Iain Dale is pondering the success of the BNP in Swanley, Kent.
I hesitated to even write about this, but for the BNP to secure a seat in a local council by-election in Kent is deeply worrying.
Well, bravo for you, Iain - such bravery!
One interesting thing is that it's quite clear from the statistics that the whole BNP vote came from UKIP and the Labour Party.
Well, that'll be because the BNP are the only party other than UKIP who pledge withdrawal from the EU - and as UKIP didn't stand this time and gained 20% last time, that gave them a good base to start from. Then you have to consider that the people most affected by pro-EU policies are the people who make up the Labour party base support and you'll get some inkling of why BNP polled 41%.
More worrying for Dale, I'd have thought, is the fact that the Conservative Party can't win a by-election in the heartland of Tory England. Dale ignores this and decides to ask Dave what they should do. Dave has all the answers ......
Pavement politics. People turn to extreme parties if they think they have been forgotten by the mainstream parties. That doesn't mean running towards issues they are campaigning on, it means running towards the people that they are talking to and showing you are listening to their concerns, taking up their issues and working for them. You have to show that no part of the country, no part of your constituency, no ward, that no housing estate is forgotten.
Maybe not. The trouble is, Dave, Gordon, Tony and all those before them have been telling these people for years that they are "taking up their issues" and "working for them" - but nothing ever changes. They now know that the old parties are ALL talk and no action. Whether you like it or not, if all you deliver is empty promises on top of empty promises then eventually they'll stop listening to you - and voting for you. "Pavement politics" is all very well if you then deliver on what you tell people on the pavement - but they never do. It's all talk and no action.
The "issues" that Dave wants to avoid running towards ARE the issues that these people want dealing with - and nobody apart from the BNP are prepared to discuss them. Those hundreds of thousands of immigrants are not taking homes from affluent Tories or the Labour supporting chattering classes in Islington. It's not their jobs that are being relocated to Eastern Europe or their schools that are being flooded with foreign children who speak no English.
The truth is that Labour and the Conservatives have both forgotten who they are elected to represent - the British - and the BNP are making headway on that. The ruling elite think that immigration and "diversity" means all sorts of foreign restaurants on their doorstep, but to the hundreds of thousands of British people in the housing estates and streets of Britain it means being an alienated stranger in your own town.
8 comments:
"The ruling elite think that immigration and "diversity" means all sorts of foreign restaurants on their doorstep, but to the hundreds of thousands of British people in the housing estates and streets of Britain it means being an alienated stranger in your own town."
Indeed.
Shouldn't have elected Call-Me-Dave, should they?
Turning word: 'guesses' !
A friend of mine was saying recently how proud he was of British tolerance and our multicultural society. He went on to cite Soho's 'melting pot' as an example.
But this is typical of many who confuse multicultural with multi-racial or multi-ethnic. Soho is a melting pot and I think that is one of the things that make it interesting. Problems are rare because everyone, by and large, just gets on with what they're doing.
My friend doesn't understand that this is not multiculturalism. The State-sanctioned multiculturalism that we see in the outskirts of London and in places like Bradford and Burnley is very different. It has slowly but torn these places apart.
The ghettoisation of different cultures whether Moslem, Hindu, Sikh, Somali, West Indian, happens because this destructive and just plain stupid "ism" decreed that no culture is better than another and each should be accorded the same respect, facilities and grants,lest one of them gets offended. It's a ridiculous situation that breeds anything but toleration.
The results have been that these 'cultures' compete for victimhood, 'respect, living space and grants.
It has even got the stage when 'culture' is used a an excuse for violence and crime. "It's our culture".
How the hell did we let this happen?
That's exactly right, BHR - multuculturalism is not the same as multi-ethnic or multi-racial. The trouble, I think, is that most people think "culture" is about the food we eat, the art we admire, the music we listen to - etc. - a very narrow view of what culture actually is.
The fact is that you can not have a multicultural nation - as that requires multiple institutions and laws which is incompatible with nationhood. Either one culture will come to dominate the other or the nation will divide into multiple nations. Even when the cultures are broadly similar this is still quite likely - when they are completely at odds it is a certainty.
Surely both of you have heard of 'Divide and Rule'? It dates from Roman times.
The more a government can fragment a society the easy it is to control and manipulate.
Why is this such a revelation to you?
Dale's juvenile pondering gets something of a mauling in the comments thread. He is a wannabe member of the political elite and thus shares their bemusement at the rise of the BNP.
In fact, as this part of Swanley is the site of an old GLC 'overspill' estate, a big swing to the BNP was always a possibility, given the right circumstances.One of the local factors this time may be that this ward is just a couple of miles down the A20 from the bar where the Harry Potter actor was brutally stabbed to death by a 'murderer of no appearance' last summer.
When I read Dale's waffle I realise just how empty politics has become here.
Listening to 'Any Questions' or watching 'Question Time' one gets the same feeling. Maybe things were always like this but subjectively I feel that they werent always so pointless.
The mainstream politicos seem to riding on a train thats rapidly diverging from any real world concerns at all.
If one looks at issues like the EU, immigration, capital punishment, criminal justice policies generally, grammar schools and who knows what else. The policies of the main parties diverge entirely from what most of the population think. I'm sure the disconnect is greater than ever before.
"The fact is that you can not have a multicultural nation - as that requires multiple institutions and laws which is incompatible with nationhood."
And the establishment knows that. They have used "multiculturalism" as a wedge issue with which to achieve dominance over Christians. The problem for them is it has never got past being a wedge tactic, so they don't know how to handle an agressive non-Christian culture.
"Maybe things were always like this but subjectively I feel that they werent always so pointless."
They weren't - but with much of our politics now decided at EU level and as the parties have moved closer together in ethos so there is less to discuss.
Consequently they argue over relative trivialities around the edges of the big issues - what they call "nuance".
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