What a pleasure it was to hear Nick Griffin again on Radio 5 Live this morning. I'd forgotten he was still with us, indeed that he's still an MEP (for another week at least).
If dictionaries could talk, their definition of a busted flush would sound just like Griffin did today. Hard to remember how big a bogeyman he was just five years ago, when the BNP were on the rise.
As one might imagine, there was no attempt on the part of Nicky Campbell to conceal his loathing of Griffin in the interview (and I use the word loosely), but it felt a bit like kicking a blind beggar. The BNP thunder has long since been stolen by UKIP, and Griffin was just flailing wildly as he sinks into irrelevance.
One of the few points he managed to get in, during his allotted three minutes, was a claim that the BNP's poll ratings had gone up after he appeared on BBC One's Question Time in 2009. Having just checked, it's clear that he's not entirely lying, though there is an element of exaggeration.
Which reminded me of Nigel Farage on Question Time last week. That appearance provoked complaints on Twitter and elsewhere about how much airtime the UKIP leader was getting, but the reason for that was simple: all the other panellists had decided to gang up on him. Just as they did against Griffin five years ago. And if the response to someone as personally unappealing as Griffin was to increase his poll ratings, what is the likely effect when the same tactic is applied to Farage?
It seems that no one learns. If a fringe politician makes as his central appeal a claim to be against the establishment, then it does him no harm at all when the establishment behaves in such a way as to demonstrate that point for him on national television.
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6 comments:
This rather reminds me of the appeal of Thatcher to the National Front constituency following her "really rather swamped" comments in 1978. The periodic ability of sections of the conservative right to present themselves as anti-establishment is a fascinating but sobering phenomenon. The appeal to 'common sense' and a rugged outspokenness is rarely achieved by the centre left/Labour movement who ought to have the courage to highlight the absurdity of voting against your class and economic interests I.E. UKIPS stance on employee rights etc.
Though I'm not familiar with the formers politics I never thought I would encounter both Chris Andrews and Nick Griffin in the same thought piece!
It's all about defining the establishment, isn't it? In the 1930s the far right claimed there was an international establishment controlled by Jews. Thatcher painted the leadership of the unions as the establishment.
Now UKIP is making progress by denouncing the entirety of Westminster. And I think there's mileage in that.
When Labour attacks the Coalition as being posh and out-of-touch, they're tapping into a popular perception, but they're not going to benefit from it. Because they're seen in much the same light by most of the public.
Milibands variable attempts to distance himself from New Labour, even if well meaning, are stymied by his party's long years of adherence to the Thatcher legacy. How can (semi-) post New Labour present itself as both a vehicle of protest and fit to govern? The inevitable result seems politically opportunistic and disingenuous. Half-baked appeals to class war imagery come across as taking the piss given that part of New Labour's pitch was the refutation of such politics.
Did you ever join the Labour Party?
I've read that Miliband has been studying the intellectual reformulation of the Conservative Party during its mid/late 70s period in opposition: the rejection of the Heath approach as a model for disengagement from New Labour. This approach would only have worked if there had been a fundamental challenge to political/economic orthodoxies as had been the case during the 70s. The lefts hope that the 2007/8 crash presented this opportunity has been dashed.
The challenge of UKIP, the Scottish referendum, we live in interesting times and yet politically I'm overwhelmed by boredom!
I know what you mean about the boredom. I've always been most interested in parties in opposition, because that's when changes happen, or rather when they should. But Miliband's Labour doesn't exactly fascinate me.
I think you're right that the big moment for reinvention has been and gone. Labour were in office at the time and didn't have the nerve to change.
But the effect of that inactivity is that we probably only delayed the full effects of the recession. It feels to me that things are going to get nasty in the next couple of years, and maybe then Miliband's successor may make a difference. Except that I can't see who's going to do it.
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