Griffin joins right-wing MEP beauties

Poor Nick Griffin. The extremist BNP leader who has just won himself a seat as a Euro MP, representing northwest England, might have assumed that one of the perks of the job would be the company of a bevy of continental women politicians, all of them deliciously right-wing, if not quite as right-wing as Griffin himself.

But 'Fat Hitler', as he has been dubbed by micro-bloggers on Twitter, is in for a disappointment.

If the Italian President Silvio Berlusconi had had his way, the new European Parliament would have been packed with showgirls from his right-wing People of Liberty party.

It was all part of his master plan to replace the "malodorous and badly dressed people who represent certain parties in parliament" with a range of "cultured and well prepared" former models and TV presenters.

Because of the resulting media furore, 'Papi' Berlusconi was forced to jettison all but one of his candidates - the former Miss Italy turned TV presenter, Barbara Matera.

Winning the Italian euro-vote with 35 per cent, People of Liberty will be entitled to 29 seats, which should see Matera (pictured above) comfortably ensconced in Brussels.

As for glamorous French women of the right in the new European Parliament, there is one - but there's a catch. She's Nicolas Sarkozy's former Justice Minister Rachida Dati, born in France to a Moroccan bricklayer and his Algerian wife. Not the ideal match for Griffin, a man whose party refuses to admit non-whites.

Dati's seat as an MEP for the Ile de Paris region is her scant reward after being booted out of the Justice Ministry earlier this year by Sarkozy (with, some say, a nudge too from a jealous Carla Bruni). Despite her distress, Dati felt able to congratulate Sarkozy today on his UMP party's trouncing of its opponents, increasing its share of Euro seats from 17 to around 30. ·