Militant Moderate: Tories' Weekend Rout On Race Issue

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Tories' Weekend Rout On Race Issue

I get the feeling that I may not have been the only person who, in the past 7 days, shifted from grudging admiration of the Tories' slick launch to disgust and virulent opposition of the new levels to which they took their race-card campaigning. I've decided to treck through the Sunday papers on this issue.

Michael Portillo has a superb article in today's Sunday Times. here's a snippet:

The Conservatives' relentless emphasis upon immigration and asylum, [Portillo] said, has compromised their campaign to present themselves as a party that has changed and renewed itself. And this - whatever the reasons for that emphasis - is undoubtedly true. Michael Howard's aides grumble that the media has exaggerated his fixation with immigration and asylum, but their complaint is groundless. The Conservative website declares proudly that the Tory leader has "thrust immigration into the forefront of the election campaign".

Last week Detective Constable Glen Williams accused Michael Howard of pandering to public fears abhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif
insert blockquoteout immigration and told him to stop using emotive language and complaining about political correctness. The issue of migrants loomed large during a week that brought discouraging opinion polls for the Conservatives, even if many Tory candidates believed that the issue was going down well on the doorstep, and Howard showed no signs of growing shy about the topic.

However, I think it was the Saturday Times' cover story that was the greatest blow to the Tories. Their own Shadow Immigration Minister, Humphrey Malins, was caught distributing leaflets in Urdu to his ethnic minority constituents, boasting of how he helped their relatives get visas, while offering white constituents literature claiming he would be working to decrease immigration. We can now chalk him up as another man the Tories should have the decency to deselect as a candidate, alongside Bob "Send Them Home" Spink and Nick "strain put on local schools by bogus asylum seekers" De Bois.

Coming after Tony Blair's brilliant and bold speech in Dover on Friday, I think the Tories are being crucified on a cross of their own making. They have defined immigration as their only theme for the election, but the fundamental liberal-minded fairness of the British people will react far better to the Prime Minister's balance of practical measures with compassion. The Tories have mobilised the nastiest parts of the Nasty Party at the sake of much of the rest of Britain. This election should have been theirs: Blair's own-goal on Iraq left him vulnerable in a way nobody would have expected after his 1997 victory, which looked set to give Labour power for a generation.

Matthew D'Ancona, in the Telegraph, agrees with Portillo (although he does take the ex-hopeful to task for misrepresenting Conservative economic policy):

On another matter, however, Mr Portillo was quite right last week. The Conservatives' relentless emphasis upon immigration and asylum, he said, has compromised their campaign to present themselves as a party that has changed and renewed itself. And this - whatever the reasons for that emphasis - is undoubtedly true.Michael Howard's aides grumble that the media has exaggerated his fixation with immigration and asylum, but their complaint is groundless. The Conservative website declares proudly that the Tory leader has "thrust immigration into the forefront of the election campaign".

The Sunday Mirror reports a senior Tory informer being desperate for William Hague to return and arguing: "The decision for Michael Howard to focus on immigration was an unmitigated disaster. It meant millions of people thought the party had not changed. It may appease core Tory voters, but it has failed to sway new voters to the party."

There are some staunch defenders of Howard, however. Matthew Parris makes some frankly bizarre comments in his own Sunday Times column. Quite how he sees the follwoing anecdote to justify xenophobia, and why he equates race and colour (for colour is only once racial feature), is a mystery to me:

Among Londoners I hear Albanian asylum-seekers, Bosnian beggars and Eastern European economic migrants spoken of in precisely the same resentful or angry terms as might be used of immigrants whose skins were a different colour. Among ordinary white Londoners I hear Asian and black Britons spoken of with affection, respect and humour — indeed, not really spoken of as though they were “other ” at all... As an issue, colour is fading.

While it is no surprise that they have muddled up immigration and asylum, even the Sun reports on Howard's pledge to reject the hypothetical white Zimbabwe farmer, fleeing Robert Mugabe, who is the 20,001st asylum applicant in a year.

His only problem here is that, like many of the clean-minded Tories I talk to, he doesn't seem to appreciate that the Tory immigration policy isn't so much a problem (although the asylum policy is), as the language in which it is being sold. There seems to be a perception that as long as the message is sound, you can get away with having outriders andf mavericks shouting anything they like, and not have it tar your platform with their brush. As the Jewish man who confronted Michael Howard last Saturday said, this is about what irresponsible idiots take from his rheteric. A kindly and liberal Conservative yesterday rubbished the concept that the Tories would ever actually be Nazi-like xenophobes in office, and dismissed my complaints as hyperbole. But I've never thought the Tories would implement such a nasty system of government- indeed, I doubt there'd be any practical change in immigration at all -it's the insidious effects of their irresponsible campaigning that is objectionable. This is a sensitive issue which deserves to be discussed, but needs to be treated with the upmost care and tact. it isn't good enough to say that race isn't an issue for Michael Howard or yourself; all Tories are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Conservatives.