Allen the Alien?

Keith Allen, looking rather like the wee lad who played the banjo in Deliverance, forty years on, achieves the extraordinary feat of making Nick Griffin look almost wholesome by comparison. If I were Griffin I'd always want to have Allen, or some other similarly contemptible drongo, by my side to make me look normal. Come to think of it, though, isn't this exactly what Griffin has always contrived anyway?

It was amusing to hear Griffin, when talking about his past, refer to his "going out to work". It is common knowledge that the man has never had a proper job in his life, that lasted more than a few weeks. In fact, the only interest that politics in general and nationalism in particular, has ever held for Griffin has been as a convenient way of 'dodging the column' and avoiding having to work for a living.

The foul-mouthed Allen is so ignorant he thinks that Brussels is in Central Europe. Mind you, he was spot on with one of his questions to Brother Leader. As they sit chatting in Griffin's office at the European 'parliament' Allen asks him "What do you do here?" There's really no good answer to that one.

Allen argues that because the British National Party received many more votes in 2010, than it had received at the previous general election in 2005, it actually did relatively well. However, he omits to mention that the BNP also fielded many more candidates in 2010 than at any previous general election, making this outcome unsurprising. The overall tally of votes increased, certainly, but the party's average share of the vote, in the constituencies it contested, went from 4.5 % to 3.1 %.

Having so many candidates was a logistical achievement, not an electoral success. The cost of all the additional lost deposits alone was an extra financial burden which the party could ill afford. Just as in the case of the National Front in 1979, the BNP overreached itself in a general election. Politically the result was demoralizing and financially it was ruinous.

Allen's admission that he asked a cafe proprietor to move a disabled couple who were enjoying a meal together, so that their presence would not inconvenience his film crew, shows him to be a hypocritical bigot. His feeble attempt to pin the blame for this bullying on the BNP shows him to be a moral coward as well.