FORTHCOMING general elections are frequently described as likely to be the “dirtiest in living memory” or some such.

This year, however, it will be true in one significant respect. Racism, and the active promotion of it, are going to be central to the campaign.

Perhaps for the first time since 1979, when Margaret Thatcher spoke of Britain being “swamped” by people of a “different culture,” the Tory Party is going to whip up hatred as its main electoral calling card.

And to be fair to Thatcher — not a phrase common to this column — she did not rely solely on racism to win support for her assault on social democracy.

Rishi Sunak, by contrast, has nothing else to offer. Fourteen years of mounting social misery and economic crisis have left the Conservative campaign cupboard all but bare.

So, pandering to his party’s militant and atavistic right wing, the Prime Minister is doubling down on prejudice.

Almost his only policy initiative is his efforts to stop desperate refugees from receiving help in Britain by deporting them to Rwanda.

Millions have been spent on this enterprise without a single flight leaving for Kigali, so its only impact has been the racist demonisation of vulnerable people.

Then former home secretary Suella Braverman and recent party deputy chair Lee Anderson promoted wild Islamophobic theories about Muslims taking over the country.

Braverman has gone unpunished and while Anderson lost the Tory whip, Sunak was unable to explain why, or give a name to his offence.

Then it is revealed that the man funding the Tory election campaign has called for Britain’s first black woman MP, Diane Abbott, to be “shot,” because her existence makes him want to “hate all black women.”

These remarks were “racist and wrong,” as per Downing Street this week, but there seems to be no suggestion of handing back the £10 million Frank Hester has contributed to the Tory war chest and some ministers, indeed, denied that what he said was racist at all.

Now Michael Gove, a sinister right-wing ideologue at the heart of government and far more formidable than the blustering Anderson or the ranting Braverman, has come forward waving the shroud of “extremism” to demonise the Muslim community above all.

At a time when Islamophobic incidents are already soaring across the country, this is deeply inflammatory and an indication of how the government is framing the imminent election.

For the Tories it fulfils the objectives of changing the subject from their own failures, identifying an “enemy within” to mobilise their core vote against, and dividing their opponents.

If they succeed in the latter aim, the blame rests very largely with Keir Starmer. His record on opposing Islamophobia and anti-black racism is poor to non-existent.

Drawing a big target on Diane Abbott’s back by suspending her from the Labour whip for almost a year is only one of his failings in this regard.

And while it is welcome that Andy McDonald has had the whip restored after absurd charges relating to anti-semitism, it should escape no-one’s attention that two black women — Abbott and Kate Osamor — remain in political limbo.

Nor has Starmer’s Labour acted on the warnings in the Forde report about the party operating a “hierarchy of racism” in which prejudice against black people is treated as significantly less important.

The labour movement needs a far firmer and more consistent opposition to racism. We lack the power to unilaterally determine the tenor of the forthcoming election, but class unity mandates that we reject the slightest compromise with the race-baiters in government or opposition.