The rise of British racism may be horribly close

Angela Wallace is one of a new breed of wavering voter. ‘I’m disgusted with all of the parties,’ she says, peering suspiciously at the men with clipboards on her doorstep. ‘MPs are not like they used to be. Now they’re all as bad as each other.’ The political activists I am accompanying have a ready response. ‘Well, why not make a protest vote?’ asks the candidate. ‘We’re the BNP.’ They have a leaflet ready: ‘Punish the Pigs’, it says. The BNP, it continues, is ‘the only party that makes them squeal. We’re NOT in it for the money.’ She promises to think about it.

In these deliberations, she will be very far from alone. In next week’s European and local elections, some 800,000 people are projected to vote BNP if the party continues its steady, menacing and (since 1987) unbroken advance. This time it is on the cusp of a breakthrough.