NIGEL

For various personal reasons, I'm not overly fond of the name Nigel, and haven't been for some considerable time*. But names are only names, and it's really nobody's fault if their parents were unwise enough to give them such a monicker, and I really need to grow up and get over it.

However, when someone is given a name which gives them the initials N.F., and then grows up to head what may turn out to be the most fascistic political movement in Europe since the last one, you do have to wonder.

They might as well have called themselves the British Nigel Party and be honest about it.

I know that I really ought not to be talking politics in these pages because it only irritates people, but the rise of the far right in the British Political scene is really beginning to worry me, and I still hope that it will finally be seen for what it is before it's too late, because it's far, far too easy to let these things happen if you let them.

His rise to prominence has been something of a "stealth campaign" to be honest, with his "lovable" rogue, "cheekie chappie", "bloke down the pub" idiotic media-friendly image rather masking the darker messages that he is actually peddling.

The problem is that that "ordinary bloke" image really does work in a political climate where the MPs in Westminster really don't come across as ordinary people at all, either being the latest manifestation of the prattling ninnies of the wealthy ruling classes, or the prattling ninnies that are "professional politicians" who don't appear to have done a day's ordinary work in their entire lives.

After all, if that funny bloke on the news sounds as if he's saying exactly what your mates have been saying down the pub for years (only don't let anyone hear you because the "politically correct" brigade'll be down on you like a ton of bricks...") then it's very likely that his words will resonate and you'll think "Hold on, he's only saying what everyone else is thinking but are too scared to say out loud" next time you put your "X" onto a ballot paper.

Meanwhile, he keeps on spouting the kind of things - only during this last couple of weeks about breast-feeding, about immigration causing him to be unable to get to a meeting - that would cause OUTRAGE if somebody at the BBC said them, but he keeps on getting forgiven because "He's only being Nigel..."

Which is, of course, why he is so very, very dangerous... and being very, very cleverly marketed.

I've long believed that most of the worst crimes are those committed in the name of "only having a laugh..." but when a metropolitan and traditionally liberal-minded and culturally aware city like London can elect an utter buffoon for a mayor simply because he seems lovable enough and has a good media profile, then the joke may very well end up being on all of us.

I'm getting rather tired of seeing Vox-Pops on the TV and hearing them on the radio, where an "ordinary" person pipes up with a bleating "Well, I'll be voting UKIP because they're looking out for people like me..." when they are patently, patently not representing the needs of the vast majority of the people of this country at all, even if the damned lies and statistics make it really sound just like he is.

Sometimes you just get the impression that the idea of Britain being peddled is the memory of 1970s Britain where all foreigners were "funny foreigners", all women were "housewives" (or wannabe housewives), all children would ride bicycles, and the family would gather around the big television set in the living room and enjoy wholesome family entertainments being fronted by just the sort of chap that you'd trust enough to invite around to look after your children for the evening.

But, of course, the cruel, dark world was never really like that, was it, boys and girls...?

Meanwhile, we need to remind ourselves that the messages of hate and intolerance, and the outright lies that this group are peddling, no matter how nicely dressed up and carefully worded, are exactly the same words that brought another despot to prominence between the wars, and we should be very careful to read between the lines of what this lovable rogue and all of his cronies are actually saying before it's far too late for any of us to do anything about it, and one of the great "What Ifs...?" of future history might just be "What if he hadn't survived that election day plane crash...?"

Because - and I genuinely hope that people are finally going to wake up and realise this before it is too late - he's not talking for you, he's talking for himself, and the utopian vision that haunts his dreams might not even have you in it, unless you're perhaps polishing his silver or driving his limousine.

And when the jackbooted bully boys are rounding us all up for dissent, and we're living in a country of full of real, genuine, actual fear - not the phony fear that they want you to believe - instead of the beacon of hope that it could be, don't come looking for me because I'll probably be one of the first against the wall when the hammer falls.

* There's an unfinished blog in my Drafts folder called "Forgiving Nigel" which I go and tinker with from time-to-time. One day, it may even see the light of day.