“Fight, fight, fight,” senior Tories urged for years. Now they express shock, and condemn the results, when people prove stupid enough to have taken them at their word. While racist thugs will always be with us, governments can create either an environment that curbs them, or one that encourages them. Across its 14 years in power, the Conservative government encouraged them.
The story senior Conservatives kept telling was of “outsiders” threatening all we held dear. Overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, the groups they targeted were Muslims, and asylum seekers and other immigrants. Others were demonised less often, though no less harmfully: for example, Priti Patel, now a leading contender for the party leadership, targeted Travellers, and pushed legislation through parliament that could destroy their travelling lives, as well as those of Gypsies and Roma.
