THE WAGES OF LOUSY MAINSTREAM POLITICS: One fifth of electorate consider voting BNP. “The YouGov poll, taken hours after the BBC show aired, indicates that 22% of people in this country would ‘seriously consider’ voting for the far-right party in an upcoming election.” I believe that the BNP’s appeal stems from a sense that New Labour, and the Tories, are unable or unwilling to deal with problems like aggressive Islamism and economic decline, that ordinary Brits find troubling. I’m not sure if ineffectual liberalism is actually a precondition for fascism, but it certainly doesn’t help matters.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:

Glenn — The aspect of the BNP surge in the Uk that keeps getting missed is that the UK has had a perfectly reasonable, not even vaguely fascist conservative-libertarian third party — the UK Independence Party — for quite a while. It was trashed and tarred as “fascist” and equivalent to continental parties such as Le Pen’s. Now they have a real fascist party…

As I say, the wages of lousy politics.