<HTML> <It is hard to say which is more pathetic: the notion that the British National Party (BNP) winning three council seats in Burnley, Lancashire, marks a breakthrough for fascism, or the claim that the failure of the far-right BNP to win seats elsewhere represents an important victory for democracy.>        I know what Hume is saying (and agree with much of it), but hasn't that always been the case with the extreme-right parties--that is, of course, until it's too late? Of course, given the extent to which the UK government and the chattering classes have co-opted aspects of their agenda (especially on immigration), you could feasibly argue that it already is too late. (And that's the sort of thing I'm talking about, not that Britain will turn Nazi.)         That may sound gloomy and misanthropic, but that's nothing next to the surge in pro-monarchy sentiment shown by the media in the wake of the the French presidential and UK local government elections--"We need our 'impartial' hereditary head of state to save us from ourselves!" "The monarchy unites us all!" Let's just put to one side the opinions of the queen's nearest and dearest, living or dead, of the her majesty's foreign-born subjects. (This is either a digression or a tantrum, depending on your point of view.) Anyway, here is a link to Gary Younge's excellent column in the Guardian, which, while not wholly dissimilar to Hume's article, is a superior analysis in a couple of ways: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,709887,00.html</HTML>