If anything, this result understates the support for the BNP

So, why the great shock? Why the hand-wringing? It’s not as if they weren’t warned. Why all those metropolitan journos disembarking at Barnsley station on the 11.47 from King’s Cross and gingerly approaching the local Untermensch with a sort of disgusted awe: what is it about this ghastly place that resulted in 17 per cent of its benighted inhabitants voting for Hitler’s bastard offspring, the British National Party? It must be simply that they don’t like the local darkies, think that there are too many of them and, poor dumb creatures that they are, feel threatened. Not racist, as such; simply lacking an education.

But this approach to explaining the BNP — the geographical anomaly/thick northerners paradigm — is running out of fuel. Five years ago it seemed to work when the media could point to racial tension in Burnley (with its no-go areas for whites) and Oldham and Bradford; a reactive vote, spurred by dumb, inchoate anger.