THE US Presidential race has taken a nasty turn, with Donald Trump now going much further even than previous Presidential candidates in openly supporting racism and white supremacists.

Because of his failure to get a grip on the pandemic and the economic damage that is causing, the fear is that the campaign will get more virulent yet before polling day.

This matters not only because of the weight of the US in world politics. It is also the case that many politicians, especially here in Britain, are in thrall to US political trends and all too often want to ape them.

Trump is now standing as the “law-and-order” candidate. On both sides of the Atlantic that always needs translation to the “divide-and-rule” candidate. It is absurd for Trump to claim he is in favour of law and order while standing in front of burning buildings during his Presidency. He is the President who encourages voters to break the law and to vote twice in November.

Worse, he is encouraging the armed far right and offers excuses for a 17-year-old killer of unarmed protestors. He has also presided over literally thousands of deaths of members of the public at the hands of the police.

In reality, the claims of a tough stance on law and order are a cloak to disguise an all-out assault on black people, other ethnic minorities and protesters.

Most crime is actually driven by social deprivation and the sense of hopelessness that breeds. No politician who claims to stand for law and order without first addressing the causes of social deprivation should ever be given any credence. It is simply a device for scapegoating and targeting sections of the community. And in the US it is overwhelmingly cops killing members of the public — not vice versa.

There is a reason that Trump is gambling everything on this during an election campaign. Historically, incumbents have run on their economic record and usually they win. But of course, Trump cannot win by running on his economic record as tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs and many more have seen their pay cut.

The meagre level of Federal financial support has been cut. Unsurprisingly, all of this affects black people and the Latino population disproportionately. But huge layers of US workers are in dire straits. For Trump, divide and rule, demonising black people and protesters and causing mayhem and violence is all that is left.

Despite this, polls consistently show that the pandemic is the number-one issue for voters. This seems to be a case where ordinary people understand something that politicians here and in the US are unwilling to grasp: you cannot return to normal economic activity while a deadly pandemic is raging.

Even where you try to force people to return by cutting their financial support, as both Boris Johnson and Trump have done, you cannot force them into bars, restaurants, hotels and other leisure activities. The unwillingness of ordinary people to risk their own health and the lives of their loved ones has been the great bulwark against the terrible policies pursued in Washington and in Westminster.

That is why it is so important that the labour movement speaks up for ordinary people and does not allow our own government to bully people back to work or force them back by cutting off financial support.

In my previous Morning Star piece I called for a zero Covid-19 strategy to be pursued. It is something that other countries have effectively achieved and can be done here. In fact, we were on course to virtually eliminating the virus and reducing cases and deaths to a handful — until the government prematurely eased lockdown.

So, there must be strong support for my excellent colleague Kate Osborne's call to extend the government's “job retention scheme.” She told Johnson quite rightly that there would be catastrophic consequences for jobs, businesses and the economy if the furlough scheme was ended in October.

Unfortunately, Johnson brushed aside her valid concerns. But there is no reason that this country cannot follow Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands, who extended their equivalent schemes into next year.

These are not left-wing governments, and they do have a care to their own public finances. But they understand that the jobs lost by prematurely ending the furlough schemes will not easily return and that the damage could be generational. In that light, maintaining the scheme is an insurance payment against far worse and predictable consequences if the scheme is pulled now.

Unfortunately, the Tory government seems intent on following Trump down the road of creating millions of unemployed.

Trump boasts that his policies are great for the stock market. He may be right, but this should not be the aim of economic policy. The priorities should be jobs and prosperity. The furlough scheme must be extended. The consequences for jobs otherwise will indeed be catastrophic.

No-one argues that these schemes should or need to be permanent. Instead, what is required is a systematic policy aimed at eliminating the virus, a zero Covid-19 strategy. Another of my excellent colleagues, Richard Burgon, points out that that new cases are rising once more, up 1,735 in the most recent daily data.

I completely endorse his call for a zero Covid-19 strategy that other countries have successfully adopted. At the very least large parts of the services sectors will go to the wall unless people have confidence to resume their normal lives. Worse, the government may simply be preparing the terrain for a second wave of deaths.

These policies are vital to reverse the spread of the virus and protect jobs until it is under control.

There is also another effect. We will have more attacks on Black Lives Matter, more praise for white supremacists, more stop and search, more use of heavy-handed policing and more demonisation of migrants as a distraction from the public-health and economic crises until they are ended.

As Black Lives Matter shows, defeating the virus, opposing layoffs and confronting racism are all linked.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North