It appears that the rumours about the English Defence League (EDL) becoming a political party have been further backed up today by the organisation’s leader.

Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said last night: “We’re having a meeting this week with politically minded people and we’re discussing the options. We know the support we’ve got from one end of the country to the other because we talk sense. So we’re having more discussions this week. It’s something we’re seriously looking at.

“We’ve been meeting with top political people for a year about this and now we’re getting close. We’ve been sitting down with a couple of lads who are posh-speaking, public school boys, who have been in politics before, and we’re discussing with them where it can go.”

Tommy Robinson is known to be somebody who plays his cards close to his chest, so there’s very little in the public domain about who the EDL has been speaking to. What’s not surprising, is that these ‘posh-speaking, public school boys’ are interested in morphing the EDL into a political entity.

Their new website has been generating substantial funds for the organisation via access subscriptions. They have means of selling large quantities of merchandise, even I’ve been tempted to purchase one of their Welsh Defence League hoodies.

I suspect that if they were given professional organisation and politically savvy spokesmen, this movement could become quite a bit bigger. It’s undeniable that they’ve tapped into something and they’ve managed to semi-politicise large chunks of working class football fans, something only dreamt about amongst political fringe parties.

You have to ask the question whether the Daily Star’s owner has insider knowledge of these EDL leadership meetings and if their positive coverage recently was merely an attempt to ‘test the water’.

The Losers

Unless the EDL has been in talks with the English Democrats, I feel that the party is going to be very worried about this development. And they should be. An EDL party will eclipse their membership figures within weeks and they can expect some of their councillors to defect almost immediately.

The English Nationalist spectrum is packed already with 4 political parties – the Eng Dems, English People’s Party (EPP), One England and the England First Party (EFP). All of these parties, with the exception of the racial nationalist EFP, will lose members, donors and activists to the potentially much larger EDL party, because size matters.

Nick Griffin could hardly have welcomed this news. In fact, it caps a pretty terrible week for the British National Party (BNP), with the party’s internal rebellion reaching a new high of intensity, the withdrawal of support from the party’s highest profile blog, the resignation of web-editor Arthur Kemp and the terrible result in the Barnsley by-election. Griffin knows that when the EDL goes political, he will lose a large swathes of his membership that currently holds dual sympathies.

Putting the Pieces Together

Where do the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) fit into all of this?

We know for a fact that;

• Some of their candidates have attached themselves to EDL demonstrations.
• They have positioned themselves to usurp the BNP’s anti-Islamisation platform and there is clearly a policy parity there with the EDL’s stance.
• Both organisations have established ties with Geert Wilders’ Freedom Movement.

It may seem little to go on, but are the posh folk Tommy Robinson talks about, UKIP officials?

However, there’s some areas which could prove sticky. Could the EDL morph into a unionist political party? If it hopes to steal members, activists and donors from the established English Nationalist parties then it will have to abandon unionism. Further, there’s no evidence to suggest that the organisation will adhere to any type of nationalism. It’s more likely to model itself on Geert Wilders’ PVV.

An EDL party could gain in size rather rapidly on just a few key policy statements, but it won’t be able to hold itself together unless it has a unified and clear ideological foundation. This is likely to prove its biggest problem, because it currently draws support from across the patriotic nationalist right, which is itself going through a state of flux with warring factions ripping each other to pieces.

Could the EDL’s political party become the unifying force that binds together the nationalist and patriotic right over a set of key principles? An end to multiculturalism, anti-Islamisation, anti-immigration and withdrawal from the European Union.

Who knows?

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