Prejudiced poison must be quashed

THE counter-punch to the globalised economy that made corporations richer and citizens poorer has been division, isolationism and the rise of nationalism.

The Brexit process, the US election and that early laboratory for counter-politics that was Scotland during the referendum campaign, revealed some of the uglier sides of politics and human nature.

Some use the energy released from the process quite deliberately to stir up further division.

Others, encouraged in their out-of-date views by the reactionary mindset, choose to give expression to those out-of-date views. That’s an explanation, but it is no excuse. Anyone who thinks that using racist terms, in public office or out of it, is somehow legitimised by the political atmosphere of the day needs their head examined.

But Brexit has allowed some on the more repressed side of right-wing politics to give vent to their prejudices.

So it was with Tory backbencher Anne Marie Morris, who casually said that dropping out of the EU without a new agreement was a “real n ***** in the woodpile”.

Shocking in itself, what was even more astonishing is that no senior Tory figures in the room, in fact no one in the meeting, checked her for her language.

Withdrawing the whip from a racist Tory MP is the least that Theresa May can do. It sounds like she needs to send several Brexiteer MPs for classes in equality.