When Keir Starmer attacked Nigel Farage as a ‘racist’ some of us worried that the tactics were crass and potentially counter-productive by seeming to insult the values and intelligence of Reform voters. Moreover, Farage and his supporters vehemently deny the label.
That episode raised, however, a tricky question: what language should we use to talk about Reform and similar movements elsewhere?
‘Extreme right’ is a common label but the whole left-right dialectic is rendered meaningless when the ‘extreme right’ and ‘extreme left’ have an overlapping voter base and many similar policies as, most strikingly, in France. Farage once idolised ‘right-wing’ Margaret Thatcher. No longer. Much of his rhetoric now mimics Labour.
‘Fascist’ is even further from the mark, though the darkly authoritarian undertone to Trump’s second term bears some comparison. Neo-Nazi is another attack line which conjures up images of thuggish men marching in jackboots. Farage has been very careful to draw a line distancing Reform from the Tommy Robinson crowd – some of whom belong to that world.
‘Populist’ is widely used. But its very name is not too meaningful beyond telling us that some of its ideas are popular. How about ‘nationalist’? The battle to own, politically, the Union Jack suggests as much. But, confusingly, Farage and his ilk also identify with a kind of ‘nationalist international’.
Maybe a better term is ‘nativist’: as used in the USA by Trump adherents like Steve Bannon (and probably Trump himself) for whom belonging is more than just having a legally compliant visa. But who is a ‘native’?. British ‘natives’, like most other Europeans, carry the DNA of various migrating Euro-Asian peoples with a bit of Neanderthal thrown in. But most are recognisably ‘white’ people which is what ‘nativists’ are trying, however coyly, to say. Which takes us back to racism.
Racism: Ancient and Modern
The idea of politics being organised to reflect physical characteristics is far more pervasive than we like to think.
The idea of blood ‘purity’ was part of the ideology which led to the Holocaust and is mercifully no longer heard. But the idea of inherent group superiority based on colour was, and still is, also embedded in colonial and slave-owning societies. An important part of Trump’s MAGA coalition are the white supremacists who yearn for a new Confederacy in the southern states where, not too long ago, social segregation was rife and inter-racial sex and marriage were criminalised.
British experience, at least here rather than in the colonies, was never quite so extreme. But my generation was schooled in racial superiority. In my home the working assumption was that white people sat at the top of a racial hierarchy. My father eventually came to accept and love his Asian daughter-in-law and mixed grandchildren, but I suspect that many of his contemporaries (and mine) did not evolve in their thinking.
There are toxic remnants of what we could call this ‘old fashioned’ racism in the extremist groups who hover round the fringes of Tommy Robinson rallies, asylum hostel protests and who organise online. They plague people of colour who are active in public life. They target people of mixed-race, especially, with vicious and hurtful trolls on social media.
But, beyond the hard-core, there are many others who dislike the growing numbers of black and brown faces in public spaces and on the TV screens. They live in fear that one of them might come to live next door or date a daughter or granddaughter. One under-discussed factor in the recent collapse of the Tory party is the haemorrhage of members privately appalled that the party was led by an Asian man and then a black woman.
More reassuringly, this bundle of prejudices appears to be disappearing as the older generation moves on. The European Social Survey suggests that only 5% of British people now object to having a non-white neighbour, the lowest figure in Europe. The fact that the mixed-race population is the most rapidly growing ethnic demographic also suggests that old taboos are dying. Politicians of all parties including Reform appear to realise that it is bad politics to appeal – at least directly – to racism. The attack comes from a different direction.
Integration and Assimilation
The main accusation levelled now at ethnic minority communities, and especially South Asian Muslims, is that they ‘don’t integrate’. The assumption has been that integration is welcome and self-segregation is a problem. Typical was Robert Jenrick’s recent intervention, complaining on a visit to Handsworth in Birmingham that there was not a single white face. The earlier ‘Tebbit test’ welcomed South Asians provided they support England at cricket. In other words, race is irrelevant if black and brown people become culturally British.
One can question the sincerity of the criticism. Robert Jenrick has yet to appear in the many all-white villages and suburbs to complain that their residents do not integrate. But complaints about ‘lack of integration’ suggest that racism is not the central issue. And that is largely borne out by everyday experience. In the bastion of popular culture that is football there are occasional, appalling cases of racism with abuse directed at black and mixed-race players – hence the need for ‘taking the knee’. But, for the most part, there has been genuine pride in England’s black players. Racism can still be an issue in sport, as in Yorkshire cricket, but the objective of integration is not in question.
