https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/17/the-acceptable-face-of-racism-in-britain/
Former Tory PM David Cameron, aka Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, has gone on the offensive against Nigel Farage and Reform UK.
In an interview with The Times last week, Cameron accused Farage of using ‘inflammatory language’ and promoting ‘divisive policies’. Citing the Reform leader’s claim that Tory leader Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t understand our culture’ after he left the 80th anniversary D-Day commemorations early, Cameron claimed Farage was deploying ‘dog whistle’ politics designed to appeal, presumably, to Britain’s racist masses. Apparently, Reform-curious, working-class voters are only a Farage quip away from beating up British Asians. (Cameron launched this attack despite Farage making it abundantly clear at the time he made them that his comments had nothing to do with race.)
Cameron’s prejudices about Farage supporters are shared by many among the British political and media class. Times columnist Matthew Parris wrote disparagingly last week of Clacton, where Farage is campaigning to be an MP. Its residents, Parris said, are people who eat ‘bumper packs of crisps’ and drink lager in Wetherspoons (the horror!). These are the supposedly uneducated types who respond all-too-easily to Reform’s so-called dog whistles.
What’s odd is that aside from there being no evidence that Farage was making a racist statement, there is also no evidence that Britain’s working classes are gravitating towards racism or white nationalism. Quite the opposite. The National Front is long gone, and the British National Party is to all intents and purposes defunct, having seen its membership virtually disappear during the early 2010s. The explicitly anti-Islam English Defence League is also considered to be defunct, although founder Tommy Robinson can sometimes draw crowds to his rallies. Put simply, far-right, racist politics is simply not a meaningful force in Britain today.