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The furore that has blown up among those who’ve noticed the two news stories connected to immigration this week is a good example of the problems the Conservatives face in winning an outright majority at the next election.
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The best hope would have been to stick with decontamination and hope the UKIPpers came around, but it's too late for that now.
This was an inspired strategic choice of a campaign team from the Conservatives at a very pivotal moment in the election cycle. I doubt there is any other two campaign guru's across the globe who are more likely to leave both Labour and the Libdems rattled and fearful right now than bringing Crosby and Messina together to work on the Conservative election campaign. Its going to be interesting to see how both parties react over the next few weeks in the run up to the Conference Season which is now most definitely on a GE campaign footing.
Anyone seen or heard from Ed Miliband or Ed Balls recently, don't tell me that they are both away on their hols along with Harriet Harman at the same time? Suspect that Ed Miliband is going to have his hands full trying to calm the increasing panic running through the party machine when he gets back. Harriet Harman might have to step in like she had to when Ed Miliband failed to get himself organised preparing the Labour manifesto before the 2010 GE.
Daily Mail - Failed firm's £53m from Labour NHS deal: Taxpayers foot huge bill after ministers terminated contract when GPs stopped referring patients to failing hospital unit
"The 24-year-old actor sparked concern with his dishevelled appearance as he made his way out of the theatre"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2383077/Dishevelled-Daniel-Radcliffe-playing-bongos-wild-night-video.html
No he didn't. I was there on Thursday (the day those photos were taken) and he sparked great excitement and admiration for his energy and vigour, as well as his gorgeousness. Whenever the Daily Mail photographs Daniel Radcliffe at 11pm with a camera flash in his face, it seems to think that (a) pale skin means that he is ill, and (b) being sweaty means that he is exhausted. They don't understand the concept of it being the hottest day of the year so far.
All I've seen is a rather pointless campaign on a van against illegal immigration (fine, if crude) and reports of a tube station swoop on potential illegal immigration (don't like the police stopping and searching people generally).
No bigotry, just hamfistedness.
Or at least, it isn't to anyone with a rational mind.
You are throwing the words 'racist' and 'xenophobe' around like there is no tomorrow. I have no fondness of racists or racism, but to brand everyone who has legitimate concerns about immigration a racist is appalling.
In the eyes of many people there is a problem. Trying to shut down debate by crying 'racist!' does not help.
For my tuppence-worth, with one or two exceptions, I have seen very little outright racism on PB, and in one of the cases the mods acted quickly. There is some mis-speak and a great deal of lack of knowledge. Perhaps my racism filter is set too high, but I doubt it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-23534373
tim's furious posting is a rather transparent attempt to divert attention from Labour's record - which he will not discuss "we're talking about something else" - and as Neil pointed out yesterday, if you are opposed to immigration checks in the street, is worse than the coalition's - that may account for the deafening silence from Labour's front bench over the "outrage" - such omertà surely cannot be accidental - looks like the word has come down from on high - "say nowt".....
Um, Josias, he's not commenting on the facts here, just on the remarkable evolution of Ian Birrell's view. There's no reference to racists in the post to which you're replying, either by Ian or anyone else. The point, also made by David in more restrained form, is that there is a political price to appeasing people who want a scattergun crackdown on illegal immigration.
The 'racist' and 'xenophobe' comment - just see Tim's previous posts, for instance from last night. Anyone having a different view from him is branded a racist or xenophobe. Indeed, he does so in his first post in this thread. I'm surprised you hadn't noticed.
good luck for the selection ...
"But Immigration Minister Mark Harper said there was ‘no racial profiling’ and no one was stopped unless officers had reasonable suspicion they were in the UK illegally.
"I absolutely refute the suggestion that we are targeting people based on their race or doing racial profiling. All our raids are intelligence-led. I don’t agree with an amnesty, if people are here illegally then they are breaking the law, we will find them and send them home. If we allow an amnesty then we will be sending out the wrong message.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383156/Police-arresting-139-illegal-immigrant-suspects-watchdog-launches-probe.html#ixzz2ast1ZCMv
I'm still rubbing my eyes that Labourlist tried to start a twitter campaign against Mr Messina.
