LONDON — The governing U.K. Conservative Party has put parties to its right “pretty much out of business” by taking into account the “reasonable gripes” seized on by extremists, Dominic Raab said Wednesday.
The British foreign secretary said the British National Party and other far-right parties had been “effectively banished” as a force in British politics by dealing with “reasonable issues” such as immigration control and listening to “reasonable views that popular opinion latches on to.”
Raab had been asked by former U.S. Representative for California Jane Harman whether the U.K. was experiencing a rise in right-wing populism in a similar way to France and Germany at a virtual transatlantic Aspen Institute event on Wednesday afternoon.
“The reality is in terms of right-wing extremism — we keep a very close eye on it — but we’ve seen the parties to the right of center-right parties like the Conservative Party pretty much out of business,” Raab said. “And one of the reasons is, I think, when it comes to tackling the narrative you need to take into account the reasonable gripes and causes that some of those extremists grapple on to,” he added.
While advocating for a “liberal, value-based” vision for “Global Britain,” Raab said the U.K. government had needed to regain control of its immigration system when it came out of the European Union.
“We don’t have the British National Party (BNP) in U.K. politics, we’ve seen the other so-called right-wing parties have [been] effectively banished, not vanished in terms of operating at the margins, but as a force in British politics,” he said.
“So I think it is an important thing to say — we saw this in the referendum — that you’ve got to be able to listen to the reasonable views that popular opinion latches on to, and if people feel that they’re being systematically ignored, you tend to fuel those parties at the fringe and that’s really important that you don’t go down that track,” he added.
