Tory shadow minister Andrew Rosindell has form on race politics

“Enough is enough”, “opened the floodgates”, “population explosion” – remind you of anyone? Shadow Home Affairs minister Andrew Rosindell has evidently misplaced his race-politics dogwhistle so he’s decided to go the whole hog and climb into the gutter with the British National Party. This following leaflet was recently distributed by Conservative activists in Rosindell’s Romford constituency:

When he received a call from The Observer Rosindell found himself backpedaling furiously, attempting to blame local councillors even though the material carried the marque “promoted by Andrew Rosindell MP”:

“I did not write or approve this councillors’ flyer. Immigration is an important issue but, as David Cameron has made clear, we must be careful with both the facts and the language we use. This flyer falls short on both counts, and I shall be pointing that out to the councillors.”

Such denials might be vaguely credible if Rosindell didn’t have form for playing the race card. In a blogpost noting the striking similarities between aspects of Rosindell’s website and far-right campaign materials, Scrapbook wrote last December: ”The MP for Romford has tabled a mere 102 questions on asylum and immigration and was a member of an organisation which advocated the voluntary repatriation of ethnic minorities until he was forced to resign by Iain Duncan Smith.”

As a 43 year-old shadow minister who was first elected in 2001, the MP for Romford ain’t no dinosaur.

Once in the Monday Club, always in the Monday Club

For some reason earlier today, Scrapbook clicked onto a website (no, not that one) with the following branding:

Given the crass nationalist undertones overtones of the above the outcome of a cursory investigation into Andrew Rosindell’s political pedigree is unsurprising. The MP for Romford has tabled a mere 102 questions on asylum and immigration and was a member of an organisation which advocated the voluntary repatriation of ethnic minorities until he was forced to resign by Iain Duncan Smith.

Rosindell said that his election victory in 2001 proved “that Thatcherism is alive in Romford”.

From the looks of his website so is dog-whistle politics.