What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

If Nick Griffin loses his re-election as an MEP in the North West of England, that could be the end of the BNP for good. After a series of election defeats in recent years, the party is ready to tear itself apart – a fitting end for a party that believes in divisive, hateful politics.

Losing elections is never a good feeling, but after years of running the Daily Mirror’s involvement in the Hope not Hate campaign, I’ll never forget the day Nick Griffin won a seat as a Member of the European Parliament. His sneering face at Manchester Town Hall said it all. The bodyguards that flanked him, the thugs that punched the air.

He won that seat on the back of huge voter disgust in the wake of the Parliamentary expenses scandal. A belief that all politicians are the same made people stay at home. It wasn’t voter apathy, it was voter distrust – you need some sort of belief to get you to a ballot box, even if it’s just a belief in democracy.

Five years on, people can see that voting BNP doesn’t change anything for the better, in fact it just makes things worse. It makes communities weaker and more divided, it doesn’t help with the issues that face families – jobs, housing, schools, getting the bins emptied. As elected politicians, the BNP are utterly useless. Their competence is only surpassed in frailty by their ideology.

Last week, when I was up in Burnley and Pendle – their former heartland - with Labour candidate Theresa Griffin, they seemed a shattered force. There was no show of strength on the streets, just some pathetic photo opportunities, where men jumped out of a van for five minutes took a selfie with a racist placard and jumped back in again.

The MEP election result won’t be until Sunday. But my prediction is that Nick Griffin will be defeated. That doesn’t mean people can stay at home in the north-west today – on Merseyside and in Greater Manchester, in Cumbria, Lancashire and Cheshire – every vote is still needed to kick the BNP out.

If Griffin is defeated, people will say it’s the pull of UKIP and its racist siren call – and yes, that will be a big factor. But it will also be because enough people in the north-west were sick of being represented by fascists.

If the BNP lose their last MEP seat, we shouldn’t play down the tremendous achievement. Hope not Hate and other groups have defeated them at every turn – on the streets, in the pubs, on the doorstep and now it’s time to defeat them at the ballot box.

And if UKIP want to keep playing the same old, tired old race card – well, we’ll just have to defeat them too.

Follow the latest on the local and European elections in Mirror Online's live blog.