Russia’s elections – fraudulent, corrupt, proof that Russia is still a one party state with nothing but a figleaf of democracy. If that’s what you think then you’re dead wrong. At least, that’s what Nick Griffin discovered after he went on an all-expenses-paid trip to oversee the Russian elections earlier this month.

Nasty Nick came out with some insightful comments into the true nature of the Eastern Land of the Free such as “Putin’s Russia is more democratic than Cameron’s UK Banana Republic,” and “I went half expecting to see a poorly designed system vulnerable to fraud. I was stunned to discover instead a robust, transparent and properly democratic system that made me even more aware than ever of the … shambles that masquerades as free and fair elections in Great Britain.”

Griffin’s BNP has been desperate to blame its consistently terrible electoral performance on anything other than the fact that their nothing but a bunch of ugly thugs that everybody hates, so slagging off the British electoral system has become more or less instinctive for him nowadays.

Yet something (maybe free vodka or a the promise of a mail order bride) has led him to become a useful idiot for Putin, who’s autocratic, nationalist populist style is probably the sort of thing that Nick imagines he would be like as leader, when he’s practising in front of a mirror alone at home.

Does pose the question, if Nick Griffin loves Russia so much, why doesn’t he go and live there?