Two Blokes on the Number 88

After the settling of yet more dust, this time from the Euro-elections, comes the analysis: who did well, badly, indifferently. This will no doubt produce hours of harmless fun in the vicinity of the water cooler. But in two regions of the country, one party has done very well, and the country very badly. Because the party gaining a foothold in the European Parliament is the British National Party (BNP), the glossy campaign failing to mask the unreconstructed fascist nature of the beast.

The BNP’s leader, Oberscheissenführer Nick Griffin, has been elected in the North West region, and one of his Stürmers has gained a seat in Yorkshire and Humber. The singularly unsavoury Griffin has already said that he will not represent any constituent who is not white, which is a first: even in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles, Ian Paisley made his surgeries available to all in his constituency – whatever their church. He was as diligent a servant of Catholic visitors as he was of Protestants: this was the right and Christian thing to do.

Christian values, or any other moral code, does not constrain the BNP: nowhere was this better illustrated than in the aftermath of an interview given by Unterscheissenführer Simon Darby last week. One of those quizzing the BNP’s deputy leader was Iain Dale (and there is no blogger greater than he) who has subsequently been the recipient of hate mail. His co-host has also been targeted. Their transgression appears to have been to gift this particular Gauleiter a generous length of rope, then watch as the recipient strung himself up.

Meanwhile, the BNP is painting itself as misrepresented and unfairly stigmatised, which might seem a bit rich until one realises their direction of travel: the Nazis painted themselves as the victims of a supposed Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy, even while they were systematically murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews, and engaging in a brutal war against both civilian and military in the Soviet Union.

Also, as noted this morning by the Guardian’s Michael White, the BNP, while trading on the disaffection of white working class voters, has two MEPs who were privately educated, rather like Oswald Mosley before them. One thing that the Guardian, and all other parts of the news media now need to do, is to continue their probing of the BNP, whatever the threat level, so that its true nature can be revealed.

Let’s keep shining that light on the journey of the Number 88.