Labour are warning that the far right are becoming more dangerous – perhaps it’s time for them to stop being complacent.

John Denham announced a new government initiative on the weekend to address the concerns of the white working classes who he said had been “exploited” by the far right. The government, it seems, has finally taken its head, ostrich-like, out of the sand of middle class suburbia and realised that in their absence the right wing have filled the void that their disinterest in traditional Labour heartlands has created.

As secretary of state for communities and local government, Mr Denham has actually helped to deepen the class divide that has led to traditional Labour areas becoming a breeding ground for racists. In a speech he gave to the Fabian Society only a few months ago – a speech, aimed at wooing the middle ground of voters – Mr Denham said that the old ideal of egalitarianism that had “dominated much left-liberal thinking since the 1960s” was over. In other words people were now willing to accept disparities in wealth and we should stop kicking against the system. This is sort of the political theory equivalent of “shit happens”. He also said:

“If you think you are in the middle, policies and language aimed at ‘the poor’ leave you out. And if you are in the middle, you are more likely to be concerned about whether ‘the top’ is doing better than you, than you are about ‘the bottom’.”

Well, guess what John? Those people at ‘the bottom’ are now in danger of becoming a major thorn in the side of the Home Counties voters New Labour has been so busy attracting for the last 12 years.

The far right are making gains, they aren’t large gains yet – they are, however, getting a lot of publicity. In the vacuum of any decent opposition to them on the ground, that publicity is starting to win people over to their crude and ignorant ideologies. Every time the media shows someone from the BNP or the English Defence League on TV they are in isolation. If anyone from any of the major political parties deigns to even comment on them, it is usually from the despatch box at Westminster. The logic being: “you are ‘down there’ and we are ‘up here’”. Unfortunately, ‘down there’ is in the grass roots of the constituencies – i.e. where the voters are. A good, if maverick, example of how this optical illusion works can be seen in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (bear with me). When Romeo talks about how attractive his latest crush Rosaline is, his friend Benvolio says to him:

“Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,

Herself poised with herself in either eye”.

In other words, in the absence of any comparison, she looked like a good thing. So it is with the BNP. Those who say that Nick Griffin should not be given the platform of a respected programme such as Question Time to air his racist opinions are missing the point. It is exactly the platform that they need to be seen on. They need to be engaged with in a respectable environment so they can be compared to mainstream politicians – and completely annihilated.

Ignoring the problem has not and never will make it go away – just as ignoring working class voters, your own traditional constituency, will only make them turn against you. Complacency, combined with a recession that has hit the poorest and most marginalised in our society the hardest, is the ideal breeding ground for fascism. Necessity is the mother of all reinvention. Labour may lose the next election, but for the good of the country as a whole they need to remember who they are and win back the working class.