The investigation of the battle between the BNP and Labour in the local elections by Peter Oborne in last week’s Spectator has triggered a furious controversy about the threat of the far Right. Jon Cruddas, the MP for Dagenham, told this magazine that the BNP ‘are on the verge of a major political breakthrough’; New Labour’s fixation with middle-class voters in swing constituencies had, he claimed, created an angry tribe among the white working and lower-middle classes.
Margaret Hodge, the employment minister, subsequently told the Sunday Telegraph that eight out of ten of her constituents in Barking, east London, were threatening to vote BNP on 4 May. Andy Burnham, the Home Office minister, parried by claiming that the far Right ‘pose a very localised threat and I am worried that if we give them too much coverage, it can back up the notion that they are a potent protest vote’. On the Tory side, Ann Widdecombe warned that ‘there is a genuine unease with what the major parties are doing’.
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