included).

Here's the comparison (until 2010 Respect would have been included, but they now have too few councillors to merit inclusion). Councillor figures include Scotland and Wales
                           Green            UKIP          BNP

MPs                   1 (20 pts)       0                 0
MEPs                 2 (30 pts)     12 (180 pts)  2 (30 pts)
MSPs                 2 (20 pts)       0                 0
GLA members    2 (20 pts)       0                 0 (was 1 but resigned)      
Councillors      140                  23               13

Total                230 pts          203 pts        43 pts.

So that gives us Greens 4th, UKIP 5th and BNP a poor sixth

Gender balance note: of UKIP's 23 councillors only one is a woman (even the BNP manage 4 women).  Would take a while to count the number of Green women councillors, but I'm confident it will be over one third.