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So, in a speech today Gordon Brown will tell us that super-fast broadband is ‘the electricity of the digital age‘. So what does that make electricity, Einstein? The ‘coal’?

Sorry, that was a cheap shot. I actually think it’s an excellent aspiration (we can’t call it a policy because we’re not permitted to have a ‘legitimate expectation‘ that it will be enacted) and hope it comes to pass. Brown says it ‘must be for all – not just for some’.

I’m a firm believer that a lack of access to information is the greatest driver to disillusionment, disenfranchisement and disengagement. I’ll never forget when, a few years back when we were on our uppers, the Citizens Advice Bureau told us that the bank we needed off our backs for little while would regard newspapers as a ‘luxury’.

Being poor carries with it hidden traps as well as the stresses and worry – you only have to look at the level of unclaimed benefits in this country to see the dangerous ignorance it fuels. Being informed (however modestly) can be one of the first things out the window.

Brown’s announcement, however, is being framed in the already sickening negativity surrounding the run up to the general election and the media coverage of it. The Tories have announced a similar aspiration (good for them) but, according to the BBC, have ‘attacked’ Labour over its plan for an annual £6 (50p a month) levy to pay for its own plan.

Maybe the Tories did ‘attack’ the Labour plan. It’s quite possible that the Tories are trying to be partisan over this although to try and make 50p a month look like clear blue water between them and Labour seems pathetic in the extreme. It seems such a piffling amount of money to prevent a cross-party consensus on an issue that will provide the poorest with what a lot of us take for granted.

However, with the BBC not providing a Tory quote (either attributed or otherwise), it’s difficult to know what form this ‘attack’ takes and from whom it’s coming. It looks like a decent idea brought low by either a piss-poor political spat or piss-poor journalism.

So, here’s today’s score. If you don’t what to know, look away now: politics was the loser.

Those who followed goings on at the 2005 general election will remember New Labour’s wearyingly cynical and scaremongering tactics that formed the centrepiece of its negative campaign against the Liberal Democrats: Voting Lib Dem will let the Tories in. Peter Hain’s back door was an unpleasant and prominent feature.

It’s now 2010 and in the run up to the forthcoming election, constituents in Hove and Portslade are having this crap from New Labour shoved throught their letterboxes…

click to embiggen

Whoever produced this dross has a very short memory or, probably more likely, a galloping dose of denial. They’ve clearly forgotten or are studiously ignoring this little nugget from a certain Gordon Brown in September 2007…

I am a conviction politician like her, and I think many people will see Mrs Thatcher as not only a person who saw the need for change in our country and took big decisions to achieve that, but also is and remains a conviction politician, true to the beliefs that she holds.

A week later Brown had her round to tea at Downing Street and he paraded his guest in front of the waiting media. When do we get to see that in New Labour campaign leaflets?

EDIT: Sorry, not sure I made it clear that this is a New Labour leaflet I’m talking about here. Here’s the other side of it…

click to embiggen

I’ve edited the post slightly to make things clearer. In short, Thatcher is a source of embarrassment for Clegg, a cause of admiration for Brown.

For some reason Tory pencil-neck Michael Gove is the man chosen for the assault on New Labour’s ties with the Unite union. Apparently Unite has given 11 million quid to Gordon Brown in the last three years. Brown then, if I understand Gove correctly, used the money to usher in the communist dystopia under which we now toil and slave. After the next election, if Unite get their way, Britain will look like the worst bits of Doctor Zhivago.

I was particularly taken with this from Gove:

“Labour’s re-unionisation has put them in bed with the past at a time when it is crucial that this country wakes up to the future.”

The Shadow Secretary for Schools is dishing up metaphor stew. Can you sleep with the past? Does it hog the duvet, I wonder. Also: Wake up! Wake up! The future is nearly here! You don’t want to kip through it, do you Britain? You know, I think Michael Gove might be calling us a bunch of lazy bastards, lolling abed just as something modern and… stuff is about to happen.

And when a Conservative shadow minister uses ‘forces of conservatism’ as a pejorative term, you can pretty much conclude British politics is busted beyond hope. I mean, did it not cross Gove’s mind, even for a second, the nine kinds of prick he might sound like saying that? You’re a Conservative, Michael. You are the forces of conservatism. The clue’s in the first three syllables.

