Gold Teeth?

Comparisons with the Nazis are almost always ill-judged, but if you are going to take away people's jewellery, then you are asking for it. If that had not leaked and caused such a stink, then it would have been announced yesterday. Not that it would have been anything new. As long ago as 1999, Mike O’Brien wanted to seize asylum seekers' jewellery, including their wedding rings, for exactly the same purpose. A decade later, Jacqui Smith wanted to confiscate and sell their children's toys. Three months ago, this Government banned them from buying toys, in the spirit of Robert Jenrick's paintbrush.

Like greed, both racism and sheer spite, by no means only or even ordinarily on grounds of race, have always been fundamental to New Labour. It has had both supporters and opponents who believed that it was on some sort of mission "to rub the Right's nose in diversity" or what have you. But Andrew Neather himself was only a hanger-on, scribbling lines for Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett, all of whose records could not have been further from any such rubbing. If you doubt that, then what are the Blairites saying now?