An odious spectacle

Seeing Nick Griffin playing the ostracised martyr on television is sickening, and underlines the futility of banning him. Some 8,000 are invited to the Queen’s garden party, there was zero chance that Her Majesty would allowed within 50 metres of him. So his daft blog, asking readers to suggest questions he’d put to the Queen, was an irrelevance. His whole political schtick is that ‘I represent a million ordinary people, and the establishment won’t listen to them’. The more you ban him from things, the louder he shouts this message. What happened today is grist to his mill.
 
Sky News interviewed guests outside, who thought it unfair that he was banned, given that all MEPs are automatically invited and have been for years. One woman said: “He’s a person, like everyone else. You don’t have to believe his opinions.” This is the British way: tolerance. Which is, of course, why the BNP and its neo-fascist predecessors have done so badly in the polls for so long.