In December 2008 I helped win a minor victory over a piece of irresponsible reporting by a local paper. The paper reported on a council meeting which had turned down a planning application for additional parking spaces by a Muslim centre. So what? It was reported as a story combining violence in the council chamber with street protests and racist graffiti on the Muslim centre’s walls. A suitably inflammatory shop poster was produced to sell the paper. But no such thing had happened at that meeting. The non-story of an entirely peaceful meeting was conflated with the images and account of violent events occurring several years previously which had been instigated by members of the British National Party against the centre.

So what did the local paper think it was doing? What sort of popular bitterness was it trying to revive – and on whose behalf? When the BNP party database was exposed, friends told me that 16 BNP list members lived locally. Local newspapers lacking advertising revenue, and not above manufacturing a controversial topic, may be willing agents for the BNP this June. They can sell papers with the simple messages that BNP support and a lack of community resources (parking spaces in the case above) is caused by immigration. And I am sure they will be able to find plenty of vox pop to illustrate their complaints. Perhaps the local papers are where the citizens’ true engagement in politics lies in 2009?

The miserable turnout in council elections has already legitimised the BNP in some areas. When this is combined with the “pocket borough” mentality of both major political parties in the UK, focusing on only a few thousand electors in a small number of key marginals, and the opportunism of local papers, no-one should be surprised if the June election delivers major victory to a small extremist party. What happened to those experiments in electronic voting? How about voting on Saturdays and Sundays and making a festival of a chore? Let’s register as individuals not households, and tackle postal vote scams. Most importantly let’s pull the rug from under the feet of first past the post. It’s a rotten system that elects candidates with less than 50 per cent of the vote, and works against transparency by encouraging tactical voting. Finally, on a national level, let’s reduce the number of seats in parliament and educate our young people about their democratic heritage by extending the vote to 16 year olds.

The success of the BNP is symptomatic of the failure of politicians to take democratic participation and electoral reform seriously. The BNP are now polling the highest support ever for a fascist organisation in British history. In February the BNP took a traditional Labour council seat, gaining its second seat in the south east outside London. In general elections the BNP saved three deposits in 1992 and 34 in 2005. In the 2004 European elections they polled over 800,000 votes across Britain, their highest ever vote.

BNP support may grow further with the disintegration of Ukip. Ukip polled the third highest vote nationally in 2004 pushing the Liberal Democrats into fourth place, with over 2.5 million (16.1 per cent) votes. In the regions where the BNP already has a presence a small swing from Ukip to the BNP could get them elected. Once on the European stage these British fascists will find ready friends in the far right and further strengthen their position.

After June, in the face of electoral rejection, mainstream politicians will be forced to confront the reality of their ostrich-like pusillanimity. Progressive Labour should lead the way in putting engagement at the heart of the democratic process – and that will mean taking electoral reform very seriously indeed.