The Parallax Brief genuinely has no idea why the BNP’s forthcoming Question Time appearance has caused quite this of amount indecorous flapping in Westminster and in the media. The latest development is a desperate rearguard action by Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, and one of the government frontbenchers most outspoken against the BNP’s Question Time bow. According to the Independent, Hain has written a letter to the Beeb, telling the corporation that it runs “a “serious risk” of a legal challenge if it allows Nick Griffin to participate.” The basis for this latest fusillade in the effort to deny the BNP a television platform is connected to the recent decision by Griffin, made under pressure from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to change his party’s constitution to allow non-whites to join.

“Ah-ha!” Says Hain. That won’t happen for another month, meaning the BBC has invited on Question Time an illegally constituted party.

The BBC, according to the Indy article, has claimed it makes no judgment on the legality of the BNP, arguing that, “If there were to be an election tomorrow, the BNP would be able to stand.”

As far as the Parallax Brief can tell, most talking heads (both of the journalist and politician sort) fall into two camps on the BNP Question Time issue. First, there are those who view the BNP as abhorrent and against everything that Britain stands for, and therefore not the sort of chaps who either deserve, or should be given, a national television platform from which to publicise their hateful cause; and then there are those who agree, but believe that providing that platform will actually go some way to exposing them to a wider audience as abhorrent and hateful.

Now, this — along with the internal wrangling within the Cabinet about who will and who won’t sit at a table with Griffin or whether to even turn up at all — is of tremendous interest for those of us interested in political strategy. Interesting, perhaps, but wholly irrelevant and missing the only point which should have any bearing on this matter: The BNP is a British political party, operating on British soil, and is about to appear on British television. And Britain, lest we forget, is a country in which citizens and political organisations may speak freely. Make no mistake, the BNP is a dangerous combination of idiotic populist economic policies and brazen racism. But why that should matter when it comes to the right to speak freely, and, more important, a citizen’s right to hear freely, is beyond the Parallax Brief. Liberty is only as robust in a society as how it is applied to the minority groups in that society. One can’t say that we have freedom of speech in the United Kingdom if we silence everyone we find somewhat distasteful. Of course, the BNP is distasteful, but it would be even more distasteful to abrogate its and its members’ inalienable rights to free speech.

There was never a better excuse to roll out the hackneyed Voltaire line “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” because the BNP, odious as it may be, deserves the same BBC treatment as received by all other political parties of its size.