Hugo Rifkind
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In the many interviews that he has given since Sunday, Brons’s fat-arsed boss Nick Griffin has one constant refrain. ‘This is all old,’ he’ll sigh, when somebody mentions the black-hating, and the Jew-hating, and the White Power T-shirt he was photographed wearing 20 years ago, back when his arse was considerably less fat. ‘Why don’t you talk about what we are saying today?’ Imagine if Myra Hindley had been released from prison, and had then launched a campaign to ensure that elderly ladies never had to sit next to screaming toddlers on aeroplanes. She’d probably have said something similar.
But, you see, I’m doing it myself. I’m getting shrill. Griffin is not Myra Hindley. He’s not Hitler, either. He’s actually just a fairly mundane fat-arsed bigot. His bigotry, though, is of a special type. It strikes chords. It makes us overreact and talk about his fat arse. And because of that, when he talks, when words issue from that fleshy bit above his double chins and below his Hitler hair, we still don’t hear them. We’re still stuck on what he is, not what he says. And if we weren’t, then we might notice something, and be rather heartened. We might notice that the BNP has been hobbled.
When was the last time you heard a British fascist point out that there ain’t no black in the Union Jack? When was the last time you heard them faffing on about how only 50 people died in the Holocaust and they were all really nasty anyway, or that Africans are stupid and that Asians carry disease? When was the last time they said what they actually think?
They don’t. They can’t. They’d go to jail. And even if they wouldn’t, there just isn’t an appetite for screaming hate any more. Things have moved on, it makes people uncomfortable. That’s partly why that battle on Channel 4 News looked so odd, because Brons has learned to pretend not to hate, and Guru-Murthy didn’t bother.
It’s the wrong approach. Every time the BNP has to tone it down, become more subtle, it’s a little victory for everybody else. Racists still, but each one forced to live a lie, in a country that won’t stand for them coming clean. Look at them up there on the telly, forced to do their best impressions of normal, moral human beings. It’s wonderful that they have to. We could be gloating about that. We don’t need to shriek. We certainly don’t need to go on and on about Nick Griffin’s arse. Which, as I may have mentioned, is very fat indeed.
It’s different in Italy, isn’t it? Silvio Berlusconi and all his many lady friends at his country home. Topless girls in Jacuzzis. Naked foreign dignitaries popping in and out. And after hours? For some reason the mind conjures up teams of girls wearing babydoll dresses, having pillow-fights, while Papi Berlusconi stands in the middle, covered in feathers, and laughs like Al Pacino does in The Devil’s Advocate. The Italian president has declared that he would resign if ‘caught lying’ about the scandal rocking his government, which started over his relationship with the 18-year-old model Noemi Letizia. I love the ‘caught’ part of that. He’s a little man, but he’s got front.
Writing in the Times, Mary Beard likened Berlusconi to the Emperor Tiberius, famed for his romps on the island of Capri. Gordon Brown has also been likened to Tiberius, although more in a big, bruising, not-being-as-popular-as-the-last-bloke sort of way. And yet it is almost impossible to imagine such a carry-on at Chequers. Berlusconi is known for his friendships with lithe, slender young news anchors. Gordon, I seem to recall, is quite good mates with Kirsty Wark.
Italians are renowned for their style, but my assumption always was that this had much to do with their clothes. And yet in these pictures, some of which I have been forced to peer at quite closely, the style remains quite evident, even though the clothes are not. Even when they strip off to be ogled by a short bloke with a badly dyed comb-over, Italians do it with panache. We Brits, we strip like the Germans. Functional and flappy, with a barely suppressed urge to then go hiking.
Students at Oxford, I see, have brought out a nude calendar in aid of the charity TravelAid. These pictures, too, I have studied, for I am a professional. They’re reading in the library, walking down a road, playing in a string quartet, playing rugby, at a lecture, drinking in a bar. They’re all young, they’re all healthy-looking, some of them are even quite attractive. But strangely, it’s the most sexless thing you ever saw. It exudes Britishness. All naughty giggles and turned-up toes.
None of the free and easy sense of the Italians. Welcome to my villa, I am the President, you’ll be wanting half a bikini, then. I wonder if there is any other nation that does it quite so well? The Americans look trashy naked. The French try too hard, wearing neckerchiefs, and coyly nibbling on things. The Dutch — well, I’m getting carried away, and my wife is in the next room. Let’s leave it there.
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