How should the UK deal with the increasing fracturing of multiculturalism right now, and how we are all being pitted against each other? This idea was on the mind of a man named Steve, who featured on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions on Friday in the aftermath of the Gorton and Denton byelection. Steve asked if the Green victory was an indication that Labour needed to “get back to its roots”, adding, to great applause, that “we’re a relatively wealthy country, we should not be demonising minority groups to square the balance”.

Listening, I was struck by the response of one of the panellists, New Labour minister David Blunkett, who criticised Labour’s current technocratism, but did not reflect on what Steve said about demonisation. It was especially striking considering Blunkett’s earlier comments, that when listening to the victorious Green MP Hannah Spencer’s speech, he thought: “I could have delivered that speech back in 1987 … What is it that has driven this young woman … to join the Greens rather than the Labour party?”

But for all that Spencer said of community and the dignity of work, Blunkett could not have delivered such a speech, because Spencer spent considerable time addressing rising Islamophobia: “I can’t and won’t accept this tonight without calling out the politicians and divisive figures who constantly scapegoat and blame our communities for all the problems in society. My Muslim friends and neighbours are just like me, human.”

In 2002, as home secretary, Blunkett described local schools as “swamped” by non-English speaking immigrants, and in 2003 was named winner of an annual Islamophobia award. He is hardly the kind of figure one would associate with the open tolerance and solidarity that Spencer has espoused.

But this is not about relitigating the New Labour years; the current Labour........

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