Peter Hain: what a cock.

The BBC could face legal action over British National Party leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has warned.

The show is due to feature Mr Griffin, Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Tory and Lib Dem panellists on 22 October.

But Mr Hain has written to BBC director general Mark Thompson arguing the BNP was “an unlawful body” following a court ruling on its membership policy.

Mr Hain, back in his day, was a strong opponent of the disgusting practice of apartheid. And his opposition was sensible, if some of his aims were not. But now, when he’s relatively close to power, he’s become blinkered. He now supports using the full power of the state to quench the views of the minority (in this case, a horrible racialist minority). The BNP has some election success behind them, largely because of the ineptitude of the ruling party, and now a member of that ruling party is trying to say that they are ‘unpersons’.

Not the way to go about it. How about getting Labour to stop pandering to the extreme right on immigration and instead making the case for immigration head on. Those of us who have shifted into England from elsewhere aren’t exactly ruining the country; definitely less so than some of those who were born here and claim to be acting it the country’s best interest. Make that case properly, and the BNP will wither. Keep talking about ‘British jobs for British workers’ and scaring people about those nasty brown folk moving in, and the BNP will flourish.

And banning them will just make them the victims, and we know how the English love an underdog…