NBTTT: Ukip / East Angular

An aspect in which East Angular differs to a lot of the rest of.the country is that while it's experiencing the post-2000 migration from eastern Europe, it didn't get anywhere near as much as other parts of the country of other migration events in recent history - West Indian migration in the 50s and 60s, subcontinent migration in the 70s and 80s.

Places like Birmingham, London, Manchester, Nottingham have all pretty much learned the migration script: a new wave.of migrants start arriving, there's decade or so of They Don't Integrate, They're Talking All The Jobs, They're Taking All The Benefits, They're Criminals, They're Breeding Like Rats, and then, when it turns out they're just people who want to earn a living and bring up their kids, like everyone else, it all calms down.

It just happens that this wave of migration coincides with the austerity necessitated by having to haul the banks out of the s**t in 2008, so the usual migration-related gripes and frictions are magnified.

There's no big Ukip movement in East Angular, and there's been no political earthquake. Ukip, for all the noise they make, and for all the attention they've been gifted by the press (and BBC), are still the fifth party of British politics. They took a lower share of the vote on Thursday than they did in 2009. They've got fewer councillors now, when they're supposedly causing a political earthquake, than the BNP got at their peak. Remember the great political earthquake that the BNP precipitated? No, of course not. Their support simply drifted off until the next dishonest migration-fixated bandwagon rolled into town. And that one will roll away next year when Ukip fail to get Westminster representation, and everyone goes "huh, well that was all a lot of noise for nothing. Next?" And then maybe the English Democrats will get their turn. And people can tell lies about "No English Allowed" signs for them, instead of on Ukip's behalf, like that weak bumwash peddled on here this morning.

Posted By: Arizona Bay, May 26, 15:09:14