BNP ‘new boys’ snubbed on first day as MEPs

Nick Griffin (right) and his sidekick Andrew Brons (left) spent their first day as members of the European parliament in Strasbourg yesterday being cold-shouldered by fellow MEPs and the system in general. "Just finding our feet, new boys at a very large school," Griffin commented.
 
There have been a few set-backs so far this term. First, Griffin got pulled over by the French police for breaking the speed limit on the way to Strasbourg - though he claimed not to be driving. Then he got kicked out of OFarrell's, a popular Strasbourg watering hole for MEPs, when all he was doing was having a quiet drink outside.

The next snub came when Diane Dodds of the Democratic Unionist party refused to sit next to Brons in parliament. Griffin, who claims to have befriended some German Greens, complained of "childish behaviour on the part of the Brits".
 
But the biggest disappointment was being blacklisted from Glenda Kinnock's party for all British MEPs, though Griffin put on a brave face. "I wouldn't want to share a drink with Glenys Kinnock anyway. They [she and her husband Neil] haven't got their noses in the trough, they're in the trough." Griffin said that Kinnock, who is described as an "arch-traitor" on the BNP website, was a "political prostitute".
 
The BNP don't belong to any official political grouping in Strasbourg, and therefore miss out on extra funding and staff. So it looks like the only 'boys' who will talk to Griffin and Brons are Jean Marie Le Pen and various Hungarians, Bulgarians, Dutch and Austrians with unpleasant views on Muslims, gypsies and Jews.

Whether Brons, a former member of a neo-Nazi group founded on Hitler's birthday, and now an MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, is up to the job is another issue. He was seen nervously fiddling around the parliament chamber, and had to get Griffin to show him how the electronic voting mechanism worked.

He also appeared puzzled about exactly what the BNP's stance on Europe was: "Our default position is that this place and Brussels have no right whatsoever to legislate on Britain. But since they also have that power, we're not here as total abstentionists."

Griffin is a little more certain about what he wants. Speaking about the Strasbourg parliament, he said: "If and when the free nations of Europe get their destinies back, perhaps this building could be turned into a monument to the follies of imperialism. We must get rid of this ridiculously wasteful circus, though I fear it would prove too much for French pride." ·