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LONDON: Nearly a quarter of adults would consider voting for the far-right British National Party, a poll out on Saturday said, after its leader made a controversial appearance on a BBC show.
The YouGov survey for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, conducted after BNP chairman Nick Griffin made his debut on Thursday on "Question Time", BBC television's top political panel show, found that 22 per cent of voters would "seriously consider" voting BNP.
The debate over whether Griffin should have been allowed on the programme – plus the fall-out from the show – has triggered heated debate in Britain and dominated newspaper headlines.
Many critics of Griffin's appearance feared that giving him such a platform would hand a boost to the far right.
The poll found four per cent said they would "definitely" consider voting for the BNP, a further three per cent who would "probably" consider it, plus 15 per cent who said they were "possible" BNP voters.
More than half of those surveyed agreed with the BNP or thought the party "had a point" in wishing to "speak up for the interests of the indigenous, white British people... which successive governments have done far too little to protect".
This included 43 per cent who agreed that they had "no sympathy for the party itself", though they shared some of its concerns.
Some 12 per cent said they completely agreed with the BNP, against 38 per cent who said they disagreed totally with the party's politics.
The BNP claimed on its website on Saturday that 9,000 people had either signed up as "registered potential members or on our mailing lists" since the show aired.
Cabinet minister Peter Hain, a veteran anti-apartheid campaigner who fought unsuccessfully to try to stop Griffin's appearance, said: "This is exactly what I feared and warned about.
"The BBC has handed the BNP the gift of the century on a plate and now we see the consequences. I'm very angry about this."
The BBC invited him on after his party won nearly a million votes – and a 6.2 per cent share – in the European Parliament elections in June, which saw Griffin and a colleague voted in.
The British Broadcasting Corporation has defended the decision, saying it was duty-bound to be impartial.
The BBC said it had received more than 350 complaints about the show, most of which alleged bias against the BNP.
Nearly eight million people watched the show – triple the regular audience.
Saturday's newspapers were full of stories and comment about Griffin's appearance. Editorials variously laid into Griffin and the BNP, the BBC, the programme format and the panellists.
The Times said the BBC was right to invite Griffin, but made "important errors" during the programme, including producing a show "all about him" that "could have seemed to the uncommitted viewer perilously close to bullying".
The Financial Times said: "It is shameful that none of the mainstream politicians who sat on the panel... dared to stand up to the racists by presenting a defence of immigration."
BNP webmaster Simon Bennett said: "In the Euro elections we gained some 40,000 enquiries, but spent half a million pounds to do so.
"On 'Question Time' night we spent peanuts, but gained almost 25 per cent of the Euro election total in the space of eight hours.
"We harvested a huge number of new people who were sickened by the bullying of chairman Nick Griffin."
Griffin on Friday accused the BBC of setting a "lynch mob" on him and called for the programme to be re-recorded.
Griffin suggested the London audience, which fired some angry questions at him, came from a city being "ethnically cleansed" of white people.
He said he would lodge a formal complaint with the BBC, accusing it of changing the format to show him in a bad light.
YouGov interviewed 1,314 voters online on Thursday and Friday. The survey put the main opposition Conservatives on 40 per cent, the governing Labour Party on 27 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 19 per cent and other parties on 14 per cent – including three per cent for the BNP.
- AFP/so
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