by Jason Michael McCann

We can be sure this is the ultimate ambition of England’s protofascist Faragists

EUROPE breathed a sigh of relief when the predicted far-right populist surge failed to materialise in the recent European parliamentary elections. While the centre right and left groups, the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), suffered significant losses, Guy Verhofstadt’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) was, in terms of gains, the real winner – increasing by forty-one seats.

On balance, with the EPP and S&D maintaining a majority between them, the prognosis for Europe is good. The centre held. The feared far-right insurgence was largely contained within the United Kingdom, with a staggering twenty-nine of the UK’s seventy-three European parliamentary seats won by Nigel Farage’s new right-wing populist Brexit Party (that is 30.5 per cent of the vote).

Elsewhere in the European Union, and evidently conscious of England’s rapid lurch to the right, the surge was arrested, with voters turning to the Liberals and the Greens. But this leaves the United Kingdom in something of a pickle. Once again, the far-right has gained ground, only this time round it has virtually obliterated the Conservatives and reduced the Labour Party by half. In Britain, for as toxic as it is, the centre has not held. It has utterly collapsed in the face of Brexit frustration and as a consequence of the increasing temperature of the angry vote and the abject failure of the Conservatives and the Labour opposition to provide anything approximating “strong and stable” government.

Immediately, the result of this election must be cause for considerable concern – read: Alarm. Given that the purpose of any political party is to take the state to further the ambitions of the class, group, or faction it represents, we can be sure this is the ultimate ambition of England’s proto-fascist Faragists. Their success in the European elections, together with the fact they have increased their numbers on 2014, means the British far-right – under whatever brand or permutation – is within a stone’s throw of achieving this objective.

As a fundamentally undemocratic political ideology, right-wing authoritarian parties do not depend on winning majorities, and typically this is not how right-wing parties have come to power in the past – and it is the past from where we should be taking all our lessons here.