I wonder what Tom Watson is thinking today about how the Tories are preparing for GE2015. Given his rather withering resignation letter post Falkirk, who do Labour have as potential successors?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/03/former_republican_epa_directors_climate_change_is_real_deal_with_it/
"The final tally from the above? Two Conservative policies similar to the Republican party; six to the Democrats. And in two instances — the death penalty and nationalized healthcare — it runs further to the left.
In other words, Messina doesn't need to change his policy arguments that much, either."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/08/how-conservative-would-uk-conservatives-be-us/67930/
If Mr Crosby can identify the wedges/be the bruiser, Mr Messina can help the activists to be most effectively deployed. Great combination of skills.
I heard an excuse last night that Labour doesn't have the money to pay for his expertise, but that was rather undermined by another report that said Mr Messina wasn't interested in working for them in the first place.
What is Labour's war chest like? They didn't have a lot of cash for GE2010 but they did have Mandy for free and he's a formidable chap.
When they go off piste into areas they don't know about they tend to merrily source dodgy information from friendly nutters and fools. Lewis bloody Page writes the military commentary ffs which is an instant credibility disaster.
Edit: Clarified last ambiguous sentence.
I was surprised that Gordon brought Mandy back last time - but he was desperate/ate his pride, and Mandy wanted to be brought back into the fold after much acrimony. Gordon and Tony were his New Labour siblings. If you haven't read his autobiog The Third Man - its very good and quite funny.
Miliband`s silence over this period has been odd but in some ways welcome.Do we really need all that crap that Eric Pickles is wondering about ending up as news?
Labourlist noted earlier that Labour aren't providing anything for the TV men to use so are getting bugger all coverage bar rebutting the Tories agenda.
Usually the parties provide light stuff to fill the news vacuum - Pickles on renting your driveway out is about as light as you can get...
"But one thing we learnt is that grand speeches, proud boasts and silly gimmicks won't solve anything."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10219288/Chris-Bryant-MP-Go-Home-vans-show-ministers-have-no-ideas-on-immigration.html
Have you told Ed?
The EU has never been a left/right issue. UKIP is correctly seen as the party which is against the scale of unskilled EU immigration. This disadvantages the people who are competing against them for jobs, in places like Boston. It does not disadvantage the caricatured geriatric ex-Tory golf-club member who supports UKIP. UKIP is socially conservative on matters like gay marriage, but on economic issues, UKIP is 'soft-right', not 'hard right'.
A Smithson theory which is spot on: there are some issues which always benefit one particular party whenever it is mentioned (especially the NHS for Labour party, however badly they run it). Equally, when the tories reduce immigration by hitting at 'soft' targets like students, or rich Chinese, UKIP waverers are unsurprisingly unimpressed.
Statements like his can be filed under the Actually I Didn't Want To Play With You Lot Anyway line deployed by a weedy schoolboy being ignored in the playground.
That's back to front. The 24 hours news cycle isn't interested in Miliband, which is the root of his problem.
If they are interested in the crap that Pickles is coming out with,they would be interested in what an opposition leader with a poll lead comes out with.But I agree with you that in (non)engagement with News International,posturing on media regulation and ignoring the 24 hour news cycle,Miliband is refusing to play the media`s game.Whether that`s going to be a plus for Labour or a millstone remains to be seen
The way Labour manipulated/made the news agenda changed how the game is played. Whether for good or ill, there is a 24hr news cycle and sitting in the dress-room isn't really an option.
The last leader I can remember who tried it was Attlee ("Do you have one final additional message to give to the British people?" "No."). Did quite well for a while.
"Financial struggles with bills and debts 'worsen'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23534877
This story has sunk without trace (the immigration one is not even in the BBC top 10- and today the tabloids are rolling around in Simon Cowell's love life) - so I doubt the government is too concerned over the outrage over the arrest of 140 possible illegal immigrants....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10218938/Of-course-people-at-the-BBC-are-biased-why-not-make-a-virtue-of-it.html
"... Which makes it ridiculous for the BBC to pretend that its front-persons remove their own world views the moment they sit in front of a microphone. It’s absurd, because it is impossible, and were it possible, it would be uninformative. I could write these columns as though I weren’t a Tory (see above). I’m sure you’d pick up on it soon enough, and wonder why you’d paid to read someone pretending to be something they weren’t: that is, neutral. That is: a lie.
Such neutrality doesn’t fail only when it is used as an attempted mask for party affiliation. Any policy issue is identically afflicted. Do BBC staff really have no opinions about, say, fracking? Is it conceivable that those views don’t leak through into their broadcasts?
