I've been hearing from the media about "right wing" seemingly-facsist groups in Europe, and have wondered, numerous times, if they're really rather more left-wing then right wing. Michael Moynihan at Reason lets that particular cat out of the bag. Just as suspected:

In a post yesterday, [Matthew] Yglesias "explains" British politics to his readers and offers this bit of shock at the two BNP seats: "The rise of the BNP is all the more shocking for the fact that UK voters already have a 'mainstream' far-right option available to them in the form of the UK Independence Party, so it's hard to rationalize BNP support as simply a sign of disgruntlement with the establishment options." This is misinformed nonsense. After being tipped by Spectator blogger Alex Massie, Yglesias acknowledges what has long been known to observers of British politics: the BNP siphons off Labour voters, not voters from UKIP. The coal mining town of Barnsley, where the BNP received 17 percent of the vote and is the birthplace of thuggish union leader Arthur Scargill, is a traditional Labour stronghold. So why would these voters be interested in UKIP, a Euroskeptic party that is the exact opposite of the BNP on economic issues? Yesterday I quoted MEP Dan Hannan's description of the BNP manifesto: ""[I]t wants nationalisation, subsidy, higher taxes, protectionism and (sotto voce) the abolition of the monarchy." Watch this video of BNP leader Nick Griffin announcing that his first speech before the EU parliament would address the scourge of "privatization."

Higher taxes? Nationalization? Opposing international free trade? Oddest "right wing" British group I've ever heard of. But what can one expect from a media which has also been calling die-hard Stalinists in Russia "the right"?