Question Time was 'win-win situation' for BNP

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The political event which dominated the week's headlines and divided public opinion more than any other in recent times finally took place last night.

Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time, an event he himself described as "history in the making."

It has been an historic week for the far right in the UK, but the real question is whether this will contribute to their ascendancy or hinder it.

The media circus in the build up to last night saw politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum lined up to give their views.

The BBC was widely condemned for inviting him, Griffin himself was lambasted for, well, being the leader of the BNP, and his fellow panellists were subjected to accusations that they were unfit to be on the panel.

I am paraphrasing, but according to certain commentators Jack Straw wasn't adequately pro-Muslim, Sayeeda Warsi too Muslim and a bit homophobic and Chris Huhne a bit too posh.

Cabinet minister Peter Hain's intervention was perhaps the most passionate and determined, but it also came across as ill-conceived and a little desperate.

Using an out of court settlement in which the BNP agreed to alter their constitution to claim that they are now an illegal party, and Griffin should be ejected from the panel, only served to compound their cultivated status as a misunderstood party victimised by the mainstream political elite.

Griffin himself this week claimed that the "hysteria" which has been generated by his appearance on Question Time has left him ill-prepared for the debate.

However, he is acutely aware that the increased media attention will have generated a great deal of extra interest in his party and yesterday he claimed that the BNP had its best ever single day in terms of extra visitors to its website and telephone donations.

Before watching the show I expected it to be something of a disappointment.

Despite his claims prior to the event that all the panellists and the audience will be doing their utmost to make him "look like an idiot" Griffin's strategy was fairly simple- try to look and sound relatively normal and deny any unsavoury claims about his past..

When the audience and the panel start to pillory him he will immediately look like the anti-establishment, forgotten majority martyr he likes to portray himself as.

This strategy has worked well for Griffin so far in the handful of TV appearances we have seen.

His private education and Cambridge degree combined with his views and rhetoric somehow appeal to a section of white working class voters. Perhaps he is seen as a well-educated man who can effectively articulate their views.

Griffin walked on to the Question Time stage amid a chorus of boos and he set the tone of the programme by making a cheap personal dig about Jack Straw's father.

The panel and the audience, as expected, went for the jugular.

He was called a racist, a Nazi and a Holocaust denier.

In the face of these accusations, which were often backed up by quotes, Griffin seemed to deny everything in the attempt to present himself as a misjudged individual.

Even when he was told that the clips of him speaking the actual words are available for all to see on YouTube he was still unwilling to accept that he had said them. It is, according to him, all part of a communist conspiracy against him.

Unlike in previous TV interviews, Griffin was sweating and twitching and had something of a frenzied look in his good eye - for a fleeting nanosecond I almost felt sorry for him.

Make no mistake, if this was a boxing match Griffin would have been knocked out in the first round but that's not how Question Time works.

The in-studio audience is certainly not representative of the public and even less representative of the voter who might be attracted to the BNP.

Some of his comments viewed by the audience and by the political elite as particularly odious – such as his view that "a lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing really creepy" – will, it pains me to say, strike a chord with some voters.

As will his description of Islam and his criticisms of the government's record on immigration.

We must not fall into the trap of seeing Nick Griffin through the eyes of Westminster politicians.

On Radio Five Live and The Wright Stuff this morning a significant number of callers felt that Griffin had been bullied and that is why appearing on Question Time was always going to be a win-win situation for him, however poorly he performed.

Anyone who thought it would be the arena where Griffin would be suddenly seen by the nation as a repulsive racist, that his mask would slip and he would immediately start denying the Holocaust or pull out his Ku Klux Klan mask and start abusing black people in the audience has naively misunderstood the appeal of the BNP and underestimated Nick Griffin as a politician and strategist.

I am not remotely convinced by his claims that the BNP are not racist but the very conscious change in the language they use from separatist terms to vague phrases like "indigenous British population".

This appeals to people's patriotism and makes it difficult for mainstream politicians to expose the BNP's true colours without sounding anti-British or overtly politically correct.

This very superficial makeover has certainly contributed to the recent success they have experienced.

The other main factor has undoubtedly been the close ideological proximity of the three main political parties and the failure of the government to address some of the serious poverty and lack of opportunity in certain communities.

While the government has certainly reduced child poverty and improved the lives of some of the poorest people, there are some communities which have hardly changed for twenty years, despite the optimism they felt in the mid-nineties at the prospect of a Labour government.

They now feel forgotten and betrayed and many of them see the BNP as the only alternative.

This, combined with the terminal decline in the public's opinion of mainstream politicians, has been the principal cause of the surge in support for the BNP.

The mainstream political elite needs to realise and accept that there are some individuals, mostly living in deprived communities, who genuinely feel that they are overlooked in favour of ethnic minorities.

Rather than simply dismissing them as racists we must engage with them and ask them why.

Perhaps we need to explain to them that, contrary to what they read in the papers, failed asylum seekers aren't entitled to council houses and that Asian people don't get pushed to the front of the housing queue.

The right-wing press is certainly partly responsible for preying on vulnerable people who a disaffected with the political system by peddling lies and generating fear to sell copy.

Yet those who should be held most responsible for the BNP's rise in fortunes are the mainstream Westminster politicians and, in particular, those in government.

It now strikes me as a little hypocritical that many of those who despise the BNP but have failed to do enough to curtail their advancement are now criticising the BBC for allowing a party which a million people voted for a platform on a mainstream political show.

The BBC is a state-run, apolitical broadcaster and it would be thoroughly wrong for them to pick and choose which elected politicians they allow a platform.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed an hour of Griffin-bashing and seeing him squirm and sweat brought a huge smile to my face, I cannot agree with Jack Straw that it has been a "catastrophic week for the BNP".

Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, and the extra media attention generated as a result, has presented him and his party with a win-win situation but, despite this, the BBC cannot deny a platform to someone simply because the majority of us find his views repugnant.

If they had done, it would have only served to enhance their martyr status and further disenchant all those voters who voted for them, whether in protest or otherwise.

Alex Bryce is a parliamentary researcher for Labour MP Ashok Kumar.

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