And even to compare Australia to the current social collapse of England is just daft!

I say: tomato!

But not so in Japan, where opposition to non-racial Japanese immigration is relatively non-controversial and widely accepted across the political elites and the voting population. Yet that policy isn’t generally defined by whites as racist …

From that time on, however, the planks of the White Australia Policy had been steadily whittled away by both Labor and conservative parties with occasional rabid reinvigoration from either side (Arthur Calwell of Labor and Stanley Bruce of the Nationalist Party were both staunch advocates). Gough Whitlam (Labor) finally disposed of the policy once and for all, but it was Malcolm Fraser (Liberal) who ushered in the law that race was not to be a consideration in any immigration application.

In short, the issue of race and immigration in Australia has cut across political lines and neither accusations of racism nor celebrations of openness belong exclusively to either side of the house. And as for Whitlam’s demonisation of Vietnamese refugees—it is indeed indefensible but it had nothing to do with race. Whitlam was opposed to Vietnamese refugees on the grounds that he did not want to accept anti-communists into Australia. This was, of course, reprehensible. But not racist. One of the stated purposes of Whitlam’s policy was to improve Australia’s relations with the communist regime in Vietnam. Hardly what one would expect if the purpose of the exercise was to discriminate against Asians.

For a start, most of the immigrant communities are Labor bulwarks (hence Howard’s attempts at dogwhistling to isolate them). The notable exception is UK immigrants who are the biggest pool of anti-Asian sentiment. For a second Australia takes in more immigrants per capita than Britain, and from more diverse sources (I reckon the last bit is a key to minimising nativist resentment, BTW).

I wouldn’t argue that xenophobes don’t exist in Australia, but IME they are considerably less prevalent than – if quite as nasty as – British xenophobes.

Nope, you really aren’t

But I have to say that this discussion has not been impressive. Egging somebody may indeed send a message, but so too does shooting them, or punching them in the face. One basic rule of law principle is that it’s not OK to commit battery on people because you disagree with their politics—and this is true whether we are talking about shooting them, punching them, or indeed relatively minor batteries such as hitting them with a pie, a rotten tomato, or an egg.

Frankly, if the folks commenting here are representative of the modern left, well you seem like a bunch of thugs and bullies, totally uninterested in respecting the rights of people with whom you disagree.

It’s not purely about language, it’s also about geographical mobility or the lack of it. There are some working class communities where moving away from one’s town/city (or either from a particular area of one city) is seen as an unfamiliar or even dangerous thing to do, taking you away from the support network of your friends and family. (That’s one thing stopping some working-class children going to university). If that kind of community safety-net is vital to you (and there may be reasons why it is), then free movement of labour within the EU means that ‘they’ can come to your city and take jobs there, but you can’t imagine going to theirs.

Whereas I think more middle-class people, even if they would have no intention of going to work elsewhere in the EU, would know people who had done so, so it’s more obviously a two-way street. I don’t know whether working class cultures with more of a tradition of expecting to go ‘away’ to get work are as hostile to immigrants. My impression is that overall Scotland is less anti-EU immigrants than England, for example.

Addressing these concerns doesn’t have to mean agreeing with them. But clearly whatever Labour’s policy on “selling” europe and current immigration policy is, it isn’t working, and now Britain is sending some fascists to Europe.

And what makes you think they either want to or should want to ‘compete in Europe’?