‘In the three years since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Unite has spent more than £11 million of its members’ money on buying influence within the Labour Party’. To which the only answer is: it didn’t do them much bloody good did it? Not exactly 11 million quid well spent, was it? Gordon Brown is so grateful for his Kremlin gold that he called the Unite members striking over their working conditions at British Airways ‘deplorable‘.

Still, now we know. All you people who lost your jobs, investments and homes in the last couple of years, hear Gove’s cry: that’s who ruined this country in the last few years, the bastard unions. Them and their sub-prime mortgages, their soft-touch regulation and their multi-billion dollar bail-outs. The red scum.

So here we go again, back where people use words like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘Labour’ and ’socialist’ in the same breath – in the face of 13 ugly years of New Labour neo-liberal history, no less – and expect to be treated as if they were great observers of the age. Ahistorical doesn’t begin to describe it. Gove’s claims that under Brown ‘class warfare has not only been resurrected; it has been elevated to holy principle’ would read as weapons-grade satire coming from anybody else.

Anybody who thinks the New Labour high command are hard-bitten class warriors huddled around their braziers (have you seen the Milibands?) should be immediately barred from participating in politics for life and for their own safety be permitted to use only a fork with a cork on it at meal times.

So the news that Tory peer and millionaire sugar daddy Lord Ashcroft has announced he is ‘non-domiciled’ in the UK for tax is playing out in all the squalid fashion you would expect. It basically boils down to: ‘BREAKING NEWS: We’re both as disgusting and craven as each other when it comes to sheltering tax dodgers say New Labour and Tories.’ They might as well have made a joint statement.

In seeking to obscure their complete lack of honesty over the tax affairs of the man trying to buy the general election for them, the Tories are looking to spread the blame. Look at two of New Labour’s biggest donors, they squealed, Lord Paul and Sir Ronald Cohen are both long-term residents of the UK and also ‘non-doms‘. New Labour reply that the Tories ‘aren’t being straight with people’ (it obviously takes a bunch of wriggling liars to know a bunch of wriggling liars).

Both sides have ended up using a pisspoor and insulting ‘Look! They’re doing it as well!’ excuse for their tax-dodgers as if it’s a defence any normal person could employ in daily life and expect to get away with it. Morality and accountability both got a pasting in the ensuing shit-slinging. All they’ve actually managed to do is further entrench the deeply and widely held belief that the main parties are as bad as each other. That should do wonders for turnout come polling day.

You end up thinking, what are they, like six or something? If I want to watch a bunch of insufferably spoilt shits petulantly screaming at each other about whose fault something is I’ll spend more time with my kids, thank you very much. New Labour and Tory heavyweights John Prescott and Eric Pickles even took it upon themselves handbag the other about their parties’ tax dodgers on Twitter. Salad dodgers defending tax dodgers. It’s even less dignified than it sounds. This election campaign has descended into cheap so fast I can’t believe it’s costing millions to fund.

Meanwhile…

And then there… Toby Helm:

When Sir George Young recently blurted out that Ashcroft was a non-dom on Newsnight he was “corrected” by a spokesman for the party who said Sir George had “miss-spoken”.

No – it now turns out – he hadn’t.

The correction of Young was a lie perpetrated not by the spokesman, who would merely have been taking orders, but by the people at the top.

Looking at the Tories’ declining fortune in the pre-election polls, Jamie says: ‘[I]magine going down in history as the man who failed to defeat Gordon Brown – as the man to whom people thought that Brown was, on the whole, preferable.’ It’s a thought to cherish, imagining the shame on a beaten Cameron’s doughy face, but neither is it enough to thaw the chill in the heart the prospect of another five year of Brown gives.

No doubt Cameron would be gutted to have thrown away what was looking like a dead cert until very recently (and he may or may not resign as Tory leader) but in the longer term I reckon the party could view it as dodging a bullet. It’s tempting to think that the Tories might have the sense to quietly back away from winning this time around. Imagine what New Labour will do to itself as Brown limps on and they have to fix the mess he’s made of everything with a much smaller majority (or even no majority at all).

There must be at least a small part of Cameron that’s dreading what he’s got coming up in the next few years as Prime Minister if he wins. Surely he must occasionaly think to himself, ‘Christ, I’m about the squander the prime of my life clearing up some other bastard’s crap’? It’s politics as cleaning up nightclub chunder – all the work with none of the fun. Not that I’m sympathetic, you understand me.

Plus he’s going to put some serious money where his mouth is. As Philip Collins says in the Times about Cameron’s speech to the Tory spring conference…

The trouble with “broken Britain” rhetorically is that it gives real fire to speeches now and ruins every speech three years into government. This list of awful things will be replayed time and again if none of them gets better.

And the ‘broken Britain’ hyperbole is just one of many misbegotten children he’s going to have to deny later on. Cameron might have stolen what he considers to be the best parts of the New Labour schtick in order to get elected but that also has distinct disadvantages. After thirteen years of all the deception, destruction and death from New Labour, huge swathes of the voting public have bullshit detectors finely tuned like never before. With seemingly no real and wider enthusiasm to see a Cameron government he’s not going to get any benefit of any doubts. He shouldn’t book a honeymoon.

You probably couldn’t give a finch’s fart about this – what with politicians screaming at each other and Our Cheryl splitting up with Ashley – but I thought it would be instructive to see what policies are announced on any given day by the main political parties in the run up to the election. You know, to see if those who want our votes are interested in anything other than screaming at each other.

To find out what’s been announced I’m going straight to the source – the news pages on the respective parties’ websites. It might not be too scientific but they should be pleased: this way I’m not taking anything that’s being filtered through the filthy, biased media. So what have we got for Monday February 23?

Conservative policies: 1

Announcement’s were…

- ‘A New Age of Agriculture – Our Agenda for British Farming’

…also…

- Tories show how ideologically similar to the government they are by parading a minor New Labour defector
- Tories sort of agree with New Labour’s pre-election hard-man crime and punishment window dressing

Lib Dem policies: 2

Announcement’s were…

- Tim Farron set out plans to reform the farm payments system and use the savings to support farm apprenticeships
- Vince Cable sets out the Liberal Democrat plan for the banking sector

…also…

- Labour and Tories are wrong on the economy and I’m right, says Vince Cable

New Labour policies: 0

Announcement’s were…

- The Tories are nasty says Foreign Secretary, David Miliband
- Tories are nasty says John Healey, Housing and Planning Minister

(Actually, ‘Healey announced a boost to housebuilding in England, by confirming nearly £500m funding to build around 8,000 affordable homes across the country’ but I can’t find that positive announcement on the New Labour website. Who told me? The filthy, biased media did.)

So, if the New Statesman is right, a number of prominent Tories have been running a dirty tricks campaign inside their own party. If Harriet Harman was doing this, Tory attack dogs would be going berzerk…

I’m amazed that the leaked Conservative document advising local officials on how to “trick” grassroots activists into selecting more female, gay and ethnic minority candidates hasn’t received more attention… The document, Action Plan for Candidate Selection in Safe Seats, encourages party officials to use “stealth” and to keep “quiet” over plans to diversify candidate selection. “Like a conjuror, we’ll get more applause if the audience cannot see exactly how the trick is performed,” it says.

I suppose those of us who quite like women, gays, brown people and political correctness should be glad that they’ve been doing it, even if by deception. That said, I doubt very much that after the election we’ll be seeing Cameron’s Queers or Cameron’s Khimars paraded like Blair’s Babes were in 1997. The Daily Mail won’t have its nose rubbed in it to that extent, for goodness sake.

It’s all apparently part of a move to change the ‘white, male and middle-class image’ of the Tory party. What it fails to address is the white, male upper-class millionaire’s club that currently controls the the party. Will any female, gay and ethnic minority candidates, should they get elected, get promoted from the back to the front benches or otherwise given positions of some power to challenge the traditional Tory powerbase? Or is this more Blairesque window dressing?

The massive fuss over Labour MP David Wright calling Tories ’scum-sucking pigs’ on Twitter shows that all concerned, including me, having nothing better to do. Political correspondents across Westminster seem to have dropped everything to chase the story with a tenacity not seen since All The President’s Men.

Eric Pickles, Tory Party chairman, hasn’t shut up about it for the best part of two days. He’s starting to sound like a girl who’s had her pigtails pulled. How he of all people can object to being called a pig is anyone’s guess although credit to him for going on the telly at lunchtime. Sacrifices must be made when someone’s saying beastly things about you on Twitter.

It’s also nice to see that some of the Tory bloggers getting their knickers in a twist are those who aren’t above calling people ‘pricks‘ and ‘paedos‘ themselves. It wasn’t so long ago that George Osborne was referring to Gordon Brown as being autistic. Right-wing outrage was more muted on that occasion.

Still, its just another example of how the wit and intelligence has largely fled from British politics. ‘Scum-sucking pigs’, ‘pricks’ and ‘paedos’ – is it really the best we can do? The days of John Wilkes are indeed long behind us.

Click to make big.

Make your own poster here (via Councillor Bob).

Well, it’ll save us all a walk to the local primary school next May, if nothing else. Screw the voters, the results of next year’s affront to democracy are in. Those who really matter have declared their verdict. Here’s state-funded gossip-monger, the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

Asked what Cam[eron] was going to focus on in his speech tomorrow, Robbo replied:

“Well, the Prime Minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor was talking about..the deficit…”

And advertising-funded gossip-monger…

ITV’s Tom Bradby has called George Osborne “the Chancellor”.

Why else would Tories propagandists have the balls to start publishing this kind of guff.

‘We’re all in this together,’ said the heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in his party conference speech – a previously undeclared hankering for inclusion (AKA ivory tower buck-passing). It’s just some of us are deeper in than others.

Were you one of those liberal-lefty types that rallied to David Davis’ banner when he made his pointless and self-aggrandising publicity stunt principled stand over civil liberties last year? Your erstwhile leader thinks you’re a coward and an appeaser…

“If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”

One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936. And how many ‘Guardian-reading vegetarians’ will join Davis on his next ego-buffing fool’s errand.

The best response was the first comment to the above piece:

More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German.

Witness the Tory fightback…

More cutting edge counter-propaganda here and here.

Johann Hari on the feel-your-pain David Cameron:

Let’s start with a tiny story, that points to a bigger untold tale. A few days ago, the Leader of the Opposition was asked how many homes he owns. “I own a house in North Kensington and… in the constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have,” he said. He then started to get confused, said he might own four homes after all, and pleaded: “Do not make me sound like a prat for not knowing how many houses I’ve got.” Imagine if Neil Kinnock said this in 1991. Do you think you might have heard?

And yet we’re going to hand the country to this honkingly unsympathetic arse and his millionaire mates no questions asked.

That’s how long it takes the Leader of the Opposition to dismiss electoral reform out of hand:

But it’s also why a Conservative government will not consider introducing proportional representation, as many participants in A New Politics have demanded. The principle underlying all the political reforms a Conservative government would make is the progressive principle of redistributing power and control from the powerful to the powerless. PR would actually move us in the opposite direction, which is why I’m so surprised it’s still on the wish-list of progressive reformers. Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites. Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver transparency and trust?

It’s a thin argument even for this Blair-lite chancer who’s going to romp to victory at the next election on the sole merit of being perceived as slightly less shit than Gordon Brown (that’s a solid gold ticket right now, I’ll grant you).

(more…)

In an interview on BBC1’s Andrew Marr programme today, Cameron said he did not want parliament to be full of “robots”.

Aw, go on Dave. It’d be brilliant.

Tall, strong, and outwardly decisive and impressive but when you find out what’s underneath you realise we’re all doomed? It’s the Terminator for Prime Minister. In keeping with the foreign policy of recent years we could install Sir Killalot as Foreign Secretary. ED-209 has the implacable authoritarian savagery required of the modern Home Secretary. Proteus could give us the juicy sex scandals. Diminutive, unfailingly loyal, often spouts incomprehensible rubbish, and infuriatingly irritating? It’s got to be Twiki from Buck Rogers for Communities Secretary. Taciturn, obedient and singularly lacking in charisma until things go wrong and then all hell breaks loose? The Gunslinger from Westworld would be the perfect candidate for Chancellor of the Exchequer. And C-3PO from Star Wars could provide the ineffectual camp petulance required of a Leader of the Opposition.

So, Daily Telegraph lawyers take incoherent gobshite and toe-curling political embarrassment Nadine Dorries’ blog offline after she makes certain remarks about the newspaper’s methods and the ‘motives’ of the newspaper’s owners, the Barclay Brothers.

In the spirit of solidarity Craig Murray is hosting the offending remarks on his blog. Go and judge for yourself. It’s in no way comparable to the Alisher Usmanov affair that took down several prominent blogs and her supporters who say it is are trying to grab a little reflected honour for Dorries’ sorry fantasies.

