This Island Now

So the UK's electorate has voted in the local and European elections (in the latter with a higher than usual turnout, contrasting with the drop elsewhere in Europe), and the results have been fairly predictable: a shift towards the smaller fringe parties, and especially the UKIP, which campaigned on an anti-European agenda, but which also brings together Britain's anti-immigrant, anti-politician and anti-metropolitan constituencies. As the Guardian points out, parties like the UKIP are familiar in other countries "from France and Italy to the United States and Australia. This is the first time such a party has made such an impact in a UK election. It is a big hit against the European cause but, as results from elsewhere in the EU showed last night, it paradoxically leaves British politics looking more typically European."

I commented in an earlier post on the sense of foreignness I derive from seeing cars driving about London with the St George's cross fluttering from their aerials - this kind of national flag-flying is more commonly encountered in Mediterranean countries, where it's mostly associated with the political right wing. Populism in the UK has a rather dubious past - its antecedents include figures like Enoch Powell, whose Rivers of Blood Speech of 1968 did nothing to soothe the intercommunal tensions in Britain at the time. As Johann Hari has shown, the UKIP has some rather strange fish in its pond. It also has a charismatic leader, which makes it even more of a problematic phenomenon.

While I don't see fascism on Britain's political horizon yet, there are clear and unmistakable signs that it may be on the way - coming, as they say, to a theatre near you, in the not too distant future. The British National Party also "did well" in the elections which have just passed. And the behaviour of football fans in Cryodon, Bromley and other parts of London last night after the England defeat shows what may lie in store on the streets in the months ahead. If the prognostications of many commentators are fulfilled, and Tony Blair, weakened by the constant barracking he has received over Iraq, cedes his party leadership, and thus the premiership, to Gordon Brown, the Labour government will move inevitably to the left. The Conservatives, with much of their support gone to the UKIP and BNP, will not be able to mount an effective challenge, Labour will win next year's general election by a narrow margin, and the right wing of the political spectrum will gravitate towards the ultra right. Let's hope this doesn't come to pass.

These reflections were made all the more acute by watching the Panorama special screened by BBC1 last night. Entitled Covering Up, it mostly consisted of an exposition of the views of four young British Muslim women who, we were told, "are choosing to wear the hijab - to cover their hair with headscarf - or even to veil themselves, and to cover their face entirely." The four included Sister Muddassar Arani, the lawyer who defended the Islamic extremist Abu Hamza - and this inclusion was rather noticeable. While two of the women who were interviewed mainly spoke of wearing the hijab, or veil, as a means of asserting their personal identity, almost like a fashion accessory, a third saw it as a badge of political protest, while for Sister Arani it was the mark of her alienation from British society, an alienation intensified by the obvious hostility that was expressed in her statements, her appearance and her gestures during the film. The programme seemed to be mixing apples and oranges in a dangerous way - the essentially playful and mischievous youthful protest of the two younger interviewees contrasted sharply with the hard-edged and politicized stance of the other two. Yet the BBC reporter was trying to blur the edges of this contrast, in a way that was meant to suggest that Arani, too, was merely attempting to "be herself", separate but integrated within the context of free expression in a liberal and tolerant society. The obvious falsity of this line was underscored by the comments of a Christian cleric, who questioned whether Muslims in Britain really wanted to integrate at all.

The programme tended to reinforce the fallacy of a confusion between race and religion that's common on the left - "Islamophobia" is seen as a form of racism, which it palpably is not, as Islam is not a race but a creed or, some would say, an ideology. Criticism and rejection of militant Islam is as valid as criticism and rejection of Nazism, or of Marxism-Leninism. This point was not brought out at all in the Panorama programme, which also failed to interview any ordinary non-Muslims. Some of these omissions and discrepancies are discussed on the BBC's Comments Page for the programme.

Thus, the shots in which the cars flying the St George's Cross were clearly intended to suggest a symbol of menace were wasted, and also bizarrely inappropriate: as an anti-racist message, these shots would have been most effective. But in the context of militant Islam they failed, because the threat and menace so obviously present in Arani's stance throughout the programme were so much greater.

With confusion like this on the liberal left, and with the extremes of Islamofascism and ultra-rightwing populism growing, it's hard to see how a focused debate on the UK's future is going to be possible. We can only hope that the run-up to the coming general election will concentrate minds to an extent where reason can begin to prevail once again on the political scene.