Jörg Haider And Our Own Car Crash Politics

The rise of this person was what happened when two supposedly rival parties decided to operate as a cartel, agreeing in advance about everything that mattered and even about most things that didn't, functioning as a single entity, and working as a money-making machine for hangers on.

It was also what happened when a supposedly Christian-based, morally and socially conservative party opposed to incorporation into a superstate (a pan-German one, but the principle, at least, is the same) and instead looking to preserve as much as possible of the legacy of an imperial past, together with a supposed party of social democratic economics likewise opposed to the country's being swallowed up into a much larger yet narrower entity, simultaneously and by mutual agreement abandoned any pretence at giving practical effect to those principles.

While Haider became quite sceptical about the EU as it actually operated in practice, he came out of a tradition which has always favoured European federalism in principle, as the means first to pan-German unity and then to Continental, and even global, domination. That tradition is also vigorously, virulently and even viciously secular in general and anti-Catholic in particular.

So we in Britain have plenty of reason to take note.

On a bridge in Durham this afternoon, I saw stalls both for the "Socialist Party" (Militant as was) and for the BNP. Those manning the Militant one were clearly undergraduates, and were merely collecting signatures for two petitions, one to renationalise the energy companies, the other against the BNP. But those manning the BNP one were older, they spoke with local accents (I mean really local - Durham itself or its immediate environs), and they were clearly doing a roaring trade in recruitment among the Saturday shoppers.

I had assumed that, with only three seats to fill, the North East, alone among the English regions, would be spared a BNP MEP in June, never mind the two that they are on for in each of London, the North West and the South East, at least. But after today, I am not so sure. Neil Heron gave a seat to the Lib Dems rather than UKIP last time. Having won his cause, he is unlikely to stand again, and if he does, then he will only be giving the BNP a ninth, if not a twelfth, seat. He really does need to think about that. As, in BNP-infested Sunderland, I have no doubt that he does.

Who can stop this from happening, both in the North East and throughout the country?

We can.

And nobody else can.