> I meant this semi-seriously - does the Tory party depend on coded
> racist appeals the way the GOP does in the US?
Of course they do. And Labour aren't much better. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary in the early part of the decade, spoke about asylum seekers "swamping" British schools, said that Afghani refugees should go home and work on their own countries, and generally tried to appear "tough" on immigration. After his forced resignation (ironically for helping his partner's nanny jump the visa queue) he admitted that some of this was sheer electoralism.