‘Britain’s been swamped by us whites. It’s time to kick us out’
For years the far-right BNP had been drifting towards oblivion. Since the peak of its popularity in 2009 – when it won almost a million votes at the European elections – its membership had plummeted, its voters had scattered, and its only elected representative anywhere in the UK was a lone councillor in Pendle, Lancashire. The party had lost its way.
But then, this week, scientists revealed that the earliest modern Briton, known as “Cheddar Man”, wasn’t white. He was, in fact, black.
Suddenly the BNP was given a new lease of life.
“Our party has always fought to give this country back to its indigenous people,” said leader Jack Boot at a press conference on Wednesday. “Since we’ve now discovered that these indigenous people were black, we will henceforth be campaigning for our own repatriation. It’s time to send white people like me back where we came from. Wherever that is. I’m not actually sure. Norway?”
In towns across England, BNP members held anti-white rallies, brandishing placards with slogans such as “Send Us Home”, “Kick Us Out” and “Keep Britain Black”. Police received reports of BNP agitators intimidating themselves in the street. One party member sprayed offensive graffiti on his own front door. Another posted excrement through his own letterbox. One even beat himself up in a dark alley while shouting racist abuse at himself.
“The fact is, Britain is full,” said BNP chairman Bert Truncheon. “It’s been completely swamped by us whites. We come over here, taking their jobs. In the last 10,000 years Britain’s changed beyond all recognition. These days, black people are a minority in their own country.”
Members of the white community, however, expressed concern at the BNP’S behaviour.
“These BNP thugs keep coming up and asking me where I’m ‘from’,” said Dave Smith, a 42-year-old plasterer in Dagenham. “I say, ‘Dagenham.’ But they just say, ‘No, really, where are you from?’ It’s hurtful. I was born in this country, lived here all my life. But just because my greatgreat-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-great-great-greatgrandad came here from another country, they treat me like I don’t belong here.”
On Thursday, tensions were eased when the entire membership of the BNP succeeded in driving itself out of the country. The party’s plan was to set up an all-white colony for itself on an uninhabited island in the Arctic circle. Shortly after arrival, however, the plan fell into disarray.
“By setting up home on this island, we’ve become immigrants,” announced party treasurer Barry Knuckle. “Therefore, we’re now campaigning to kick ourselves out of here, too.”
Stephen Fry did more than any other celebrity to popularise Twitter. These days, however, he can hardly bear to glance at the messages his followers send him, for fear of what they might contain. “I am very sensitive,” he tells Bryony Gordon in her latest Mad World podcast (available now on itunes). “I am deeply, deeply unhappy about negative criticism.”
And he always has been. Thirty years ago, Stephen Fry was a columnist for this newspaper, and one week he wrote about the misery he and his fellow actors suffered at the hands of professional critics. Sir John Mills, he revealed, once “sat in front of a dressing-room mirror and burst into tears when he recalled one remark by a critic whose name he has now completely forgotten”. By and large, concluded Mr Fry, critics were “worthless and embittered offal”: cruel, snooty and devoid of talent. “What decent person,” he demanded to know, “would want to spend a life picking and cavilling?”
I sympathise with him about his critics on Twitter. I will, though, say a word in defence of professional critics. The best critics do more than just criticise a work of art or entertainment; they create one. They create something compelling, witty, funny, enlightening, impassioned, vivid. It’s a performance, a showstopper, a star turn.
Take Clive James’s TV reviews, which were almost always more entertaining than the programmes they described. The same goes for Nancy Banks-smith’s TV reviews – and Anthony Lane’s reviews of films. Martin Amis’s book reviews are often funnier than his books. The late AA Gill, meanwhile, once published a collection of his restaurant reviews – with all reference to the actual restaurants stripped out. He’d simply preserved his irradiant, freewheeling intros. I still re-read them now.
A review shouldn’t simply be a jaded thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Its verdict, in fact, is the least important part. It may not feel that way to the recipient of that verdict, particularly if it’s less than glowing. But it’s true.
My three-year-old son has entered a new phase. For his own amusement, he keeps deliberately getting things wrong.
Ask him to count, and he’ll say the numbers in the wrong order. Point to a picture of a crocodile, and he’ll say it’s a giraffe; point to a picture of a giraffe, and he’ll say it’s a gorilla. And there’s no point asking him what food different animals eat. “Rabbits eat trees,” he informs me on the way to nursery. “Tigers eats nuts. Fish eat potatoes. And bees eat lettuce.”
I wouldn’t mind. I’m just slightly worried that he won’t have grown out of it by the time he starts school in September. And that on my first ever parents’ evening, his teacher will say, “We do have a few small concerns about your son, Mr Deacon. He insists that his name is Cabbage, and that two plus two equals France.” FOLLOW Michael Deacon on Twitter @Michaelpdeacon; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion