Turn away, for a moment, from Westminster and the battle to be the next prime minister – and towards the lives of the ethnic minorities and immigrants who live in England and who just saw many parts of their country turn turquoise at the May local elections. How are these people to be treated by Reform representatives when that party thinks they are lesser humans – and a threat to the social fabric of the very communities they live in?
A newly elected Reform councillor has allegedly said “Carnt [sic] believe amount of nigerians in town … should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes”. The deputy leader of Reform, Richard Tice, said that voters have heard all this “smearing and sneering” before when the comment was put to him. Another Reform candidate tweeted that Muslims “never coexist with others” and should be deported, and that Africans have IQs “among the lowest in the world”. And another stated that, “The only solution” was to “remove the Muslims from our territory” – and that Ashkenazi Jews were a “problem” who “caused the world massive misery”.
As for Nigel Farage himself, where does one start? He allegedly sang Hitler Youth songs as a joke and was allegedly a racist abuser while at school; an admirer of Enoch Powell, a believer in the fact that some Muslims are here “to take us over” – and a man uncomfortable with people speaking other languages on public transport who has even blamed traffic congestion on immigration.
But so much of this sort of speech has become background noise, hasn’t it? Just part of the general political slop of the decade since Brexit. Take Back Control, Stop the Boats, Secure Our Borders. Claims that we have become embarrassed about our culture and history because something was not sung at the Last Night of the Proms. Rows over university syllabuses that threw black, Asian and minority ethnic students under the bus. Nonsense about flags that we are not sufficiently proud of.
Reform policies and talking points have become almost indistinguishable from the swirl of culture war and anti-immigration hysteria that now constitutes our mainstream political culture. You could plausibly have a “who said it” test between Tory, Reform and Labour, and be flummoxed. In fact, you can even add Tommy Robinson to this mix, whose second “unite the kingdom” rally was held in London at the weekend and who calls for “national unity, free speech and Christian values”.
But the words that fill our papers and airwaves have consequences. They shape the beliefs and political views of the people who have, make no mistake, turned against their neighbours and voted Reform. Ethnic minorities know that the election of Reform candidates holds no promise – that things will not get better for them, only worse. That there is nothing at the core of Reform’s political project other than identity politics. That there is no local economic agenda, no grand vision for supporting people in a cost of living crisis.
Reform has promised to cut spending, reject proposals to house asylum seekers in its areas and end any diversity roles in local government. The party will be as hampered by central government policy as any other, and will succeed only in spreading further fear, suspicion and division. It will shade national concerns around people coming into the country into local concerns around how ethnic minorities exist in our communities.
Black and brown neighbours will now be the subject of suspicion, possibly as far as the policing of the very languages they are allowed to speak – Farage has said that the number of students speaking English as a second language in Glasgow was tantamount to the “cultural smashing” of the city.
With regard to the cultural practices and public appearance minorities are allowed to display, lest they diverge from “Britishness”, Farage has said that immigrants from the West Indies integrated better because they had a “shared history, shared culture and shared religion” with the UK. On freedom of religion, Farage has called for a ban on Muslim public prayer, saying that a Ramadan event in London earlier this year was “an open, deliberate, wilful attempt, not at the private observance of a different religion, but the attempt to overtake, intimidate and dominate our way of life”.
Who will be exempt in these circumstances? Who is spared from the suspicion? How long do you have to have lived in an area to be allowed to call it home? The Black man whose family has been here for generations, the woman in a hijab who has sought asylum, the brown child born in the UK who speaks a language other than English to their friends and family (as I do often, in the sort of public transport conversations that give Farage the creeps) – all cast as cultural smashers and forever outsiders unless they can strip the colour off their skins and self-police their dress, speech and culture.
There has been a failure, an inability to grapple with the gravity of what is happening. The anti-migrant right has been given too much space and time by the media and politicians to establish itself as the mainstream. So-called legitimate concerns around immigration have turned into covers for prejudice. Mentioning the racism that fundamentally defines this metastasising politics is woke. Listen here, Reform will insist, it’s about immigration – and no smears or sneers are going to stop us talking about it.
And so back to Westminster. The real threat is not that posed by pretenders to Keir Starmer’s leadership. It is a Reform party that is edging further towards taking parliamentary seats at the next election. What is at stake are not political careers, but the safety and dignity of ethnic minorities in the UK. The relegation of neighbours to second-class citizens.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
