Nick Griffin has won an important victory just by being invited to appear on Question Time. To secure such a slot on prime-time television represents the greatest single accomplishment in the history of the fascist and neo-fascist movements in Britain. Oswald Mosley may have once filled the Albert Hall, but that granted him an audience of 5,000 and all were converts. The BBC delivers an audience of millions. For every 50 people who conclude that Griffin is a buffoon, one may decide he just might have a point. And that is all the BNP needs.
Instead of complaining to the BBC, as several ministers have done, we should instead ask why almost a million British voters supported Griffin’s party at the latest local and European elections. It’s not because they share its racist agenda. As Samir Shah powerfully argued in this magazine two weeks ago, Britain is arguably one of the least racist countries on earth. All surveys show the same results: the concept of racial prejudice is viewed by nearly everyone as repellant, and by the young as plain bizarre. We are the original multi-ethnic state.
It is instructive that nine out of the ten constituencies with the most BNP supporters are held by Labour MPs. The white working class — and the working classes of most other ethnic groups — are abandoning a party which long ago lost its purpose and direction. The more thoughtful Labour MPs, such as Jon Cruddas, are acutely aware of the problem and deplore the way that Westminster politics has been reduced to a battle for swing voters in swing seats. In some ways, BNP supporters can be seen as an abandoned fragment of what was once the New Labour coalition.
The Conservatives cannot escape blame. David Cameron could adopt a more muscular immigration policy or speak in stronger tones against the Islamist menace, which, as Melanie Phillips argues in these pages, is of such concern to so many. But the Tories still fear that the mention of the topic will alienate voters in swing seats. This electoral calculation may well be correct, but Cameron mustn’t forget that the BNP have worked out precisely the same thing. They keep their racist agenda a dirty secret, and collect the popular causes abandoned by the main parties.
To be airbrushed out of a campaign director’s map might be regarded as a blessing. But such voters no longer feature on the radar screen of policymakers. Academic analysis of the BNP shows that as many as one in five voters believe in every one of their policies. Only a third of the British public consider membership of the European Union to be ‘a good thing’, yet this minority view is held by every party at Westminster. Polls constantly show that immigration is one of the public’s chief concerns. This can be said of no party in Westminster.
The last time the far right did so well in Britain was in the mid-1970s. It was Thatcher who killed them stone dead. She said immigration risked ‘swamping’ Britain, and directed herself at the working class, who were to form the backbone of her three election victories. So the politicians who complain about the publicity the BNP are seeking have two choices. The first is to call them ‘racist’ and moan about broadcasters. The second is to get their hands dirty, and engage with the voters whom the BNP targets.
Griffin’s Question Time appearance marks the collapse of the first strategy. It seems that our political class is still too squeamish to embark upon the second. But unless something is done to address the concerns of the orphaned voter, this may just be the beginning of the BNP’s journey into the mainstream.
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