Unpopular views are not always immoral. Remember that at one time, the notion that all people should be treated equally was an unpopular view.

Sure, there are rules that most rational people would probably agree to in any given situation; but the only way to establish what these are is through debate and constant challenge. Only recently has homosexuality been accepted by the majority of society; without this previously taboo subject being fair game for debate then it might still be outlawed to this day. The same is true of racism, sexism and slavery. The problem with a society that defines what is and isn’t fair game off the bat is that it very quickly falls out of step with the rest of the world, and has a moral compass that is at the whim of whoever happens to be lawmaker at the time.

For instance it might be clear to you that murder is wrong, as is racism and homophobia; but it might be equally clear to someone else that something more contentious like abortion is inherently wrong, or the usage of GM crops or religion. A society in which some subjects are not open for debate would be in danger of accepting some contested values unfairly, and perhaps with grave consequences.

The list of human rights you describe was arrived at through careful examination and extremely thorough debate. They were proven to be robust against counter argument and therefore earned their place. If there were any compelling arguments against these then this would have been exposed in the debate and the potential right rejected. But a debate must happen before we know this, and they must continue to be debated should any new issues come to light.

I’m not saying that we should simply declare all viewpoints equal, what I’m saying is that they are all fair game for discussion. We all have an individual responsibility to weigh up all the arguments for and against before deciding for ourselves what position to adopt. What absolutely shouldn’t happen is that moral positions are dictated to us by those in authority who have declared that the matter is now settled and that there is no room for any more discussion.

Oh, it’s on now!

Sweet, sweet irony.

To cite the BNP’s immorality as reason for their exclusion only begs the question – who makes the decision about what is moral, and who is deemed moral? Is this done by public acclamation, or do we somehow appoint an arbiter to make this judgement on our behalf?

How is it feasible to censor parties with whom the majority disagrees? A censor would presumably be appointed by the government; the government are chosen by the electorate. Taken to its logical conclusion, the winner of an election would therefore be able to censor out whatever it chose, including all opposition parties. In this present case, the argument appears to be – most people are revulsed by the BNP, so it is justified to exclude them. But how do we measure people’s views about political parties? By elections. We had an election in the summer, and the BNP received a million votes. Do you see the problem?

On a practical level, I would argue that a far more effective way of of countering the BNP is firstly to ignore them as far as possible, and secondly for the mainstream parties to work much harder to re-engage the hundreds of thousands of voters who felt sufficiently disenfranchised by the current political climate to vote BNP this year. I cannot believe that all of them are ardent racists.