As with so much other establishment practice, this is one best tackled by transparency. Were the BBC to give up on its neutrality dogma – not least because it’s untrue – presenters would be free to say what they actually think. And we would be free to view their arguments through the prism of their beliefs.
Just as you can with this newspaper, or any of the other brands of newspaper that are available, from the less fashionable outlets.
But there’s the difference: you chose to buy this newspaper. You don’t choose to buy the BBC; which fact, increasingly, is unsustainable politically and is why, I suspect, the BBC Trust clings to the arcane lore upon which the Corporation was established. “If we admit we’re no more neutral than any other human being, they’ll wonder why we need to be funded by a poll tax.”
Surely the reverse would be true: diversity (so we’re endlessly told) is good for organisations. The BBC has many wonderful broadcasters: I’d pay to hear what they think, more happily than I pay to hear them mime, unconvincingly, a lack of bias..."
'Left' and 'right' is very crude terminology given how many axes there are on which to base that decision but it's an easy and understood description, so let's run with it.
Firstly, wherever UKIP actually sits as a party, there's the question of where it's voters sit politically. Almost certainly, these are at/to the right of the Conservatives. The swing voters who have wavered between UKIP and the Tories have done so over things like gay marriage (a UKIP policy which sits ill at ease with Farage's libertarianism, as an aside). The relevant thing here - in terms of building an electoral coalition - is whether the Tories can attract those Con/UKIP voters back. If DavidK is right and UKIP is not to the right of the Tories, that should make life easier for Cameron as the purples should do part of the job for him.
However, the second point is that yes, UKIP is off there to the right anyway (and hence it won't be so easy for Dave). The assertion that the EU is not a right/left issue is highly arguable. True, there are some far-left wingers (eg Bob Crow, Tony Benn) who are opposed but in general, the left is more internationalist and the right sets a higher value on nation, tradition and culture. Being in favour of continued, if reformed, EU membership places the Tories to the left of UKIP, as does UKIP being in favour of much reduced immigration as one of their key anti-EU messages. Likewise, support for small(er)-government places UKIP firmly to the right.
To take one example, the second-most high profile UKIP politician where I live (after Farage) is Godfrey Bloom MEP. I find it difficult to place his political views anywhere other than at the rightwards edge of mainstream opinion.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
This has UKIP on virtually identical ground to Con, if a tad more authoritarian.
I suspect the coalition has moved south west since then.....
LBC 97.3 @lbc973
The majority of new homes in central London are being sold off-plan in overseas sales events before being advertised in the UK
"Jacobites Unite For Nick Palmer's Reselection"
What could possibly go wrong ?!?!?!?!
Does anyone seriously believe that spot-checks on BME`s at tube stations are intelligence-led.What tosh!The minister is seriously insulting the intelligence of BME voters and everyone else.They are clearly aimed at maximum publicity for vote-gathering purposes and not a serious effort at reducing illegal immigration.
Robert Kimbell
Average votes at by-elections on 1 August 2013: LAB 32.23% (from 6 contests), #UKIP 26.63% (from 5), CON 15.67% (6), LDEM 13.71% (4).
From these local elections UKIP, although losing two very precarious council seats actually gained in votes, and if we look back to May the percentage of votes for UKIP has shown a steady if unspetacular climb.
It may well be that nationaly these percentages may be different but the effort of the pollsters to force UKIP from the game in July must now be seen to be an epic fail.
We could argue all day about whether this abandonment was motivated by dirty politics or a genuine belief, per Tim, that immigration is good and necessary for growth but the fact is a lot of people didn't like it.
As a result this government feels the need to be seen to be doing something about a problem that is massively beyond their control. They have better prospects of repaying the national debt than removing all the illegal immigrants in the UK. This has pushed some, such as Boris, to think we will have to have an amnesty. The problem is that the international evidence is that amnesties don't really work and encourage further illegal immigration.
A government in this situation can either focus on making the system better, whilst recognising and acknowledging that it is a sticking plaster on a serious wound, or they can create the impression of activity by gimmicks and gestures. I am seriously disappointed the government has opted for the latter, especially when those gimmicks seem in some part to be capable of causing or stirring up racial hatred and distrust. I hope this stops but politicians of all stripes are very reluctant to have a sensible discussion about what has become an intractable problem.
