The Next Step: Moving on from Question Time

I said the Internets would be ablaze with analysis and accusations over Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. It didn’t take Nostradamus to know that prediction would come true.

Hopefully this post will be the last I need to say on the matter, as I’ll just add this little contribution to the debate: A while ago I was asked to compare the BNP and my experience dealing with the Front National.

Yesterday I was discussing the program with my friend Xavier Garcia, Spokesperson for the Parti Socialiste in the Alpes-Maritimes, who is also a university lecturer on politics in Nice. He wrote his doctoral thesis in Sheffield on the Labour Party of the 1980s.

The conclusion we came to was resolutely against No Platform (Who would have thought?) Here’s a summary of our conversation:

The rise of the BNP was impossible in the 80s and 90s because of the political landscape in Britain. Now, the Labour Party has become a middle class intellectual party and lost/losing its working class credentials (exactly like the PS), meanwhile, the Tory Party, which used to occupy the Right, has moved into the centre.

Most people think it is mainly old people who vote far right, in fact it’s very significantly young people from the working class (for reasons and fear that are discussed to death, like jobs and immigration) and so this space combined with far-rightists are why the BNP is “rising”.

On No Platform, the French parties boycotted the Front for years, and it grew and grew until it established a foothold, feeding and thriving from the notoriety and being “underground” from the mainstream parties.

Then No Platform ended, and the Front enjoyed a little boost (the same boost the BNP might experience after QT) but the FN has been in terminal decline ever since, further accelerated by Sarkozy poaching FN votes. Cameron’s Tories seem centrist, but only time will tell, they could erode the Far-Right electorate. If Labour gets its act together, the BNP will have nowhere left to go provided they are not given the No Platform lifeline of the protest-vote.

It’s incredibly short sighted to claim “told you so” from a 1% increase in the polls immediately after such a media spectacle. Which leads us to…

Tom Miller (a parliamentary candidate) has been asking me to respond to an article in the Guardian: “Ministers warn of poll boost for BNP after Question Time” who seems to have missed this quote from Darth Mandelson:

“In the short term, he [Griffin] may have done himself a favour. But in the long term he has done himself no good at all.”

Not to mention missing this (much better) piece from the UK Polling Report, YouGov verdict on BNP’s Question Time which highlights:

The topline voting intentions, with changes from the poll last weekend, are CON 40%(-1), LAB 27%(-3), LDEM 19%(+2), BNP 3%(+1). So while the BNP support is up, it is nothing significant. 2-3% has been pretty much the norm for their support over the last couple of months, and the most recent YouGov/Telegraph poll at the end of September also had them at 3%.

Then just as a side note:

What has changed was attitudes to the BBC’s decision to invite Griffin onto Question Time. At the weekend 63% thought it was right, 23% wrong. Now the balance of opinion has shifted further in favour of the BBC’s decision, 74% thinking it was right, and only 11% wrong.

I can’t believe anybody would think that the first appearance of the BNP on the Question Time would be a make-or-break situation and then we could all go home. This was the first battle in the war against the Far-Right, and we can choose to fight it, or regress to No Platform.

PS. I am in Britain this week, hoping to spend it with my girlfriend. Sorry Tom for not replying to your incredibly urgent Tweet until you mentioned it three times!