The problem is, that new arrivals aren’t favoured for social provision. They DO get equal treatment, but that’s because our society is built on equality. I wonder how your working class friend would have felt if he was less likely to receive a council house because his wife was more ‘recent’ than others.

To believe that the BNP are somehow going to sort out the mess in social provisions (there simply isn’t enough to go round), then that is stupidity. To believe that newer immigrants should have less rights may not be racism, but it is definitely xenophobia (which aint much better).

Until this demand is met – as it is just about everywhere else in Europe – the BNP will attract support.

Just ask the mayor of Calais what she thinks about the effects of how British welfare provision obligations are conceptualized.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x90kqv_migrants-a-calais-natacha-bouchart_news

It’s the elephant in the room that lefties who still feel that need should be the main criterion for allocation of benefits can’t acknowledge, even when it starts stinking the place up.

He wrote something very similar to a friend of his “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” ie he was making a specific point to his friend about *him* being able to continue to write – he wasn’t making the generalise statement of principle that sometimes people believe him to have made.

If you want to argue that we should on principle support the idea that people should be allowed to say whatever they like please do – but you’ll have to leave Voltaire out of it I’m afraid. I look forward to your campaign against having any libel and slander laws, fraud laws, incitement to race hate laws and all the others.

Of course the BNP should be given a platform – it is childish to try and deny them it and frankly ridiculous that the mainstream parties have taken a policy of not sharing a platform with them. Their racist arguments are not difficult to defeat but it would be halpful if the like of the Labour Party would keep a straight argument. We are told immigration is good for the nation but when it comes to Ghurkas, apparently it is bad! (Phil Woolas)

Massive Immigration and the resultant rise of the BNP are a pair of big f****** elephants in the room that the main parties need to address.

The BNP has risen in popularity for three main reasons:

1) The mainstream parties have not addressed the problems of the working class or the poor e.g. The government penalised the poorest by removing the 10p tax in order to grab a headline.

2) People are seeing immigration everywhere. e.g. I went for a 12-week scan with my partner and in the waiting room 11 out of 20 couples did not speak English as their mother tongue. (I am not saying we should get rid of immigrant, merely pointing out what I have seen with my own eyes so don’t flame me.)

3) People have lost confidence in mainstream politicans and parties and don’t feel represented by them. MPs seem more interested in protecting their own terms and conditions (expenses) than dealing with the problems of the country. The result is low voter turn out and the distorted results seen in the Euro elections because a swathe of the nation that would vote Lib/Lab/Con didn’t bother to turn outAND the proportional representation system throws up these kind of results.

Mainstream politicians need to raise their game if they want to deal with the threat of the BNP. They [BNP] may have a lot of sick ideas (and some ones that I agree with too, like getting out of the EU) but denying them a debate is not going to counter them.

Peter Hain is an intellectual pygmy.

Micheal Gove possibly

Douglas Murray , director of the Social cohesion think tank was actually apporached- he would have been a good choice

Shami Chakrabarti perhaps?

or for a comedian Lenny Henry

On which grounds, she is apparently pursuing a £33 million claim… Are these figures just mysteriously plucked from the air, or what?

Please note:

“Over the 16 years she worked at Four New Square, she said she earned £7million less than white barristers who joined at the same time.”

I agree with you on the need for better education and training, and I would suggest that the lack of it is far more responsible for low wages than immigrants are.

I suppose if you were to ask the construction and agriculture industries what benefits their workforce might have had then you might get a response along the lines of the paper below from the association of labour providers:

http://www.labourproviders.org.uk/files/P+R%20papers/the_role_of_migration.pdf

In summary they’d argue that their sector would cease to exist in a british context on anything like the same scale because of its dependancy on seasonal unskilled labour. So without a pool of seasonal labours – such as migrant workers – prepared to do the work, then there would be fewer farms able to compete with cheap imports – particularly given the competative nature of british farming. They’d also argue that as a result of migrant workers, the british agricultural sector is in better shape now than it has been for the last 20 years. So therefore without the migrant worker workforce, there would be fewer farms employing fewer british workers.

