politicised, briefly:

The Tory Party's policy on immigration is nothing short of a scandal. The last two weeks have borne witness to a sort of backstreet rabble-rousing from Michael Howard that would not sound out of place at a BNP meeting.

Howard's tactic is simple. Attacking such a disenfranchised minority is a filthy, vicious political technique and he should - once this unpleasant campaign draws to close - be brought to task both by the party he has regressed fifty years and the political system his presence disgraces.

He is correct, albeit only semantically, when he suggests that it is not racist to impose limits on immigration. It may not be racist in the strictest terms, but it is pointless, unnecessary and self-defeating for the nation that follows such a path - a xenophobic folly. His is a peculiarly nasty policy predicated on the entirely false idea that economic migrancy into this country is undertaken by foreign nationals solely to take advantage of our social welfare system, to our economic detriment. In reality, migrancy into Britain is of enormous fiscal value - the public purse was swelled to the tune of £2.5 billion in 2002 by overseas workers, a net figure which includes any benefits or healthcare provided in return by the state.

Howard's (and - latterly - that bastion of impotent, middle-English outrage, the Daily Mail's) contention that Britain is becoming swamped by immigrants is Malthusian nonsense. Asylum applications have fallen by two-thirds in the last three years and the backlog of claims sits at around 10,000 (not Mr Howard's claimed 50,000). At the end of 2003, Britain sat 9th in a European league table of asylum applications per capita. We have the world's fourth largest economy - we have around 3% of the world's refugees. The idea that Britain is overloaded with refugees and those seeking asylum is a nasty myth. Howard, and his supporters at Associated Newspapers should be ashamed.

But never mind the lies and the flawed economics. In Mr Howard's world, are we also to ignore the immeasurable social and cultural benefits of an open, multi-ethnic society? Do we, as a nation, want to live in a Britain where diversity is cherished and a friendly, confident welcome can be extended to those who have chosen to make a life for themselves and their families here? Or would we rather our children grow up in a country where different cultures and accents and skin colours are treated with suspicion, where a siege mentality borne of fear of anything different is encouraged and where a human being's value is dictated solely by their impact upon the public purse, or even an uneven assessment of that impact?

Thankfully, it appears that Labour will win the forthcoming election and Howard's own brand of fear and loathing won't find a home in this country's government. Nevertheless, the true damage of this insidious, opportunist campaign will not be known for some time. Howard has shown that, bubbling under the surface, there are genuine racially-inspired tensions in British society - like it or not, he's struck a chord. How Britain deals with that remains to be seen. I can only hope that we choose a path of rational debate and consideration, rather than the rancorous, populist spite that has made headlines for the Tory Party over the last fortnight.