That “Sweden shows that nowhere in Europe is immune to the rise of the far right” is probably true (Editorial). It is also true, as you say, that far-right parties have not gained the significance in the UK that they have elsewhere. The first-past-the-post voting system effectively excludes the representation of small, far-right parties in parliament. More effective, in the UK, is entryism into an existing party.
In recent years, the Conservative party has become the vehicle for far-right policies and politicians who promote those policies, not least: cultural intolerance; leaving the EU; the linking of racist anti-immigration politics and Europhobia; promoting a “hostile environment” for asylum seekers and attempting to deport legal asylum seekers to Rwanda; the marginalising of experts (elites); promoting nationalism with those union flags that now drape every minister’s office; attacking democracy by illegally proroguing parliament and denigrating human rights lawyers as “lefties” and “do-gooders” and restricting freedoms to protest. The new secretary of state for health and social care has been less than supportive of abortion rights. Today’s Conservative party has adopted policies and taken positions not that dissimilar to those in Sweden, Orbán’s Hungary, Duda’s Poland and Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Dr Robin Richmond
Bromyard, Herefordshire
