CounterpointStimulating debate with the British Council

It's not exactly a good time for Britain's far-right radical movements.

While the BNP is rocked by internal squabbling, the English Defence League is not doing well in its demonstrations or public image.

If events continue as they have been, historians are likely to look back one day and write about how Marmite (yes, the spread) brought down the BNP.

Yesterday, the Lancaster Unity blog revealed that the BNP's legal director Lee John Barnes has resigned from the party.

Yesterday the local newspaper Telegraph and Argus launched a campaign to stop the English Defence League coming to Bradford for a demonstration.

EDL supporters plan to demonstrate in the city on Saturday 28th August. But will they be allowed?

In 2009 the Equalities and Human Rights Commission decided to take the British National Party to court over its whites-only membership policy.

The EHRC was also criticised by minority groups, saying the win was "hollow" because there was no clamour at all among minorities to join the BNP.

Earlier this year the BNP finally voted to change its membership rules to allow non-whites into the party, after sufficiently squeezing publicity from the court case.

As I said recently, various people have called for the new Muslim fundamentalist group Muslims Against the Crusades to be banned.

But under what pretense?

An Indian Muslim preacher has been banned from entering the UK for his "unacceptable behaviour", the home secretary told the BBC today.

The move is significant because it is the first ban by the new government and it signals that their approach is going to remain broadly similar to that of the previous administration.

A new radical Muslim group has sprung up on the scene calling themselves 'Muslims Against the Crusades' or MAC, as they sometimes refer to themselves.

It's likely that MAC are the latest incarnation of Anjem Choudhary's 'Islam4UK' which was banned under the previous government. This time however, he is nowhere to be seen.

With an air of inevitablity, Nick Griffin today posted a statement to the British National Party's website saying that he was planning to step down... in 2013.

There's no doubt that the BNP leader was under pressure to leave: the party had a disastrous showing at the General Election. This is infact contrary to the mainland European experience where increased immigration and recession has led to more support for the far-right.

Ed Husain of the Quilliam Foundation, author of the big selling book The Islamist, talks to Catherine Fieschi and Mark Erbel of Counterpoint about Islamism, British identity, and strategies to counter violent extremism in the UK and beyond.

NATIONALIST EXTREMISM
The English Defence League has not had a good week. On Saturday a large rally by the EDL took place in Stoke, an area not known for its high concentration of ethnic minorities or Muslims even. So what was the point? Most likely, an effort to boost their membership and morale given that the area is relatively successful for the BNP (it has 8 local BNP councillors)

And evidence of those close links were obvious when hooligans from the EDL rally started chanting: BNP, BNP, BNP!. 17 people were arrested after six police officers were hurt.