politics

what is it about the right these days.
cameron is calling ukip members racist (as if all the conservative party are (and excuse the phrase) whiter than white on the subject .
(as a sidebar here yasmin alibhai-brown of the independent and of the standard – yeah i know very likely bedfellow – was going on about how cameron shouldn’t use the word racist in such a way, because in doing so it detracts from the power of the word and the seriousness of the allegations. you know i would agree with her if it wasn’t for the fact that so often the word is used by minority groups to prevent debate, and that it is easier to throw out the allegation than it is to defend against it…)

ironically for most people cameron is just stating the obvious – we all knew they were racist, so it wasn’t exactly news or a shock. in fact i know someone who thought he said they were all closet rapist – well it would have been news then!
but his comment does seem to have been the first foot that cameron has put wrong.

meanwhile on the slightly further far right the bnp have gotten themselves in the news because of the candidacy of sharif abdel gawad, whom the bnp describes as a "totally assimilated greek-armenian". members of the bnp’s rank and file are up in arms about this as they say that it should be an all white party, and they are not placated when they are told that sharif is not a pakistani muslim. others say he is just going to confuse the electorate as to what the bnp stands for.

in echoes of leaders such as blair and cameron, bnp spokesman phil edwards said those members who refused to accept the candidacy had no place in the party.
though quite what this means is not made clear: is this a move on the part of the bnp to be more inclusive, have they decided that there is there a time limit on how long you remain non british?
this follows an attempt by nick griffin to allow non-whites to join the bnp, an attempt that failed in the face of resistance from the party.

to add to it all sharif is so named because his mum had a crush on omar sharif, while he is here because (wait for it… wait for it…) his father was a refugee. you couldn’t make this stuff up.

this all comes at a time when the bnp are trying to field more candidates in the forthcoming local elections than ever before. oddly among one of their target areas is east london, which as we know has recently seen the election of one mp based on the appeal of race as an issue. step forward respect and george galloway.

(one labour candidate is taking the issue very seriously and is organizing school trips to auschwitz, which while is a noble idea limits to idea of racism to one moment in history and to one group. one has to wonder where he is getting the cash from to do this and also how big an impact is it going to have – how many kids will go? 100, 500, a thousand? hopefully they will be of voting age or it will be a waste of money.)

so we have cameron going on about a party being closet racists even though they share similar policies.
we have the bnp trying to be more inclusive.

has british politics gone mad?
nope there is boris getting into trouble again for having another mistress. it seems the more things change the more that they stay the same.