Clarke sacked, Labour stung

Charles Clarke has been axed from the Cabinet following last night's local elections disaster for Labour. I'm not in the least bit surprised. He may not have been directly responsible for last week's cock-up (and am I the only one who thinks that just 38 crims remaining out of over 1,000 in under a week ain't bad?), but this is about damage-control and popular appeal now, simple as that. I said last week that if there was a general election, the Tories would win. They already held a majority of the national vote at the local level, but last night they widened that significantly, and at Labour's expense.

Realistically, with an overall turnout estimated at a mere 36% (down three points from 2004), the Conservatives still have a long way to go before they can be confident about winning the next general election. Nonetheless, local elections are about protest votes, and the general shift towards the Right indicates how deep-seated Labour's image problem currently is. How things change in just under a decade.

Meanwhile, the BNP has depressingly become the second-largest party in Barking and Dagenham, although a recount is currently taking place. The party more than doubled its overall number of seats from 20 to 44 yesterday. While this is a drop in the ocean considering that there are about 22,000 seats in all, it is obviously still a cause for grave concern. After all, a simple protest vote against Labour could have gone to any number of mainstream parties on either side of the political spectrum. A vote for the BNP is a racist vote, and nothing more. What I'm curious about is why such a far-right party is winning any seats in the first place.

I think I am correct in saying that for historical reasons, neo-Nazi political parties have a slightly stronger hold in European countries than they do in North America. From personal experience I can tell you that no party that anywhere near resembles the BNP has won local council seats in Canada during my lifetime, even in immigrant-rich cities like Toronto. Why this difference?

The only thing I can think of is that the existing inhabitants of places like Toronto and Montreal are much better prepared and more willing to adapt to a stream of new people moving in from other countries. Much is made in the UK of the need for immigrants to integrate more successfully into their adopted societies - a point with which I agree wholeheartedly - but less is said of the need to answer the questions and concerns of those people who have already lived in these societies for generations. That ignorance breeds racism is hardly earth-shattering, but it seems to me that if there was some sort of programme in place to dispel the right-wing myths that these people are "taking our jobs" and "buying our houses", and explaning that they are often fleeing the most dire living conditions imaginable, perhaps the whities in Barking and Dagenham would be more inclined to get talking to these new arrivals and include them in their daily lives, rather than hurrying on past and looking at the floor.

A country like Canada was built on immigration in a way that England wasn't, and as such, it's probably had an easier time adapting to new waves of immigrants that continue to arrive. Still, in the globalised world that we live in, immigration has become the best way to support our way of life. Some people are obviously taking more time accepting this than others, but the core reasons for this need to be addressed. Otherwise, prosecuting the likes of Nick Griffin for incitement to racial hatred is simply treating the symptom instead of the disease.