Michael White writes regarding Margaret Hodge's call for housing to be allocated to migrants after indigenous people, rather than on the current basis of need:

Last year the number of council and housing association units built in the borough fell from a very modest 572 to 230. What is true, as Jon Cruddas, Dagenham's Labour MP now running to be deputy leader, keeps saying is that social services in poor boroughs do feel the pressure of globalisation. So do falling local wage rates. "Racialising" problems will not help, better statistics leading to more Whitehall cash will, argues Cruddas whose local activists beat back the BNP. Labour in Barking did not, add Mrs Hodge's critics.

There's no point in beating the BNP by becoming the BNP. There can be no triangulation with them. But as White says, this strategy doesn't work anyway. If you make the far-right's rhetoric acceptable by aping it, why would you get the votes on that platform rather than the real deal?