It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog

The naming of dogs, as T. S. Eliot once so nearly put it, is a difficult matter.

BNP supervillain Nick Griffin was interviewed by resident B.B.C. intellectual Andrew Marr at the weekend, encouraging the viewer to believe that a great unmasking was in the offing and that those darned meddlesome kids would be blamed at any minute for the would-be Great Dictator's fall. Having softened Griffin up with some tedious policy questions, however, Marr steadied himself for that last question ... the coup de grace. What are the names of Griffin's dogs?

Those, like Sordel, who had heard the story before were one step of the drama unfolding before their eyes, for Griffin's dogs (at least, according to widespread assertion) are called Anne and Frank. Griffin's jet-shoes and discombobulator ray could surely not save him now. The Resident Intellectual had the "genocidal racist" parked upon his own petard on the cusp of detonation.

Except, it turns out that the Griffin hounds are called Bella and Otto.

Now, I'm not sure where I heard that thing about Anne and Frank, but in retrospect it always sounded rather odd. As a thought experiment, the idea of an anti-Semite calling something that he intends to love, feed and exercise by a name that will call to mind a young Jewess does not seem especially likely. Unless Griffin actually bought the dogs to beat - an imputation that even his many detractors have yet to suggest - it would have made more sense for him to have named the pets Adolph and Eva.

Or perhaps, in the light of his patriotism, Oswald and Diana.

The problem is that one is only too ready to believe the worst of Griffin. When a man, with sober rationality, proposes sinking the ships of would-be immigrants, the views that he will espouse in public invite speculation as to the ones that he is concealing.

Gordon Brown for example, speaks of a future increase in public spending, when everyone knows that he is lying through his teeth and intends to cut it dramatically. In the light of this shameless and transparent neglect of the truth by a "mainstream" politician, no great leap of the imagination is required to hop from sinking ships to Arbeit macht frei.

So, perhaps Griffin is lying about the names of his dogs. Or perhaps he is lying about something considerably more sinister.

Either way, the more that Griffin is perceived to have been smeared by his unscrupulous opponents, the more likely it is that the electorate will be to discount even those accusations that have a sound basis in truth.

Which is a worry, because the tag that Griffin used most frequently when referring to those opponents was Liberal elitists.

And, to be perfectly honest (delightful though it might be to meet The Resident Intellectual) Sordel would not wish to do so at the cost of the bring the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Black Balls For White Supremacists?

Short of having a peerage, could Gordon Brown be less democratic? As an MP for a Scottish constituency he, like so many of his auld acquaintances, owes his place in the Commons to a West Lothian bye. He was never elected to his place as leader of the Labour Party, and never elected to be prime minister either. If he wants someone in the cabinet but can't get them elected (such as Peter Mandelson) he hands them a peerage. Moreover, at a time when it is painfully obvious to everyone that he can command the support neither of the country nor his own party (nor, quite possibly, his own cabinet), he clings on to power with the same Nanny-knows-best logic as his predecessor.

This is the man showing a new zeal for parliamentary reform.

It is interesting that he - and others - have been attacking the old abuses of the Commons with the emblem of a "gentleman's club". This comparison suits the class war mentality that he and Baron Mandelson seem to believe plays to a Great British Public resentful of privilege, yet it also seems a remarkably thin comparison. Gentlemen's clubs are, it is true, known for their leather armchairs, but extensive redecoration of the Commons is scarcely affordable, let alone necessary. Clubs are also known for their sleepy atmosphere, but - given the tireless energy that the members have been putting into their expenses - clearly there has been little time for napping between debates.

Moreover, it is worth bearing in mind that gentlemen's clubs supply a luxury that is paid for by its members, and not taxed out of the pockets of those milling outside its doors. People don't enter gentlemen's clubs to make money; they generally have it on the way in and somewhat less of it on the way out.

Presumably the basis of the comparison, then, is this: clubs are exclusive. They keep out the people who don't "fit".

It is interesting, then, that recent news has taught us a lot more about the ways of democracy with regard to the BNP. Evidently the other political parties have been colluding to run additional candidates in areas of local BNP strength in order to dilute their vote. There is, in short, a conspiracy against the BNP. When Nick Griffin said last night that the egg-throwers were only doing what the major political parties wanted them to, he was far-right on the money.

Now, I can't say that I like the BNP much, but amongst the reasons for Hitler's rise a prominent one was the defects of the Weimar Republic, and the roots causes of support for the BNP are not so distant. The Labour government spent years whipping up anti-Islamic sentiment in an effort to persuade us that fighting a war abroad was the only way to prevent domestic terrorism here. It was shameful fear-mongering, and has resulted in a country where dislike of foreigners now has an institutional root. Open the door to xenophobia (for contemptible political ends) and racist politicians will squeeze through.

Another factor to consider here is politicians tend to be made in the image of the tactics used against them, and the eggs are only the latest of the harassment used upon Nick Griffin, who has been unsuccessfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred twice and was, of course, prevented from attending the vote count on Sunday at his first attempt by the mob demonstrating outside.

According to Wikipedia, Nick Griffin has a Boxing Blue from Cambridge. He apparently took up the sport after a "brawl with an anti-fascist". He will learn and employ tactics appropriate to those used upon him.

It goes without saying that there is no moral equivalency between racial hatred and spangly loo-seats but I do have a nagging fear that the true threat to the British political system is not the people clamouring to get into our parliament but the people fighting so ignobly to stay there.

Brownian Motion

So: the big result is in.

The charming thing about The Apprentice is that it isn't decided by a public vote. Going back to my earlier comments on elitism, we should celebrate an area of televisual competition in which victory is allocated solely on the basis of the decision of a single judge who (rightly or wrongly) is acknowledged as the expert. Generally unerring though Simon Cowell may be, he is still forced to share power with the two lesser lights on his various panels, and is then forced to submit their collective decision for ratification to the collectively tin ear of Britain. The future Lord Sugar stands alone; it is indeed his way or the highway.

Had the European elections been settled on a similar system, the BNP would probably not have won its first two seats last night. Someone (quite possibly - on the basis of his extensive experience of European voting systems - Graham Norton) would decide for us all, and the inevitable confusion that follows from allowing the Great British Public to settle any question of moment would have been avoided.

The downside of all this, however, would have been that the losers would not have been able to call upon an enormous range of fanciful excuses to explain their failure.

If you listen to the Labour faithful (as we must now describe Lord Mandelson, who has engineered the biggest turnaround since Saul stopped persecuting Christians and changed his initial letter to P) then we all want him and Gordon to get back to the serious business of sorting out the economy. The anti-Labour vote was seemingly a slap on the wrist delivered to all politicians but focused upon the ruling party. The vote for the BNP was cast by people too stupid to be trusted with the vote in the first place, who evidently have no idea that the BNP is a racist party. So, at least, run interpretations repeated last night with such unanimity that any teacher worth his salt would have inferred collusion.

This post hoc gerrymandering, in which the vote is explicated one way or another to suit the standpoints of the politicians, is what happens when the usual excuse for ignoring the British public - "the only poll that counts is the one held this week/next week/sometime/never" - is rendered fatuous by an election actually having taken place.

What we really want is someone with the authority of the soon-no-longer-to-be Surallan to tell us all Why I Fired Them. In the absence of that certainly, the paths of our political masters are as inscrutable as the movement of pollen particles in water.

We can only congratulate ourselves that so many of them have sunk without trace.