With just over a month to go until the European elections on June 4^th, the Electoral Commission has launched a voter registration campaign which includes this advert, currently being shown on prime-time TV.

It’s a great start, and will hopefully raise awareness about the elections, which traditionally suffer from very low turnout (in 2004, turnout was less than 40 per cent). What the advert doesn’t make clear enough, however, is the danger of not voting. Low turnout means that fringe parties, including the BNP, are in with a real chance of winning seats in some regions and representing us in Europe.

The EU suffers from an ambivalent and, at times, hostile, press in Britain. Yet decisions made in Brussels have a very real impact on all of our lives – registering to vote and ensuring that it is credible politicians who are making these decisions is the least we can do.

Any publicity is good publicity, according to Nick Griffin, BNP party leader. Until last week, that is.

The BNP have long argued that coverage in the press – whether positive or negative – is a good way to raise their profile.  

Indeed, the mainstream media seemed to reach a consensus that reporting about the BNP helped to give the party a veneer of respectability. See more about this debate here. As such, their party conference in November was barely reported and, until recently, coverage was generally confined to specialist publications, such as the excellent Searchlight magazine.

But the furore over the leaked BNP list last week brought the party firmly back onto the agenda of the mainstream press. And this, I believe, can only be a good thing.

As great a resource as Searchlight is, it is surely mainly preaching to the converted.  The horror and revulsion about the BNP generated by the mainstream media last week helped to do what will hopefully prove to be irreversible damage to the reputation of the BNP.

With the European parliamentary elections coming up, in which the BNP hope that a disproportionate amount of ‘protest voters’ will enable them to win seats, it is increasingly important for the general public to realise what the BNP actually stand for – and for this to motivate them to go out and vote for parties which actually represent what Britain stands for.