Nigel Farage and the "racism" furore - Tory politicians and journalists band together to deny reality

You would have thought that our politico-media elite might have learned some lessons from the brouhaha caused by Gordon Brown’s description of Rochdale Labour supporter Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman” when she expressed concerns about East European immigrant numbers during the 2010 general election campaign. Apparently not, given the hysterical accusations of racism that have engulfed Nigel Farage and his party since he told a lefty radio presenter last week that we’d prefer to have Germans rather than Romanians move in next door.

One would expect Labour and Lib Dem politicians to clamber aboard their moral high horses and denounce the slightest suggestion of racial partiality as tantamount to a desire to set up death camps - but you’d hope conservative commentators would shrug and point out that, statistically, immigrants from some countries are less criminal, better educated, harder-working and less likely to end up on benefits than immigrants from other countries. But there’s an election in two days’ time and the Tories are in trouble, so tribal instincts have kicked in and the Tory press is stuffed with the sort of pompous, sententious, race-huckstering rubbish that helps make The Guardian and the New Statesman so utterly unreadable.

As far as traditional Toryism stands for anything, it’s a preference for basing policy on experience rather than ideology. Yes, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could take an equally positive view of al all immigrant groups (or their descendants) in the UK. Now, if you’re an egalitarian, the wish has to be father of the thought – because you would like all immigrant groups to be equally trustworthy/responsible/well-behaved etc., you simply convince yourself that they are. When this turns out not to be the case - because it so bloody, screamingly obviously isn’t, as a quick glance at any number of statistics will tell you – you quell your inner doubts, your cognitive dissonance, by screaming the word “racism” over and over again and passing laws banning the expression of some demonstrable truths and generally behaving like a hysterical toddler until truth has been silenced and you can once more maintain the illusion that the world is just as you’d like it to be.

But Tories aren’t egalitarians (because real life isn’t egalitarian and Tories pride themselves on their grasp of reality), so they know in their heart of hearts that while, say, this or that individual Romanian or Somali might indeed be a more upstanding  member of British society than this or that individual German or Dane, when judged as groups there are significant disparities in achievement and behaviour. Of course we, as individuals, can choose to ignore these disparities, and suffer the consequences. But when the Conservative Prime Minister and the government he leads choose to pretend that these disparities don’t exist and, as a result, fail to implement sensible policies which take account of reality, we all suffer the consequences.

This isn’t the first time in my life I’ve been sickened by the Tory Party and its supporters in the press (the Ted Heath era springs to mind), but it’s the first time I’ve actually wanted to see it humiliated in an election.