Silence amid the circus

Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC's worn-out political forum Question Time was a predictably haphazard show-trial that generally worked wonders for its racist guest of honour.

Griffin, as expected, was amiable, skilful and evasive – unlike his tiresome fellow panellists.

But the most telling moment of last night's curious circus was not to be found in any of the BNP chief's guarded pronouncements. It was in the silence of his detractors.

At a stroke, blundering motormouth Jack "Listen, I am a minister of justice" Straw and impassioned Lib Dem warbler Chris Huhne fell silent when accused of murdering 800,000 Iraqis and tacitly supporting an invasion of the sovereign Islamic Republic of Iran.

It was the one and only statement from the serpentine Griffin that was not immediately ridiculed or quashed.

Not a peep.

Presumably the honourable ministers were too busy recharging their batteries in order to continue nobly rebutting the wearisome rhetoric of a chubby racist on live television.

After all, shooting fish in a barrel is certainly preferable to excusing state-sanctioned war crimes and wholesale terrorism.

Which brings us to last night's protests outside the BBC's television studios.

Despite their commendable intentions, the irony of 800 justice-seeking humans expressing outrage at a fascist party entering the headquarters of an organisation which implicitly supports aggressive, illegal wars and horrendous repression around the world was acute.

Though not nearly as acute as the horror and suffering of those currently quaking beneath the merciless shadow of western bombs in the Middle East. Those clinging on to shattered lives amid the rubble. Amid unseen, unheard, untold devastation.