Vote Labour, or the bogeyman will get you

GNU LABOUR

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I don't know. Last year it was 'if you don't vote Labour, the Tories will get in', which might have been true if every single Labour voter in the country had voted with his conscience - although if that had happened all the votes would have gone to anti-war parties and we'd have had our first Lib Dem government. Now they've found an even bigger monster to scare us with.

Now the media take the shit that comes from Margaret Hodge (she should see a bowel specialist to stop it coming out of her mouth) and stir it in with some misinterpretation of their own, following a report by the Joseph Rowntree Trust. 25% of voters might consider voting for the BNP, apparently.

Hello, guys! That's MIGHT CONSIDER. I might consider sticking my fingers into an electric socket, but I would quickly persuade myself it was a bad idea. I have considered using a hosepipe on the garden, in accordance with Geraldine's desire to tell Thames Water to fuck off, but I don't know my neighbours very well and Justin has given me good reason to hesitate.

The BBC, on the 10pm news last night, did the government's work for them by hauling a load of toothless EastEnder types from Central Casting onto the screen to mutter dark things about "too many immigrants".

If the report had said that "25% of British people are a bit racist", I'd have looked up from my paper and murmured "is that all?" before returning to the saga of Michael Vaughan's knee.

Let's be clear: voting for a party at a General Election is something people still take seriously. If they can't take it seriously, they usually don't vote at all, or they vote for a candidate who has absolutely no chance of winning (eg Raving Loony, or Kilroy-Silk - excuse the tautology). If they want to register a protest vote, they do it at a by-election, a local election or a Euro-election. When you're choosing the government of your country, you don't piss about (which makes it all the scarier that one person in five still wanted Blair and his maniacs in charge). The BNP stands for principles which are abhorrent to the majority of people, who consider themselves decent-thinking: fairness, balance, restraint. Most people might have a fairly woolly concept of what those things are, but luckily they still associate the BNP will Millwall-suporting thugs. Sure, many British voters don't like it that the people who've moved in down the road have big beards, cook funny-smelling food and don't speak English. But they don't want them deported, put into camps, or even have their windows smashed.

The only thing that is potentially worrying is that more people are now prepared to say to a market researcher that they'd consider voting BNP. But that doesn't translate to an imminent jackbooted revolution.

Britain will never have a BNP government, and all these dark hints from the government are yet more scare stories told by a desperate administration, like an over-controlling Victorian parent trying to frighten disobedient children into compliance. You would hope the former Children's Minister would have better things to do than make kids nervous.

(Further excellent comment from NoseMonkey and Chris.)