What is coming under attack is ‘multi-culturalism’: with the implication that society is growing apart. The proliferation of mosques, women wearing hijabs, niqabs and burqas, demands for the punishment of anti-Islamic ‘blasphemy’: all these are seen as rejection of an integrated British society and often the rejection of shared values.
Much of the new politics of hate is best described as Islamophobia rather than racism. And it can be difficult to counter politically since the attacks can have substance. Some Muslim – mainly Kashmiri – communities in northern post-industrial towns like Oldham, Rochdale and Bradford remain largely segregated. Cases of terrorism, the ‘grooming gangs’ and ‘honour killings’ are political gifts that keep on giving to Reform.
Even cities once seen as a template for Britain’s success in integrating minorities, like Leicester, are dominated by the identity politics of the Indian sub-continent. All parties have, to varying degrees, been complicit in this divisive and unwelcome politics which appeals to people as members of an ethnic community.
There are undoubtedly many success stories such as the remarkable educational advance of young women of Bangladeshi origin and the movement of many people of South Asian, Chinese and African origin into the professional and business middle-class. What has obscured the success of integration and fuelled the rise of Reform, however, is the idea that immigration is ‘out of control’ .
Immigration and Race
Immigration and race are entangled but in complex ways. Much of the post-war history of immigration policy was a process of closing the door on Commonwealth immigration which rose rapidly in the 1950s and ’60s. Race was a significant factor and Enoch Powell was the last major politician to make an overt appeal based explicitly on the grounds that Britain’s racial identity was threatened.
The next big immigration scare had, seemingly, little to do with race. The Brexit referendum was dominated by concern over rising immigration of white Eastern Europeans. Nigel Farage complained about foreign (European) languages spoken on public transport. The ‘problem’ was said to be too many – white – Eastern Europeans.
Indeed, Conservative Brexiteers made much of a promise to make more work permits available to Commonwealth non-Europeans. And that is what the public got: a deep cut in (white) immigration from Europe and a substantial rise in (non-white) immigration from Asia and Africa. This may not have been what many voters intended. But it does suggest that some of the race-based prejudices which are alive in the immigration debate and a powerful influence in Trump’s America and in France – like the so-called ‘Great Replacement Theory’ – were conspicuously absent from post-Brexit immigration policy.
The extraordinary surge in net immigration post-Brexit may have been a factor behind the rise of Reform. Some of us believe that immigration has been, on balance, of substantial economic and wider benefit to the UK but there are reputable arguments for less of it. And many have been searching for a non-conservative party to articulate that concern.
In any event the main trigger for the rise of more toxic politics around immigration has been the relatively small numbers of ‘small boat’ asylum seekers. Most are non-white people and many are Muslims (and are usually desperate human beings) but there is an obvious, if difficult, political problem when the government is unable to control the country’s borders. Framing the debate in terms of racism doesn’t help.
The Reform Conundrum
There are nudges and winks from Reform and its leader that will undoubtedly attract the support of people with a racist outlook. But this is dangerous political territory for those of us who strongly oppose Reform.
The new and politically naïve Reform MP, Sarah Pochin, made her prejudices clear in an exchange on Talk TV showing her agreement with a caller who was annoyed by the number of black and Asian faces on Channel 4 and in advertisements. Farage carefully distanced himself from ‘racism’ and criticised the MP’s language but did not condemn it as racist. In fact, the controversy surfaced the fact that people of colour are disproportionately featured: the legacy of a well-intentioned policy of compensating for earlier bias the other way.
When an extremely unpopular Prime Minister then denounces a somewhat less unpopular Farage as ‘racist’ on shaky grounds the effect, surely, is to make expressions of racial prejudice more respectable.
It is surely far better to attack Reform for its failures of policy, or lack of it. First, Farage’s main achievement – a life’s work, to give him credit – was Brexit. A large majority now accept that Brexit was a mistake. So don’t blame the voters but blame the man mainly responsible.
Second, Farage made much of being associated with Trump who is now heartily disliked in the UK and seen as a threat to British interests and sovereignty. The famous photo grinning with Trump tells it all.
Third, the economically illiterate programme of deep tax cuts and simultaneous big spending pledges is nonsensical and belatedly Reform is trying to row back from it. But elected Reform councils with simplistic slogans about cutting waste are already looking both nasty and ridiculous.
These, not racism, should be the lines of attack on Reform.
Vince Cable is a former Leader of the Liberal Democrats and former MP for Twickenham (1997-2015, 2017-2019).