The logo of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage’s so far phenomenally successful electoral branding company, is a visual triumph. It looks at first like a piece of ordinary 1960s design, with its bold sans-serif font resembling the logo of a spy show like The Saint or The Avengers  — a touch of retro, a touch of camp drama, and a sky blue arrow that pointed, on ballot papers, to the box where you could put your “X” for their candidates. But that arrow has a long history.

Considered more subtle and less racist than Farage and Arron Banks’s Leave.eu, the conservative right’s official Vote Leave campaign tried to draw attention to the 75 million Turkish citizens who would supposedly flock to the UK when Turkey joined the European Union, which was alleged to be happening imminently. In their flyers, as David Renton points out in his new book The New Authoritarians: Convergence on the Right, “the direction that migrants would follow if Britain was foolish enough to remain in the European Union was illustrated by a giant red arrow pointing towards England, reminding older audiences of the approaching arrows with which the TV show Dad’s Army had once visualized a Nazi invasion of Britain.”

In that sitcom’s introduction, the red arrows are countered by a blue arrow coming out of England to stop the hordes from crossing the Channel  — and then going beyond  — just like the arrow in the Brexit Party’s logo. It isn’t the first time that British xenophobia has employed the imagery of the fight against Nazism.