Attempts to portray the right’s rise as a return of trends in the 1930s, when Mosley’s Blackshirts marched the streets, with grand self-flattering claims from ‘anti-fascists’ that by opposing the EDL they are repeating the Battle of Cable Street, fails to address its very modern causes. The mainstream left must realise its own role in any rise of right wing populism in Britain. By abandoning much of their traditional constituency or treating them with disdain, and embracing culturally divisive politics, they have created a space and for the far right to fill.