The BNP didn’t do nearly as well in the Euro elections as I thought they might – there was no sudden tipping into a situation where a large group of supporters realised how large they really are. I suppose with hindsight an election just isn’t a mechanism for that to happen – my comparison with the fall of Eastern bloc single-party machines was invalid, because the self-discovery process requires that people openly show their support for the opposition, and, whatever happens to the Labour Party, the wider establishment is still strong enough for that sort of public display to be highly inadvisable.
Of course, it is only a suspicion of mine that such a group really exists, and the outcome is equally well explained by the theory that in fact only a few percent of the electorate supports the BNP’s ideals and policies. The larger number of people who, like Peter Hitchens, oppose immigration on the basis of economic and social issues rather than on the basis of race, are still reluctant to associate themselves with the shunned racists.