Sometimes I wonder why some people just cannot shut up and crawl back into their little holes. Nope, on this occasion I am not talking about BNP leader Nick Griffin, but Welsh Secretary and serial meddler Peter Hain.

Most of us who read or listen to the news will know about the decision to invite Nick Griffin – or rather, Nick Griffin MEP – onto the BBC current affair panel programme Question Time. And most of us would be more than aware of the shitstorm this has all created, from the now rather tiresome hand-wringing of some MPs through to threats of violence and disorder from the group that calls itself “Unite Against Fascism” (UAF).

Peter Hain, proud defender of free speech...

Now Hain has threatened to launch his own legal campaign against the BBC for inviting Griffin onto the show – when he should be getting on with his job and not wasting his own and everybody else’s time. (A copy of the letter itself can be found here).

I frankly cannot see why this has caused such a rumpus – Griffin is an elected MEP and, whether Peter Hain and his ilk like it or not, the BNP are now part of the democratic landscape of this country; as such he and his colleagues should concentrate on debating the issues at hand rather than chasing their own little bogeyman in order to make themselves feel better.

The BNP core leadership may be an odious lot in that their history can be traced back to various unsavoury groups; this cannot be said for many who might have voted for them on the other hand – in the main ordinary British people who have seen successive Governments do sweet bugger all for them and their families, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the steady flow of newcomers and the rise of fundamentalist Islam. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that there is clearly a political vacuum here, and that the BNP have very successfully worked to fill it.

The political establishment don’t appear to have learned nothing from history: in the mid to late 1970s this country was seriously under threat from the National Front (a party far more extreme and uncouth than the BNP), and in some cases there was a very real fear that the NF could have gained a significant foothold in the British political arena. The left simply stoked the flames, whipping up hysteria in a society that was arguably on the brink: had the Labour Party – then dominated by the left – won the general election in 1979, we would have witnessed mass carnage in this country. The inner cities would have imploded, and the white working class would have jumped blindly for the tub-thumping rhetoric of the NF.

As it happened, the Thatcher revolution was about to begin – and with it a more coherent, common-sense approach that didn’t aim to smash the NF but slowly strangle it. By the time Mrs. Thatcher was relected in 1983, the NF were back again on the fringes of society and consigned to the terraces at some football grounds. By the late 1980s, even this phenomenon was slowly being snuffed out.

Less than two decades after the end of the Thatcher era, we have come full circle – the main difference this time is that the Conservative party, rather than being the voice of reason and common sense, are now part of the happy-clappy, multi-kulti, whateveryouwanttobe-friendly establishment. Even David Cameron, keen to promote his new-found political mission, is a member of UAF. It’s just laughable – twenty years ago any Conservative worth his or her salt would not have been seen dead standing alongside this rabble.

The political vacuum that exists today is down to the simple fact that politicians are more remote than they have ever been; with their own little scams, fiddling their expenses and living in their own little media bubbles many of them have no real idea how things have changed for the British public in the past two decades. They’d immediately dismiss it as my being paranoid, but when I go shopping these days every third person I encounter cannot speak English properly – on one occasion when asking where to find something at a supermarket I received little more than a series of incoherent grunts. Of course, to even dare to suggest that applicants for this person’s job should be able to speak English properly would be seen by some as “racist” – or something.

This is just the sort of situation that gives the BNP its credibility – and no amount of legal posturing or placard-waving is going to change anything. For what it’s worth, I happen to find Peter Hain offensive – is anyone going to support me in launching a legal campaign the next time he makes an appearance on Question Time? Erm, right.