#bnp: The BBC has to up its game if it wants to play with fire
It's probably the biggest week for politics in quite a while. The BNP's future could well be decided this week, depending on how well (or otherwise) Question Time goes on Thursday.
The BBC has taken some flack for allowing the BNP on to the show. It's argument that the BNP has been elected by voters to a role, therefore it has to let them on would only hold water if there was a constitutionally-endorsed rule which said that was the case.
As it is, there isn't, but the BBC says it wants to be fair. But to be fair, it needs to treat the party, proportionally, in the same way it treats other parties. Sadly, that hasn't been the case so far - the BBC has given the party too soft a ride as a recent interview on Radio 1 showed.
It had two members of the party on. Many of their comments deserved challenging, but weren't. It was soft soaping of the worst kind. And they didn't even reveal the backgrounds of the two young party members who were portrayed just to be two average Joes.
What Radio 1 failed to do was point out that the two involved were actually members of the BNP's party structure.
To quote the Mail on Sunday - which appears to have uncovered the BBC hiding facts or the BBC not researching its subjects well enough -
The Mail on Sunday has discovered the full background of the two 'young BNP supporters' identified by the BBC only as Joey, 24, and 28-year-old Mark.Both men are senior officials in the BNP party hierarchy, and one has a notorious history of racist, homophobic and anti-semitic views and is a self-confessed admirer of Adolf Hitler.
Joey is Joseph Barber, also known as Joey Smith, who runs the BNP's record label Great White Records and is one of its leading artists, recording tracks including Pondlife and Christmas Is A British Thing.
The other guest was Mark Collett, the former leader of the Youth BNP and now the party's head of publicity.
So in other words, not just regular members of the party. The BBC's questions were also incredibly soft and the overall tone was non-challenging and sympathetic - something Cameron, Clegg and Brown didn't enjoy when they last went on to Newsbeat.
You can ready the BBC's stance on that poor show here, but it's not the only bad effort to date.
It's not the only bad example either. On the night of the Euro elections, David Dimbleby, who'll host Question Time on Thursday, went into his interview with Nick Griffin asking if the BNP could claim it wasn't racist if it didn't let black people in.
Griffin responded by saying that would he ask the same of the Black Police Association which, he claimed, didn't let white members join. That reply went unchallenged, and when I blogged about the interview, I repeated Griffin's reply.
It was only when someone commented on the post that it transpired that the BPA does let in white members. Ok, so I should have checked the fact - but my blog is read by a few hundred people a week. Dimbleby, having assumed the role of political ringmaster for Thursday, has no excuse not to be better prepared to challenge such obvious answers from a character like Griffin who, at best, can be described as slippery.
So other than allowing BNP lies to become folklore facts, what else should the BBC doing on Thursday night? For one, it can't allow the show to become a Q&A about the BNP. The BNP are on there because they've been elected as a political party. They can't be allowed an hour to justify their policies with the other politicans just heckling from the sidelines.
It needs to be like any other Question Time, covering the issues of the week, with the politicians chalenging each others' stances. It's been brilliant over the past couple of months to see more and more people say that the only way to beat the BNP is to prove they aren't an answer, and that their answers aren't the truth. That can only happen through debate on the issues of the day.
So, while Sunny Hundal's list of 20 questions on the Guardian website today about what should be asked of the BNP is so wrong. His questions do need answering, but not on Question Time. Question Time isn't a soapbox for just one man, and to have questions about Mein Kampf, the Holocaust and Ayrian supremacy will result in it becoming just that, with tut-tutting from other parties.
Dimbleby needs to be on his game, challenging every comment Griffin makes, and allowing consider arguments from the other parties. The BBC is on dodgy ground here - it's upset the main parties by even allowing Griffin on. It's right to treat him like any other politician - to do anything other only plays to the BNP's "no-one will listen to us and we know why, don't we?" argument - but so far, the BBC hasn't done it's job properly in holding the BNP to account in the way it does the other parties. That has to change on Thursday.
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David Higgerson - David Higgerson has covered local and national politics for much of his career as a journalist. This blog aims to look at Westminister from the outside in, at a time when it appears very few are looking out from the inside.
Nick Griffin seemed to be the only politician on question time who was speaking the language of the common man in Britain today. How can we, the public, be expected to trust the main political parties who have collectively played a part in starting the war in Iraq, had a hand in the banking crisis, and then there's the expenses debacle. The immigration situation is a disgrace and the BNP seem to be the only political party willing to talk about it. They will probably get many votes and I may end up being one of them for the first time ever...
Disillusioned
I've been in labour most of my life, I've left now and will not vote Labour, and I feel very bitter about the party, but sod it I'm not that far gone to vote for idiots.
The BNP are a racist party, and although people might feel immigration has been used in a Political way you cannot blame the immigrants for this, only the governments, sending people home because of the colour of their skin is a disgrace Griffin looked like a lost lamb led to the slaughter by the BBC and he deserved it.
Thanks for your comment Robert - but here's my question: where does a disaffected Labour voter go? Have the Tories done enough to win you over?
Hi John - I don't think the BNP are the only party prepared to talk about immigration. They are the only party prepared to talk about it in very extreme terms, safe in the knowledge it's highly unlikely they'll ever be in a position to do anything about it. The problem with the BNP is that is doesn't really have an immigration policy. It simply blames immigrants for many problems which have nothing to do with immigration. But when they are questioned on it, they can't pinpoint what they'd do. Close the borders is one cry, until it's pointed out that many immigrants add value to this country. Send 'em back is other chant, until they're asked to define who should go back, and then the answers are many and various. If you are disillusioned, I'd argue there are many, more effective, parties to go to with a protest vote before the BNP.
Where do I go from here, well I've left the Labour party for start, I've had enough, and I think in all honesty I will sit at home on polling day.
Where do I go from here, well I've left the Labour party for start, I've had enough, and I think in all honesty I will sit at home on polling day.
Houses and cars are not very cheap and not everyone can buy it. But, mortgage loans was invented to help different people in such hard situations.