There is a certain amount of exaggeration surrounding the ascension of the BNP to the European Parliament. On Sunday night they won two seats, one in the North West where party leader Nick Griffin was triumphant and the other in Yorkshire & Humberside where Andrew Brons was elected.

First of all, they are two MEPs out of 785 in a parliament that is known to be of little use other than to debate legislation that is really decided on by the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.

We are not in the midst of Nazi Germany in the 1930s but nor, as a fellow blogger pointed out, must we rest easy. There is a fight to be had after the failure of the fight to deny them a place in mainstream politics.

The BNP received fewer votes this time around than they did in 2004 yet they gained two seats. This has to do largely with the collapse of the Labour vote following the MPs expenses scandal, the general mire that the governing party finds itself in and yet another low turnout for an election which is in itself awfully sad.

Millions of people died fighting the very fascists the BNP like to praise to protect our right to democracy, flawed thought it maybe, and we throw it back in their faces by not even bothering on election day.

Many people I speak to who dont vote say they don’t know enough to go out and vote for someone but surely they know enough to know that voting for a racist party isn’t a particularly good idea. Had these people gone out and voted the success of the BNP might have been prevented.

It must be made clear that beyond the spin the BNP are a fascist party despite their attempts to hide the tattoos, grow out the hair and dress up in smart suits. If we are to examine the expenses of our MPs with such scrutiny should we not also examine the past of these two MEPs, party leader Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons? It is a very dark past indeed.

Both are ex-members of the National Front, an organisation that is racist to the core. Griffin is on record as denying the holocaust amongst many other abominable statements. Brons is a former member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, an organisation set up on honour of Adolf Hitler.

Griffin has said that using what he calls saleable words such as “freedom, security, identity, democracy” can cleverly disguise the party’s real intention which is to get themselves in control of the British broadcasting media to a point where they can change the minds of the British people who might then say that “every last one must go,” referring to immigrants in this country. These words were spoken to a group of David Duke supporters, that is David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

These are not good people.

I tend to think that some of those who voted for the BNP aren’t actually racist, just plain ignorant and stupid enough to fall for the spin of Griffin and his thugs particularly when confidence in the mainstream political parties is at its lowest ebb. But one wonders now how our two fascist representatives in Europe will fare with the taxpayer’s money?

The BNPs political manifesto will come under the kind of scrutiny that it has never before been subjected too. The fact the party does not allow black people to join means that when hiring staff for its European offices they will surely be liable to violation of basic employment laws as The Guardian pointed out this morning.

It’s the kind of scrutiny which will hopefully see the BNP fall on their sword, their manifesto exposed for all its hypocrisy and stupidity but we cannot become complacent. Complacency is what has allowed Griffin and Brons to take their seats in Brussels as representatives of this country. They are racists representing Britain to the whole of Europe and that is a very sad thing indeed.