We're Going to Get You

Mark Harper, the hapless flunkey charged with defending the Powellite Pantechnicon Programme, is now busy denying that the UK Border Agency has been stopping people on the basis of their skin colour and ordering them to prove their pedigree. The Border Agency, it will be remembered, is that charming group of people who did their job so well that Theresa May felt moved to break them up and start again from scratch; apparently the Powellite Pantechnicon Programme is the scratch from which Daveybloke's mad old cat lady hopes to build a nice new blue-in-tooth-and-claw system for wog expulsion. The criteria for stopping people include "avoiding eye contact, a sudden change in walking direction or pace, and seeking to avoid confrontation with someone perceived to be a threat". Doubtless the one about eye contact is designed to ensnare those cunning wogs who have schooled themselves more thoroughly in English manners and mores. Still, it will be seen that even the last criterion, though it may require a degree of telepathy in judging who is perceived as a threat by the more inscrutable of the suspect races, makes no mention whatever of skin colour. Although the Powellite Pantechnicon Programme was piloted in racially mixed areas of London, the Home Office has not been collecting data on the ethnic background of those stopped for questioning; perhaps because such data would be largely useless for dealing with the approaching Romano-Bulgarian apocalypse. In any case, the whole delightful concept is not really a policy but a political stunt aimed primarily at UKIP and Daveybloke's own back-bench baboons; its effect on illegal immigrants is purely a secondary matter, and its effect on our swarthier citizens a purely instinctive one.