As you probably gathered from my earlier blog entry on the London Mayoral elections I’m not a conservative, in fact I hope that you‘ve gathered from reading my blog that I’m a bit of a left-winger.

Having been reading about the elections there is something that concerns me more than a Tory winning the Mayoral election and that is having a member of the Assembly aligned to the British National Party (BNP).

It was only a matter of time before the BNP started to get prominent positions in important part of Government – they already have dozens of councillors up and down the country, now they have an Assembly Member (AM).

I can only see one reason for this and that is our continued dismissal and constant ignoring of the party and the threat they pose to the nation. For too long we have allowed them to operate without effectively challenging their political beliefs and showing them up for being the racist, bigoted lunatics that they are. Now we can no longer ignore them, they are sitting in councils up and down the country and deciding policies in the London Assembly.

We should have engaged them in the political debate and effectively challenged them before they gained enough support to get elected into such prominent positions. When their support began to grow and their number of councillors started to increase is when we should have began the effective offensive on their abhorrent and grotesque policies and political beliefs.

The newly elected BNP London AM, Richard Barnbrook AM, spoke about indigenous and first generation people and how settlers to this land cannot be allowed to dictate what will and will not happen. He spoke about enforcing British values and customs upon those who come to settle in Britain and that so long as people “abide by our identity and laws of this land” he “will see where we can help”.

The whole idea of multiculturalism, in my opinion anyway, is that we all live together and respect one another’s values and customs. The law of the various jurisdictions around the country should of course be applied fairly to everyone, but British values sand at odds with many of the values that those who come to our country hold.

The country would, economically, be on its knees without immigration. Those who come here work hard, pay their taxes, do the jobs that many in this country see as being beneath them and fill skills gaps. We cannot as a nation survive without immigration. Our population is aging and declining at the same time, this makes the economic prosperity of the country very bleak and immigration is the only solution in the short and medium term.

• Politics