Ministry loses it's bet

No Griffin walkout so we're down a few quid, but who's counting. If that's a platform for the BNP - give us more.

Admittedly, Griffin got off lightly. Not that it was a shabby performance from the other panelists, but none of them squarely nailed him to a post, drove the points home, boxed him into a corner. Griffin managed to keep his cool and to some degree looked like a victim as opposed to a victim because of his rhetoric and values. Jack Straw never quite hammered and pressed the opportunities when he could have, a more effective rebuttal to Griffin's Holocaust denial explanation would have been "what sort of person, let alone party leader denies the Holocaust in the first place, then says he's re-evaluated his position after seeing transcripts of intercepted radio transmissions". Easy to say that with 20/20 hindsight. Time was short and I suspect more's needed for a thorough dissection of the Griffin animal.

Still, it was interesting to see that despite many political differences, in face of the BNP there's much more the other parties agree, than disagree on - especially when it comes to core values. This could easily have unwound when Straw copped out on Labour's culpability for the BNP getting votes, but Warsi quickly scored points by reigning him in and with the BNP in the room, it felt like Straw wasn't inclined to attempt spinning a way out of it.

Full score to the BBC for standing up to the nay-sayers and providing the opportunity. Evidently there's been no bloodbath or surge of support for the BNP (perhaps a little premature to make a call on the latter) in the aftermath of giving them a platform so perhaps the likes of Peter Hain, Livingstone and Alan Johnson will accept the public's not so stupid as to need their censorship protection from unconscionable views.