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As the June 10th elections approach, there's a slightly unreal atmosphere surrounding British politics. In the newspapers, and in the online world of blogs and political party websites, a consensus appears to be growing that the political landscape of the UK will be changed definitively after these elections, even though they are three separate elections (EP, local council, and London mayoral/London Assembly), and don't even amount to a national referendum. In the streets of the capital, there are the signs of something something that may be just an anticipation of the European Championship Finals, or possibly of something else, which hasn't been seen in England for a long time - an English nationalist movement - as cars speed around the thoroughfares with St George's flags attached to their aerials.

The new UK Independence Party (UKIP), with its hardline anti-EU and anti-European platform, is touted to take more than 20 per cent of the vote in the UK European elections, thus pulling ahead of the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems), and succeeding in them in third place after Labour and Conservatives. Together with the British National Party (BNP), with which it shares many common goals, this new grouping in British politics is a slightly troubling phenomenon, for it suggests that the far right is gathering strength in a way that hasn't been seen in Britain since before World War II. Using issues on which the electorate has confused though often understandable opinions, including migration from Eastern Europe, Muslim immigration, hostility to the EU and the Euro, taxation, public transport, education, and so on, these parties seek to reassert a "Britishness" (or rather an "Englishness") that has not been clearly formulated, and which could, in the wrong hands, be put to the service of policies and attitudes reminiscent of the Fascism of the 1920s. There is also a would-be "respectable" extremism of the left - George Galloway's Respect Coalition, self-styled as "the greatest mass movement of our age", looks for support among disillusioned Labour supporters of the Old Labour persuasion, and seems to be finding it. By the look of it, there are a lot of "wrong hands" at large.

With Labour under constant attack over its stance on Iraq, and with the Conservatives still unable to present themselves as a viable future alternative government, it looks as though the smaller parties will do well on June 10th. I have to say that I find this prospect a worrying one. At times, it gives the sense that one is living in a foreign country.