James Macintyre of the New Statesman has drawn attention to the contrast between the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin onto Question Time and its stubborn refusal to air the Gaza appeal earlier this year.

The juxtaposition is extremely powerful. On the one hand the BBC would not broadcast an appeal for innocent Palestinian civilians killed or bombed out of their homes and their infrastructure pounded into rubble; and on the other the leader of Britain’s fascist party is invited on to the BBC’s main current affairs debate programme and given a platform to spout his poisonous – and Islamophobic – agenda. A humanitarian cause snubbed, but a fascist invited into the mainstream.

The BBC’s approach to these controversies is a mess – completely the wrong way round.

Macintyre has also exposed the cant behind the pseudo-defence that because of the BNP’s election success in June there was no choice but to invite the far-right onto the programme. Macintyre, who used to be a producer on Question Time, has shown that the proposal to invite the BNP onto Question Time was around before the party won two seats in the Euro-election.  As he says of Griffin’s appearance last week, “for the team behind the original plan it was a triumph, the culmination of highly effective lobbying…”

Some may benefit from a brief warm glow that all is right in the world because the leader of the racist BNP was a poor TV performer, but I think this offers only a complacent dead end. Reports about alleged squabbles within the BNP do not offer any hope for working out how to defeat them and the racism they feed on and promote.  The BNP has gained from Question Time and trying to pretend that this is not the case will do no one any good.

The damage that has been done by the decision to legitimise the BNP by asking them to appear on Question Time is a huge boost in the party’s profile and a message sent to the public that the BNP is a legitimate party.

As James Macintyre rightly says, Question Time was misused last week.