So why has the BNP failed so dismally? Partly because vicious factionalism is an intrinsic component of such parties, as John Tyndall, A.K. Chesterton and even Oswald Mosley would tell you. But more to the point, it was undone by the thing it craved: publicity. When Nick Griffin appeared on the BBC’s Question Time he did not — as the bedraggled bands of ranting idiots screaming ‘nnnnnnoooooo platform for racists’ insisted he would — appear a compelling and plausible figure for whom one could happily vote. He appeared to be instead implausible and forgettable, a man (not a necessarily unpleasant man, on the face of it) patently out of his depth. And leading a party whose manifesto and ethos was riven with contradiction and absurdities.
I was not keen on the way in which Question Time dealt with the BNP issue — consumed by the hysteria of the media, and the band of cretins insisting he should never have been allowed on air, they were forced into the position of making Griffin the whole story. But still, that appearance and the attendant coverage occasioned by the appearance did more harm to the BNP than a thousand ranting protestors could have ever done. And it should be a lesson to the left; it is not always the oxygen of publicity, it is often the cyanide of publicity. The BNP are finished as a force because, against the odds, a democratic reflex afforded them exposure and they were found out.
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