Nothing has damaged Britain more than the fear of being labelled ‘racist'

Telegraph

a day ago

Have you ever been unjustly accused of ' racism ' in public? I have, and I can tell you it was one of the most sickening, paralysing moments of my career.
During a broadcast interview, and only after listing some of the ways in which immigration has benefited Britain, I expressed concern that the current levels were unsustainable economically and incompatible with effective integration. My fellow panellist, a prominent member of the Green Party, who incidentally once claimed it was possible to enlarge women's breasts via hypnotherapy, then erupted into eye-bulging outrage. Harbouring such worries was manifestly bigoted and 'racist', he declared. In that stomach-churning moment I realised there was no smear greater and, importantly, no insult less likely to backfire on those hurling it, than this one.
This is how authoritarians always operate, whether in Soviet Russia, Communist China or the committee rooms and seminars of modern-day Britain. They use taboos and speech restrictions to consolidate power, anathematise dissenting opinions and punish those showing the slightest reluctance to endorse progressive orthodoxy. And all under the banner of promoting unity in diversity and shielding marginalised groups from 'offence '.
In the UK, reached a stage where people didn't care what happened to the country, provided they could say, from the rubble, 'well at least no one accused me of racism'. It's why Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, plus a thousand bemused footballers, famously took the knee – and it was right where the guilt grifters wanted us.
Knowing the terror this labelling would elicit, politicians and activists gaslit the British public on an industrial scale. They didn't need to concede the economic costs of immigration were in danger of outweighing the advantages; they could just declare the country was built on hardworking asylum seekers, and denounce those who challenged this assertion as xenophobes. They didn't need to listen to warnings that discrete communities were living parallel lives, with some groups almost entirely sequestered from wider society; the received wisdom was that importing large numbers of people, whose values might be unreconcilable with our own, was unquestionably positive.
What particularly aroused woke anger was when minorities refused to stay in Victim Street. Thus when Sir Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, voiced concerns about integration and community cohesion he was suspended from the Labour Party. Tony Sewell's Race and Ethnic Disparities Commission was denounced for Uncle Tomism when it suggested that perhaps the UK wasn't Full Fascist.
And it wasn't enough to not be racist, we had to be 'anti-racist': a theory advanced by ludicrous pseudo-scholars such as Kehinde Andrews or Ibram X Kendi, for whom 'the claim of 'not racist' neutrality' is apparently a 'mask for racism''. New terms entered our lexicon, such as 'the global majority', which helped feed the narrative of an oppressive West, prosperous only through exploiting the poor.
Parliament's useful idiots brought in the legislation – the 2010 Equality Act and 2015 Modern Slavery Act – that would facilitate and underpin the migration dogma. HR teams – now 450,000 strong in this country – played their part, squandering corporate time with mandatory unconscious bias training and telling colleagues that rolling their eyes could constitute a racial microaggression.
But after years of this claptrap, we can begin to see the tide is on the turn. First, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), hitherto a reliable ally of the open borders brigade, released modelling showing the true cost of a 'low-wage migrant' to the British taxpayer. Then, Nigel Farage's Reform crossed the tipping point – 30 per cent – at which our electoral system starts to work in its favour. And this week, the Casey review put into black and white what we already knew: that thousands of vulnerable white girls were systematically abused by predominantly Pakistani men whilst our authorities turned a blind eye.
Now, finally, we can talk freely about Pakistan's sexist culture and its incompatibility with notions of civilised behaviour. We can openly discuss reports of rape and assault perpetrated by those allegedly seeking asylum here. We can admit we are not realising a 21st-century version of Theodore Roosevelt's 'melting pot'. We can unashamedly demand a visa system which welcomes only those who subscribe to our values and contribute to our society.
The fear of being labelled racist is toxic. It pushes discourse underground, driving people towards the very divisions which 'anti-racism' claims to oppose. It hands politicians carte-blanche to pursue ruinous policies and duck difficult decisions. And it waters down the term, when we ought to preserve its meaning so that demonstrable injustice isn't dismissed as noise.
And remember, it's not just immigration. It's also 'transphobia' and climate change 'denialism'. We have to stop being so terrified. To believe we need market solutions to rising temperatures is not tantamount to denying the science. To believe in biological sex is not to discriminate against trans people. Enough is enough.