Why, despite the women, the BNP won

I didn’t want to blog about the BNP leader’s appearance on Question Time. But I would say that Nick Griffin did precisely what he came to do.

The questions raised by last night’s programme will not go away by ignoring them but by honestly addressing them, and the facts that inform them.

The one great plus to emerge is that conventional politicians, currently enduring a lower status than at any time in our lifetimes, now know they have a fight and may at last be stirred to address the pain, exclusion, and vulnerability of Griffin’s “shut out” followers.

Some of those who have found themselves fossilising on the housing list, lingering on the benefits system, shut out of a share of the boom of much of the past decade, may have found comfort in his vicious damnation of people of other ethnicities and sexual orientations.

What he did say last night included things that no politician has said on the airwaves in our lifetime. Some of his anger was directed at “the teaching of homosexuality to primary school children”. How many children are taught homosexuality by how many is a question not worth answering, because it’s an absurd question.

The very fact that Griffin was outnumbered and attacked from beginning to end served his purpose most precisely. Where was the quota of BNP supporters among the audience? “We are the victims of these people with whom I share this table,” he might have said.

As to what last night’s programme told us about how to combat the BNP, the women starred. Baroness Warsi was sharp, to the point, and intelligent. Bonnie Greer was graceful, humorous, light, leaving Griffin looking heavy and uncomfortable.

The men were at sea. They looked grumpily, either ahead, rarely attempting eye contact (Jack Straw), or with disdain (Chris Huhne).

It may all have given him another few hundred thousand votes. Do not be duped into believing that it will have lost him any. And it probably had to happen. Last night was not an end but a beginning.