Jonah Hull of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports on Ireland’s approval of the historic Lisbon treaty and explains how a political superstar is waiting in the wings for a return to power.

Niall Stanage, an Irish journalist who covers business and politics from New York, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the reasons why Irish voters originally rejected the Lisbon Treaty and their recent reversal in course.

He also discusses the role that a future EU presidency might take, how the rest of Europe is reacting to Ireland’s decision and the implications for the U.S.

A BNP poster.

Britain’s left-wing Labour party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suffered major losses in European parliamentary elections, fueled by anger over the economic crisis and the recent scandal over expenses claims.

Labour’s loss was the British National Party’s gain, to some extent. The BNP, a far-right, whites-only party, won some 8 percent of the vote and its first seats in the European parliament. Several mainstream politicians in Britain have condemned the BNP’s victory, and some staged a walkout during BNP leader Nick Griffin’s victory speech.

Marko Hoare is a senior research fellow at Kingston University specializing in the history of Europe. He writes at “Greater Surbitron” to argue against the BNP’s vision of his country.

We must defend our Britain and our immigrants

Today is a day of national shame for Britain: the fascist ‘British National Party’ (BNP) has won two seats in the European parliament, and 6.6 percent of the national vote. Led by the Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathiser Nick Griffin, who won one of the two seats, the BNP is an all-white party that calls for an immediate halt to all immigration to the UK and the repatriation of existing legal immigrants through ‘a system of voluntary resettlement’. It claims to be defending the British nation and the culture and interests of the ‘indigenous population’.

Of couse, the BNP vision of Britain is [u]nrecognisable to any civilised British person. It is a vision of [those] who still live fifty years or more in the past and are incapable of coming to terms with the reality of the twenty-first century multiethnic Britain that most of us are at home in and comfortable with. I grew up in London, and went to school in an inner-city comprehensive, where the children spoke 51 different first languages. In my first year at school, as far as I can remember, roughly three-quarters of the children were from partially or wholly non-white or immigrant families. And the proportion only increased. For the most part, the difference between a native and an immigrant in London is blurred or non-existent, and for most of us Londoners, almost everyone we know and love is at least party immigrant in their origins. A foreigner arrives here and, within a year or less, becomes a Londoner. It is the great, constantly changing ethnic mix of London, with new ethnic groups and individuals arriving continuously from all over the world, that makes this such an exciting, dynamic city to live in. An all-white Britain would be an alien world for Londoners, or for the inhabitants of any town or city in the country.

So when the fascists or their fellow-travellers say that immigration is ‘destroying traditional British culture’, they are lying. As a Londoner born and bred, I think I would know if my traditional culture were being destroyed by immigrants. And guess what ? It isn’t. The British culture that I grew up with is a culture that is inseparable from multiethicity, constantly rejuvenated by new waves of immigrants. What a joy it is, to discover the Nigerian community in Peckham, or the South Asian community in Alperton; to hear regularly Russian and Polish in the streets; to eat Somali and Eritrean food ! The Notting Hill Carnival takes place every summer in Notting Hill, the traditional centre of West Indian life in London, where I grew up, and has been running for fifty years. Inspired by the annual carnival in Trinidad and launched in response to the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 – themselves incited by an earlier generation of fascists – it is an integral part of London’s cultural life. Without immigration, we would not have it. Ending immigration – were it possible – would prevent the emergence of other such cultural phenomena in the future.

This is not to agree with those ‘politically correct’ types who, in their cultural relativism, embrace a form of self-hating anti-white racism that is not much better than the racism of the BNP. There is not a ‘white culture’, ‘black culture’, ‘Asian culture’. etc.; there is our single, great British culture, in all its glorious, constantly evolving diversity. The cultural synthesis between ‘indigenous’ Britons and immigrants works both ways. It is not just a question of indigenous Britons benefiting culturally from immigration, but also of immigrants benefiting from contact with our great British culture. Every time a woman from Pakistan or Turkey, for example, takes advantage of British freedom to escape from an unwanted arranged marriage or oppressive and sexist parents and pursue her life as a free individual; every time Tamil, Tibetan or Chechen dissidents demonstrate here against regimes that persecutes their people back home, that is a triumph for Britain and something of which we should be proud. Immigrants are fuel for Britain’s economic and cultural growth; and Britain is a place of personal and political liberation for immigrants from less free societies.

The fascists would like to destroy our London and our Britain, and to substitute for them a London and a Britain based on uniformity; a uniformity based on the most retrograde and primitive elements of our ‘indigenous’ society. Such a Britain would be impossible to create, of couse, and the very attempt would necessarily involved pogroms and bloodshed on a scale never witnessed here before. To destroy London’s Arab Bayswater, Portuguese Golborne Road, Bengali Brick Lane, Soho Chinatown and so on, would be to destroy the whole city; an experiment in totalitarian violence of the kind practised by the Nazis and Communists. Nor would it stop there. Keeping ‘British culture’ uncontaminated by foreign influences would presumably mean keeping the British people hermetically sealed from the rest of the world: no pizzas or curries for us; no American music or films; no French or Italian clothes; no Japanese electronic goods. British culture cannot be separated from global culture, and only the most medieval of barbarians would try to do so.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user mia under a Creative Commons license.

Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaks with Martin Savidge about the political and business aspects of this complex situation. Chow recently published an article on Ukraine’s importance for European gas in The Washington Quarterly [PDF].

For more on the gas dispute, read what a Worldfocus contributing blogger had to say: Ukraine squares off against Russian gas giant. 

Virgin Media plans to cut 15 percent of its workforce by 2012 — 2,200 jobs.

In October, U.K. unemployment rose at the fastest rate in 16 years — with the number of people receiving jobless benefits rising from 36,500 to 980,900. About 1.82 million British people are now out of work, and earlier this week, businesses cut another 5,000 jobs.

On Tuesday, Britain and the EU called for coordinated global efforts to stem an impending recession.

Blogger “Nicolae Sfetcu” outlines how the financial crisis has impacted several different European countries.

On a British conservative blog, users respond to a post about the unemployment rate. User “Torymory” writes about losing his/her job and blames the government for the “mess,” while user “Tony Makara” bemoans the British economy’s dependence on the world.

From Iceland, blogger “Simmi” writes about his personal experience in the recession, speaking of growing resentment in the country. Iceland was hard-hit after three major banks collapsed within one week in October.

The crisis may have far-reaching effects, from financial institutions to more minute aspects of daily life. “Finding Dulcinea” writes that French culinary tastes may shift in response to the financial upheaval.

Ireland faces a recession for the first time in 25 years. The “Notes on the Front” blog looks at the future of recession, unemployment and economic policy in the country.

Blogger “Dirk Ehnts” criticizes European response to the financial crisis, calling for massive and coordinated action and saying that policy thus far has been driven by “dogma instead of pragmatism.”

An article in the Los Angeles Times compares the economies of Italy and Spain, which have faced a lower level of financial panic than the rest of Europe.

For more on global unemployment, read our previous Blogwatch: Unemployment claims reach historic highs.

Photo courtesy of wallyg under a Creative Commons license.

Richard Gowan, an expert on international peacekeeping missions with the Center of International Cooperation, speaks with Martin Savidge about the latest development in Georgia.