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Mainstream political parties rounded on the BNP today after its breakthrough in the European elections.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, condemned the election of two MEPs for the far-right party as a sad day for British politics, while David Cameron described the result as desperately depressing.

"The BNP are completely beyond the pale. They do not even let black and Asian people into their party, they are an appalling bunch of people," the Tory leader said.

"What the mainstream parties have to do is to prove their worth, get on the doorstep, explain to people how we are going to take up their concerns, how we are going to respond to their issues. That is the way to beat these dreadful people. I hope that this is the extent of what they can do and they go no further."

Like the Conservatives, the BNP benefited from an anti-Labour backlash in Thursday's poll. Disgruntled left-wing voters stayed at home in droves.

Before retiring to his bed this morning, Nick Griffin trumpeted that his and Andrew Brons's election to the European Parliament was the awakening of the British lion whose roar would shake the world.

The BNP leader tussled by phone with a series of interviewers on breakfast television and radio. He spoke from his farm cottage in Welshpool, where he was driven at dawn after the count at Manchester Town Hall confirmed his victory.

Challenged by John Humphrys on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme over his party's anti-immigration policies and Holocaust denial, Mr Griffin blamed the malign influence of a ruling liberal elite for transforming Britain into a "crime-ridden slum without industry" and turning the white working class into second-class citizens.

"If you come to Bradford and places like Oldham and talk to people there, not just white people but also Sikhs and Hindus, you will find they have serious problems living in this multiracial, multicultural society where the ruling establishment do not take anti-white racism seriously," Mr Griffin said.

"I think the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, by leaving the door to Britain open, have forced people to turn to a party that speaks openly about the problem of immigration, and says that while there may be a few good things about it, there are also a lot of bad things".

Earlier Mr Griffin described the election of two BNP members to the European Parliament as a defining moment in British history.

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