Closet racists and out in the open racists.
Here's a teaser for you. How do you prove that your party is not, in the words of David Cameron in one of his rare lucid moments, made up of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly"? By, err, getting an armoured personnel carrier and parking it outside the hall where the Conservative party is holding its spring conference. Of course, David Cameron wasn't being serious, because if we were to take him at his word, he'd have been describing George Eustace his press officer as such, as he was formerly a UKIP candidate. Cameron is also still maneuvering the party's exit from the main right-of-centre grouping in the European parliament, where he'll be joined by the likes of the frequently accused of racism Italian Northern League.
Away from closet racists and onto to the full-blown racists. The British National Party is in uproar because Sharif Abdel Gawad, a "totally assimilated Greek-Armenian" has been chosen to represent it in a Bradford ward. This has angered the less reconstructed members of the party, who are disgusted that an "ethnic" (the new word which stops the party from being completely and openly racist, instead hiding its agenda behind a veneer of respectability.) has been chosen for what they think should be a pure-white party.
The BNP really only has one purpose; a protest vote for those who think doing so will get attention. Its councillors which have got elected in the past have been useless, either not bothering to turn up to meetings or being completely incompetent. Unfortunately, as the political parties start to meld together as the Tories and Labour are doing, more and more are likely to turn to the extreme-right, especially when fed lies and propaganda in the election literature which drops through their door. All three main parties are claiming that the councils they run on the whole have the lowest council tax. All are campaigning on crime, and their policies are mostly indistinguishable from their national ones. The BNP instead usually focuses on what is actually happening locally, such as how it exploited the "grooming" of young girls in Keighley, wrongly blaming the local Asian population. Sad and depressing as it is, it seems they could conceivably receive more than the 190,000 votes they apparently picked up in last year's general election. Unless the "mainstream" parties realise the threat of such unmasked racism, the situation for the minorities in this country, picked on by both the popular press and those who think they are being ignored, is likely to get worse.
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