Question Time

So, in the aftermath of BBC One's Question Time last night, the BNP have announced that they had the biggest recruitment night in their history as 3000 new members signed up. Having watched the programme, I found it simply reinforced my view that Nick Griffin is a horrid, horrid man with repulsive views. But I can quite easily see how others could percieve otherwise; Question Time was quite clearly, geared towards giving him a kicking - rightly so - but it wasn't a fair match. Most of the questions were aimed towards exposing the BNP's racist core - rightly so - but they still ignored the "immigration question" that fuels the BNP's politics and is the downfall of every party manifesto in Britain. You either sound weak or you sound racist - not because there isn't a middle ground, and not because it's some PC-brigade conspiracy; there are no clear solutions.

Britain is an island. It's got a sea around it, and not too far away, there's all of Western Europe. Therefore anyone with a boat, kayak or pedalo can gain access to our nation; the only way of keeping all the immigrants out is to build a giant concrete wall around the entire country. So you either try and espouse tighter border checks; harsher criteria for asylum - which inevitably hurts innocent refugees, or you decide that you're going to deport anyone who isn't white.

I also think that the problem of immigration has been vastly misrepresented by the media as a whole; irresponsible scare stories about migrant baby-booms or complete lies about immigrants going to the top of the housing lists just exasperbate the fear. In fact, recent statistics show the annual migration to Britain overall has dropped; the recent study claiming that the population will rise to 70 million by 2029 shouldn't be that much of a shock - it's roughly 65m now. 5m over twenty years isn't a terrfiying rise, considering the advances that have - and will continue to happen, making our lives longer - and of course, remembering that white people have children too.

Griffin was deliberately ambushed on Question Time. However; his opponents were not political heavyweights. At times they dissolved into bickering amongst themselves and Baroness Warsi came across as as much as a homophobe than Little Hitler himself. A better politician could have fought back - and would have fought back. Griffin to an extent, played up to the victim status. The BBC were ultimately right to allow him on air; he has been elected, and has a right to express his views, however odious. It is not in the Director General's authority to deny him that. Some have called for the BNP to be banned from media exposure like Sinn Fein in the 80's - the difference then was that Sinn Fein were trying to pull a Guy Fawkes. Even so, freedom of speech does not guarantee a place on Question Time just because you want it. I'm sure the Greens or UKIP, or any of the independant MEP/MP's would have jumped at the chance to lay into Nick.

The BNP won't probably be featured on the programme for years to come; in the long-run, it will have dealt them a heavy blow. And to claims that the audience was overtly hostile; the whole point in the QT audience is that it represents a cross-section of society; and the society of the host city. The majority of British people do not support the BNP, in fact it is only a very small minority that do; proportionally they won't ever get the same level of support as the Conservatives so they can't exactly complain. London has more ethnic minorities than anywhere else because it's our capital. But it wasn't just Muslim or Black people twisting the knife; white people hate him too. Griffin would probably put that down to a liberal elitist conspiracy - quite clearly there is no such thing (liberalism is fundamentally the opposite of an elite; he attempts to demonise the left because the majority of the country is Right. "Intelligensia", really? Being intelligent is not a crime).

Overall, the programme exposed the BNP, and Griffin as idiotic, conspiracy theorist jackasses who don't believe in the Holocaust and use playground politics - "My dad went to war and yours didn't" - as solutions. Their leader is nothing less than a scheming, vicious, malignant boil on the face of British politics and the worst kind of elitist politician (the guy went to Cambridge so he is hardly "one of us"); quotes in the show exposed his intention to hide the fascist heart of his party with a patriotic facade. It is not racist to be nationalistic, but the thought processes that lead one to the conclusion that one person who belongs to one nation is better than a person who belongs to a different nation is a very dangerous path indeed.