Home secretary Amber Rudd does not want to be called a racist. “Don’t call me a racist,” she said last week. To be fair, very few people, including the majority of racists, like being called racist. You have to be really very racist not to mind the label. Racist voters, while they often like racist policies and racist politicians, don’t, in general, like them to actually call themselves racist. They’re not comfortable with it being openly proclaimed. For now. Things haven’t got that bad.

I think maybe lots of racists don’t think they’re racist. I don’t think I’m racist, so maybe I’m racist. Maybe everyone is, to some extent. Maybe it’s a spectrum. But not thinking they’re racist is almost certainly an attribute that many non-racists and racists share. Then again, liberal guilt being what it is, some non-racists probably think they’re racist – as, obviously, do the more self-aware racists. So, whichever way you look at it, there’s loads of common ground.

I can hardly think of a more damning slur on the British workforce than this proposed policy

But is Amber Rudd racist? That’s the key question. Unless racism is a spectrum, in which case it’s “Is she too racist?” There would have to be a specific point on that spectrum beyond which the level of a person’s racism became unacceptable, and before which you’d sort of have to go along with it for practical reasons. In the end, it all just reverts to the binary. It’s a black and white issue.

So, is the home secretary racist? I feel like, the more I ask the question, the more racist she seems. Well, it’s her fault for saying “Don’t call me a racist.” She put it in our heads – it’s almost saucy. After all this, to conclude she’s not racist would feel like a bit of a shame. Like a whodunnit where the denouement is that it was natural causes.

But I suppose we should look at the evidence. Where did all this talk of suspected racist Amber Rudd’s suspected racism come from? Well, she made a speech at the Conservative party conference. “Ah well, that explains it!” you’re probably thinking but, in fact, there’s even more to it than that. There was an issue with the contents of the speech.

Illustration by David Foldvari.

This is surprising as, having watched some of it, I found it very difficult to discern what the contents were. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of small print. She reads it in a sort of bland lilt, like a recorded voice in a lift. The actual words are extremely hard to grip on to. You can hear the audience dutifully applauding every so often, from which I concluded that a rather undramatic cricket match was being played at the other end of the hall.

Nevertheless someone managed to work out what the contents were. Perhaps they played a recording through a speech recognition app, printed the text out in bold, capitalised Comic Sans and then read it next to a blaring smoke alarm after an overdose of ProPlus. And what she apparently said was that firms should be forced to reveal what percentage of their workers are foreign – initially just non-EU but, post-Brexit, non-UK – and to make greater efforts to employ, or to train and employ, British workers, instead of recruiting abroad.

This threat to “name and shame” companies that hire lots of foreigners went down very badly with many people. Labour said it would “fan the flames of xenophobia and hatred in our communities”, the SNP called it “the most disgraceful display of reactionary rightwing politics in living memory” and LBC’s James O’Brien said it was “enacting chapter two of Mein Kampf”.

This, in turn, caused Rudd to clarify that all this was just part of a “review” and “not something we are definitely going to do”, but also to assert that “people want to talk about immigration, and if we do talk about immigration, don’t call me a racist”. I don’t think I can agree to that. We’ve all long since wearily acknowledged the old Nigel Farage cliche that mentioning immigration doesn’t necessarily mean you’re racist. But, let’s be honest, if you could take out an insurance policy against being racist, mentioning immigration would put your premiums up.

But obviously, whether Amber Rudd is racist (or, perhaps more pertinently, xenophobic) or not depends on what she’s actually saying about immigration. And she’s basically saying that, for a British company, employing a non-British national should be a last resort. Companies should do all they can – with advertising and training – to fill jobs locally, in the knowledge that if they fail too often, the percentage of foreigners they employ will be made public. In short, they shouldn’t employ a foreigner just because he or she happens to be the best person for the job. Given time and effort, they should be able to find someone British who’ll do.

So, no, I don’t really think Amber Rudd is xenophobic. It’s not foreigners she despises, it’s the British. I can hardly think of a more damning slur on the British workforce than this proposed policy. It takes British workers’ inferiority as a given, as its premise.

It is already harder for firms to employ foreigners than locals – foreigners either have to get here or, if they’re already here, be allowed to stay. That’s not an issue with a British worker. English may not be their first language, which can cause problems. That’s not an issue with a British worker. Laws already in place mean that companies have a considerable incentive to employ locally if they can. But Rudd has looked at the British workforce and decided they need much more help.

A fair criticism of foreign labour is that it can undercut the cost of British workers – that it drives wages down; that, frankly, people from poorer countries are willing to work for less than the British are. If that’s the concern, a sound government response would be to raise the minimum wage, not to threaten to expose companies as unpatriotic if they don’t voluntarily inflate their own labour costs.

This threat of exposure is what illustrates Amber Rudd’s anti-Britishness most shockingly. She is convinced that revealing to the public that a firm employs a high percentage of foreigners will be disastrous to its image. She thinks this nation which so many peoples over the centuries, from Celts, Romans and Angles to Jamaicans, Bangladeshis and Poles, have made their home, will no longer stand for the employment of immigrants. She may not be racist, but she certainly thinks we are.