Johann Hari: This toxic strain of fear and hatred

Brown is trying to prove to the Murdoch media that he is Hard Enough to be Prime Minister

Published: 01 March 2007

The ugliest issue in British politics has been kicked awake. Government ministers have been scouring the TV studios this week to brag that the number of asylum applications in Britain has fallen by 9 percent. The fake-liberal Tories have been braying for an even bigger drop, achieved by ever-harsher "punishments". Through it all, it has been taken for granted by politicians, presenters and public that we should roll out the bunting to celebrate the news that in a world scarred by war and tyranny - many of them of our creation - we are offering safety to fewer and fewer of the victims.

And then Gordon Brown's team went a step further. The Prime-Minister-in-waiting gave a thoughtful if flavourless speech about Britishness. But there was a problematic pair of sentences, in which Brown suggested immigrants should carry out some unspecified "community service" in preparation for citizenship. It was a bad choice of words, implying that immigrating to Britain is on a par with committing a crime - but if done intelligently, it could be a good idea. Most immigrants, like my father, want to contribute, and would be happy to do all sorts of things, from visiting the elderly to translating for the police to giving talks at schools about their home country. It could be a good way to help immigrants feel they are welcomed, and to give a demonstration to everyone else of how immigrants enrich this country. (Since 1997, immigrants have added £36.7bn to the UK economy - equivalent to paying for the entire NHS for a year and a half).

The problem came with how this idea was sold to the right-wing press. "Sweep streets to get UK passport!" shrieked The Sun, next to an article by Brown. This clearly came from private briefings, since that idea appears nowhere in the speech. It's one of a string of depressing statements by Brown in which he tries to prove to the Murdoch media that he is Hard Enough to be Prime Minister. Remember his statement - in India! - that we should "stop apologising" for the British Empire? (When did we start?).

Brown's increasingly bombastic speeches about Britishness - demanding we uncritically celebrate British history - are falling into a nationalist error that was highlighted a century ago in a row between G K Chesterton and Rudyard Kipling. Chesterton criticised Kipling - the imperial drum-beater - for his "lack of patriotism". In a spluttery rage, Kipling demanded to know what he meant, and Chesterton explained: "He admires Britain, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires Britain because she is strong, not because she is Britain." I don't love my mother because, on every objective criteria, she is The Best Mother In The World, but because she's mine. I don't love my country because it is the best country on all measurements, but because I belong here.

Brown is offering a Kipling vision, when a Chestertonian one actually reflects better the warmth most of us feel for our country. We don't think of abstract "British values"; we think of the relief when we get off the plane at Heathrow and realise we're home.

But there is a harder, crueller flaw in Brown's statements. He has demanded all immigrants learn the English language. He's absolutely right: we cannot be a shared community if we can't talk to each other. But he has simultaneously cut off funding for one of the government's best innovations - free English language lessons. From this September, only immigrants on benefits - a small minority, despite the lies - will be given free language courses. My local further education college, Tower Hamlets College, has more than 250 people on waiting lists to learn English, desperate to be able to participate in the community Brown talks about. Now they almost all will have to find £900 - or go without.

For most immigrants, this means being left to flounder. My Congolese friend Marie-Jean Ndoki came here speaking no English, and cleaned offices for the minimum wage at night, learning English by day. After six months of lessons she got a job as a translator and now works for a group of solicitors, paying taxes. Under the new government plans, she would have been denied lessons, since the idea of setting aside £900 as a cleaner makes her hoot. She would have been struggling to understand the country around her, and taken far longer to become a net contributor to the Exchequer. How can it be right to demand immigrants learn English, but take away the means to do it?

In a neat coincidence, this new rash of immigration panic has coincided with a rare opportunity to deal with the man who has done more than anyone else to curdle the debate about Britishness: Rupert Murdoch. He has recently bought a fat stake in ITV, which has prompted Alistair Darling, the trade and industry secretary, to reluctantly order a government review of a media empire that relentlessly presents asylum seekers and immigrants as swan-baking, MRSA-spreading scum.

From Fox News to The Sun, the core of Murdoch's politics is an inverted populism, turning the public's rage away from tax-evading billionaires and their lackeys and on to the weak and helpless - with immigrants first in line. The case for reining this overweening power in is strong: the first time Murdoch expanded his British media ownings, he only got it past government regulators by making a promise he has dishonoured. He was allowed to buy The Times and The Sunday Times because he assured regulators they would have "full editorial independence". The editors who have worked for him regard this as a joke. Andrew Neil has described Murdoch's management style as "terrorism"; Kelvin McKenzie says he would have published The Sun in Sanskrit if he suspected Rupert wanted him to. Murdoch's private, unaccountable power is now so great that Lance Price - who was Alastair Campbell's Number Two - says he "seemed like the 24th member of the Cabinet. His voice was rarely heard... but his presence was always felt."

Of course some anti-immigrant fears will always occur - but Murdoch fosters the most toxic strain of foreigner-fearing nationalism, and makes successive governments bow to it with the threat of a Kinnocking. Would Brown - a cerebral and essentially decent man - be letting his team talk about forcing immigrants to sweep the streets if Murdoch and other right-wing press barons didn't hold such power to poison public opinion?

Yet there seems to be no chance the government inquiry will restrict Murdoch to a sensible one-paper, one-TV-channel ration. On the contrary, Brown is bowing to his power, warping his views on Britishness to fit a Murdochian mould. Meanwhile, David Cameron, Alan Milburn, and all other major political pretenders genuflect to him just as quickly. This is one bleak reason why the ugliest issue in British politics will never be allowed to rest.

j.hari@ independent.co.uk