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The great Daniel Hannan MEP spoke to KeepRightOnline today about the recent round of European Elections, his take on the results, and the media glorification of the British National Party. Take it away Mr. Hannan...
The first point to make is that the Conservatives were the only mainstream party to get more votes than last time. The two pro-Brussels parties, Labour and the LibDems, were hammered. Anti-federalist parties won seven out of every ten ballots cast.
Sadly, this news was completely lost in all the noise about the tiny BNP (whose share of the vote, by the way, went down slightly from last time.) Why? Because journalists, like Labour politicians, indulge themselves whenever the BNP comes up. They like to make themselves feel better by ranting about fascism - thereby underlining what nice, caring, anti-racist people they are. The trouble is that, by bigging it up, they give the BNP precisely the disproportionate coverage that brought it its two seats.
By the last week of the campaign, Labour activists had given upon any attempt at positive arguments. Instead, they went around saying: "Vote Labour to stop the BNP". Sadly, their party is so detested that their words had the opposite effect.
Incidentally, I hope Nick Griffin's acceptance speech will finally have driven into the skulls of some BBC reporters that the BNP is not "far Right". The man barely mentioned immigration; instead, he spent all his time excoriating the privatisation of state industries. His is a far Left party: it believes in nationalisation, higher taxes, state subsidies for factories, massive expenditure on the NHS and state pensions and (although it tends to keep quiet about this one) the abolition of the monarchy.
Not that BBC producers care about any of this, of course. For them, "Right-wing" is a handy synonym for "baddie". Anyone who is sufficiently odious - from the revolutionary ayatollahs in Tehran to the Stalinist nostalgics in Russia - is "Right-wing" in the idiom of our state broadcaster. Is Griffin a total arse? Yup. Therefore, to your earnest BBC producer, he must be Right-wing.
Daniel Hannan MEP is a British politician and Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party. He presently serves on the Committee on Fisheries and the Delegation for Relations with Afghanistan. Daniel is also a journalist, writing leaders and a blog for the The Daily Telegraph. He has also published several books arguing for radical democratic reform, the most recent being the incredibly sound, "The Plan," which is a KeepRightOnline 'must have'.