The politics of this are tricky because the truth is there is very little the government can do effectively. The priority going forward has got to be better immigration controls (which the Coalition has done, albeit this has also created a lot of moans) better monitoring of over stayers, which requires exit monitoring, more efficient removal of the immigrants that are found (which May has tried to achieve by, for example, restricting article 8 claims) and ultimately an unofficial amnesty.
" The picture is credited with encouraging millions of men to sign up to fight in the trenches, many of them never to return. But new research has found that no such poster was actually produced during the war and that the image was never used for official recruitment purposes. In fact, it only became popular and widely-used after the conflict ended.
James Taylor, who has researched the history of recruitment posters, said the popular understanding of the design and the impact it had was almost entirely mistaken. “It’s widely believed to have been the most popular design of First World War, instrumental in recruiting millions of men. But the truth is: that simply wasn’t the case. It’s an urban myth,” he added.
As part of his research, he studied the official records of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the body responsible for recruitment posters, in the National Archives at Kew.
These documents provided details of the production of almost 200 official recruitment posters produced during the war and indicated which ones were deemed popular. The so-called ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster is absent. He also analysed thousands of photographs of street scenes and recruitment offices from the period in search of the image, again, without finding it..." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10218932/Your-Country-Needs-You-The-myth-about-the-First-World-War-poster-that-never-existed.html
On the political compass test, I came out as similar to Francois Hollande.
Aaargh! Don't ever let me near the economy.
If I read the reports right, the government is maintaining these were not spot checks and they were not racially profiled. They were intelligence led.
Now, you can believe that or not, but that is the line.
http://www.bloggers4ukip.org.uk/2013/08/have-you-ever-polled-human-by-mistake.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
I would agree with a lot of what you said in your post.The government are trying to derive political benefit without actually doing the work.They promised to have exit controls by the end of this year and this is nowhere in sight.And their net migration statistics are now considered dodgy.Hence the stunts supposedly aimed at illegal migrants but actually a call to rally right-wing voters to support the government.
But they should consider such campaigns also alienate some people.30% of BME voters voted for Boris in London where a lot of marginal seats are located and to alienate them by spot-checks and obvious racial profiling seems a bit silly to me.
Therefore if there are places with more suspected illegals - they'll target them. That these people are mostly from Asia and Africa isn't exactly surprising since most of the EU can come here legally now.
Getting your required number of collars doesn't work if you stop lots of people who aren't illegal immigrants. It's simple stuff but the argument never seems to actually consider the motivation of the people actually doing the job.
It isn't as sophisticated as racism. If you're told to catch carp you go where you think the carp swim.
Just more hogwash from liberal do gooders, the same people that have wrecked this country with PC correctness and unlimited immigration. UK has a serious problem, mainly in England I must say and every avenue possible should be made to find the criminals and have them deported pdq, no wishy washy human rights/skin colour baloney should be involved. If you are innocent you should have no problem and just be happy they are actually finally trying to do something to catch what are criminals.
Some fantastic and stomach-churning pictures of adventure sports. Anyone tried one of these and wanting to have a go?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383949/Going-extremes-The-breath-taking-awe-inspiring-images-thrill-seeking-daredevil-action-sports-enthusiasts-vying-win-Red-Bull-Illume-photo-contest.html
Or, on the other hand, their "intelligence" is that foreigners tend to be non-white so lets pull all of them up and ask them for IDs even though there is no law in this country that gives them the right to do ask for ID.
People who support these measures may as well ask for all non-whites in the UK to wear a red armband that says "Ausländer". Because that's how it feels right now, the country seems very hostile to non-whites.
But of course that was the *right* sort of erm...
Dizzy Thinks @dizzy_thinks
@stellacreasy here's a BBC doc from 2008 about UKBA at tube stations radiotimes.com/episode/c5wp/u… less evil coz Labour were in gov? H/T @Tfoch
They are like those who banged on about 'bashing the Boche' before WW1 and then shrieked when they saw the casualties on the first day of the Somme.
What did you think war with Germany would entail mate?
On immigration, there are plenty who chafe at the problem, but they don;t like the solution.
Either live with the problem - or tolerate the 'unbritish' solution.
Max, your testimony strongly implies the government is not telling the truth - and I believe you should take this further.
