It's not just the BNP it's so many others. In Europe I had two conversations with ex pats I was introduced to. Within a minute they'd brought up the subject of "Asylum seekers and immigrants" "we're being swamped"and "Enoch Powell was right". Then recently I had two conversations with new people back home and the same thing happened. It was as though it was a bonding mechanism, as though they were saying "You're English too so you're bound to agree".
When I disagreed and quoted statistics, facts etc they were most discombobulated and didn't want to know. I'd broken an unspoken code evidently.
These people were perfectly pleasant otherwise.It's depressing and much more common it seems to me than it used to be.