The BNP on the BBC: Undue exposure?

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

The vile British National Party must be loving this week.

A guest slot on the BBC's flagship political programme, Question Time, reams of articles in the build up and countless blog posts, including my own.

Party leader Nick Griffin is probably smirking, thinking his work is done. He will gain credibility for his party by appearing on BBC One. He will get their vote to increase at the general election.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to calls for the BBC to pull the plug and deny the fascists the oxygen which they crave.

But, as Fleetstreetblues writes, the rise of the BNP is unfortunately too big a story to ignore.

Their total vote in the 2001 general election was just 47,129.

In the last general election in 2005, it had increased four-fold to 192,746 as the public showed their disgruntlement with the political mainstream.

More recently, the party has won a seat in the London-wide assembly and two European Parliament seats.

Those two seats in Europe is the same representation as that of the Green Party and its leader Caroline Lucas has appeared on Question Time twice already this year.

But Nick Griffin is wrong. Just by being chauffeured to the studio and appearing on television, he does not give his party legitimacy.

For a start, despite the huge increase in numbers, the performance of his party in general elections remains poor.

The BNP started the decade at a low base and has never come close to winning a seat at Westminster, even when pooling all its resources into an area such as Oldham.

And, for all the arguments that the BBC are giving the BNP undue exposure, my instincts tell me that the best way forward is to oppose their politics directly.

For this reason, I would have chosen different panellists - perhaps Diane Abbott for Labour and/or the highly-principled David Davis for the Tories.

As it is, Jack Straw appears for Labour, Baroness Warsi for the Conservatives, Chris Huhne for the Liberal Democrats and playwright Bonnie Greer are around the table tonight.

We may yet get the best result where Griffin loses all credibility it proves to be the end for him and his bunch of racist thugs.

But I doubt that will happen. As well as being a bigot, Griffin is often a smooth operator in front of the rolling cameras.

Odd that the BNP website which espouses their nauseous views is offline today, though.

A message appears instead, which states, "We have had to take our normal website offline due to the enormous amount of ordinary people, just like you, visiting our website."

Or is it not the fact they are not prepared for the spotlight suddenly shining on them and their ridiculous views?

Question Time is on BBC1 at 10.35pm