Rotherham's race rows may be a taste of toxicity to come. Labour support for a referendum would help draw the poison
The party that David Cameron has described as a "bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" couldn't have asked for more. Less than a week before Thursday's Rotherham byelection, the town's children's services department was revealed to have taken three children of east European migrants from foster carers because they were members of the rightwing UK Independence party.
A media and political storm naturally followed. Ukip might be hostile to immigration and multiculturalism, the leaders of the main parties insisted, but they were a "mainstream party". For Ukip it was the ultimate badge of respectability. The small-state cuts enthusiasts, whose main platform is withdrawal from the European Union, had arrived – just in time to boost their chances in Rotherham and two other Labour seats the same day, Middlesbrough and Croydon.
Activists from other parties confirm that Ukip support has surged in the town – where tensions were already inflamed by racially charged sexual assault scandals, and hostility to EU migration is high. Add the fact that the election is being held because the former Blairite Labour MP was forced out over expenses fraud and the stage has been set for a classic byelection insurgency.
Ukip has already been bolstered by rising opposition to the EU (polls now regularly show a majority wanting to pull out) and wider disaffection with the political establishment. Nationally Ukip is polling up to 10%, and it beat the Liberal Democrats in both this month's police commissioner elections and the Corby byelection. No wonder the Tory leadership is panicking and slapped down its vice-chairman, Michael Fabricant, for suggesting an electoral pact.
But Rotherham could also be a taste of toxicity to come at the next general election, which is scheduled to follow the lifting of current restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian migrant workers. After years of cuts and falling incomes, when working class communities in particular have been at the sharp end of migrant labour exploitation, expect Cameron's new strategist Lynton Crosby – whose anti-Muslim ranting was recently exposed – to find ways to play the ethnic card.
In areas such as Rotherham, the EU can effectively be a proxy for immigration. Labour may well be rescued by the spread of protest votes between different parties. In both Rotherham and Croydon North, the odds have also narrowed on the leftwing Respect party, which won Bradford by a landslide earlier this year.
The growing challenge to the mainstream parties from both right and left reflects the kind of political polarisation that is common during economic crises and has already gone much further on the European mainland. There the anti-migrant hard right was already well established before the crash. What has been new since the eurozone erupted into crisis has been the growth of the radical left in countries such as Greece, France and the Netherlands.
So far, the free-market nationalists of Ukip have been taking the bulk of their votes from the Tories. But if they can poll well in Labour heartlands such as Rotherham, as they did last year in Barnsley, they will open up the prospect of establishing themselves as rightwing populists on the continental model.
The only real obstacle is an electoral system that penalises smaller parties and Ukip's monomaniacal focus on the European Union – though the party can still exert powerful pressure on the political mainstream. And given the intensity of the crisis, austerity and unrest in the eurozone, it's hardly surprising that longstanding antipathy in a Britain itself afflicted with cuts and recession has tipped over into support for outright withdrawal.
Put on one side the City interests and Brussels budgetary follies that animate the Atlanticist Europhobes. The employment rights and financial speculation tax plans that get the British chauvinistic press in such a lather are the kind of things people in Britain mostly like about the EU.
But what have been mercilessly revealed by the crisis are the inbuilt flaws at the heart of the union. The neoliberal model of deregulation and privatisation that has failed across the western world is built into the structure of the EU by treaty. Freedom of movement for capital without freedom for public intervention and investment has become a fatal obstacle to recovery.
What was always a democratic deficit has now, as the EU's Troika commandeers member-state governments, become a crisis of democracy. And a lopsided currency union without large-scale tax-and-spend transfers, underpinned by a deflationary central bank without full monetary powers and democratic control, was always a disaster waiting to happen.
As failing austerity is now being given the force of law across the eurozone, the prospects are now of deepening crisis, regardless of the current calming of financial markets. The European status quo is clearly not sustainable, and either breakup or reconstruction of the eurozone and the wider EU will have to take place if the crisis is to be overcome.
In that context, the political elite's terror of allowing people in Britain to vote on the relationship with Europe is an unacceptable absurdity. For the Tories, a commitment to a full in-out referendum would have the advantage of shooting Ukip's fox. But Cameron is said to be toying with an "in-in" option that would only offer the alternative of a "renegotiated" package or the status quo – and the blustering Boris Johnson has flip-flopped, suddenly discovering the issue isn't as "simple" as he thought a week ago.
Ed Miliband has, meanwhile, ruled out a "referendum now", fearing the issue could divide and dominate a future Labour government. But not only is a commitment to give people a say on the country's central constitutional arrangments right in itself – if, as seems likely, Cameron is driven to support some kind of referendum, it would give Labour the chance to seize the democratic initiative from the Tories.
Miliband has argued for "comprehensive reform" of the EU. There would be plenty of progressive allies for that in Europe (and more before long), which could create the basis for a Labour referendum. What is certain is that only a break with neoliberal austerity and anti-democratic diktat in or out of the eurozone will head off the threat from the radical right.
Twitter: @SeumasMilne
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