FEARING that the tax hand-outs planned for Kenneth Clarke's Budget will fail in their objective of buying back the government has resorted to the basest form of rabble rousing - racism.
Amid a ragbag of odds and ends in the Queen's Speech, the focus of media attention will be Home Secretary Michael Howard's reactionary Asylum and immigraton Bill.
Despite Howard's weasel words. carefully citing only cases from Eastern Europe to create the impression that "Our proposals have nothing whatsoever to do with race". , the crackdown on an alleged rising tide of "bogus' asylum seekers, and restrictions on their right to appeal against refusal to admit them, coupled with Peter Lilley's moves to cut their access to benefits, are clearly designed to appeal to racists inside and outside the Tory Party.
Only racists react with alarm to Howard's hysterical warning that if the numbers seeking asylum were to go on rising for the next five years it could mean as many as 100,000 applications a year in 2000. Many more people leave Britain each year.
Much more alarming is the fact that the vast majority of hounded and desperate people who apply for asylum in Britain are - often after a lengthy period of detention in jails like Campsfield in Oxfordshire and Haslar in Ponsmout - rejected and deported by Howard's hard-faced Home Office gang Howard admits that:
"Only four out of every 100 people claiming asylum in Britain are deemed to be genuine by the Home Office."
Among these are many fleeing from repressive regimes deemed 'friendly to British imperialism: almost all Nigerian refugees are refused asylum.
The attempt to make it even harder for asylum seekers to find refuge in Britain is of course part of a Europe-wide crackdown, the Fortress Europe' policy spelled out in the notorious Schengen agreement, in which liberalised internal EU borders are combined with tougher action to prevent entry from non-EU countries.
Deportations
Deportations from Britain have climbed to record levels - often carried out with extremes of brutality and occasional tragic consequences, as the case of Joy Gardner demonstrated.
But the Tories have added their own refinements.
Howard has introduced a new 'racist charter", obliging teachers, doctors and •police about families they feel may be here "illegally': naturally the finger will tend to point first at black people.
The Immigration Service, relying on UNISON immigrants" in the workplace. vindictive operation costs.
Black and ethnic minority