British National Party leader Nick Griffin "literally prevented a war in Syria", a party spokesman has said.
Simon Darby made the claim as he clashed with the BBC's Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics show over the loss of support for the far-right party and Mr Griffin's appearance with Greek neo-Nazis Golden Dawn.
He accused the BBC of "trying to put him (Mr Griffin) in prison twice merely for exposing the Muslim grooming scandal" but Mr Neil then asked why the BNP leader would not give an interview on the issue.
Mr Griffin posted a tweet apparently revealing the jury's judgments in the trial of a child sex ring, almost causing the case to collapse.
Asked why Mr Griffin would not give an interview, Mr Darby said: "Mr Griffin was in Syria. Nick was in Syria preventing a war, literally. He flew out to Damascus and prevented a war. He was instrumental in putting that letter across to the UK Parliament before that vote when we decided we wouldn't quite rightly interfere in Syria."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article