Why I wouldn't go on Question Time with the unsavoury Nick Griffin

Updated: 04:25 EDT, 20 October 2009

The call came early last week. Would I like to be on the same Question Time panel as the BNP leader Nick Griffin?

It took me all of five seconds to say: thanks, but no thanks. There's no upside.

Best case, you monster him and come across as a bully. Worst case, he challenges you to disagree with some of his views, perhaps on something as straightforward as demanding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and you're immediately tarred as guilty by association.

No debate: The prospect of being on the same Question Time panel as BNP Leader Nick Griffin is unappealing

Once you've said he's a racist, where else is there to go?

The BBC haven't invited Griffin on to the show so that he can congratulate Jack Straw on his stand against the Muslim veil, have a reasoned debate with the Tories' Baroness Warsi about the level of capital gains tax on small business or confront Chris Huhne over his enthusiasm for European integration.

Actually, if this were a special EU edition of Question Time, there might be some justification for including Griffin.

One million people voted BNP in the European elections and the party has two MEPs.

But the BNP isn't a serious force at Westminster, nor is it likely to have any MPs after the next General Election. So the BBC is under no obligation to give Griffin a platform.

We are told the programme offers an opportunity to expose the BNP. To whom?

The party trawls for support among white working class voters, those the advertisers refer to as C2DEs.

How many of them do you imagine watch something as cerebral as Question Time?

'Oi, Doris. I never realised the BNP were racists. I'll be voting LibDem in future.'

If they're hoping that Griffin will come across as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, they are going to be sorely disappointed. He won't rise to the bait.

I speak from experience. Back when I had a show on Sky TV, my producer thought it would be a good idea to invite Griffin to appear.

After all, we'd had the Islamist headbanger Omar Bakri on the programme a couple of weeks earlier, so why not?

Interviewing the shifty and unsavoury Griffin was like trying to nail jelly to a wall. We went through his 'manifesto' point by point.

There was little in it which couldn't have been espoused by any of the main parties.

His law and order policies, for instance, were straight out of the David Blunkett song book.

He was against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like the Liberals. The Tories and UKIP were both promising to repatriate powers from Brussels.

I put it to Griffin that what set the BNP apart was the large elephant not in the manifesto, namely that it is the 'Wogs Out' party.

Even when I confronted him with the incontrovertible evidence in chapter and verse, he shrugged and shuffled, mouthed a few platitudes and that was about it. I may have pressed him again on the overtly racist appeal of the BNP, but it didn't achieve anything.

Questionable: The BBC's decision to invite Griffin on Question Time is curious

Afterwards, I felt rather grubby. On another occasion we featured a man who'd been forced out of his job as an engine driver because the union objected to his BNP membership.

The researchers had also invited an excitable teenage 'cultural commentator' from one of the unpopular papers by way of balance.

He managed to work himself up into such an hysterical, nasal lather of sweaty indignation - squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance - that he succeeded only in making the BNP man seem reasonable.

That's the danger on Thursday. If the rest of the panel and the handpicked members of the audience gang up on Griffin, he'll lap it up.

And it's difficult to maintain a crescendo of outrage for a whole hour. What happens, for instance, when Griffin reminds Straw that it's Gordon Brown banging the 'British Jobs for British Workers' drum and a Labour government now boasting about repatriating illegal immigrants?

Don't forget, even though he leads a party of little more than a few skinheads above a kebab shop, Griffin is a politician. He can lie, obfuscate and dissemble with the best of them.

That's what politicians do.

As Melanie Phillips reiterated yesterday, Griffin's goons have been able to goose-step their way on to territory vacated by mainstream politicians, who collectively regard the patriotic white working class as bigoted peasants and smear anyone who raises genuine concerns about immigration, however moderately, as a 'racist'.

The Left, in particular, raise the BNP bogeyman at every available opportunity, allowing themselves to flaunt their own 'goodness'. If the BNP didn't exist, Labour would have to invent them.

Look, I don't have any real objection to sharing a platform with political fanatics. Last time, it was Polly Toynbee.

In fact, I'm due on Question Time in November. But on Thursday, I'm glad to be sitting it out.

There's no upside, except possibly for Griffin, which is as good a reason as any for steering well clear.

We're all doomed? I don't think so

Doomed? Gordon Brown says we have 50 days to save our planet from global warming

With no apparent irony, Gordon Brown insists we have just 50 days to save the world from global warming.

Politicians do love their dramatic, artificial deadlines. Remember '24 hours to save the NHS'?

The 50 days in question is the run-up to the Copenhagen climate carnival.

Apparently if we don't sign up to the new treaty, which will impose arbitrary and draconian restrictions on carbon emissions, the Earth is doomed.

According to Gordon, thousands of people in Britain will die from floods, droughts and heatwaves.

No, they won't. My hunch, considering the world has actually got colder this century, is that never mind 50 days, the climate in 50 years will be pretty much the same as it is today.

All Copenhagen will achieve is a wordy communique, which will be interpreted in Britain as yet another excuse for politicians to extend their power, their patronage and the punishment culture. It will mean higher taxes and higher prices for just about everything.

Meanwhile, China and India will go on pumping out gases like there's no tomorrow.

Which there will be, regardless of the self-aggrandising, apocalyptic rhetoric.

Hey diddle diddle, they are all on the fiddle

A Bolivian man living illegally in Britain has won his appeal against deportation on the grounds that he has a cat.

Because he jointly owns the moggy with his girlfriend, this was accepted by a tribunal as sufficient evidence that he is in a stable relationship and fully settled in this country.

Therefore sending him home would breach his right to a 'private and family life'. Granting him indefinite leave to remain, Judge Judith Gleeson even joked that the cat 'need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice'.

We're not even allowed to know the name of the Bolivian - or the cat. Both have been blacked out of court papers to protect their privacy.

Needless to say, the Borders Agency and the Home Office are tearing their hair out. How can we ever tackle illegal immigration in the face of such judicial stupidity?

Where does the right to a family life come into this case? The Bolivian and his girlfriend are not married and there are no dependent children.

If the couple are determined to have a family life, they can have one in Bolivia.

Surely if joint ownership of a cat has to be taken into consideration, his application was bereft of all other merit.

Does this new loophole apply solely to cats, or can other pets be taken into consideration?

If so, the courts will soon be clogged with other illegals appealing against deportation because they have budgies or gerbils.

The case comes in a week in which the same court refused to deport 50 foreign criminals, including killers and sex offenders, because it might infringe their human rights.

Sir Andrew Green, from Migrationwatch, said: 'I despair. This is symptomatic of the attitude held by many members of the judiciary, in complete disregard for the impact of such decisions on the future of our community.

'Drawing pets into the consideration of such important issues is so utterly absurd that you could not make it up.'

That could have been me speaking.

Recycled blues

They say no good deed goes unpunished. After my column complimenting Enfield Council on the courteous and efficient way they handled my call about the recycling not being collected, I have been inundated with complaints from other residents less than gruntled with the refuse service.

Give me a break, please. I'm a columnist, not an ombudsman.

Don't call me, call the Town Hall. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Women who drink a glass of red wine a day 'prone to catching liver cancer'

The  health fascists never give up. They're now targeting women who relax with a glass of wine after a hard day juggling work and family, telling them they're all going to die of liver disease.

It's enough to drive you to drink.

● Forgive me, I know I really should get out more, but who is Stephen Gately?