UKIP's nothing like the National Front.
I didn't say they were exactly the same. Just that the rise of UKIP is reminiscent of the NF's back then. UKIP's tactics may be different, but their policies are very similar. Nowadays very few political organisations do street demos and 'anti' demos leading to fights. For a start there's barely a radical left any more to provide vigorous opposition to the extreme right. UKIP are certainly smoother operators than the NF, but politically I would argue they are quasi-fascistic.
Kick immigrants out? Check.
Leave the EU/EEC? Check.
Racist remarks against black people/eastern europeans? Check.
As for Tebbit, arguably he represented a 'hard right' wing of Thatcherism which was specifically trying to appeal to NF supporters, many of whom voted for the Tories. Quasi-fascists are not all street hoodlums in black shirts and leather jackets. Retired Colonels and the blue rinse brigade fit very well with a quasi-fascist ideology which unites across class barriers (as Mussolini and Moseley did).
You can call this an oversimplification, an exaggeration. I don't think so, I think times are different and the far right have taken a form in these islands which is more like the FN in France, or historical populist movements like Peronism: not in its exact ideology but in the vagueness of its programme. I mean, what was the UKIP manifesto for the 2014 election? All we had to scrutinise was one from 2010, which allegedly is now "disowned". That and a load of populist soundbites, often contradictory or whacky but with clear agendas beneath.
However small the political support relative to the total electorate, the rise of a populist quasi-fascist party is a very worrying development indeed. Characters like pintail are proof that there are some out there who like what they hear from UKIP, and presumably are prepared to vote for them. There is also the question of how the far right influences mainstream political parties, the Tories in particular, as they try to appeal to right wing voters.
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