Once, attending a local election, I found myself amidst a group of men with hair as scant as my own and wearing similarly rumpled suits. Acquaintances across the room shot me puzzled glances. I waved cheerfully. My acquaintances frowned. Then it hit me. I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with members of the British National Party.

No one with any sense wants to be mistaken for a sympathiser with the far-right BNP. The party fosters hatred of immigrants and ethnic minorities and is now implicated in wildcat strikes around the country. So it is with substantial qualification that I assert that the slogan “British Jobs for British Workers” is an unobjectionable one.