This morning, I'm in love with the Tories...

[Hopeless Romantic]

Sayeeda Warsi joins Question Time's "BNP panel"
Hooray! Thank God for the Conservative party.

Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

According to the Times, the Tories will be putting up Baroness Warsi, the shadow community cohesion minister, to represent them on BBC1's Question Time against nasty Nick Griffin from the BNP next week - as I advocated they should in a post more than a month ago. Yesterday I had been full of despair upon hearing the news that Bonnie Greer would be on the panel, along with the boring, uninspiring, middle-aged, middle-class white duo, Jack Straw (from Labour) and Chris Huhne (from the Lib Dems), and wondered why the BBC bosses and the three main parties seemed so unconcerned about the lack of a British-born ethnic-minority panellist or a British Muslim panellist to face off against the racist, Islamophobic Griffin. In picking the Dewsbury-born Muslim lawyer, Sayeeda Warsi, the Tories - and, to be fair, the BBC - have played a blinder and killed two birds with one stone.

The shadow community cohesion minister is ferociously feisty and combative, and will - I hope! - give Griffin a verbal kicking on the night. She also happens to be from Yorkshire where the BNP have made such inroads in recent months, winning 10 per cent of the vote and a seat in June's European elections, and so she will have an opportunity to expose the Holocaust-denying, Muslim-baiting, hate-inciting Griffin to her fellow Yorkshiremen on national television.

Good on the Tories! And good on the BBC! There's two things you don't often here me say on this blog. Makes a change, eh?


http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2009/10/bnp-panel-tories-warsi

[T_i_B]

1. As is always the case with QT

I'll be giving that show a very wide berth.

It's boring and full of bullshit at the best of times. Allowing Griffin on will not improve matters. Question Time is a shining example of why UK politics is such a turn-off for many.

[non sociopath skin]

2. I agree totally, TiB.

Can't remember the last time I watched QT, and the unedifying thought of watching the White Rich Guys' token female ethnic minority in a head to head with a racist street thug isn't likely to make a difference.

The Skin

[oldironside]

3. If they were looking for a spot of tokenism...

... they could have gone further and found a disabled ethnic minority lesbian, but being the Tory party the pool was probably rather small.

[Dutch]

4. Surely she should be in love with Labour or the Lib Dems?

After all they're the ones putting their out their big guns for this in Straw and Huhne, rather than a third-rank figure chosen on the basis of their ethnicity. Typical Slimey Cameron showmanism. And to be honest I think this article and much of the QT hoo-haa is yet another example of the hysterical gibbering that the BNP have a remarkable, and by them much cherished ability to provoke in to many normally sensible people.