[iuopyra]

I think it's always blown out of proportion in terms of elections. A lot of people have, and always have had, tacit sympathy for groups such as the BNP, National Front and their foreign equivalents, but for a number of reasons that sympathy or covert support rarely translates into sustained electoral progress for these parties. Politics is geneally cyclical, so far right groups may gain votes one year and lose them the next year, if support for far right groups grows substantially over the next decade, as in 3 or 4 per cent growth per annum compounded, so what? The BNP, which is by no means the smallest far right group in Europe, polls around 3-5% of the vote nationally in a parliamentary election, if they grow at 5% every year for the next ten years 90% of voters will still not be voting for them.

Centrist parties will beef up their immigration policy to attract fence sitters who may be lulled by media savvy far rightist groups, but they will only go so far and generally the fence sitters will meet them half way (i.e. in order to pull the average BNP voter away from the BNP the Conservative Party would not need to replicate BNP policy, just make a gesture such as advocating a burka ban).

Bottom line, until they're starving people would rather not vote for 'fascists'. They have been conditioned to be this way and that is the greatest defence against the rise of the far right.