BNP deputy denies party is on verge of collapse following loss of MEP
Published on Tuesday, 23 October 2012 14:41 Written by Martin Banks
British National Party leader and MEP Nick Griffin has launched a withering attack on a former colleague who has quit the party.
Speaking exclusively to this website, he said the party would be "well rid" of Andrew Brons.
Brons, one of the British National Party's two MEPs is no longer a party member.
Brons, an MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, said he considered himself to have been "expelled in all but name".
He became the party's first MEP when he won a seat in Yorkshire and the Humber in 2009 with 10 per cent of the vote. He defeated former Socialist MEP Richard Corbett, who is now a close aide to European council president Herman Van Rompuy.
Brons said he would continue to "promote the policies on which I was elected" in parliament.
However, Griffin disputed his claims, saying Brons had left voluntarily. He also called on his former colleague to "do the decent thing" and step down as an MEP "so that the people who voted for him can rightfully replace him with a member from the party they voted for in 2009".
"Brons says he was pushed out, but this is untrue. He froze himself out of the party. He can now do the decent and moral thing and retire or sit and take the money until the next elections in 2014."
He said the party already had a replacement lined up in Rotherham who, he said, had helped expose a "grooming scandal" in the area.
"I don't know Brons' intentions because I have not spoken to him for two years."
Griffin also disputed claims that the party was on the verge of collapse, saying, "We went through a very tough time from July 2009 to July 2011 but we have got through that. We recently received a very significant bequest from a member who died and this has cleared up all our financial difficulties."
He conceded, though, that the party's vote had dipped and that it had "lost a lot of councillors" in the UK, saying this was the result of the Labour party "injecting huge resources into beating us".
He said, "They have had a lot of success, but the BNP is back as the only serious game in town."
In the statement, Brons said: "Over the last 16 or 18 months I have been marginalised to such an extent, in what is left of the British National Party, that I have been expelled in all but name.
"Employment law recognises a concept of constructive dismissal which means that the employee cannot be expected to remain in employment and can regard his or her employment at an end.
"My position in the rump of the BNP is analogous to that of an employee who has been constructively dismissed."
Brons, a former college lecturer, lost an election in July 2011 to be leader of the British National Party when Nick Griffin was re-elected.
Credit: The Parliament.com