What is it about Britain which makes people reluctant to vote for the extreme right or left?
We have addressed the miracle of Barking, where 12 BNP councillors were voted in, and just as it seemed they might gain a foothold, all were shown the door in 2010. And here we are, just down the road from the scene of that convulsion, poring over it all again. Not this time as a crisis averted, but as a piece of social history. Three talking heads being interviewed in a suburban shopping centre by the equalities chief Trevor Phillips, and considering what Barking tells us about our country. On the one hand, the willingness of large sections of the white working class here to endorse a racist party. On the other, the overwhelming rejection of that party at the next available opportunity. And the over-riding question: why has Britain never really embraced the far right?
It's a pertinent question. Look at France, where Marine Le Pen has two MPs. Look at Holland, Sweden and Greece, where unsavoury types strut with the legitimacy of the electorate. The same basic issues exploited by the far right afflict us here. Why don't far righters and even fascists make hay?
Radio 4 documentary No Extremists Please – We're British, which will be broadcast on Tuesday, will say there could be something about the people. An island race with a conservative bent repelled by extremes of left or right. People with a psyche partly explained by last century's fight against fascism. People who can't get overexcited about political theory, much less eugenics. Folk deeply suspicious of those who take themselves too seriously.
Perhaps there is something about the institutions. A politics largely served by two amorphous parties, flexible enough to tack right when the prevailing sentiment calls for it, and left when necessary; leaving little space for parties on the margin to sustain themselves. Institutions that fall down, but self-correct, as Labour did to retrieve the situation in Barking.
Perhaps it is the far righters themselves, who throughout contemporary history have appeared incompetent and/or comic. Think Nick Griffin on Question Time – or the BNP leader in Barking, too drunk to propose a toast to soldiers returned from Afghanistan. Or Sir Oswald Mosley, lampooned by PG Wodehouse as Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. Could be all of the above, to varying degrees at different times. But if it is an accident, it is a happy one.
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