So, BBC Question Time featuring Nick Griffin has been and gone.
And I have to say, Griffin can go home tonight feeling very, very happy. He didn't fuck up, he was as slippery as Jack Straw when it came to difficult questions, he went into the most hostile audience / panel / chair combination I've ever seen and he survived it.
He had twenty tonnes of glorious publicity, he held his own against severe challenges and he looked in charge of himself and of the situation. He didn't convince me and he didn't convince anyone in the studio, but I think a lot of people who were watching might feel differently.
And why?
Because the politicians didn't take him seriously and lined up the most useless panel of twats against him. When Chris fucking Huhne stands out as the guy who landed the best punches, you fucking know you're in trouble. Their combined intellectual efforts were not enough to land a killer blow.
So he's had acres of press coverage, riots trying to shut him down, didn't get (metaphorically) killed in a seriously hostile show ... as far as he concerned, it couldn't have gone any better unless he'd been gang-raped by Warsi and Greer.
Well done to the intellectual heavyweights in the LibLabCon clusterfuck for screwing his one completely and utterly.
Update: Peter Hoskin makes a good point here. Only one real blow landed on him, and it was an own goal.
Update 2: The Curate's Egg has a good bit.
16 comments:
Totally agree Obo, my mind has not been changed either, but I bet there are a lot more people talking about BNP and British ethnicity at work tomorrow, and wondering 'what if?'
I still get the feeling that the BNP are being promoted deliberately - why else mention them all the time and get people to publicise them so widely, all the while there is a **** shaped hole in the media of the party that shall not be named.
After the 23 July by-election won by a 12 year old Tory, even that nice Dora O'Brian on Mock the Week mentioned every party including the Greens and BNP but not ****.
Why not? They came fourth, beating the Greens and BNP.
It was still my birthday when I started
The "non violent" KKK quote was amusing.
I don't think he will have persuaded anyone who didn't already sympathise with him.
I think the person who should worry about their performance was Jack "it's racism if a black says it is" Straw.
There was more focused hostility to him than Griffin. Hahaha.
Where did they get the audience from? Kindergarten??
The BBC's HYS page is proving illuminating.
Griffins appearance seems to have swayed some into supporting him. Nothing to do with a bunch of hooting, Guardian reading middle class types of course, because the benefits and working classes love people like that.
The red tops ought to make interesting reading tomorrow.
don't forget that what you have here now with the bnp has actually gone before in other eu countries and with quite an alarming rate of success, in austria and germany.
it's not new, it is just new to the uk. they seem to follow in or gain more ground/validity when the going is tough(much like hitler did) and i think it is so (and i am sure there are many studies which reflect such) that when a country is in recession that people tend to look towards more radical 'soltuions'. and the right wing blogsphere to my mind reflects that in that everybody starts to look for solutions to their discomfort, and as such blamelaying seems to follow ccording to whicheer minority you think is at fault.
i have great difficulties distinguishing between the chants of benefit scroungers and dirty foreigners. for me they are all the same type of chant,they say someones got to be at fault and parties like the bnp feed off that, -it is the breath of their very existence feeding off the discontent of the people. and the polticians do too, everybody gets into the lets blame whatever fucking minority we dont like instead of looking at the simple fact that the system is not working.
5 on to 1 is never pretty, Griffin will pick up votes for that. Why couldn't they just do the normal format and tripped him up on the economy as well as foreign policy. Instead they kept on about the BNP itself, and made themselves look like bullies never letting Griffin get a word in.
Non of them came out of this very well. But Griffin didn't need too.
sorry,
a hundred typos, hope it still makes sense.
"I don't think he will have persuaded anyone who didn't already sympathise with him."
I'm not so sure. It was a disaster for the Righteous - they ganged up on him in a blatently biased programme, instead of simply letting him hang himself.
He may get quite a few sympathy votes out of this...
I'm not sure Griffin or the BNP will have gained significantly from the programme itself. Though a pre-outraged audience that still seemed incapable of booing at the right time has probably helped his cause!
Jack Straw was pathetic and seemed to draw fire away from Griffin - so another Labour bullet finds it's mark in its own foot.
I am going to shot myself as i agree with you obo
http://newslion.blogspot.com/
Would be interesting to know via FOI how many of the audience were actors/pre-selected/plants. As Quiet man says it would have been much more intersting if they had stuck the the usual QT type questions instead of the of a sort of Griffin interogation session. The whole show revolved around him.
I was expecting Straw to be a wily debater and Warsi to be shrill and irritating. The opposite was the case. Straw and Hoon seemed to be trying to parrot prepared speeches and couldn't give straight answers, whereas Warsi engaged with the debate and gave clear, uncompromising responses.
I think that a lot of viewers (like myself) will have been alienated by the gang-bang and the insolent refusal of most of the panel to consider that their inaction might have contributed to the rise of the BNP, but Griffin didn't come across well and I wonder if the surprise beneficiaries of this will be UKIP - as the acceptable face of immigration control and anti-EU policies.
I thought he came off looking like a complete tosser. Virtually everybody disagrees with me I see.
"I thought he came off looking like a complete tosser. Virtually everybody disagrees with me I see."
No, you're right, he did.
It's just that everyone else came off worse, because we expect that of Griffin from the outset.
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