UKIP Has-Been Reverse Race Card FAIL

The path negotiated by former UKIP Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage was a carefully mapped out one: there was just enough bigotry to rally the bigots to his side, but not so much that he could be nailed as a racist, despite the occasional lapse, as with his “Breaking Point” poster, which the Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell promptly renamed “Hating Point”. Farage’s successors have not always found following the same path easy.

Suzanne Evans

One of those who briefly bid to succeed Mr Thirsty was Suzanne Evans, now rather grandly calling herself a “Political commentator and journalist”. But the old prejudice is never far below the surface, as was evident as she recoiled in horror at seeing the “You Clap For Me Now” video, which the BBC has reported on recently.

“A film which celebrates black, Asian and ethnic minority key workers helping to tackle the coronavirus pandemic has gone viral with millions of views. The video features doctors, delivery drivers, teachers and celebrities including comedian Tez Ilyas. ts director Darren Smith says coronavirus has brought about a sense of solidarity within society” tells the Beeb’s feature. And there is more, not that Ms Evans wanted to hear it.

“The film - called You Clap For Me Now - features a range of workers from ethnic minority backgrounds reading out lines of a poem. It includes the verse: ‘Don't say go home, don't say not here, you know how it feels for home to be a prison, you know how it feels to live in fear. So you clap for me now, all this love you are bringing. But don't forget when it's no longer quiet, don't forget when you can no longer hear the birds singing.’”

Ms Evans was horrified. After Siobhan Benita, who will contest the next London Mayoral election for the Lib Dems, observed of the film “When this outbreak is over, let us never again forget who puts their lives on the line to keep us all safe”, off she went.

“What a shameful and nasty piece of race-baiting. We clap for everyone in the health and care sector. Black, white, rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight. The whole point is this disease crosses every boundary going. Let’s fight it together not attempt to whip up resentment”. Reverse race card played, victimhood shamelessly displayed.

What she managed to miss, as befits any good media-savvy bigot, is that not everyone in that film is from the BAME community. But they are from outside the UK. The point the video makes is well made: it’s all very well clapping now, but come a time after the Covid-19 pandemic, and while white Britons will continue to be applauded, there is the all too real possibility of a return to prejudice against those who are not.

So while Ms Evans’ followers lap up this drivel - belief can be so easy when the conclusion has already been reached for them - no-one who now realises the contribution all those previously neglected and undervalued workers make will be taking any notice. What she cannot understand is the stinking hypocrisy behind clapping for someone one moment, then telling them to shove off to another country the next.

The inability to take that point on board says more about Suzanne Evans, and her fellow political travellers, than it does about video producers seeking to educate others.

Once a bigot, always a bigot. If only there were a vaccine against that infection.

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