Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the electoral victory of an ultranationalist, whites-only political party in the UK is a “straw in the wind, and we have to watch the horizon very carefully.”

The spiritual head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion said the financial crisis has led to a temptation to look for scapegoats.

Williams said: “We ignore at our peril the very high risk – which history should have taught us – of financial stringency leading to political extremism.

Anger finding its expression in xenophobia, prejudice and rivalry – all the tactics that both sociologists and psychologists remark on as the displacement of unease and fear.”

A representative of the British National Party, which calls for strict anti-immigration policies in order to return to “the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948,” recently won a local election in Kent, England.

The Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, is in Kent.