BNP Griffin in landslide victory

Headline news out here in the shires - British National Party leader and allegedly-not-a-holocaust-denier-anymore Nick Griffin has achieved the sort of success he so craves in political elections. Unfortunately for him, the poll in question wasn't a political election. It was one among students at Cambridge University to find the worst Cantabrigian ever.

Cambridge University Students' Union don't like Nick Griffin. Thankfully, nor do the vast majority of British people.

University newspaper The Tab reports that Griffin, who studied law at Downing College and left with a Second Class Honours (Lower Division), attracted an impressive 1,097 votes - that's 44% of all votes cast, sufficient to curse Britain with a fascist government should it ever happen in a General Election.

Nasty Nazi Nick is typically quick to argue that the poll reveals nothing, as he is wont to do whenever any poll reveals the BNP do not enjoy the support he likes to claim they do. "This poll does not even reflect the opinions of students at Cambridge. Let's have a debate at the Union and see what students really think," he says - the fury with which Cambridge Union members protested a planned appearance by Griffin in 2002 rather suggests otherwise, however. Could it be that the students have, since then, been "swayed by the follies of the left-wing?" Erm - the left-wing (note: he can't blame the Worldwide Zionist Conspiracy, because he's rather keen on pretending not to be an anti-semite nowadays)? They vanished with the election of Tony Blair. The reason Cambridge students oppose the BNP is that Cambridge is very successful as a multicultural town - it enjoys a cosmopolitan atmosphere of the type that a flat, damp, mid-sized town would otherwise only dream of and some of the University's most luminous alumni were most definitely not the indigenous British people who, according to the BNP, should be the only people to inhabit these isles. All in all, Cambridge has long benefitted from immigrants who have come to Britain and contributed enormously both to the city itself and to Britain and the human race as a whole. What's more, if you fancy a curry there's about 30 places that serve a damn good one.

Jokes aside - what does this tell us? First of all, far right groups such as the BNP have never been popular in the UK. That's why, ever since the 1930s and Mosley's bad day out in Cable Street, British people have opposed them every step of the way and also why no far right organisation has ever achieved more than limited success on the national stage, certainly not enough to give them any sort of real power. Right now - as is so often the case during harsh economic times - they find higher than average support as people seek a scapegoat on whom to blame society's problems. It used to be the Jews, then it was blacks, then Indians and now it's Muslims. Thankfully, the majority of people value freedom and the true British ideals of acceptance, tolerance, the offering of asylum and equality; and it seems that the up-and-coming generation are no different.

Who knows where we'll be in 25 years' time - but one thing's certain: in the years between now and then, when those students currently at Cambridge (and Oxford and Manchester and all the other universities, each of which have strong anti-right wing organisations) take over the reins and run our nation, the BNP will not be getting the power for which they're so desperate.