LIKE a fly that needed swatting, it’s fair to say the British National Party barely registered a whimper in last week’s local elections in Worcestershire.

The BNP, to nobody’s surprise, trailed so badly it made the Lib Dem performance in the South Shields byelection look acceptable.

This year’s miserable tally included 11 votes in Clent Hills, near Bromsgrove, 12 votes in Alvechurch, 16 in Bedwardine and a whopping 32 in Riverside.

You’d think, given the freshly secured rejection by the greater public, party bigwigs would slowly slither away and question why they bother doing this every year.

But no – BNP leaders in Worcester seem to be blaming the media for their plight, and are adamant there’s a huge conspiracy preventing their rightful march towards domination.

An e-mail arrived in The Source’s lap from Carl Mason, BNP organiser for the city, which started off by saying this correspondent is “very ignorant”.

He blamed the UK Independence Party for BNP’s woes, insisting on calling them “UKRAP” all the way through, and claimed Rupert Murdoch is giving Nigel Farage “free media support” nationally to pressure “the Establishment” into getting them off his back over the phone hacking saga.

Without a hint of humour, he then said “when Mr Murdoch withdraws his free media support” people will “turn to the BNP for saviour”.

He then declared there will be more candidates standing for the BNP in next year’s city council elections, although why they would waste their time yet again is a mystery.

Given the fact the BNP’s four Worcester candidates polled 335 votes from an electorate numbering 76,955 last week,I’d take up a new hobby ifI was them.

If Mr Mason was to analyse the county council election results in close detail, he may want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

In fact, while you’re at it hurl the bath out the window too. The emperor has no clothes.

IRONY of the week is the turnaround for Tory councillor Lucy Hodgson, who you may recall was controversially de-selected from her old County Hall seat of Nunnery by her party, and left to desperately search for a new ward to contest.

She eventually ended up as the candidate for Malvern Chase, and duly won it for the Conservatives by 27 votes, while Keith Burton, the new Tory hopeful for Nunnery, lost her old seat to Labour.

Karma?