Janet Daley

Donald Trump has provided a salutary lesson in what racist talk sounds like – the Leave camp has done nothing of the kind

Of all the insults and smears being flung around in this unsavoury referendum “debate”, the most irresponsible is the charge of racism. True, we have got beyond the stage where anyone uttering the words “immigration” and “problem” in the same sentence was instantly ejected from respectable public discourse – which is a kind of progress.

Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn is now being criticised by his own party for

failing to mention immigration in the official Labour leaflet in favour of Remain. By not raising the subject at all, he seems to be either refusing to admit that a large proportion of Labour voters do regard uncontrolled migration as a problem, or accepting that this is the case and having no adequate response to it. The memory of Gillian Duffy – and Gordon Brown’s contempt for her reservations about “all these Eastern Europeans coming in” – lives on in Labour’s memory.

Yes, we’ve come quite a way from the time (around half an hour ago) when the only acceptable view on “the problem of immigration” was that it was a contradiction in terms. Every major governmental agency and – heaven knows – the BBC offered the virtually identical message: Immigration Is Not a Problem. Anybody who said that it was, or even that it might be for some people in some circumstances – was a bigot.

After 20 or more years of that unblinking denial, the subject of immigration is being talked about – a lot, out loud, and largely without shame. But this does not mean, as the stalwarts still try to insist, that it is racism that is out and proud. The sly insinuation (or sometimes explicit claim) that it is inherently bigoted to examine the consequences of the rise in numbers of migrants is becoming a constant refrain as Remain tries to come to terms with a new political reality.

The people are about to have a direct say with no mediation by the governing class, on what many of them believe to be the cause of a genuine, real-life problem. Those of them who think – rightly or not – that their life chances have been adversely affected by the importation of cheap labour, or the competition for housing, or the increased demand for public services that a sudden increase in the population has brought, have got to be listened to now. This is where the real argument should be: these are the genuine concerns that should be being addressed. But instead, the “R” word is still being used with gratuitous, and vicious, effect to shut down the discussion and to stigmatise anyone who makes a public attempt to understand a widespread public anxiety – so widespread that it is now likely to be the deciding issue in the referendum vote.

Let’s see if we can make some sort of proper sense of this: what exactly is racist, and what – most importantly – is not?

To say, for example, that the unlimited importation of labour tends to depress wages may be contentious. It might possibly be disputed with statistics and analysis. Whether or not you find the counterarguments convincing may depend on your personal experience or anecdotal evidence. But it is not a racist observation. It is a practical economic question with (potentially) a practical economic answer. Since, on the face of it, it is a commonsense conclusion, it would seem absurd to reject it outright simply because it might be conducive to resentment.

When the Home Secretary, Theresa May, says that social cohesion is put at risk by rapid mass immigration, her statement may or not prove to be true. It might be alarmist. You might even claim that it is objectionable or ungenerous. But it is not racist. It is a social observation about the nature of communities which may or may not be sound and in a free society we should all have a right to discuss its merits.

It is surely plausible enough to be worthy of consideration. As is the assertion that the arrival of large numbers of single men who have what we regard as inappropriate attitudes to women could be disruptive. Again, that observation might be unfair or alarmist. It might be distressing to those who see themselves as being impugned. But it is not totally unreasonable given recent events in Germany, and it deserves to be given a hearing without being instantly slandered as just one more instance of racism. George Osborne, in his interview with Andrew Neil last week, dismissed this whole issue with a contemptuous throw-away line: “There are a lot of disgusting things being said about … women being raped by migrants.”

Excuse me? Does he think that the women in Cologne were making it all up? Or that they should they have refrained from complaining about being assaulted so as not to inflame racial tensions? (Or for fear of being branded racist themselves?)

Of course nothing of that kind may happen here. Nobody is saying that it necessarily will. But the possibility needs to be openly discussed, doesn’t it? If only so that it can be more effectively prevented. So it goes on. The Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood has announced that he is defecting from Leave because of “racist undertones” in the Brexit campaign. This is a particularly perverse argument when you consider that it is would-be migrants from Commonwealth countries who have been hit hardest by the freedom of movement rule within the EU because non-EU immigration numbers are now the only kind that the UK Government can control. Just ask people from the Indian subcontinent, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa how much more difficult it is for them to gain the right to remain here than it is for Romanians.

So who are the real racists? Slugging it out in his characteristic fashion in the United States presidential campaign, Donald Trump said something last week that should leave no room for doubt. One of his many commercial ventures, Trump University, is currently being sued for fraud in a class action by former students who claim that they were charged fees under false pretences. The case came before US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel who was born and raised in the US state of Indiana but whose parents were Mexican immigrants. Instead of summarily throwing the case out as Mr Trump had hoped, Judge Curiel sent it for trial. What happened next?

Mr Trump took to his public platform and denounced the judge on the grounds that his “Mexican heritage” gave him “an inherent conflict of interest” in this action because of his (Trump’s) commitment to building a wall along the Mexican border to stop illegal migrants. The judge was, in other words, being personally vindictive because of his racial affiliation.

Now that, boys and girls, is the real thing. Why is Trump’s eruption truly racist – unlike the expressed concerns over migration numbers in the UK? Because he is suggesting that on the basis of a man’s race alone he should be disqualified from making a professional judgment: that he is unfit for the position that he holds simply by virtue of his ethnic origin.

Or to put it another way, judges of Mexican heritage cannot be trusted to have judicial integrity. As the Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said, that is the “textbook definition” of racism. So more than half a century after the elevation of racial tolerance to sacred constitutional status, there is a US presidential candidate expressing sentiments that belong to 1930s Germany – and giving us a salutary lesson in what genuinely racist talk sounds like.