The debate on whether Reform is racist, or not, is heated and the subject of many claims, all of which rather ignore what people actually think.

YouGov did polling on this at the end of September, but little attention appears to have been given to what they found, which was this:

What are the conclusions?

First, on balance, most people think Reform's policies are racist. That is clear from the data. The opinion I, and many commenting here, hold appears to be widely shared.

Secondly, and unsurprisingly, if you support Reform or the closely adjacent Tories, you deny this. There is nothing surprising about this. Just as I found in my tax haven campaigning years that the easiest way to determine whether a place was a tax haven or not was to gauge the vehemence of its denial that it was, so too does this rule hold true for Reform, the Tories and whether they are racist or not. The more that they deny that they are racist, the more likely it is that they are.

Third, this split is now at the core of politics in England, but not in Scotland (although that is not clear from this poll, but is from others), whilst in Wales the situation might be more polarised than anywhere else, except the two sides are now represented by Plaid Cymru and Reform, with everyone else now falling pretty much by the wayside there.

In that case, then, let's stop debating this and instead conclude that Reform is generally agreed to have racist policies, as do the Tories, but they deny it.

Moreover, let us also conclude that this is where most of the heat is regrettably coming from in politics right now, when almost every other issue in society is vastly more important and is being pushed aside by the politics of hate.

And so let's finally conclude that the impact of racist policy on UK politics is entirely negative, because it is, and most people know that, which fact does not, however, stop the racists pursuing their goal of creating division, discord and misdirected anger within society.