BNP List, Newsnight, New Labour and racisim at the next Election

I watched Newsnight last night* and wanted to write a post about their analysis of the BNP list they had carried out using the Mosaic profiling tool. This breakdown of the British people by location, class, salary and other information normally used in marketing campaigns.

As I had had a couple of glasses of wine I wanted to check my facts before posting so went to watch it on iPlayer and there it was, gone! Well "not available" anyway. This is unusual as it is available for other nights so I assume it was withheld because of the BNP analysis.

So although I can't refer to the source the main thing that I remember is how big the BNP were in Labour strongholds, most notably inner cities. Now this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who hasn't been hibernating on Zog recently, but it was the scale that struck me. It was big and accounted for a very large part of the BNP membership. Furthermore, they made the point that although there were many Professionals in the BNP it was dominated by C2's, again not too big a surprise.

I distinctly remember thinking that this is what frightens New Labour; they know there core vote in could melt away, not to the Tories but to the BNP, and why that are so keen to stress the BNP's racist undertones so much. Is this also why they raised the 70m immigration cap recently?

It could also explain why Labour has suddenly been very edgy on immigration recently, despite making political capital out of accusing the Tories of being racist every time they raise the issue.

Despite, maybe because of, the economic downturn, the next election could very easily turn in to a very nasty battle over immigration. If it does it could pan out like this:

Labour needs to be strong on immigration to satisfy their white inner city and C2 core vote that they can be trusted, this in itself will have racist undertones. They will stress their immigration points system. They may even revive the population cap argument.

The Conservative Party will stress high immigration rates and claim they first thought of the pints system, if not to get the vote switch to themselves themselves but to push Labour's core votes towards the BNP and so weaken them. Labour will accuse them of racism.

The LibDems will stand on the sideline and cast the racist pox on both their houses, but at the same time say they will be strong on illegal immigrants.

Amongst all this Nick Griffin will play the" we're not really racists argument for all its worth" and campaign heavily in inner cities, especially those with large immigrant communities. This will stir race tensions and I wouldn't be surprised if we get the odd race riot.

It does make you wonder why the list was published, though? Qui bono? I think I'll leave that one for the conspiracy theorists for now.

God, I hope I'm wrong, this outcome is far too depressing to contemplate as nobody will come out of it well.


* unusual for me as its past bedtime!