The panellists were all so anxious to have their go at Nick Griffin they often managed to let him off his own hook. There were some decent audience interventions along with the usual array of utterly incomprehensible ones - none was a killer point. Griffin was really starting to hang himself with his extraordinary discourse on indigenous people, and had he been allowed to keep going uninterrupted could probably have finished himself there and then. Alas, his fellow panellists were interrupting so madly that they broke his suicidal flow. Particularly impressive is Griffin's belief that the indigenous people of this island can trace their ancestry to common ice-age humans - and there was I thinking that regular invasions kept changing and mixing our common heritage, with even the Normans a couple of thousand years ago massacring most of their predecessor settlers, the Saxons.Winners and Losers? Huhne a definite loser - poor points, couldn't shut up, much too long-winded, and always angry; Dimbleby seemed to think he was a member of the panel rather than the chairman; Warsi was actually a lot better than expected - made some good points pretty effectively, and has moved some way from her previous inarticulate self; Bonnie Greer was wonderfully academically disdainful of Griffin, who for some reason kept reacting to her as if she was his best buddy; and Jack Straw was solid, but after a decent opening comment never really found his dynamic point; and Griffin has got his pound of publicity, but is poor in front of an audience of unbelievers. Next time - just let him speak without interruption.
6 comments:
Jack Straw could have ended the BNP single handedly tonight but just didnt have the guts or cohesion.
He used to be a very effective debater - wonder what happened to him tonight?
Straw's Dad a conchie? Disgusting. Apparently the long answer is the best answer in his book. He failed to impress.
It was a pantomime, an absolute joke. Howard from the Halifax was an idiot, and the moronic mob didn't help matters.
We've had these questions before, all in the last week too. As you say, let the man talk and he will hang himself, but no-one gave him that chance apart the one time. I wanted to hear more on policy, as if it were a normal question time, rather than the tired old race questions. This, I believe would have damaged him more, perhaps even in the eyes of his potential support. I bet the others oved being on with him. They weren't stretched in the slightest.
Oh and "Dick Griffin", ROFL! Up goes his support.
Straw was rather incoherent throughout. Really a shame, I always admired him as one of the great politicians of our time. Exactly for being so grey and being such a survivalist.
Griffin didn't specifically embarrass himself but the fact that he got such a hostile reception means that the masses won't be as ready to vote for him next time round. Hopefully.
Did anyone else find this painful to watch? Like in any hyped-up event, the mass hysteria before the battle was much more exciting. Within 30 seconds of the actual program, every panelist was jumping on the anti-BNP bandwagon to distance their party/pr from the group. Its not a bad bandwagon to jump on, but it seemed to be a great demonstration of modern politics, where pandering to the masses overran genuine debate... just another question time I suppose.
Baroness Warsi (as she apparently prefers not to be known, I think in the hope that she will be mistaken for a democratically elected politician) was an odd choice for this panel.
As a Muslim woman, admittedly she would stand to lose more under the BNP than the other grey politicians under the panel. She is, however, no stranger to using the politics of prejudice and vitriolic hate when it suits her to.
In the 2005 election campaign she stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Dewsbury. Targetting what she maybe perceived as the prejudice of the many Muslims in that constituency, she produced horrifyingly homophobic election literature warning parents that the equalisation of the age of consent would put their children at risk of being propositioned by homosexuals, and claimed that homosexuality was being taught to children as young as seven in schools. She was also a vehement defender of the frankly fascist Section 28, and has previously commented that she believes the BNP has some "very legitimate points" - presumably in relation to their homophobia as opposed to their Islamophobia.
All in all, thoroughly despicable, to try to make victims of one minority in order to win electoral favour. Which is exactly what the BNP do. Luckily, the voters of Dewsbury were not sufficiently swayed, and Warsi had to be shoe-horned into the House of Lords to continue with her hate-fuelled political career. But to see her on Question Time expressing mock disgust at the BNP alongside the genuine liberal outrage coming from the rest of the panel - and much of the audience - made my stomach turn. Another example of the chimera politics we have come to expect from Cameron's Conservatives.
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