Thoughts from the Train: look back in frustration - a lucky escape on Thursday night

There has been plenty written about Thursday night's 'Question Time', and I did wonder if I should add to that. However, given what happened, and the fact that I went to the trouble of watching it, it would be a pity not to.

Firstly, for all the protestation that the programme followed its normal tack, with questions springing spontaneously(ish) from the audience, I can't help feeling that the whole atmosphere was distorted by Nick Griffin's presence. I rarely recall an edition where so much of the debate was focussed on one member of the panel, on his ground. Yes, from a metropolitan liberal perspective, having a articulate, hostile audience was a good thing, but the panel were perhaps overeager in their attempts to pin one on him, so to speak.

Yet for all their complaints about the metropolitan audience, it almost certainly reflected public opinion. The BNP are the political equivalent of Marmite - either you like them or you don't. If you don't, you are likely to be hostile to them. And where they are unlikely to find a welcome, their presence is weak. In this year's county elections, they ran a full slate in Essex. Across the Stour in Suffolk, they only managed to find three candidates. Indeed, in Brent, we don't tend to see much of them.

Luckily, the BNP leader performed really rather badly. Given that he must have prepared for a televisual lynching, it was astonishing to see him blunder his way from ridiculous statement to ridiculous statement. A 'non-violent Ku Klux Klan' indeed - one presumes that they only strung up marinated carrots from trees. Given that he has been under intense scrutiny for years, one wonders how he thought that he could issue blanket denials of his past statements and retain any credibility.

But I see this as a missed opportunity. I for one would have been interested to see how he would have responded to the Royal Mail dispute, or President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Having seen how badly he performed on those subjects where he would have prepared most, how much of a train wreck would it have been on other topics?

At the end of the day though, it was political theatre, and most of those who have voted BNP in recent elections are unlikely to have been watching. On the other hand, if it inspires a few people to get involved in politics in order to offer a positive, alternative message to the BNP's hatred and division, it may prove to have been worth the effort...