Here’s what I think.
Nick Griffin is an odious little toad of a man.
Everything that the British National Party stands for is abhorrent to all sane people.
However, there are enough irrational people on the electoral register that the BNP are an elected party.
Question Time is supposed to be politically neutral. An unfortunate side effect of this is that the BNP will occasionally invited onto Question Time. You can’t blame the BBC for this. Blame the idiots who elected them.
There is more than a little irony in anti-fascist protesters trying to stop an elected party from speaking. And as a side effect they have given Griffin far more publicity than he deserves and given him a chance to play the martyr. The UAF are doing more harm than good. It’s the BNP who are supposed to be the stupid one.
The best way to handle this was to have Griffin on the panel but to have stacked the rest of the panel with intelligent and erudite people like Stephen Fry who would have easily shown him up as the buffoon that he is and his policies as the poisonous nonsense that they are. Give him enough rope to hang himself.
Oh, and I have another suggestion for the BBC. As I tweeted this afternoon:
BBC, if you want to give the BNP some air-time, why not put Nick Griffin on “Who Do You Think You Are”? I’d love to see that.