The day before the last elections I wrote a poem:
Election Day tomorrow,
But the country’s up in arms,
We don’t know who to vote for,
‘Cause they all greased their own palms.
We feel like we’ve been cheated,
As they swapped their second homes,
And filled them up with pricey crap,
Like designer garden gnomes.
We’ve watched in mounting horror
That the country’s run by fiends,
We don’t HAVE to pay for loo seats,
And for posh moats to be cleaned.
“No I won’t resign,” they say,
“I’ve done nothing untoward.”
Then thirty seconds later
They have fallen on their sword.
But tomorrow if you go to vote
I must make a little plea,
Be careful who you’re punishing
Or we’ll get the BNP!
In spite of my warning (or maybe because only about 12 people read my blog) the BNP won 2 seats in the European Parliament. Oh dear. More people should read my blog, clearly. Tonight newish MEP and leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, will be appearing on Question Time and now it seems the country’s up in arms. Er, hang on a minute. Have they already forgotten how it was that he got his seat? He didn’t give it to himself. That’s right, people voted for him. Somebody, somewhere, indeed several somebodies saw the BNP at the top of their ballot paper and put in a big fat cross. What possessed them? Well, who can say? Of course there are BNP supporters out there, lurking, let’s be honest, there are a lot of racists now that all these “Johnny Foreigners” are coming in and taking our jobs blah blah blah-di blah. Ask them, of course, and they’ll say “I’m not racist or anything but…..” when they proceed to be just that. But are there more of ‘em out there than ever there were before? I doubt it.
Maybe it was a protest vote by some people. A bloody stupid one I’ll grant you. But how often do people really consider the consequences of such a thing? They don’t imagine other people will do the same. Do they? “I’ll just stick my cross in this here BNP box,” they think to themselves, chuckling slightly, “and when they read out the results and see they got one vote those Labour and Conservative chaps’ll think twice about fiddling the expenses again.” How very naïve. Or could it be down to voter apathy? We’re very well known in this country for being far too lazy to get off our bums and walk to the local school to vote. It’s not like we have to go far or have to write our names or anything. “But, you know, I went out for a walk last week and I must have ventured a whole 50 feet from my house and I’ve been to work and I’m tired and I just can’t be arsed.” And women! Think of those poor suffragettes that starved themselves just so you could not really be that bothered to exercise the right to vote they so vigorously fought for. Shame on you!
But whatever the reason behind the BNP wins the fact remains that they were democratically elected, whether we like it or not. And the protesters outside the BBC seem to have conveniently forgotten that. They also appear to have forgotten what living in a democracy means. Have we got any right to stop anyone, regardless of how odious we find them, expressing their views in public? Can we really hand someone a European Parliament seat in one hand and then say well, actually, we didn’t mean to give YOU a seat, can we have that back, please so we can give it to someone else we like a bit more? No? No. That’s not democracy, is it? And sure, you can stop Nick Griffin from having a public voice but you don’t want to make him a political martyr. The fact is when he gets his 15 minutes on Question Time tonight he’s bound to be so vile and objectionable that most people won’t make the same mistake twice of allowing him a parliament seat and maybe they’ll be a bit more careful when choosing who they vote for or if they vote at all. I wonder, though, of all the protesters (mostly students) outside the BBC tonight how many of them actually voted in the June elections? Very few, I’d say. In which case they’ve only got themselves to blame.