BNP: LibLabCon in wolves' clothing?

The Talking Clock picked up a copy of the Evening Standard this evening. Some interesting, quality news reporting in it covering stories which do not make the national headlines.

We were most curious about a story concerning the bill for the Met's translation services - apparently it will hit £20million by 2012.

The article talks about the diverse number of communities and languages spoken in London and the heavy demand for translation services this creates.

Then comes the response from Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne who is quoted as saying: "This highlights the failure of the Government's policy to ensure that immigrants speak English".

Now, you might think Chris Huhne's comment is fair enough. We do.

...but then we thought about it and thought 'but most of what is on the BNP's website is exactly the same kind of comment about exactly the same issue'.

So we mulled on that a bit more and remembered that a few years back, the then Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett got a few people in a flap by suggesting that immigrants should face a 'Britishness' test.

A few years before that, Conservative Lord Tebbit (then just 'Norman') sparked controversy when he said a test of integration of immigrant communities was what he dubbed the 'cricket test'.

So the Lib Dems, Labour and the Conservatives all have prominent people saying roughly the same thing.

Which then takes us to asking what the difference is when the BNP ask the exact same question in the exact same language...

One could argue that the BNP are 'thugs'. Maybe. But they are not responsible for current civil liberties abuses in Britain or a 'dodgy dossier' war.

One could argue that they are racist. Maybe. But they do point out on their website that there are no end of groups in the UK aimed squarely at non-white British folk and that groups aimed exclusively at white British folk would be illegal.

So, apart from the fact they like waving the national flag (why shouldn't they?) and the fact that they want Britain to be self-governing (we agree - naff orf Brussels), what's so outrageous about the BNP? How are they any different from the Liberal Democrats or any other party?

Is it because they would like to repatriate immigrants? Only, in the same copy of the Evening Standard - today's - is a report on a LSE study commissioned by Boris Johnson. It looks at the effects of an amnesty for illegal immigrants of whom, the article says, it is estimated that there are 618,000 in the UK.

The report, written by Rashid Razaq - says that 111,265 illegal immigrants have been deported since 1998.

Well, excuse us for being slightly simple, but it wasn't the BNP who deported anybody. It's Labour who have been in power since 1997, so it was Labour doing the deporting. And we're sure the Conservatives would have deported illegal immigrants, too. And we're quite sure that the Liberal Democrats would have deported them, too.

So, when it comes to deportations and matters related to integration, there appears to be a commonality of policy for everyone - including the BNP.

Of course, if people of any political party commit an illegal act of violence then they should be punished like everyone else.

Yet bizarrely, the BNP are not making the papers for acts of violence against innocent members of the public at the moment...

Perhaps if there had not been a 'no platform' policy on the BNP in most of the media for the last few decades, we might be able to identify what is so shocking and horrible about the BNP. But as we have not been able to hear their arguments and only have their website to go on, we do not see anything so very different in what they say and what the three main parties say on this issue.

We are told the BNP are "nasty", "evil" "fascists". No explanation is given for those labels. That's the extent of the case against them for most members of the public. But the explanation of those labels hasn't been given - not to our eyes or ears, anyway.

Are they being judged on what they may have said or done some thirty years ago? If so, who were the Labour and Tory leaders in 1979? Shall we do the judging on that snapshot of history?

Maybe they're being judged on what they look and speak like. And isn't that, in itself, a form of racism? Thinking about it, it sounds like anti-working-classism.

It's all very baffling.

We're happy to be enlightened.