Farrukh Dhondy | A Titanic fate lies ahead for Tories as anti-immigrant bigots lead in race

Through surveillance heard

The Arab hordes were swarming in the West.

By the year six-forty-one

Poor Yezdi was on the run --

Oh fellow-Parsis… you surely know the rest?”

From Shah Bhagey, by Bachchoo

Imagine, for a moment, that the Titanic has just struck the iceberg, and icy waters are flooding in through the breach. Panic on the decks, a scramble for the lifeboats. As darkness descends, the doomed wonder who is to blame.

Now imagine the moments while the sinking ship is still not completely submerged. There’s still activity among those left on deck. No, the activity is not dedicated to finding materials that could help the desperate cling on to life as they float in the waters. Some of it is, of course, dedicated to whistling tunes as all hope dies.

And yet, incredible though this may sound, gentle reader, the main activity among the survivors on the doomed deck is -- you won’t guess -- electing a new captain, now that the old one, under whose watch the ship struck the iceberg, has clambered onto a lifeboat and is rowing towards California.

There were, incredibly, five contenders who put themselves forward for this captaincy.

Here endeth the analogy!

Which, of course, began with the wipe-out of the Tory Party at the July election, when they won 121 seats as opposed to the Labour Party’s 412. So Hedgie Sunak, who led the Tories into this historic debacle, waits till a new leader is elected and then goes.

As I write, three of the contenders to lead the Tory Party have been eliminated through a process in which Tory MPs vote for their favoured candidate in successive ballots, the least favoured contender being out of the contest after each round.

The two who are left standing on the burning deck (sorry, wrong poem, but couldn’t resist) are then subject to a vote by all the members of the Tory Party – and the winner is crowned the captain of the Titanic (I thought you said your wretched, gloating analogy had ended --Ed. Thhodi si mazza yaar! --fd)

The two who’ve survived are both right-wing bigots, one called Richard Jenrick and the other, a lady of Nigerian parentage, Kemi Badenoch.

Before I tell you why even Tories shouldn’t support either of them, I can’t resist repeating my old fairy tale: Once upon a time/several times, there were three Enochs. The first one was a good Enoch, a pal of God, mentioned in the Bible. The second was a bad Enoch, surnamed Powell, who in 1968 made a bid for the leadership of the Tories by making a speech saying that immigration will result in “rivers of blood” in Britain. Even the racists rejected this nonsense and poor Enoch was relegated to the wilderness of Northern Ireland, where he rotted and died.

Now comes the third Enoch, even named “Bad”. She is playing a similar anti-immigrant card as the first bad Enoch. And for the same reasons -- to get herself elected to the leadership of the Tories.

She has made public statements to the effect that immigrants who are likely to bring conflicts from their countries of origin to the UK should not be allowed into the country. It’s not quite clear what she means by this. Perhaps she is alluding to the fact that in September 2022, fights broke out between Hindu and Muslim gangs in Leicester. Or perhaps she is thinking about the tribes of her parents’ native country Nigeria, where the Boko Haram faction kidnapped, raped and killed other Nigerians in recent decades, and where tribes constantly fight each other. So Kemistry would perhaps mean banning all Hindus, Muslims and Nigerians from coming to the UK?

When she, which is as likely as my elevation to the House of Lords, becomes Prime Minister, will she pass a law to that effect? And would the law be protective of peace in our time by being retrospective, so that her parents, Hedgie Sunak, Cruella Braverperson and Ugly Patel would all be repatriated?

Good idea? (As a Zoroastrian, having no conflict to import, I shall stay put -- unless you count my antagonism to ancient Macedonians, though I bear no grudge against the descendants of Alexander the Damned!)

Another tenet of Kemistry is that “all cultures are not valid”. Again, I don’t quite know what she means, unless she is attacking Christianity for unscientifically believing in virgin birth, etc. It’s a philosophical point, but the Tory membership may take it to mean that non-white or “foreign” residents of the UK are to be looked upon with suspicion. Another anti-immigrant dog-whistle? Shame!

And what of Jenrick? He advocates leaving the European Court of Human Rights. Why? Because it was the ECHR which stopped Hedgie Sunak and Cruella deporting refugees to Rwanda. Quit the court and pack them off is what Jenrick wants the Tory membership to gather from his stand.

He must also hope that the voters will forget the fact that he was suspected of corruption when he was housing minister and approved a £1 billion building project, waving building restrictions on that land. The beneficiary builder? One Richard Desmond, who is a billionaire donor to the Tory Party.

So, whoever wins in early November, we hear their cries:

“Out with Johnny foreigner… Rivers of blood... human rights are a Marxist conspi... glug, glug, glug, glug...”