At Labour’s party conference, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has accused Nigel Farage of “worse than racist” dog-whistle politics. Keir Starmer, too, decried Reform’s latest plans as “racist”.
Many Labour supporters see this as a turning point. To me, the moral gush feels calculated and insincere.
Throughout the year, this Government has been amplifying Reform’s message about neglected trueborn Britons. Many such Britons have been neglected in recent decades, mostly, in my view, by the Tories. But according to a YouGov poll, many Reform voters hold xenophobic views; 78 per cent think multiculturalism has made the UK worse.
This May, the Prime Minister said the UK was becoming “an island of strangers”, then later said he regretted using the phrase. Starmer and his team are adroit shapeshifters.
They now roundly denounce Reform, and recognise that the country is sliding back to the bad old seventies when black and Asian people were subjected to intolerable racism by the state, the media, patriotic followers of Enoch Powell, Mr Farage’s alter ego.
But all is not what it seems.
Mahmood asks us to “fight for our belief in a greater Britain, not a littler England” based on ethnonationalism. And she lambasts Farage for promising to reassess the status of legal settlers in the UK, change the immigration rules and render some of them stateless. That done, she feeds the same Reform hounds red meat. It’s quite a trick.
She will be harder than anyone on migrants crossing the Channel. She reaches out to people who feel “the country doesn’t work for them”. The country doesn’t work for us minorities either in the present climate. But you know, we are second-class Brits, here on sufferance, always and forever.
Mahmood will make migrants wait for 10 years before they get citizenship. To qualify, they will need to be fluent in English, work, claim no benefits, commit no crimes and do voluntary work. What else? Not have children? Not talk back when abused?
Imagine Spain imposing these conditions on Brits who settle there, insisting that they speak Spanish or integrate. Or if Zimbabwe brought in new citizenship tests for settled whites.
These policies and national conversations insult and unnerve many Britons of colour. Why, we ask, do white extremist nationalist thugs who riot and try to burn asylum hotels not have to be good citizens? Why are Tommy Robinson and neo-fascists permitted to upset the social order?
She could have acclaimed invaluable immigrant contributions to the nation from when the welfare state was created to now. She could have said sports, medicine, science, construction, business and other sectors depend on those who came to stay.
We voted the Tories out because their view of Britain was mean, exclusionary and deeply unfair. The hope was that Starmer, a human rights lawyer, would unite us and hail the multifarious and creative country white, black and brown people have made over the years. That hope was dashed soon after he won his thumping majority. It’s always thus. When Labour gets into power, minority supporters learn bitterly that their votes are useless and their concerns are ignorable.
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In 1968, when Powell was at the height of his popularity, the Labour Government tried to placate his followers by passing an overtly racist act. British passport holders with bloodline links to this country were free to move to the UK without visas; all other subjects had to apply for visas.
Cabinet papers released under the 30-year rule showed that, despite Home Secretary Jim Callaghan’s protestations, the measures were indeed aimed intentionally at “coloured immigrants”. White South African, Zimbabwean, Australian and New Zealand immigrants caused no panic.
The immigration debate has always been about colour, not numbers. Blair and Brown coolly admitted countless EU nationals but clamped down hard on those outside the Union.
I completely understand that cohesion and common values matter in multiracial societies. Laws must apply equally to all; tackling prejudices or violence against any race, gender, class or sexual preferences is the responsibility for every citizen.
I, for example, would not shed a tear if groomers holding dual citizenship were deported. I don’t think it is racist to say that some communities maintain values and lifestyles that should not be tolerated in a liberal democracy.
Forced marriages, faith-based homophobia and honour-based violence must be opposed and punished. We should also revile and punish the xenophobia of white people, whatever their class, and the neo-Nazis roaming our streets.
Labour will need determination and clarity to curtail antisocial forces, protect the democratic rights of all citizens and renew our country.
Starmer and Mahmood did attempt to change the immigration narrative at the conference. But like previous Labour Governments, their policies and doublespeak told another story.
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