Welcoming the BNP's platform

I'm a near-absolutist on free speech (like Oliver Kamm, who notes the exceptions).

In and of itself, this is the right position.

But it's also a sensible position because, for those people who say unsavoury things, they so often show themselves to be idiots and not worthy of the hoo-ha they often generate. More seriously, they also inevitably reveal (in the cases where they're trying to hide it) the nature of their values and beliefs.

Take just today the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin. The Independent takes up the :

British National Party leader Nick Griffin said today he was unable to tell if a caller to a radio phone-in was British as he couldn't see what he looked like. He told the man, who said three of his grandparents were born outside Britain, that he could class himself as "civically British" but not "indigenous British".

During the phone-in, Sean Fowlston from Nottingham asked: "Would you be good enough to tell me whether I am British or not, given that three of my grandparents were foreign-born?"

Mr Griffin said: "It doesn't matter where on earth they come from, obviously I can't you see you down the radio."

However he tries to justify it, Griffin demonstrates in that one comment - "I can't see you down the radio" - what the nature of his belief is. I therefore welcome the opportunity the BBC gave him today to clearly, and to a larger audience than his beliefs should rightly attract, show himself for what he is.