The BNP have changed their constitution to allow “non-indigenous Britons” to join, but now it is being claimed that their new rules “indirectly” discriminate against black and Asian people:

[P]rospective members had to sign up to principles including a duty to oppose the promotion of any form of “integration or assimilation” that impacted on the “indigenous British”, and a requirement to support the “maintenance and existence of the unity and integrity of the indigenous British”.

So what precisely are the BNP doing? Oh, yes, asking their members to sign up to their …

The government is driving white working class people towards the BNP, says a report from think tank IPPR:

We have to stop reducing the complexity of people’s lives to simplistic tick boxes. They tell us less than ever about who people are, what lives they lead, or what services they need. Equality campaigners need to realise that mobilising around fixed group identities is alien to a new generation more used to facebook groups and flash mobs. We need new ways of thinking and talking about equalities in the 21st century.
Not only …

There’s no such thing as a fair election that they don’t win, according to the BNP. They have invoked the Ballot Act of 1872 so that they can put their own seal on ballot boxes at the general election because apparently somehow people tamper with their votes, despite the seals of independent election officials:

We know it happens. We just cannot prove it.

Yeah, right.
Elections in Britain are fair. Or at least the method of counting the votes is fair and accurate; whether or not you agree with the political system depends …

My post yesterday entitled “UKIP: The almost-acceptable face of the BNP?” seems to have got a few interesting responses.
First it got a link from Iain Dale’s Daley Dozen, which was nice. Followed by an influx of visitors – and presumably how the bloggers who wrote posts about my post found out about it.
Both of the replies actually follow a similar trail of thought:

The burka is not part of Islam.
As if somehow that is something that non-Muslims can categoricaly state.

It’s OK to ban because lots of other parties across Europe have …

UKIP, the party which used to be feted as the libertarian wing of the British political scene, has now proved itself to be little better than the BNP:

It makes sense to ban the burka — or anything which conceals a woman’s face — in public buildings. But we want to make it possible to ban them in private buildings. It isn’t right that you can’t see someone’s face in an airport. – Lord Pearson, UKIP leader
It is a symbol of something that is used to oppress women, it is a …

A fully-white UK:

Giving the BNP a seat on the Question Time panel was always considered risky – even by supporters of it. We want to shine a light on the BNP and their policies, to make them unelectable. There was always a chance that Nick Griffin would perform well and the whole spectacle would have been a massive success for him.
That did not happen.
Griffin bombed. He stuttered, was incoherent, and failed to respond to the questions. He was unable to deal with the criticism of the panel and some well-made arguments from …

Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, is due to take part in Question Time on Thursday. But Peter Hain has declared that it would be illegal to have a BNP representative on the panel:

Now that the BNP have accepted they are at present an unlawful body, it would be perverse of you to maintain that they are just like any other democratically elected party. On their own admission, at present, they are not.
If you do not review the decision you may run the very serious risk of legal challenge in …

The news that Jacqui Smith will be on Question Time in two weeks time was greeted with louder boos than Nick Griffin being on next week!
It really does say something when a former Home Secretary is despised more than the leader of a racist party.

Although my immediate reaction to the concept of BNP leader Nick Griffin being invited on to Question Time was “WTF?!”, as soon as I got over that immediate shock, my view is simple.
Let them on.
Let the BNP come on to Question Time. Let them speak their piece. And then shoot down their absurd, racist policies and views.
The only way to defeat the BNP is to allow them to air their views and then poke holes in everything they say. If we ban them, we give them legitimacy through being seen …