So how did Nick Griffin’s first outing on Question Time go? A mixed bag in my opinion.
Most of the programme was dedicated to attacks on the BNP or Nick Griffin, most of which was lapped up by a baying audience that was disproportionately full of black and asian people. Nick Griffin looked uncomfortable and nervous the whole way through.
Jack Straw was by far the weakest panelist on the programme, spinning so fast they could have hooked him up to the national grid. Chris Huhne was the least confrontational of the LibLabCon panelists (who’d have thought it from a Lib Dim?). Baroness Waarsi was the best of the politicos on the panel by far. She attacked Griffin – sometimes weakly – but she also treated Jack Straw as fair game, especially when he denied that Liebour’s open door policy was to blame for the rise in the BNP’s popularity.
Interesting, whilst everything Nick Griffin said was met with jeers from the crowd, when he said there were too many people coming into the country and that it should be stopped there were no jeers from the predominantly black and asian audience.
Griffin was strongest on Islam – when he was asked to explain why he believed that Islam was a cruel and wicked faith he did so quite openly, citing the stoning of female rape victims for “adultary” and the Koran’s instructions to murder non-believers as evidence of its cruelty. There were a few disagreements from the audience and from Baroness Waarsi who insisted that that wasn’t what Islam is about (despite it being in the Koran).
The funniest part of the programme was when Jack Straw was pontificating about Winston Churchill and the contribution of black and asians to the war effort during the Second World War and Nick Griffin pointed out that his grandfather was an RAF pilot during the war whilst Jack Straw’s grandfather spent the war in prison for refusing to fight. To be fair to Jack Straw, he barely flinched but it was a priceless moment.
On balance, Nick Griffin came across badly. He was unconvincing during most of the programme but he was certainly not the weakest panelist – I would put him above Straw and Huhne. If the programme encourages people to join the BNP it will be because of the attacks on Nick Griffin – the negative politics throughout – rather than what Griffin said. After all, are naturally attracted to the underdog.
And the best panelist? Not Griffin, not Straw, not Huhne and not Waarsi. The best panelist was some black woman from a museum who calmly and intelligently wiped the floor with Nick Griffin. She did more to put down the BNP than the LibLabCon panelists put together and she did it without insulting him, without raising her voice and without feigning anger. It is people like her that will keep the BNP down, not failed politicians whose refusal to tackle immigration gives oxygen to the BNP.
I see a couple of people have responded to your previous BNP/Question time post, suggesting Nick Griffin may have benefitted from it.
I sat and watched it, and cannot agree. Griffin came over as a total twat. Constantly forced to deny ‘quotes’ he was alleged to have made and offering not one jot of policy.
Mind you, it was also the most dismal QT ever. The whole format was lost and became ‘bash Griffin hour’ Other than Baroness Waarsi, not one of the panel put forward a single suggestion to counteract the rise in ‘popularity’ of the BNP.
Funny how Baroness Waarsi can see Labour’s uncontrolled immigration is the cause of BNP ballot success. Yet Jack Straw can’t?
A few people have said about Griffin/BNP “give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” After last night he’s got the rope, all we need now is for him/them to complete the job.
Straw has always been an icompotent facile dick wad, thats probably why , griffin chose him being on the show, for his debut, sort of like being truncheoned with a well soaked weetabix
however, the show has done its job, The Sun (Gorra Luv It!!!!) has come out against the BNP and that is the vital result!
Oh yes, top tip guys, if you are going to start a political party, dont put a fat bloke with a wonky eye on as your first TV representitive
Aborigines–lazy & stupid, dont understand the modern world(or even want to), fucked up on beer and pills, harking back to a prehistoric Dreamtime, when we all had jobs and worked down coalmines or built shitty cars that none of us wanted to drive, was he trying to be ironic by hinting we are all really nig nogs?
Griffin was utterly abysmal. He was even worse than I expected. I couldn’t believe it. 8 Million people watched him at the start and most of them had probably switched over by the end.
Griffin looked terrible, his nerves were clearly a problem and some of the things he said were pretty absurd. I didn’t like Baroness Warsi, Chris Huhne was better but hats off to Bonnie Greer. She made Nick Griffin look very silly indeed.
I will say though that the BNP would have been better served if Nick Griffin had put his ego aside and had allowed Andrew Brons to appear on the programme instead. Brons looks better, sounds better and is a far more plausible figure than Griffin will ever be after last night. I thought Griffin’s over-all performance was appallingly bad.
I am not a supporter of either Griffin or the BNP but this was not Questiontime it was a lynch mob. Just put yourself in the same postion if you had gone on to defend your beliefs, and consider how you would have done, and consider that more than likely every other week of the prog politicians would have been briefed on the questions being put, and consider also that the audience was hand picked. If they agreed he should go on he should have been given a fair crack of the whip because would expect it. I dispise Jack Straw just as much as Griffin the man is a traitor, and it was his father that supported fascism and Hitler in WW2 by refusing to fight, not his grandfather, and it was Griffin’s father that was in the RAF not his grandfather.
“I am not a supporter of either Griffin or the BNP but this was not Questiontime it was a lynch mob.”
Griffin’s friends in the KKK know all about “lynch mobs” – an unfortunate turn of phrase to describe last nights nonsense if ever there was one.
Griffin couldn’t defend his beliefs – that was his whole problem. I well remember when Griffin produced the magazine “Who are the mind-benders?” (Co-written with former UKIP member Dr. Mark Deavin) Griffin thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. He once wrote to me enclosing a copy. I was polite, of course, but quite frankly, I was in dispair at the situation.
“The Mindbenders” was all about “Jewish Media Conspiracy”. I can recall throwing about two-dozen of the blasted things into a bin after somebody brought them in to an NF meeting. That’s how bad his writings were – the then NF wouldn’t even touch them.
I saw nothing last night to suggest that Griffin has changed even one iota.
Seems the wheels have come off your trolly on this one Wonko. Polls showing BNP up and the media awake to the fact that old one eye hit a cord with many Brits, so changing the victory against Nazis tune. have you seen the comment pages? Cannot be all BNP supporters since they don’t have many who can write, except after QT they may have another 4,000 or so. BTW, old Bonnie got her facts badly wrong. Warsi could not answer the gay question. Chris whats his face was crap and Dimblbore was biased. As for Jackboot Strawman, words fail me.
my girlfriend has turned into a green nazi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
she said, ‘they can either act civilised or fuck off home’
but the really weird thing is, she is still a tree hugging hippy!
your girl friend needs a psychiatric help
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