The Windrush scandal hasn’t come about by accident – this is what happens when you let dog whistle racism go mainstream

“The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants,” said Theresa May in 2012.

My how the Home Office has done what its then secretary of state charged it with doing. And we thought it was filled with incompetents.

As has become brutally clear with the developing scandal over how it has treated the Windrush generation, a hostile environment has also been created for British citizens.

May, in her current role as prime minister, might have apologised to the leaders of Caribbean nations, but the members of that generation, and their descendants, are still having to battle to prove they have the right to live here to a government department that destroyed their disembarkation cards and repeatedly changed its rules to make that harder to do.

Calls for the current Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign are entirely justified given what has happened. But I would argue that it isn’t her head alone that should be on the block.

At this point it’s worth asking: how did we get here?

How did we arrive at a situation where our fellow law-abiding, tax-paying, countrymen and women are being denied medical treatment, jobs, benefits, housing, the ability to travel abroad and the right to live in their homes?

We need to talk about this.

In 2012, May was playing into an aggressive and, yes, racist anti-immigration narrative that has been allowed to develop alongside the rise of the “alt right”.

The latter phrase has emerged as way of rebranding a new version of the extreme right, providing a convenient get-out-of-jail free card for those afraid to call it what it actually is.

Its use has helped to make a radioactive political movement seem no more threatening than magic moonbeams. Assisted by the tacit endorsement of a number of right wing newspapers, its agenda has become almost respectable.

It hasn’t hurt that while its leading lights are no different from their predecessors in worldview, they are much smarter when it comes to how they present themselves.

They are careful to avoid overt racism. In fact they usually claim to be outraged if it is mentioned in connection with them, even when their dog-whistles are blowing so loudly.

They cry piteously that it’s not racist to talk about immigration while blaming it for all the nation’s ills.

Of course we should be able to talk about immigration. The problem is it’s the way it is discussed by these people which has led us to a place where “immigrant” is intertwined with “minority”, which is intertwined with “non-white”, which is then intertwined with “bad”.

How much are the goings-on at the Home Office motivated by some people seeing members of the Windrush generation as not quite British?

This is a cancer, the growth of which has been greatly assisted by the fact he media rarely challenges those responsible with any fire. When it does, when interviewers – increasingly rare on the BBC – call out those who blow dog whistles, they find themselves under attack and accused of trying to “shut down debate”.

But mainstream politicians are equally to blame. David Cameron got the ball rolling with his ludicrous and arbitrary net migration target, and May then set about creating her hostile environment. Others quickly joined the party, egged on by their supporters in the press.

The end result is injustice being wrought on an industrial scale in the form of the Windrush scandal.

So what now? Apparently there is a task force being set up, which, as a response to British people running the risk of getting booted out of their homes, is woefully inadequate.

A blanket “you’re good, don’t worry” statement and a presumption in favour of those who may lack documentation because the Home Office destroyed their disembarkation cards is the very least that should be done.

Beyond that, we need to attack the narratives that have been allowed to fester surrounding immigration and race. The genie might be out of the bottle, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be slain.

The process starts with calling people who blow dog-whistles, and the politicians that pander to them, out for what they are: racists.