A dark day...

I'm sitting here listening to 'If you tolerate this...' by the Manic Street Preachers:

And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next...
...Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain...
...And on the street tonight an old man plays
With newspaper cuttings of his glory days

To be renamed - *An ode for the abstainers* ??

I could have chosen a different quote - 'All that is left fo evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing' - Perhaps that's even more apt; PR elections are more democratic, however the problem comes with a low turnout when marginal parties like the BNP are elected. And that is exactly what happened today.

I happily blogged a year ago that the BNP had failed to succeed in the local elections. I remember my time in Carlisle - a key background for the BNP - characterised by fascist campaigning and leafleting. Ultimately such efforts were in vain. Now these neo-Nazis have two MEPs. Notwitstanding the fact that Euro-elections didn't exist during Mosley's day, one cannot get away from the fact that the far right can claim their biggest electoral achievement in British political history.

Their success can be boiled down to several reasons:
1. Anger over MPs expenses and general disillusionment with the Westminster system/the (warped) belief that MPs are 'in it for as much as they can screw out of the general public'
2. The rightward direction of New Labour over the last decade and a half - the inevitable skewing re: the distribution of wealth and the political 'disenfranchisement' of the old Labour party's natural constituency - the white working classes
3. Linked to the above - the working class's belief (wrong) that Labour has abandoned them and opened the floodgates to waves of immigrants (mainly eastern European) who have taken jobs and drained public finances through benefit claims.
4. The world economic crisis - probably less important than it may first appear to be - Brown has been largely praised for his statesmanlike approach regarding the financial crisis and benefitted a lot from the G20 (although expenses has largely negated this). Plus, no other British politician is seen as a better option in this respect - Cameron, for example, is still seen as a risky soft option.
5. The political nous of the far right to 'seize the moment', play on people's fears and exploit their own coverage and that of the discredited main parties for their own political gain. In this regard, the actions of the Telegraph has been abominable (has the editor been in the pay of Griffin et al?).

These tactics are nothing new, however, they have just come at a time when people are feeling other anxieties. This has created a toxic stew which has resulted in fascists representing me in the European parliament.

More to follow. I'm trying to organise my thoughts on this one -