The British Political System is in Turmoil

There’s no way around it. Labour’s up the creek without a paddle, the Conservatives sole policy is to attack Labour and the Lib Dens are lagging behind, as per usual. And now we have the British National Party.

I can’t believe some people. Even thinking of disallowing the BNP onto a political show when they have elected MEP’s because they don’t agree with some of their views, or arguing that they are not a legitimate party? Sorry, but they are already a legitimate party obtaining around one-million votes in the European Elections. That’s one-million people who agreed with some or all of their policies. So you don’t want them to have the right to platform their views? That sounds very Communist and like the Nazis to me. Oh, wait a minute…

I thought we lived in a democratic country where freedom of speech existed. Incidentally, QuestionTime even went on to say that freedom of speech was the cornerstone of our society whilst talking about the Daily Mail/Gately article.

The BBC’s impartiality—or lack of it

The BBC have to remain impartial, they should not favour one party over another. But they quite clearly do. From the moment the audience came and sat down David Dimbleby, who acted like judge, jury and executioner throughout the programme, entered before filming began and announced it was okay to jeer. I wondered if he ever said that before any other show. I highly doubt it.

I often watch QuestionTime. I know the format. Their Web site states the following: “[..]Question Time has become something of a national institution, offering British voters a unique opportunity to quiz top decision-makers on the events of the day.” Events of the day? Ah, is that why, for 50 minutes, Nick Griffin was quizzed on all aspects of the BNP party ranging from 70+ years ago whilst ignoring the postal strike, MP expenses, the recession, rising unemployment and rising national debt amongst others?

Let’s face it, Dimbleby hates the BNP (with good reasons) but cutting Griffin off whenever he tried to speak was abysmal. Avoiding valid questions which might make the BNP shine, such as why we are accepting mass immigration despite rising unemployment, just made this the more obvious.

“Question for Dick Griffin. I mean Nick Griffin.” I see what you did there. Dimblefag, sorry, Dimbleby, didn’t flinch. Had that been said to anyone else he would have stepped in and said something.

Jack Straw might as well have been replaced with a tape recorder. He read out from his papers and when asked a question the Labout party hadn’t pre-scripted (“Is the rise of the BNP a result of Government failure?”, which incidentally is a resounding “Yes”) he tip-toed around it for minutes before Dimbleby interrupted. The other panelists were just as guilty of this.

“I find two men kissing creepy” caused a bit of a stir. However, Christianity takes a fairly dim view on it (Just look what is says in the Bible about it), but that’s fine because they’re a religion. They’re allowed to be homophobic without people complaining—last time I looked England was classified as a Christian country. Even Muslims don’t condone homosexuality, amongst others.

Bonnie Grer is a playwright and a historian, why was she on the panel? At the beginning she even stated that “I know nothing of politics.” She had her back to Griffin through the programme (why even make an appearance if you disliked him that much?), attempted to out-smart him and argue over moot points, such as the EU definition of genocide and something about the ice-age. If you wanted to try and be clever, go on Mastermind. If you wanted to discuss history then go on Time Team. We’re here for politics and party policies.

The aftermath on Radio 2

People calling into Radio 2 the day after said the audience appeared to be hand-picked. Today The Daily Mail announced that one of the audience members said they had applied for QuestionTime 2 years ago and received the call up 24 hours before the programme started. They engineered the audience to be BNP’s activists. Hence the fact that the audience were abnormally hostile.

The BNP’s chance to fall from grace

People thought that by giving the BNP this opportunity that the country would see what a racist party they are. In normal situations this would be true. Judging by the polls and papers afterwards they were wrong. Thanks to the BBC’s inept ability they have managed to in fact turn them into martyrs. The BBC had far more complaints about the bias towards Griffin than the words of his voice.

We all knew what the BNP stood for before the show, and we haven’t really learnt anything new. Are people right in what they think about the BNP? Yes. Are they going about it in the right way? No. The scenes before and after he show were a disgrace. The far lefts are just as bad as the far rights. They’re both Fascists in their own ways.