A BBC Scotland host was forced to apologise after being called out by an SNP MP for echoing far-right rhetoric during a broadcast on Wednesday.
Gary Robertson, who was hosting the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, had asked the SNP’s Stephen Gethins if anti-immigration protesters outside Home Office hotels had “a point” that asylum seekers are given advantages that aren’t given to “the indigenous population”.
An audibly surprised Gethins responded: “Well, I'm not sure what you mean, first of all, by the ‘indigenous population’?”
Robertson said he meant “those born here”, leading the SNP MP to go on: “You know 10 million people in the UK who are UK citizens were not born here. So do they fall within the category of non-indigenous, Gary?
“That’s 10 million people in the UK. That's a huge proportion of the UK population that you've just disenfranchised there.”
Robertson responded: “Forgive me for my clumsy language, but you understand the point that they are making, which is they believe people are perhaps living in the lap of luxury, that kind of thing, in hotels, and other people who live here are struggling with the cost of living crisis, for instance, we've just seen bills going up again.”
Gethins said that it was a “cost of living crisis made worse by Brexit and by Nigel Farage, there's direct correlation”.
The use of the term “indigenous” has long been used by the far right to describe white British people.
It is frequently used by far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as “Tommy Robinson”.
In one social media post which almost exactly echoes Robertson’s question, Yaxley-Lennon wrote: “Asylum seekers and economic migrants [are] getting social housing before tax paying indigenous Brits.”
The term led to significant backlash when used by former BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time in 2009 to insist his far-right, white-only party was not racist but simply supported "indigenous people".
In 2022, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank warned that the fascist Patriotic Alternative were aiming to “hijack” World Indigenous Day with racist content, saying that the far right were trying to “appropriate the concept of being indigenous to push a conspiracy theory grounded in ethnonationalism”.
The BBC host said: “He's painting it as a case of taking sides here, and he posed the question yesterday, whose side are you on?
“Are you on the side of women and children that he feels are being threatened in this country by the levels of migration that we're seeing, or he says, are you on the side of dubious courts and the decisions that they make?”
On the small boat crossings and immigration levels which Farage has made his totem policy, Gethins said: “Look, first of all, Gary, it was Nigel Farage who advocated for a policy that saw this situation being introduced.
“It's a bit like somebody setting your house on fire and then turning up to say, ‘Don't worry, I'll sort it out now’.
“You caused this problem. We're in this situation because of you. We're poorer because of you, and we have a ‘small boats crisis’ because of you.
“People should be held accountable, and I'm sorry, Gary, but Nigel Farage is an extraordinarily damaging politician.”
Addressing the demonstrations outside asylum hotels, the former professor in international relations called for people to speak to politicians and those in power, not focus on asylum seekers.
He said: “If you've got a refugee who's just fled a conflict – it might be a single mum with a number of kids with her who are seeking asylum, who've just fled a war, possibly in Sudan, the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, fled the horrors of Gaza or fled the Taliban in Afghanistan – is protesting to them the right place to protest?”
