Peer2Politics

It’s almost a political cliche. If a country is battered by economic disaster, its ever poorer citizens will turn in droves to the crude xenophobia of the populist right. A lack of secure jobs and affordable homes, plummeting living standards: Johnny Foreigner proves an all-too-convenient scapegoat. This is a script that seems to have been followed to the letter in austerity Britain. Anti-establishment fury has been funnelled into an anti-immigration party led by an ex-City broker who wants to stick it to the man by privatising public services, slashing taxes on the rich, and attacking hard-won British workers’ rights. But, as Spain shows us, it doesn’t have to be this way.