Writer at Large Neil Mackay argues that a wave of protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, including in Scotland, demonstrate that tolerance, decency and empathy are no longer part of the British make-up

Summer is gone but its poison remains, festering deep into autumn, taking root, growing, spreading. The poison may never be drawn. It’s hard to see how it can be drawn after what’s happened.

In just a few months, Britain’s true face was revealed. The pretence that tolerance, decency and empathy were ever British characteristics is gone, washed away like cheap theatrical make-up.

We now know what Britain is: a land of racists, apologists for racists, racist enablers, and bystanders to racism.

Only a few spoke out against the bigotry and threat that’s taken hold: the counter-demonstrators outside hotels; a handful of voices in politics and the media. The rest acquiesced in their silence, encouraged it or excused it.

While this is primarily an English disease, the poison runs deep in Northern Ireland, and has infected Wales and Scotland as well. We cannot ignore that the disease has taken hold in all parts of the body politic, to a greater or lesser degree.

Scotland has more immunity thanks to our less toxic media and parliament – our press and politicians tend not to play with the grenade of racism – but we’re still sick.

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We’ve got the illness, just not as bad as the rest of the UK. It seeped over the Border, transmitted in rhetoric from England’s right-wing press and the behaviour of Westminster politicians.

We know that anti-migrant........

© Herald Scotland