Having already asked this morning whether Reform's policies are racist and having noted that most people in the UK think that they are, it seems worth asking the same question of Tory policy when the Telegraph notes this in an email which highlights what the Shadow Chancellor (who is, apparently, Sir Mel Stride) is going to say to the Tory party conference today:

Sir Mel Stride will attempt to wrestle back the Conservatives' reputation for fiscal responsibility when he addresses Tory conference delegates in Manchester today.

The shadow chancellor does so with a £47bn spending cuts package and a raft of proposed changes, not least in welfare. Sir Mel will announce that, if the Tories return to office at the next election, only British citizens will be allowed to access benefits such as Universal Credit (UC) and disability payments.

It means the 470,000 people claiming UC who have been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK, limited leave to remain, refugee status or humanitarian status will lose out.

Sir Mel will say: “A fairer system ... means ensuring that only British citizens can access welfare, because citizenship should mean something.”

So let's ask these questions:

• Does this policy discriminate on the grounds of citizenship, which is being identified with race?
• Does it discriminate on the likely grounds of ethnicity as a result?
• Is that deliberate?
• Is that deliberate act being sold to the electorate as a positive course of action, favouring them over others?
• Is there, implicit in that sense of favour, an element based on the race of the person advantaged as a result?
• Does the person promoting this seek political advancement as a consequence?

The answer is, of course, yes, in all cases.

This policy is being deliberately promoted to divide people when it is widely known that most of those non-EU nationals with indefinite leave to remain in the UK are either Indian or Pakistani nationals.

So is this a racist policy? Yes, of course it is.

It is also, however, important to ask, based on its framing, whether it might also be a fascist policy. Does it seek to suggest that some people are from super-human groups and others are sub-human as a result? The answer is that, again, this is very obviously the case. So this is also a fascist policy, in my opinion, for the reasons I lay out here.

This is how far our official opposition in the UK has sunk.

The party of Churchill is now actively promoting fascism.