On Election Day 2009

Regardless of interest in UKIP and the BNP, the expectation today is that Labour will lose its significant presence in the South West, will see its dominance in Wales eroded and that both major parties may be placed under pressure from UKIP in London and the North West.

The 2004 British intake into the European Parliament operated marginally in favour of euro-scepticism (more so, if the Celtic component is removed). This margin is now likely to increase significantly. A dip in Europeanism and a moderate rise in nationalism both seem likely.

Analyses of the BNP vote in advance of June 4th seemed to suggest that it had been holding at 5% and to be attracting the votes of middle aged working class males of low educational attainment who were either unemployed or under employment pressure.

BNP voters were also to be found mostly in the decayed council estates of the Northern and Midlands cities where they face competition for resources from West Asian migrants and communities. This is generally Labour not Tory country and the national effect has probably been much exaggerated.

In fact, the bigger threat to the mainstream parties comes from UKIP, which is right-wing and nationalist but not racist. In the event, aesthetic and libertarian considerations are likely to shift the bulk of the dissident Right away from the BNP towards UKIP as the best means of punishing the establishment.

There is however a strong non-racist anti-immigration vote which is not to be assumed to be right-wing (except in liberal fantasies) by any means. It is currently falling disproportionately towards the BNP and UKIP but it is also a ‘main issue’ amongst perhaps a fifth of Tory voters.

There is a leftist dissident challenge to the right [No2EU] which has a socialist model of resistance to wage undercutting and service degradation but it is facing, in effect, a national news blackout in favour of the liberal mainstream. Its arguments are more complex and need time to communicate.

The truth is that nationalist concerns and the politics of ‘ressentiment’ have dominated the political agenda in the last year because that is how the mainstream establishment have wanted to play it. Legitimate concerns about liberal economics have pushed reasonable dissent sharply to the right.

What is interesting is that immigration may have grown in salience in the first decade of the century but, in the mainstream parties, so have issues of defence, foreign affairs and terrorism (the EU, of course, as an issue, disproportionately so for UKIP supporters).

Domestic service concerns (health, education and welfare) have been pushed into second place for a while, although they will surely return in force with tax rises and spending cuts. This may be a delayed legacy of Blair’s refusal to enter into dialogue with the electorate over the Iraq war.

This mood amongst the public is very hard to interpret. Poll findings may mean that the public has now no major difference in its thinking from the mainstream consensus on domestic policy (other than on immigration effects and the general issue of management competence in implementing policy).

However, the implication is equally that the public is highly polarized about, perhaps opposed to, the mainstream’s assumptions about Britain’s role in the world.

Serious questions are being raised even now about expensive interventions overseas, the effects of the war on terror on civil liberties, the close relationship with the US and participation in Europe - but there may be something deeper going on even than this critique of the current government.

Perhaps we are seeing a re-evaluation of national identity as a bulwark against the uncertainties of globalization. Although this is conventionally interpreted as ‘right wing’, it is not necessarily so and it may be that the liberal elite has still not yet come to terms with this turning inward under pressure.

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