Last night’s Stoke Central by election defeat for Ukip leader Paul Nuttall brought back memories of the decline and eventual destruction of the far right National Front. Here was the leader of a far right, anti-migrant, anti-European party, standing for election in an area where the vast majority of people voted to leave the EU and he was defeated by a pro-EU, anti-Corbyn Labour candidate. How can this have happened? It’s quite simple, actually.
In the 1970s, the neo Nazi National Front (NF) were, effectively, the Ukip of the day. They made inroads into the public psyche with their anti-migrant stance and, like the post-Brexit Ukip, stood for nothing else. For a while, many of us feared they might make a political breakthrough as they spread their poisonous agenda across the land. By the early 1980s, they suffered fractious splits, forming different parties, one of which went on to become the British National Party (all but deceased). The reason for the destruction of the NF is the same as the decline of Ukip today: the governing party of the day, led by Margaret Thatcher, tacked to the hard right and made them redundant. The same is happening today.
From being a relatively quiet EU remainer, Theresa May has become a passionate EU leaver, carried along by the hard right in the Tory Party and illiberal press. She is just another cynical politician who has gone with the flow, appeasing the hard right by talking their language, as if she never believed that Britain was stronger, safer and more prosperous in Europe. Essentially, May has parked her tanks on Ukip’s lawn and the one-man band minus its one man (Farage) had no answer and for as long as she remains there, far right alternatives are not required.
Whilst acknowledging that Labour’s woeful position in the polls are down to it’s hopeless and incompetent leadership, pathetic levels of opposition and a complete absence of policies that relate to the regular working woman and man, it is also true that Theresa May’s hardline, anti-European, anti-migrant rhetoric is playing well with the 52% of voters who last year decided to take us out of the EU. With a compliant right wing press, it is not at all surprising that stopping European people coming to work in the UK is of far more importance to many people in our country than economic prosperity and if the prime minister is leading these arguments, where is the need for a bunch of cranks like Ukip who are nothing more than the BNP in blazers?
In fact, Ukip is tacking even further right than ever before, referring to itself now as the Patriotic People’s Party, making it sound more than ever like the inheritors of Nick Griffin’s grubby mantle of far right populism, suggesting that only Ukip are the party of patriotism. My own view, for what it is worth, is that campaigning to leave the EU was the least patriotic decision of all, condemning the country to a position of far less strength and importance, at the same time making its citizens poorer.
I am not saying that Theresa May is in any way a fascist. She is, as we have observed, just another cynical population who will say anything for support and anything for votes; just another hypocrite in charge of our country. By taking the country to the hard right, she may well extinguish Ukip’s flame, but hard right is still hard right and with Labour too having deserted the centre ground we are sailing into dangerous waters.
Ukip represented the ugly, divisive, bigoted, racist, isolationist side of our country. For the Conservative and Unionist Party to wear their clothes and to also find they fit perfectly is probably more worrying than anything else.
