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If it wasn't a crime, I would kidnap Michael Howard and drive him in a speedy car to the Jewish Museum in Camden, London. Then I would compel him to absorb the message of the current exhibition which marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of the Aliens Act, the first piece of official legislation in Britain to restrict immigration.

The newspapers were then, as now, fanning fear and loathing of newcomers. The Daily Mail screamed: "One million are ready to swamp the west." The Star panicked: ...the flood is sinking Britain" and the local Dover newspaper called the arrivals "the scum of the earth".

They were talking about Jews, about Howard's ancestral people, about people like his father who told whoppers to get into the country. Yes, the leader of the opposition is the son of an illegal immigrant. Today he instigates exactly the same headlines and media vigilante attacks on travellers, asylum seekers and economic migrants, legal and illegal, for votes. Blood, sweat and tears stain the votes that he will undoubtedly gather from Britons who seem for ever in a state of high anxiety that some swarthy foreigner will snap up their good lives.

Howard would be forced to retreat from this malevolent campaigning if the government was prepared to stand up to him on this issue. But Blair is, in many ways, the godson of Thatcher. He could, but doesn't, condemn outright the racist and xenophobic manoeuvres of the Conservatives. (That is exactly what they are. Howard may deny there is any racism in his assertions and policies, but he has never, ever, objected to the hundreds of thousands of white Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Zimbabweans who are in this country.)

It is true too that some newspaper editors who are driving this agenda are in and out of Chequers, best friends of the Blairs. New Labour today is determined, not so much to appease, but to outdo the right. Blair can now prove to the nation that he is even more macho on asylum and immigration, more ruthless, more "patriotic". There are results, too, of this institutional inhumanity. Fewer people are applying to come here from disaster zones. Many deserving migrants and asylum seekers are today being summarily deported - in one case an individual Conservative MP tried to stop an obviously unjust expulsion. Positive Action in Housing in Glasgow publishes stories of individual asylum seekers who are destitute and homeless. They include an elderly couple from Iraq, a mentally ill Iranian and a family from Rwanda which has been split up and is living rough. Can the two leaders really argue that these citizens from these conflict areas are "bogus"?

Even more depressing is the truth that there are black and Asian Tories (some of whom arrived here by illegal means) who agree with Howard's despicable hatemongering. In New Labour, an unprecedented number of powerful black and Asian MPs, peers and ministers who used to demonstrate against Thatcher's "evil" asylum laws, today, like good natives under colonialism, march to the drums of their white masters. More than 40 per cent of their communities support the hard line because they are worried about their own futures in this country. Yet Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism all call their people to reach out to strangers and give them what they need.

The Christian doctrine of charity and mercy towards the dispossessed is all but disappearing among Britain's establishment and middle classes. Belief in redemption too is fading. Retribution in perpetuity is what most people seem now to want. Young offenders - never easy to love - are now denied any possibility that they can reclaim their lives. The Sun wants them horribly punished for ever, even those who are children when they committed crimes. And what The Sun wants, politicians deliver.

The politicians and media thrive on this scapegoating. Voiceless victims suffer as a result. But each time this is done, the fabric of our society coarsens, hardens, feels harsh on our skins, we descend a little more into populist savagery. If it is migrants and young offenders today, how long before we bring back capital punishment and flogging in schools? Under New Labour society has become more drunk, unruly and divided. Now our leaders want us to turn on groups they accuse of destroying "our way of life". To vote for either of these parties in the election would be to vote for barbarism. Which is why I will be voting Lib Dem on 5 May. 

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a journalist and broadcaster.