Moving from a race-based agenda to a focus on civic virtue has aided the BNP’s resurgence in the last decade

Abstract

The British National Party gained no seats in the 2010 general election, and were trounced in Barking. Yet in the longer view the party still increased its vote share and the past decade has been a successful one, with BNP members now sitting in the European Parliament and the London Assembly. Daphne Halikiopoulou and Sofia Vasilopoulou attribute these successes to the BNP’s change of tactics after 2000, adopting a discourse focusing on civic virtue rather than on race – and one quite similar to the approach of the more ‘respectable’ UK Independence Party