Politics against Democracy: Party Withdrawal and Populist Breakthrough

Abstract

Strange things have been happening in Western Europe. In fact, they have been happening to such an extent that to term them ‘strange’ is perhaps inaccurate. They have even been happening in the continent’s oldest democracy where, as the local elections of May 2006 reminded us, there exists a party, the British National Party (BNP), which promotes racial hatred, demands draconian punishments for crime and loudly condemns the misdeeds of the political class. Of course, as Stefano Fella’s chapter in this volume explains, the British electoral system makes it extremely difficult for the BNP to win seats in parliament. However, this does not mean that sooner or later a more conventional party in search of extra votes is not going to borrow from the rhetoric and themes which have clearly helped the BNP. In fact, if we look at the 2005 general election campaigns of both Labour and the Conservatives, we can see that this has already happened to some degree as regards issues like immigration and security. Moreover, at the 2004 European Parliament elections, the fiercely anti-European, welfare chauvinist and anti-Establishment UK Independence Party (UKIP) obtained a stunning result, gaining 16.1 per cent and 12 seats.