The BNP may have been elected to Europe but on football they founder

The BNP does not accept black members even if they are wearing
an England shirt like Ashley Cole, right, seen here with David Beckham

Although it is too late to drive the British National Party out of politics, or to turn the clock back to a time when a pair of posturing fascists had not been elected to the European Parliament, we may, however, kick some sense into the debate using football.

Your starter for ten: what do Glenn Johnson, Joleon Lescott, Ashley Cole, Theo Walcott, Jermain Defoe and Ashley Young have in common? Correct, they were all part of the England team who beat Andorra 6-0 on Wednesday night; but what else? Give up? None of them can be members of the British National Party. Nor could Rio Ferdinand, David James and Emile Heskey, who all would have played had they not been injured, or Shaun Wright-Phillips and Carlton Cole, who were in the squad but not selected.

Indeed, it could work out that when the England squad depart for the World Cup in South Africa next summer, half the plane will be filled with Englishmen who would not be welcome within the ranks of a political party that claims to speak for us all.

The BNP does not accept black members, even if they were born in England, even if they are wearing an England shirt and scoring the winning goal in a World Cup final.

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, is enraged by the presence of a black Friar Tuck in the BBC TV series Robin Hood, because he claims this is not historically accurate. Yet what could be more quintessentially English than a black international footballer, of which there have been 58, or a black Olympian, or black Englishmen in the cricket team? Without them, there would be no Ravi Bopara, Dimitri Mascarenhas or Adil Rashid in our cricket team, nor Christine Ohuruogu winning Olympic gold.

These people can play for England, run for Britain, bring distinction and glory to our country; but cannot gain entry into the BNP. The same goes for Shirley Bassey and most of Diversity, the dance troupe that won Britain's Got Talent.

I'm not saying that any of these people would want BNP membership; more that there are better and more civilised ways to dismantle the logic of these preposterous racists than hurling eggs and turning Griffin's jacket into an omelette preparation each time he stands to speak.

One of the most patriotic sportsmen I have met is Ian Wright (whose adopted son is Shaun Wright-Phillips), who scored nine goals in 33 games for England. In retirement, as a television analyst, he was worthless because he could not separate his professional persona from his fan-like desire to see England win. If the team played badly, while others in the studio would dispassionately rip the performance to shreds on tactical and technical issues, Wright would sit there with the raving hump, sulking his way through the broadcast like a miffed supporter resenting the price of his ticket.

And the BNP would wish to play patriot games with this guy? Or with a young man like Walcott, who is risking the wrath of his club employers at Arsenal because he is determined to represent his country at senior level and at an Under-21 competition this summer, rather than taking time off?

The squad members from England's World Cup victory in 1966 received belated medals on the pitch at Wembley on Wednesday night, and there was not a black face among them. Yet there were seven black players in the squad Sven Goran Eriksson took to the World Cup in 2006. Are they somehow less English?

All that needs to be known about the values of the BNP is that they do not permit blacks, but raise money through their website with the sale of gollywog souvenirs. It is a warped view of England and Englishness that permeates their culture and finds no room for the way the country has evolved.

If you intend putting a flag out for the football team next year, or are keeping your fingers crossed for an Ashes win this summer, or a British and Irish Lions victory in South Africa, you are casting a vote for a country more inclusive than Griffin's little band of inbreeds.

Daily Mail

Protest vote? Vote fascist, get fascist...

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, looked smart in his suit, and his brief speech was like a Room 101 check-list of everything Joe Public hates about modern political life. Snouts in the trough, PC politicians, Big Brother-style microchips in your bins. When he talked about you the voters, it was in appealing, flattering terms. Decent people, real people, were the BNP's target audience in its party political broadcast on TV this week.

A couple of BNP councillors stood self- consciously in front of the cameras detailing minor local battles, such as on CCTV cameras and meals for the elderly, which they had won. And not a black face in sight. Maybe it was unintentional. Maybe Griffin happened to pick the whitest thoroughfare in modern Britain, but everybody who walked past the camera's gaze looked just like him. Decent people, no doubt. Real people. Not like that other lot.

These are high times for the protest vote parties. Disillusionment with Westminster has never been greater; disenchantment is widespread. But when is a protest vote not a protest vote? The answer: when it is cast in elections for the European Parliament.

This is an EU-run show, you see, and operates under EU rules with proportional representation. So an angry cross put in the box of some addled BNP nutter as a protest vote does not get washed away by the major party tide as it would under the first-past-the-post system. In Euro elections, all votes count. So, this time, vote fascist, get fascist.

For example, in a recent council by-election in Moston, north Manchester, the BNP took 23 per cent of the vote (coming second to Labour) and a lot of people felt jolly pleased to have given mainstream politics a bloody nose. Repeated on June 4, however, it would also place a generous smattering of extreme Right Neanderthals in Brussels, stomping around the EU Parliament on behalf of Britain.

The BNP works on projection and fear. In times of economic recession, this centres on the anxiety that immigrant labour is going to undercut and steal your jobs.

Leaving aside the fact that if a shoeless Somalian asylum seeker with no English can do what you do, it probably isn't worth doing and you really should have paid more attention in school, how can this be? Similarly, if you have skill and a real talent, how can you be replaced by a Romanian squeegee woman?

There is no queue of heart specialists outside University College London hospital, bemoaning the fact that the Poles have come in and replaced all the best surgeons on the cheap. For that matter, there isn't an angry mob of bank tellers in the High Street, either. And try to get a good British plumber or skilled carpenter at short notice...

What we should be voting for is not a party of myths and scare stories, but one that will construct an education system that is not producing another generation reliant on the minimum wage and menial occupations. And then we would be getting somewhere.

There are four BNP councillors near where I live. I used to think I understood. Maybe I still do if I think of an old boy on the front line of Britain's racial politics, who needs our help but feels alienated and invisible. Not out my way, though, where a vote for the BNP - certainly one that is going to count - would be a spiteful, thoughtless, gesture.

It is too easy to absolve blame by pointing a finger at Labour policies or Conservative ineffectuality. There are a lot of things that are Gordon Brown's fault, but a vote for fascism is not one of them.

BNP would like to style itself the party of decency. Of course, race issues were not mentioned in its broadcast, beside an oblique reference to 'PC minority projects'. The party's website, though, is a little different. Great White Records, books called Immigration Invasion (How Third World Immigration Is Destroying The First World And What Must Be Done To Stop It), and gollywogs.

Oh, they do love a gollywog at the BNP. Golly display plates, golly mugs, golly coasters, golly toys, golly fridge magnets, golly key rings, golly snow ornaments, seated desk golly, golly pens, golly badges. Anyone would think they were trying to be offensive were they not such decent folk and all.

The modern BNP wears suits, and tries to make young women its public face, but nothing else has changed. Repatriation is still part of the creed and all asylum seekers are either bogus or unwanted. Oppose and, one presumes, you are not a real person. Maybe there will be a repatriation scheme for you one day, too; or a camp.

Spoil a ballot paper, set fire to it for all I care, or use this as an opportunity to find out who is your best candidate rather than be corralled on party lines; but do not vote for the BNP. It isn't big, it isn't clever and it certainly isn't any way to protest.

You want to change politics, then stop hiding behind the skirts and suits of a bunch of fascists.

Mail Online