Comment: Pantomime fascist falls at first hurdle as Greer shines on night

Published on Friday 23 October 2009 01:56

CHARMING, witty, disarming , amusing: there's no doubt who stole the show … Bonnie Greer. But what was that ghastly reptile doing on the panel? That was Nick Griffin, who has put the mainstream parties in a panic and plunged the BBC into a state of siege.

He came over not as a would-be fhrer but a pantomime fascist, a joker who wouldn't make it on a pub quiz team let alone BBC1 Question Time, but for a set of obnoxious views and a reputation vastly greater than he deserves. So confused were the backtrackings, flimsy denials, absurd untruths and patent bluster, it was hard to tell which end of the pantomime horse was speaking, though most of it sounded well to the rear.

Griffin fell at the first hurdle, in a toe-curling attempt to present a Holocaust Denier denial. "I was not convicted of it," he said, smirking at David Dimbleby. He grinned and smirked a lot, in between strange reptilian darts of the tongue around the mouth.

Second shaft: why had he expressed admiration for Hitler and the Nazi Party? "I can't explain", he retorted, "why I said these things." After weeks in which anticipation of his appearance had stirred up so much controversy, was that the best he could come up with?

Even worse was his explanation of how he had come to change his views on the Holocaust, a weird excuse to do with wartime radio intercepts. The audience groaned. Had he actually changed his views, or was this just BNP dissemblage to appear respectable?

Arguably his most disturbing trait was not how Oswald Mosley-like he was in appearance, but how ordinary – but for the fact his answers were from some other planet.

If he is, as he claims, the most loathed man in Britain, it doesn't say much about him, or all that wasted loathing. That didn't make it a hands-down victory for Jack Straw and Chris Huhne. Both stumbled and dissembled on the most acute question of the evening: whether it was the failure of the government's immigration policy, not Griffin's racialistic blethers that accounted for the rise in votes for the BNP.

The more they sought to explain and excuse the chaos that is Britain's border controls, the worse it got for them. Clearly, the BNP leader was not the only one with previous dodgy positions to escape from. Easy winner by far was Greer. She slapped Griffin down with consummate ease, dismissing his fantastical account of the origins of "indigenous" British and the BNP's website account with: "Your history is a joke!" The audience erupted.

Several audience interventions landed well-aimed punches and Sayeeda Warsi, shadow minister for communities, was disciplined and ice-cool in her scorn. Dimbleby, chairman-cum- panellist, struggled to keep the panellists in order. He pleaded at the audience towards the end: "I don't want the whole programme to be dominated by Nick Griffin." What on earth did he expect?

Soon it was all over and Dimbleby was able to assure millions of agitated viewers that Question Time would revert to sound, honest, mainstream politicians next week … with Jacqui Smith.

Oh, the relief.