I am reading East West Street by Philippe Sands, the human rights barrister. In this powerful book he describes his journey to discover how his grandparents, Ukrainian Jews, evaded capture while 70 of their close family all died in the Holocaust after years of rising hatred.
I then picked up The Economist for last week 21 July where I read that UKIP is back and growing its membership on the back of an anti Muslim campaign. (Back from a brief ‘kip). Its opinion poll ranking is apparently equal to the Lib Dem’s. And in yesterday’s Guardian I read reports of an international campaign to free Tommy Robinson, and a warning by Hope not Hate that ‘We are witnessing the emergence of a new internationalised far right propelled by deep antipathy towards Muslims.’
Many politicians are just itching to cry ‘betrayal’ when the British public discover the scale of self harm involved in a Hard Brexit. The Economist reports an academic study suggesting that Britain lost £1bn of exports in 2016 because of the threat of higher tariffs from the EU
This is fertile soil for a new fascism.