I'm sure things have been tightened up a lot - but its really not hard to work out where many of them will congregate.
g Max, get over it. do you think you're the only person who has ever been stopped and asked for ID ?
If they had intelligence specific to you or anyone else - they'd either not do anything as you're British or arrest you already.
I'm finding this a rather odd discussion - the whole point of trying to target places where UKBA suspect there are illegal immigrants is because they *suspect* it. If they knew, they wouldn't need to random stop anyone.
The police randomly stop cars at checkpoints and ask you to do a breath test or check your tax disc etc as part of campaigns.
In recent years, with the EU’s relaxation of travel restrictions across mainland Europe, hundreds of thousands of Roma gipsies, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria, have travelled west in search of a better life.
Each morning, a small army of women and children leave these illegal camps and catch trains into the city centre, where many spend the day trying to exploit, harass and steal from tourists.
Some sit begging by cashpoints — often with babies on their laps. Others tour the streets pretending to be deaf, dumb or otherwise disabled, and seeking donations for fictitious charities.
A few pick pockets. Others — like the group which struck in Place Sainte-Opportune — ‘swarm’ passers-by, using the ensuing confusion to brazenly steal from them.
Last month, an organised gang of gipsies upped the ante, attacking two minibuses full of Chinese visitors stuck in traffic as they travelled from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, stealing thousands of euros in cash.
Two months earlier, an immigrant ‘Fagin’ called Fehim Hamidovic was sentenced to seven years in prison for masterminding one of the biggest ever child pickpocketing rings. He was found to have sent 500 young gipsy girls onto the Paris streets each day, threatening them with beatings, cigarette burns to the face and even rape unless they stole the equivalent of £250 a day.....
In short, hostility to the Roma is contributing to the re-emergence of the racist Right in France, so much so that the country’s National Front party is on the verge of taking a lead in national opinion polls.
The past fortnight has seen tensions spill over. Several violent ‘revenge attacks’ by demonstrators carrying baseball bats, iron bars and petrol bombs have been reported at Roma camps........
‘Welcome to Europe’s open borders,’ an exasperated senior police officer told me this week. ‘All of these kids are ultimately members of gangs from Romania and Bulgaria. They pitch their caravans on the outskirts of town.
‘Hundreds of them are trying to steal — and they’re becoming increasingly confident in how they do it. We can barely touch the kids because they’re considered too young in the eyes of the law.’............
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383855/How-Roma-invasion-sparked-rise-Frances-racist-Right.html#ixzz2atgHR49l
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This is not specific intelligence and to claim otherwise shows they take voters for mugs.
There is a separate, specific issue in that our borders are so poorly defended, and our strange enthusiam for the ECHR, has meant that we cannot get rid of the seriously undesirable.
We cannot solve either problem while we remain in the EU. But we can pretend to do so.
When Elaine Perry was threatened by a couple after complaining about their rowdy children, she called police in the hope they would protect her.
Instead, the 57-year-old librarian was arrested by two women officers who hooded her, taped her legs together and bundled her into a van in front of a crowd of onlookers.
Miss Perry, who says she was made to feel ‘totally humiliated’, ended up in court charged with using threatening behaviour and assaulting one of the officers.
But the mother of two was cleared by magistrates and now intends to sue Sussex Police and complain about her ordeal to the police watchdog, particularly over the use of the special hood, designed to prevent prisoners spitting at officers.
She was kept in the hood, which looks like a plastic bag but is made of mesh, for about 15 minutes and released from it only when she began hyperventilating.
‘I have never been in trouble before yet I was treated like a criminal for taking a stand on unacceptable behaviour in a public place,’ she said yesterday.
‘I had no idea British police could use this type of hood, which would not have looked out of place in Guantanamo Bay. I felt I was being paraded in stocks, like in medieval times. It was so humiliating.
‘I was upset because I was being accused of something I didn’t do and my voice may have been raised.
‘I had a slight sore throat and it is possible that as I spoke to police, some tiny globules of spit hit an officer’s face. But it was not deliberate and certainly didn’t merit a hood being placed over my head.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383863/Librarian-57-stood-family-yobs-arrested-forced-wear-degrading-hood-police.html#ixzz2atjykEnR
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
As I said, the coppers get NO POINTS for spending their shift not getting collars. So they'll look at places that are most likely to give them an easy 12hrs. Coppers could stop loads of people at Bond St who were black or Asian or white but its unlikely that they'd be illegally here.
