Nigel Farage’s race discrimination comments are a strategic error

Aside from whether he’s right to argue that we don’t need many racial discrimination laws, why does Nigel Farage think it’s politically a good idea to mull about relaxing them so that firms can take on British staff? The Ukip leader has spent most of today getting rather annoyed at what he says has been misreporting of his remarks to Trevor Phillips, and explaining what it was he said. Here are his original quotes:

‘I think the employer should be much freer to make decisions on who she or he employs.

‘I think the situation that we now have, where an employer is not allowed to choose between a British-born person and somebody from Poland, is a ludicrous state of affairs.

‘I would argue that the law does need changing, and that if an employer wishes to choose, or you can use the word ‘discriminate’ if you want to, but wishes to choose to employ a British-born person, they should be allowed to do so.’