The construction industry, on the other hand, might try to argue the same thing – but this would be less convincing because you can’t exactly assemble a building overseas and import it so there isn’t the competition from abroad. Furthermore the construction industry isn’t exactly enjoying a boom time at the moment – perhaps they should persuade the government to spend money building a load of houses that can then be given to the destitute migrant workers who are currently homeless (http://www.homeless.org.uk/policyandinfo/issues/EU10s/).

Out of interest, perhaps you could explain to the unemployed british textile worker how he benefits from the fact that the clothes you are wearing are almost certainly made in sweatshops abroad by workers earning 20p an hour (ish), then you can explain to the unemployed british IT worker how he benefits from the fact the electronics of your PC are made in silicon valley (actually someone will probably point out they are not – but you get the point I’m making).

If Labour can develop a credible plan to increase manufacturing so it rises from 15-20% of the economy, such that employment occurs in the industrial parts of the UK, then the support for the BNP will decline. Labour need ensure creating a world class skill pool of skilled personnel is more important th promoting identity politics, which has become the obsession of the post 1968 white collar left wing middle class. If Labour can support the creation of a 1000 Dysons, then we can rebalence the economy and greatly reduce the threat of the BNP. The BNP is another symptom of country dominated by the white collar non-technical middle classes of SE England.

Yes, indeed. (Good post, by the way.) I also think that the middle-class establishment has spectacularly failed to present an alternative narrative – not because it would be incomprehensible unless rendered in chimp-like monosyllables (a la PMQs; fucking grow up, wankers), but because the middle-class establishment has actually and materially shafted the BNP “constituency” on a regular basis for the last 30 years.

Realistically: what can toady Nu-Labourites or Tories (young and old) say, particularly in the wake of the expenses scandal?

36 – Re: the ‘protest vote’ – again, I agree. I think the number of people not voting at all is also set to dramatically increase; not, in my view, healthy for democracy, but then democracy in this country appears to be in terminal decline…

Perhaps, but I’d be worried that Hitchens or Littlejohn – determined to engage in polite debate with Griffin even whilst obviously making clear they oppose his racist views – could end up agreeing with him on some issues and thereby reinforcing the BNP’s credibility and acceptability.

I hope panellists are practising their arguments. Jack Straw, for example, should be prepared for when someone brings up Griffin’s years spent in the National Front and as a Holocaust Denier and Griffin retorts with MI5 classifying Straw as a “communist sympathiser” in his youth.

Perhaps because this thread is not concerned with arguing over Iraq?

“what the majority of people in the UK agreed was the right thing to do at the time, and what the country’s top lawyer had rated as lawful”

In reality, multiple polls before the Iraq invasion showed that the majority of the British population was opposed to it. See http://www.eriposte.com/war_peace/iraq/iraq_war_worldwide_support.htm

As for the legal advice, you are either shockingly naive about the reality of the “independence” of the country’s top lawyer, or… well, let’s just not go there.

If they all keep playing the ball and not the man, it will be fine. Make the BNP look stupid and don’t just sit there going “Racist! Boo! Fascist! Get ‘orf!”

Since when are my suggested panel of Charles Kennedy, Darcus Howe, Peter Hitches, David Davis and Frank Field thugs?

And for that matter, since when are they big men? None of them are – not even Jack Straw, he’s just a waffler we have been listening to, from many different departments for the past 12 years.

Frank Field retains his credibility, has been warning us about this for goodness knows how long and isn’t tainted by the MP’s expenses scandal.

Do I feel Nick Griffin will trample over Baroness Warsi? Well, if her previous outings on Question Time are to go by, perhaps he will.

Do I feel Chris Hulne might fair better, perhaps he will – but he can be dismissed with a ‘You’re an ex-MEP from the European SuperState’ type quip that could endear Nick Griffen even futher.

I suggested Darcus Howe because for what I have seen + read about him he has a grasp of how communities in the UK co-exist at the lower end of the spectum – not in blogsphere.

It’s not about men, boxing and thugging – it’s about having a panel who can respond clearly to anything Nick Griffin might prefer to go unchallenged and who know how to appeal to the very people who nowadays consider voting UKIP or BNP.