A TROUBLING OBSERVATION regarding the British elections:

With all the MSM whining about Blair’s vistory and all the blogger hand-wringing over ‘Jihad’ George Galloway, most people seem to have missed the real story of last week’s elections in Britain. The British National Party (BNP) is now the fourth largest party in the UK, even larger than the Greens. Check out the BNP results here. Notice that the BNP is up in nearly every district compared to 2001: 16.9% in Barking; 13.1% in Dewsbury; 9.7% in Dudley North where their raw vote count more than doubled over ’01. And this is during good economic times in a country free of jihad attacks.

I’ve worried about this sort of thing.

UPDATE: From troubling observations to comforting corrections — reader David Steven emails:

The “troubling observation” about the BNP is not true. . . .

According to the BBC, 11 parties and 1 independent gained seats – the BNP are still a long way from winning a seat. In terms of share of vote, the BNP came 8th, behind the three major parties, an Irish and a Scottish party, the UK Independence party and the Greens.

While it is disturbing that 192,850 people voted BNP, this is only 0.7% of those voting.

It’s easy to rack up big percentage gains when your numbers are small.