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A tribute to Phil Woolas

So, farewell then, Phil Woolas. Or is it farewell? Who knows - you might ride on a wave of dissatisfaction with Coalition cuts and roar back into Parliament at a by-election. (*update* It's still unclear whether Woolas can run again or not, will update again when I know for sure) Politics is a funny thing. If this is the end, though, perhaps it might mark the day that Labour finally wake up to the idea that dog-whistle racism in election leaflets is a bad thing, let alone telling porkies about an opponent's home address.

I think it's important that everyone should show the same respect to Woolas on his way out of the door as he did to immigrants being kicked out of the country - none whatsoever. It would be wrong to authorise he be removed from office forcefully, of course, but then it would be in keeping with his own attitude towards immigrants, as reported by Liberal Conspiracy today. Woolas authorised the use of force against children. Classy.

It's wrong to demonise Woolas as some kind of loose cannon, some kind of maverick who only wanted to 'get the white vote angry' because he feared for his own position in his constituency. He didn't end up as immigration minister by accident, and it was a role that he appeared to get stuck into with some relish. Who appointed him, and why? Did Labour end up with an attack dog on immigration by mistake, someone who said everything that the screamsheets wanted (but which was never enough)? No, it was not an accident that Woolas ended up where he did. It's not an accident that even after the appalling dog-whistle leaflets during the election, Ed Miliband put him on the shadow front bench. These things don't just happen. Even in the light of his abysmal behaviour during the campaign, he was put into a position of responsibility rather than being booted onto the back benches. What does that say about Labour's attitudes towards immigration?

So here's a tribute to Phil Woolas, the man who tried to make New Labour into a Daily Mail wet dream of 'you can't come in' folded arms and a sneer, and who was allowed to do so, and who wasn't criticised by Labour top brass for having done so, and who ended up with a nice place on the shadow front bench despite having done so. Woolas is the personification of Labour's confusion over immigration - the need to appear to be tough, the need to turn doorstep concerns about the impact of immigration from the former A8 countries into a barking Rottweiler. And he did it perfectly. Labour would have been portrayed as a soft touch regardless of what they had done, and so they were, regardless of what Woolas did. The harder he tried to make Labour look tough, the less it mattered - it legitimised the original 'soft touch' accusations and undermined a fair immigration policy.

I daresay Woolas will keep fighting, and dragging his heels, and cling on for as long as he can. That's fair enough - you don't become a top-flight politician without being tenacious. It's not his role to stop. But who is having a quiet word with him, telling him that he's embarrassing the party? Who's taking him aside and saying it would be better for everyone if he slipped away? Who's telling him that, look mate, those leaflets were pretty disgusting, and not the sort of thing that a minister should be responsible for? Anyone? It would appear not. And there's the real problem. I think Labour have to work out what they think of this man and his attitudes. Do they still want to try and appear tough against immigration, at a time when the Coalition's cap is looking less and less like a sensible policy and more and more like some dogma to placate the tabloid attacks which doesn't actually work in everyone's best interests?

So, well done, Phil Woolas, for turning Labour supporters against Labour, for making Labour supporters ashamed of their own party. Congratulations and well done. Your lasting achievement in Government was to be the person who represented a caving-in to mythology, the man who represented a new strategy of trying to outflank the right on immigration, and a failure all round. And now you're still trying to cling on with your dirty fingernails - and no-one's trying to stop you. You should be ashamed of yourself, but of course you're not - if you had any shame, you wouldn't have produced those election materials, and you wouldn't have said and done the things you did when you were in government.

It looks like Woolas isn't going to be put out of our misery any time soon. He may even succeed with a legal challenge or a byelection. I wonder what kind of leaflets he'll put out during the campaign, and whether he'll want to get the white vote angry? And if he's successful, whether he'll be welcomed back into the fold and slapped on the shadow front bench again? It's not a case of goodbye and good riddance. Not yet. But it's getting closer all the time. The question is whether Labour will have learned anything from this whole sorry mess, or whether another Woolas will just step into place.

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