Many people have been following my ‘Double Standards’ theme on Twitter which has highlighted some great examples of how a certain political party seems to be speaking with a forked tongue (see the lower right hand column on this page)
The latest one is related to Corsham’s Hustings event we organised last week through the Community Partnership CCAN. As I have mentioned in my previous blogs a joint statement issued by the Tory and Labour party made it clear that neither of them were prepared to appear on the same platform as the BNP candidate. Lib Dem, Green and UKIP were prepared to debate with any legal candidate but we were nevertheless forced to come up with a compromise which split the event into two halves to appease these demands made by two of the major parties. In the event it all went fairly smoothly but it did give the BNP another opportunity to gain yet more unnecessary publicity.
So how is it that at yesterdays Independent newspaper public debate at the Morley and Outwood seat in West Yorkshire (Ed Ball’s seat) we see a line up consisting of UKIP, Lib Dem, Labour, Conservative and BNP all debating together?
At the Corsham Hustings our conservative candidate Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones said that he refused to share the platform with the BNP because it would ‘legitimise’ their views. The Labour party candidate, Greg Lovell for Labour said he was showing solidarity with Wilfred’s views. So what is going on in Morley and Outwood?
I firmly believe that the best way to expose crackpot political views such as those of the BNPs is simply to debate with them in public - it really doesn’t take much to show them up for what they are as their flimsy arguments, despite what they say, are clearly based on racial and social inequality.
