EU Referendum links to this “howl of rage” from the Daily Telegraph’s Jeff Randall:

At Labour’s first party conference after its return to power in 1997, Tony Blair spoke with great conviction: “This country, any country today, will not just carry on paying more and more in taxes and getting less… the new welfare state must encourage work not dependency… and we cannot say we want a strong and secure society when we ignore its very foundation: family life… [we must] build a country whose people will say that ‘I care about Britain because I know that Britain cares about me’… that is the Britain I offer you.”
Fine words, but it never happened. Quite the reverse. We keep paying more and more in taxes and getting less. Far from encouraging work, the state penalises it, while rewarding handsomely the dependency culture of Karen Matthews and her ilk. Family life has not just been ignored, it has been debased by a benefits system that subsidises teenage pregnancies with generous handouts and social housing. It incentivises single parents.
As for the promise, “Britain cares about me”, it turned out to be true only if you are an MP with your fingers in the Commons’ petty-cash tin, a fully abled claimant of incapacity benefits, or a bogus asylum seeker. The rest of us have been subjected to a remorseless onslaught on our traditional values, civil liberties and freedom of speech. Now we are angry; really bloody angry.

Journalistic hyperbole? To a degree, although Mr. Randall does indeed make some very good points (read the whole thing).

No less interesting is something contained in the response to Randall’s piece by E.U. Referendum’s Richard North. I should explain that Mr. North’s references to the “BNP” are to the British National Party, an unattractive bunch conventionally described as a party of the far right (although like many such parties, the BNP shares some characteristics with the far left):

The trouble is that you cannot sustain anger. That is heat of the moment stuff, so the real driver is “festering resentment”. That best describes my mood – and it accurately describes the mood of the country. We, Middle England and beyond, are heartily sick – beyond sick – of the prattling claque, the whole damn lot of them, and their fellow-travellers.
And Randall is right. “There are disgracefully few legitimate outlets for redress”. Most of the standard outlets – including the media – have been soaked up, distorted and harnessed as lighting conductors servicing the claque, rather than any genuine means of making things better.
The one thing left to us – and then only a pale shadow of what it was, once the postal vote scam was introduced – is the ballot box. And people are using it.
Last night there was a council by-election in the Temple Newsam ward of Leeds MDC. Tom Redmond, the BNP’s candidate took second place from Labour in a keenly contested marginal where the three main parties were all predicting victory. In line with previous results, the party polled over 20 percent, this time coming in with 23.6 percent…Make no bones about it. Despite the silence, the political claque is **** scared. They have all done their private polls and they know that the BNP is on a roll.
The 20 percent plus vote is firm, right across the country – with a few dead spots – and BNP are routinely thrashing UKIP, consigning it to the dustbin of history. Currently, the estimates are that the BNP will take between ten and twelve seats at the euro elections, and they will take votes from all three main parties – plus UKIP.
The politicos also know that this is not a vote for the BNP. It is an anti-politician vote, reflecting that the major Westminster parties – all of them – no longer offer any real choice, or any choice at all. And that is what scares them. The votes are coming not just from Labour but from across the board – the Tories and Lib-Dems are just as much threatened as Labour.

I suspect that Mr. North overstates the likelihood that the BNP will, when it comes to it, garner that much in the way in “real” votes across the whole country — at least this year. Even so, the progress the party has made so far is a warning sign well worth watching as the recession drags on.