If you have evidence of known employers of illegal immigrants,abnormal housing patterns etc you raid them.What you don`t do is raid a travel hub hoping that these illegal immigrants will go through that tube station in huge numbers at that particular time.
In my opinion,the police was conceived not to stamp out illegal immigration but to increase publicity amongst voters that they were trying to deal with the problem.Publicising tube station arrests with photos and tweets will only lead to illegal immigrants going underground and not to use the service for a few days and anyone with common sense knows this.The fact the UKBA were doing so indicates their target was not illegal immigrants but right-wing voters.
'Golly - is this true?!? A BBC documentary about UKBA staff targeting illegal immigrants in 2008 at Tube stations?'
Yes as Neal pointed out yesterday,which was met with a deafening silence from lefties.
Also the so called 'tourism survey' used by New Labour for 13 years as a measure of migration is rubbish,strange you would have thought they could have discovered that in 13 years.
When it comes to hypocrisy nobody can compete with lefties.
If you want to come to the UK - do so legally. It's not hard to see that it hurts the poorest irrespective of their skin tone to not control illegal immigration and remove those who are working off-book etc and using services that they aren't paying for.
The disconnect between this simple fact and Labourites really puzzles me - no wonder many aren't happy. And calling them all racists gave us BNP MEPs last time around.
If profiling is what they were doing,then the government should have the courage to say so.Not declare the immigration raids on tube stations were all led by specific intelligence.
Here's a question: imagine the Government hears that a hundred illegal immigrants from Pakistan have been spotted in area X. The police then start stopping and searching people of Asian ethnicity (either exclusively or mostly). Does this count as racist, racial profiling, intelligence-led or all three?
They are very much the forgotten victims of the camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos
If only 10% of the fraction of the money given to Israel since WWII had been given to the Romany people, then there world would be a better place. Sadly, most were trapped after WWII in that other evil empire, the Soviet Union.
A distinction should also be made between Romanians and Romanies; one Romanian I know hates Romanies with a passion that crosses the line into outright racism.
They are even hated in their homelands.
I forget precisely how long the threads remain open (without moderator-approval) but it's probably a couple of weeks (I lengthened it a bit).
Every force has something like this: I speak from experience here.
- all senior cops attend a weekly meeting where the CCons lays out what his priorities are/have they got a target from the HO to address or something local to sort out, the cops then justify their performance and explain what they're doing over the next week in great detail. This meeting will last about 2hrs and have about 15 there. There is nowhere to hide and very competitive.
- this is then replicated down from Supers to CI to Sergeants who direct the PCs and specials in their borough or ward but not half as intimidating.
It's a very specific, full of spreadsheets and stats and similar to a *sales meeting* for a business. If managed properly, its a very efficient way to direct resources and meet goals. It can of course be managed in a crap way.
No copper in his right mind would say "I'm going to do X and expect to get Y collars" then fail to do so. He'd be pulled to bits in front of an audience for crap targetting, crap intelligence, wasting resources and spoiling his forces numbers. There is no motivation for coppers to stop brown people for the sake of it if they can't arrest them for being illegally here.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21582555-noisy-spat-over-immigration-sign-things-come-enter-van-men?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/enterthevanmen
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/immigration-checks-on-tube-passengers-banned-7254045.html
It seems to have been happening under David Blunkett, who unfortunately is going to be quite hard to shift:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Brightside_and_Hillsborough_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Election_results
Got anything after 2004?
'Here's a question: imagine the Government hears that a hundred illegal immigrants from Pakistan have been spotted in area X. The police then start stopping and searching people of Asian ethnicity (either exclusively or mostly). Does this count as racist, racial profiling, intelligence-led or all three?'
Depends whose in government.
If Labour is in government it's intelligence-led,if it's the Coalition or Tories then it's racial profiling and racist.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281057/Spy-sky-catch-thousands-migrants-living-illegally-sheds-garages.html
We`ll just have to wait for the Equalities Commission to pronounce on whether there was specific intelligence which led to the raids or not.
Racist Van and anything to do with race falls into this category despite the fact that the people who are the target are criminals who've no right to be here at all.
If we replaced illegal immigrant with shoplifter - would there be a fuss? I doubt it. Yet certainly in Eastbourne there is a police van every Saturday sat on the concourse collecting retail thieves all afternoon.