Throwing lawyers at her elevates her to a high-ground she’s neither earned nor deserves. She’s no martyr however much she likes to make herself out to be one when she’s losing an argument (which is often). It’s good to see her increasingly shrill outbursts getting a hammering. She’s deserving more of laughter than litigation. Let her whine away I say – it’s one of the finest spectator sports there is.

In 2006, when giving us his blogging wisdom on GMTV, the UK’s ‘leading’ blogger, Iain Dale said this:

Responsible bloggers will behave like responsible journalists [...] If you say something libellous on this programme, you’ve got GMTV to pay your libel bills. If I say something libellous on my blog, I’m responsible for paying my libel bills. And that means there is more of an onus on bloggers to get it right, to not post unsubstantiated rumours…

Thank goodness then that Iain Dale chose to publish his ‘entirely untrue’ allegations – unsubstantiated rumours, if you like – about government minister, Tom Watson, in the Daily Mail and not on his blog. The Daily Mail paid ’substantial damages’ to Watson on Dale’s behalf.

Can I just ask, what made Tory MP and professional martyr Nadine Dorries think that WRITING WHOLE PARAGRAPHS OF HER DEFENCE OF HER EXPENSES CLAIMS ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS helped her case?

I’d argue it makes her look as if she’s yet to master a keyboard and/or written communication properly. Maybe she thought an ingenuous childlike naivety would help calm baying constituents? A cunning lack of cunning? I’m with Jamie on this when he says, ‘those caps are… possibly the most depressing thing about the whole expenses scandal.’

Update: Someone must have had a word with Nadine about the shouty-crackers approach because the CAPITALS LETTERS HAVE NOW GONE FROM THE DEFENCE ON HER BLOG. She didn’t do a very good job of covering her tracks though – you can tell they were there because the de-capped passage is in a different font from the rest (click the image for the full efffect)…

If nothing else, the rancid squabbling over MPs’ expenses serves to reinforce the popular stereotypes of the two leading political parties in this country.

New Labour MPs, with their home improvements and their little property empires, use the expenses system to get away from the working classes as fast as they possibly can. Tory MPs with their moats and country homes and porticoes (whatever the hell they are) have already got away from the working classes as fast as they possibly could and now use their expenses to shore up the defences.

It’s politics as a gated community. I’m surprised some of them didn’t claim for landmines and water cannons.

So anyway. Lefties who thought Boris Johnson getting elected London Mayor was nowt much to worry about, how’s things working out for you?

BORIS Johnson was accused of “betrayal” today as it was revealed he has ditched plans for three rape crisis centres.

The Mayor was accused of failing women by cancelling the centres he promised in his manifesto — which were supposed to improve greatly the number of rapists brought to justice.

The thing is, the people who believed Johnson’s manifesto had what they thought was a ‘legitimate expectation’ of him carrying it through. However, just because his manifesto led one to form that ‘legitimate expectation’ doesn’t mean he has any obligation whatsoever to fulfil it. A manifesto doesn’t imply a promise, relationship or anything else between the writer and the reader. It’s merely a list of vague aspirations.

That’s what you choose between at election time. Lists of aspirations. That’s the extent to which you participate in the political process at elections. In this case it’s rape victims that Johnson’s failed. He’s picked a good target as one imagines most women who’ve been raped will have a lot of other things to worry about than where the Tory mayor of London left his integrity.

There are legal precedents after all. It’s called the ‘I can be a blatant liar in a manifesto and get away with it‘ defence. Johnson could have promised literally anything in his manifesto and if you believed him and he later ‘betrayed’ you, you only have yourself to blame. Buyer beware, love.

Manifestos’ promises are worth less than then paper their printed on, if you didn’t know it already. They can say what they like. It’s a gamble – you pick one and hope for the best. Remember that when the general election is announced. The online version of Boris Johnson’s manifesto has already been deleted for the avoidance of any cross-referencing of ‘promises’ with reality.

(Via the Tory Troll blog and Twitter.)

Update: Says it all:

“Quite simply, we believe that it is more important to fund Rape Crisis Centres than press officers.”

Yet when Boris came into power he alloted over half a million pounds to his team of campaign members, spinners and public relations bods.

Within months he had cut £511,000 from his rape crisis budget.

And yet still no word from our champion on arbitrary house arrest for teenagers though. When will our doughty defender stand up and be counted? Come on David, resign your seat.

