SO DID you see Question Time? Or rather, which version of Question Time did you see? Because days after the BNP leader's appearance on the programme, the
meaning of what I saw last Thursday night has changed.
On the night itself, I went to bed content that honour was satisfied. The BBC was right to invite Nick Griffin onto the programme. Freedom of speech means giving everyone a voice, or it means nothing. And Nick Griffin exposed himself as both wicked a
nd wrong.
Watching him spouting poisonous insults, laughable excuses and anti-scientific, anti-historical non sequiturs, I almost felt sorry for Adolf Brent, as some wag of a blogger dubbed him.
It was like watching someone try to run with their shoelaces tied together. Griffin's raison d'etre is to stand up for the 'indigenous' population.
But he is trying to rid the party of its racist image, and so ended up protesting, that 'colour is irrelevant'. But if colour is irrelevant,
what's the point of Nick Griffin?
Either he was a bare-faced liar struggling to conceal his true beliefs, or he was a confused tangle of paranoia and double-think. As the psychiatrist remarked of Basil Fawlty, there's enough material
there for an entire conference.
By exposing this self-contradictory nonsense to the light of televised debate, we were reminded that racism is not only wrong but also irrational.
As the three representatives of the mainstream parties demolished Griffin's 'arguments', I began to feel an emotion I couldn't quite name – until I realised it was patriotism. I love this country, I thought. The far right could never win here. We don't try to silence them; we're braver than that. We engage with them and, because their arguments are rubbish, we beat them.
Or so I thought last Thursday night.
It is, of course, more complicated than that. The fact that the BNP's popularity has spiked since Question Time does not mean the decision to allow Nick Griffin to appear on it was wrong. But it does signal a wake-up call to the main parties, who need to address the issues that drive people to vote BNP.
There will always be a minority of racists who are beyond reason, but the numbers voting for the BNP suggest that there are other, more rational concerns, primarily immigration and the fear that it is out of control.
Jack Straw denied twice that the failure of Labour's immigration policy had led to an increase in the BNP's support. But he wasn't convincing. Sayeeda Warsi called for a cap on numbers, which sounds sensible until you realise it would be impossible without repealing the United Nations Convention of Human Rights and pulling out of the European Union.
Immigration is a notoriously difficult subject to broach, let alone form a successful policy on. Consequently, the mainstream parties avoid the issue, leaving a gap through which the racist poison of the far right can seep.
Also to blame is the disenfranchisement of thousands of white, working class voters who feel deserted by Labour.
The boost to Nick Griffin's profile might, I hope, force the other parties to take a more coherent, transparent approach to immigration, as well as re-engaging with the white working class.
In the long run, therefore, Nick Griffin, as he slinks back into the obscurity he so thoroughly deserves, might have accidentally done us all a favour.
