On Wednesday’s Today programme, BNP leader Nick Griffin told the Radio Four audience that “Liberal economics… have utterly bankrupted this country.” It’s laughable. The truth is that Nick Griffin was himself declared bankrupt in 1991. Over several years thereafter, he destroyed his parents financially as well. In this link, Griffin’s parents tell the story of how their son ruined their lives.

It is the story of a man whose gross personal financial incompetence brought significant misery to his entire family. Griffin racked up debts of several hundred thousand pounds through a series of disastrous property investments, which he describes as “a big cock up.” He was declared bankrupt and then caused the financial ruin of his parents.

Nick Griffin borrowed very heavily on several properties in the early 1990s, especially on a large country house in France. His father, Edgar guaranteed the borrowing – at Nick’s request. Edgar explains that to finance the enormous accumulated debt, they had to sell their own substantial farm house in Suffolk, all their shares and a flat left to Griffin’s mother – all disposed of in order to meet the high interest payments and the effects of negative equity.

“We came out of it very badly’ explains Edgar Griffin. ‘My father had left me a rich man….I was very, very comfortably off.” Everything went to pay Nick’s debts.

Meanwhile, Jackie aka Mrs Nick Griffin paints a picture of her husband as an idle, feckless egomaniac: “His parents taught him that the sun rose and set in his arse because he doesn’t know how to do anything at home and is always, always right.”

According to Jackie, Nick idled around for 20 years playing at fascism while she went out to work and paid the bills with four kids to feed…until he got the job as BNP leader, by which time he was 40. Before then, he hardly worked at all – except for short periods chopping down trees and teaching eastern Europeans English in Wisbech – as she slaved away. For a year, they lived on benefits: she took unpaid maternity.

Jackie Griffin says of her husband: “My mother thinks he could do with a damned good slap and get out there and do something. We’ve had four kids. I’ve worked all my life. I’ve always worked. I’ve had children and gone back to work. She’d have been a lot happier if he’d been able to provide.”

In the eyes of his parents and of his wife, Nick Griffin is manifestly unfit to lead a party which aspires to run a council, Barking & Dagenham, where the annual budget approaches £200 million.

If they don’t trust him, how on earth can the voters of Barking?

To see more about the real Nick Griffin, see Dominic’s interviews with him on YouTube.