Nigel Farage finds himself embroiled in yet another bogus race row simply for having the audacity to challenge the cosy consensus of our arrogant political elite.

Even though his comments on extreme Islam and the need to prioritise British citizens in the jobs market will strike most people as eminently measured and reasonable, he has been greeted with a predictable, bovine chorus of ‘RAAY-CIST!’.

Labour’s Sadiq Khan hysterically accused the Ukip leader of wanting to turn the clock back 50 years to the days when boarding houses would display signs reading: ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ — even though he knows perfectly well that isn’t what Farage is proposing.

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Nigel Farage, pictured, has been branded a racist following his call to prioritise jobs for British people

Downing Street waded in, alleging that Farage is in favour of ‘racial discrimination’ and calling his remarks ‘wrong and desperate’.

Call Me Dave denounced Farage’s views as ‘appalling’, which only serves to explain why so many natural Tories have deserted to Ukip.

So what has Farage done to attract this latest shower of Clarksonian opprobrium? Let’s first examine what he said about Islam.

He told Trevor Phillips, for a forthcoming Channel 4 programme, that there are some Muslims in Britain who comprise ‘a fifth column living in our country who hate us and want to kill us’.

What’s inflammatory about that? It’s a fact. Not even Phillips, a former head of the Equalities Commission, would argue against it.

Survey after survey shows significant numbers of British Muslims sympathising with Islamist terrorists and favouring the introduction of sharia law in this country.

We’ve had young British Muslims mounting terror attacks here and queuing up to join jihad abroad. You only have to turn on the television to stumble across a self-appointed Muslim spokesman spouting hatred of our values.

So Farage wasn’t being racist, he was stating the bleedin’ obvious.

Now let’s address the more contentious aspect of the interview, in which Farage called for anti-discrimination legislation to be scrapped.

He said this was a different country from the time 40-odd years ago when these laws were introduced. He’s right. Britain has changed beyond recognition, both demographically and in terms of social attitudes.

For what’s it’s worth, I don’t agree with him about getting rid of the rules preventing discrimination against people on the grounds of race or colour.

Nor was that the central thrust of his point. Farage insists this isn’t a question of ‘black v white’. But it is about nationality.

His main concern is that employers are prevented from favouring English-speaking British candidates, from whatever ethnic background, over foreign applicants.

He said: ‘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.’

Again, I’m certain most people would say: Amen to that.

Here’s just one example. A company owned by a Labour council in Carmarthenshire is advertising for Polish-speaking ‘recycling operatives’. Cwm Environmental says the ability to speak Polish is not essential but would be an ‘advantage’ since a significant proportion of its staff are Poles.

Managing director John Rees said: ‘There are health and safety considerations and it makes sense for workers to be able to communicate in Polish.’

The clear implication is that Polish applicants will be hired before natives of Carmarthenshire.

But if it’s illegal to favour British citizens, why is it perfectly OK to give preference to Poles? The company is advertising for glorified dustmen, not interpreters.

Inevitably, Welsh nationalists are bouncing up and down about it, but not for the most obvious reason.

Plaid Cymru said: ‘While we welcome the recognition of the desirability of the Polish language, we are saddened that the council does not always place the same emphasis on the need to be able to communicate through the medium of Welsh when delivering public services.’

Why on earth would Welsh nationalists welcome ‘the desirability of the Polish language’ in Wales? I would imagine it’s because they don’t want to appear ‘racist’.

Lovely, tidy, smashing.

Call me controversial, but wouldn’t it make more sense to insist that all staff speak English? I’ve never met a Welsh nationalist who can’t understand English. And surely if Poles want to live and work in Britain, the very least they can do is learn the language.

Look, I’ve written repeatedly that I don’t blame anyone wanting to come to Britain looking for work. Much of our expanding economy would collapse without the recent influx of foreign labour.

But we wouldn’t need to recruit so many people from abroad if British men and women were prepared to take lower-paid jobs.

The reason they don’t is because under Labour they found that they were better off staying at home, living on benefits — a scandal which Iain Duncan Smith has spent the past five years trying to address.

Jeff Randall, pictured, reported from Merthyr Tydfil where the unemployed were so lazy they couldn't even be bothered to catch a bus a few miles to Cardiff where there were jobs available

A couple of years ago, Sky’s former business presenter Jeff Randall reported from unemployment black‑spot Merthyr Tydfil, where he discovered people who were so accustomed to living in a dependency culture that they couldn’t even be bothered to catch a bus a few miles to Cardiff, where jobs were available.

NATS HAVE KIM IL-BRUN ON THE RUN Gordon Brown warns that if Britain leaves the EU we will end up like North Korea. You might think that’s something he’d welcome, since he did his level best to turn Britain into a bankrupt socialist paradise. This is the man who was boasting that he’d ‘saved the Union’ a few months back. How’s that working out then? The Nats, who really would model an independent Scotland on North Korea, are heading for a landslide. Brown’s own ‘safest Labour seat in Scotland’ is expected to fall to the SNP. Not that he’s standing again, obviously. As usual, when the going gets tough, Kim Il-Brun goes missing. Advertisement

So is it any wonder that employers in Wales — and across Britain — would rather hire staff from Eastern Europe who are imbued with the work ethic? The problem is that many British people who want to work now find themselves excluded from employment by immigrants, who are often prepared to accept lower wages.

And under EU free movement laws it is illegal to discriminate in favour of British jobseekers.

Gordon Brown banged on about creating ‘British jobs for British workers’ but knew perfectly well it was a non-starter. Farage is also on a hiding to nothing, even though he is simply articulating what millions of people feel.

Immigration has brought benefits, but it’s absurd to pretend it hasn’t created problems. It’s a fact that some British citizens believe and resent, rightly or wrongly, that recent arrivals get a better deal.

The political establishment doesn’t want to hear that kind of dissent, however, so they try to drown out the debate with howls of racism. They have a vested interest in pretending Britain is a deeply racist society, even though we’re far and away the most tolerant nation in Europe.

Their knee-jerk reaction to Farage’s remarks was only to be expected and could have been scripted to support the title of Trevor Phillips’s documentary.

It’s called: Things You Can’t Say About Race That Are True.

As the columnist who coined the expression ‘Guardianistas’ to describe the various Lefties who march under that newspaper’s banner, including the people who run the BBC, I’m beginning to think it’s time for a rebranding.

Given that they like to blame Britain for those they call Islamist ‘militants’ and have never met a terrorist they don’t like, perhaps they should in future be known as GuardianISIS.

Nicola Sturgeon, left, has always reminded me of Rab C. Nesbitt's son Wee Burney, right

A Scottish Labour MSP, David ‘Not Diddy’ Hamilton, has been accused of sexism after calling First Minister Nicola Sturgeon the ‘wee lassie with the tin helmet on’.

That’s a reference to her rather severe new hairdo.

In all fairness, she scrubs up quite well these days.

Before the SNP gave her a makeover she always reminded me of Rab C. Nesbitt’s son, Wee Burney.