Sir, Libby Purves (Comment, February 3) risks doing a disservice to rural Britain. There is no evidence that racist politics, whether promoted by the British National Party or others, has any significant support in rural areas. The suggestion that the BNP has achieved, or can expect, any electoral support in rural areas is unsupportable.

The BNP would need an unprecedented electoral surge to gain a European parliamentary seat in her own East of England region in June. In the 1999 Euro elections the BNP polled 0.9 per cent of the vote in the region. To gain a seat in the European Parliament it would have had to get 9 per cent. The highest BNP votes in that election were in the West Midlands and London, where the party polled 1.7 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively.

Rural voters have never yet “smiled back” at the BNP, and they are not about to start now.

Yours, etc,
SIMON HART,
Chief Executive,
Countryside Alliance,
367 Kennington Road, SE11 4PT.
info@countryside-alliance.org
February 3.

From Mr Stuart Millson

Sir, Libby Purves seems to strike an uncharacteristically frantic note in her opposition to the “blond, public school-educated, Territorial Army candidate” who has dared to venture from the inner city into her Suffolk backyard.

Your columnist may well be shocked by Nick Griffin’s party — although I fail to see how supporting “the restoration of the old county regiments” and abandoning the EU can cause that much of a trauma. However, the parties of the fringe are not in my view the paramount problem, something to be exposed and opposed by all good liberal people. By attempting to crush such protest votes, surely we are simply handing the distinctly unsatisfactory “mainstream” parties a blank cheque once again.

There must be a viable alternative to the strident far Right which so upsets Libby Purves, and the failed, uninspiring Tory/Labour hegemony. I have joined the wholesomely democratic UK Freedom Party which, with its one council seat, might convince even the good people of Suffolk that love of countryside and country is not wholly disreputable.

Yours faithfully,
STUART MILLSON,
27 Old Gloucester Street, WC1N 3XX.
February 3.

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