There’s a disgraceful policy idea doing the rounds about putting people under house arrest for up to a month on nothing more than a policeman’s say so. It’s a bit Apartheid-era South Africa.

So where’s David Davis, that doughty defender of civil liberties, when you need him? Didn’t he once accuse the government of ‘casually disregarding our civil liberties in the face of problems to which it has no adequate solutions’?

Why isn’t he resigning his seat and calling a by-election in protest against yet another revolting assault on the criminal justice system? Why isn’t he manning the barricades? Or rallying cross-party opposition?

Chris Grayling: Labour is soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime

Our police should have powers to go straight to a magistrate and get an order against that troublemaker confining them to their homes for up to a month – except for during school hours. And if they break that curfew order they should expect to find themselves in the cells.

[...]

The Conservatives are the party of law and order – law and order based on common sense, strong families and communities and a system which places the victim above the criminal.

Ah. That’ll be why.

Shadow children’s secretary and Tory pencil neck Michael Gove tries to convince us he’s a punk as opposed to his political rivals who are hippies:

Do you prefer Colin Firth or Gary Oldman, Richard Curtis or Mike Leigh, Steven Spielberg or Spike Lee? In each case, as the punk-inclined among you won’t need telling, we go for option two. And while our aesthetic is raw, we prefer our breakfasts cooked. Our tea is unperfumed, as are our candles.

Tea, candles and cooked breakfasts. How very CBGB. He’s clearly unaware of the etymology of the word ‘punk‘:

[U]sually a small nonviolent male inmate that is bullied into becoming a bigger and stronger man’s property.

Was there ever a better description of the modern Tory?

(Via Steven and Dsquared)

I knew someone would say it. Here’s the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire on Ken Clarke’s return to the Tory front benches:

What does bringing back a Cabinet Minister from the Thatcher era tell us about the health of the Conservative message of change?

To which the only response is, what does bringing back the discredited and despised figures of the worst years of New Labour – Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Alan Milburn, David Blunkett – tell us about the health of the government and its confidence in new talent?

David Aaronovitch listens to the revolting Minister for Politically Expedient Demagoguery Phil Woolas on the radio:

Mr Woolas: “It’s assumed that Labour is soft on immigration. In actual fact the largest influxes of migrants into this country came during Conservative periods of government – if you look at the 1950s and early 1960s and indeed the situation with Eastern Africa.”

“The situation with Eastern Africa”? He means the time when the Kenyan and Ugandan Asians were expelled, and arrived in a Britain for which they had passports, where they were called “Paki”, and where they became some of the most successful and dynamic citizens this nation has possessed. And this is used by a Labour minister, a Labour minister, to attack past Conservative governments for softness on immigration! I wanted to throw up.

Nauseating, if typical, indeed. If Woolas wants to rake over history, however, he needs to get it straight. In an attempt to slow the influx of Ugandan Asians, the Conservative Party attempted to buy them off. They didn’t want them here any more than Woolas retrospectively does.

Ministers were prepared to offer Asian families expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin £2,000 each to give up their right to live in Britain.

They dropped the idea because they feared Enoch Powell would demand the same offer to immigrants already living here.

The Asian community in Britain today clearly have to be thankful they were less scary to the Tory high command than Powell was. Still, you’d imagine Woolas would find the idea of financial inducements as ’soft’. Labour, it seems, have always had the capacity to out-nasty the nasty party. Take the Kenyan Asians expelled in 1968:

Alarmed by an increase in the number of Asians from Kenya entering Britain, the Labour government under Harold Wilson introduced emergency legislation to end the freedom of entry of Asians – but not white settlers – from East Africa. The Times called it “probably the most shameful measure that Labour members have ever been asked by their whips to support”.

And to think some Tories thought the campaign slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour‘ was accurate. Hellish, topsy-turvy times to be sure. But back to 1968…

Within two weeks, Enoch Powell was to make his notorious “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham. But by then the Labour government had already done more to catalyse racial prejudice than Powell’s rhetoric ever could. In fact, as [then Home Secretary James] Callaghan’s biographer, Kenneth Morgan, points out: “From Callaghan’s point of view, Powell’s antics were a valuable distraction. They enabled the government to appear, by contrast, sane and balanced . . .”

Swap ‘Powell’s antics’ for ‘the BNP’s antics’ and we’re bang up to date. Some things never go out of style.