In a policy shift which is bound to be applauded by the BNP’s Nick Griffin, Labour intends to drop a plan to make families pay a cash bond for relatives who visit from India and Pakistan, instead there will be heavy fines or the threat of jail if family members overstay.

Liam Byrne has just told the BBC’s Asian Network radio station that “what we want to do is have a new system but punish people if things go wrong.” He was referring to people coming over for family weddings and then disappearing. Byrne said the government now wanted to “make sure that we can just hit people and hit people hard if their family member breaks the rules”.

When French resistance fighters killed German soldiers the Gestapo would round up innocent villagers and shoot ten of them for every dead German soldier. It was called “collective punishment”, this policy works on the same principle.

The Labour Party seems to have given up on the centre-ground triangulation of the Blair era. Remember “British jobs, for British workers“? They are now triangulating the BNP’s white working class vote. Where is Gordon’s moral compass?

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