I've been meaning to write this since I actually watched the Question Time debate featuring BNP leader Nick Griffin on Thursday, but was only reminded to do so by a website called [link] - which, while being immensely fun (try doing it to music), doesn't actually solve anything in a way a properly formulated argument can. I don't really have a specific point to prove, I just want to respond to some of the things he said. And, unlike Mr Griffin, I will stick by my opinions without feeling the need to change my mind when someone questions me.

So let's start with the premise of the programme itself. The argument was that, as the British National Party is based on fundamentally racist values, it cannot be recognised as a political party and therefore its leader should not be allowed to represent the BNP alongside the likes of Labour and the Conservatives (and in doing so giving Nick Griffin and his organisation publicity of the like he could never pay for). I agree, actually. But I also think this is one of those occasions on which rules can, and should, be broken. Or bent.

The man is a threat, no-one can deny that. The fact that he is now an MEP should qualify him enough for an appearance - but it goes further than that. Watch 'V For Vendetta'. You might think I'm being dramatic, but imagine how a country like that could come to reality. It starts with the foot in the door that the BNP is getting. Letting Nick Griffin appear on Question Time doesn't give him that foot in the door, it merely acknowledges the worrying fact that he has it already.

It came with a stonking great silver lining though. Nick Griffin sat there for an hour next to politicians and public speakers making a thorough idiot of himself. He proved that he is incapable of standing amongst people who he would like to regard as his peers in order to face the kind of scrutiny that is required of them. He was reduced to fits of nervous laughter, patronising other members of the panel (Bonnie Greer in particular - who was magnificent), and consistent, repeated contradiction of himself.

He was quick to point out that all politicians are guilty of hypocrisy. This might be true, but most contradict themselves over the course of at least a few speeches. Not over the course of a sixty-minute debate - dozens of times. His defence, to paraphrase, was "We're all as bad as each other". Well done, Nick. That'll win you some votes.

It went without saying that he was inevitably going to provoke some minorities. What was unprecedented was the way in which he systematically managed to insult absolutely all of them. Blacks, Jews, gays, Muslims - even Christians in a roundabout way. Some of the responses from the younger members of the audience were a bit over-philosophical and a tiny bit pretentious, but all that was drowned in the gush of ignorance (not quite hatred, at least not openly) that flowed so generously from Mr Griffin.

His key argument was that white Britons must take priority over coloured Britons because they are "indigenous": a word thrown around more times than is worth counting. I was astounded by the utter irrelevance of it. He talks about the people in Britain who have been here since the ice age seventeen thousand years ago. Now, excuse me for being technical, but you show me a Briton who's been here since the ice age and I will show you a dead Briton. No-one in the world has a life expectancy of seventeen thousand. Things like "indigenous" and "heritage" have absolutely no relevance to immediate politics. It is the people who are alive here and now; not seventeen thousand years ago, not eleven years before Nick Griffin was born when the country was all-but-entirely white as he so proudly declares; who matter. Their lives, their customs, their opinions. That's what makes a country what it is. The dead don't have a vote. The past doesn't have a vote. If you want to live in the ice age, Nick, you'd better pack a coat, because you're not dragging me back into it.

He then moved through the realms of Holocaust denial (and the denial of Holocaust denial, followed by a denial of his denial of Holocaust denial), which is probably too despicable to go into (besides, one would hope that anyone stupid enough to deny the Holocaust is probably too stupid to vote, and is thus not a threat), in order to deal a blow to the gays. "I, personally, find the sight of two men kissing really quite creepy." How pathetic. A grown man, a hardened racist, crying about men kissing. I find the BNP creepy, and yet I managed to watch Griffin talk for an hour. Not to mention the fact that I find the sight of a straight kiss unnatural in the same way he sees a gay kiss as unnatural. That's not to say it is. It's just a perspective. You know, those things we have that make us unique. Look up "solipsism", Nick. [[link]

He appears to be another person under the impression that being gay is a "lifestyle choice". As if I woke up one morning and thought, "D'you know what sounds fun? A life underscored by persecution and misunderstanding, not only from strangers and idiots like Nick Griffin, but from my own family too. Yeah. I think I'll do it." How about teen pregancy, sexual promiscuity and underage sex? (Which, by the way, I am not denouncing, I am simply comparing.) Those aren't so bad, apparently, but those creepy gays have to go. He talked about "the privacy of their own home". I don't want to undermine the integrity of my argument by swearing, but fuck the privacy of my own home. We all must witness things from time to time that make us uncomfortable. Beyond that it does us no harm. Within the law and within decency (ban the miniskirt and you might begin to be justified in calling a gay kiss "indecent"), I am entitled to conduct the ins and outs of my life wherever and whenever I please - and that includes my romantic life. So is everyone else. Something being "creepy" is not a justification to denounce it. It's not even close.

The way in which he attacked Islam was similarly ignorant and laugable. He cited as many hateful references in the Qu'ran as he possibly could, declaring that "Britain must be run on Christian values". I have a favourite Bible quote. I'm not religious, but this amused me when I read it - but it proves an altogether different point when used in this context. It comes from Deuteronomy: "When two men are fighting, and the wife of one man comes to her husband's aid by seizing the other man's genitals, show her no mercy: cut off her hand." The Old Testament (and a lot of the New Testament) is full of violence like that. Does that make Christianity a violent faith? No. In the same way that violence in the Qu'ran doesn't make Islam a violent faith. It feels ridiculous of me to even bother to clarify that.

Of course there are violent Muslims. They are Muslims who are violent. They're not violent because they're Muslim. Nine times out of ten, we use our values to justify our violence - and this is the case in religious extremism. Does Nick Griffin (himself an extremist, I'm not even going to start on that little irony) really believe that Christianity is without extremism? Indeed, that any faith or minority is without extremism? To go back on myself, "the education of homosexuality" is an utter myth - school never taught me to be gay. It did a pretty good job of trying to convince me otherwise. Yes there are people who are militant about their sexuality, race or faith who only manage to publicise the worst of their minority, but they are only militant in the first place because they have been persecuted.

So how on earth can a man who has made a speech for the Ku Klux Klan sit before an audience of eight million and preach that Christianity is without extremism? The Westboro Baptist Church [[link] would adore him. And I'm sure the BNP adore them. And even to put all that aside, as an atheist I resent the statement that Britain should be run on any religious values at all. I share many, if not most, of the morals of Christianity. But by that token I share many of the morals of Islam, and Judaism, and Buddhism, and Sikhism, and most other religions. They're not religious morals at all. It's a code of sheer human decency.

Predictably, adding to his many contradictions, Mr Griffin is now complaining about his appearance on Question Time. While he waited in the wings licking his chops and drooling over the publicity he was about to win (and let's not deny it, he has won it, I wouldn't have written this otherwise), he has now decided that actually he was a little bit bullied, and has run to Ofcom clutching his grazes. Clearly he can't take it quite as easily as he gives it.

In the grand scheme of things: no, the programme probably should not have revolved around Nick Griffin's presence. In the context of political correctness, the programme wasn't right. But be honest. Would Griffin's answers to some of the current affairs questions he wasn't given the opportunity to comment on really have been worth the air time? Did Question Time achieve nothing in proving that the man is completely incapable of sustaining a mature, reasonable debate?

I don't feel sorry for him. He's not getting my sympathy vote. I'm merely amused that, for a man complaining about unfair treatment, he spent most of the programme laughing his head off...

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