BY FRANK HAVILAND

As Dirty Harry famously put it, opinions are like arseholes: everybody’s got one. Celebrity opinions on the other hand are more like Hugh Grant electoral endorsements: amusing curios, with all the efficacy of oral sex from Siri.

So forgive me if I can’t get too excited about December’s angst-ridden multi-millionaire, ‘Stormzy’, or Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., as I prefer to call him. While naturally I enjoy deciphering the esoteric and allegorical references enshrouded within the Stormzy Canon: ‘f**k the government’, ‘f**k Boris’, or ‘you f**king pussy’, I draw the coke line at taking his political statements seriously.

Except this time Mr Owuo hit on something interesting, albeit inadvertently. Stormzy found himself caught in a Twitter, er, storm last week, when he was misquoted as saying Britain was 100% racist. What he actually said was, ‘definitely, 100%’ when asked if Britain were still racist today. And while he concedes Britain is not in it with the likes of Italy, he believes the election of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump has re-emboldened a lingering sense of racism. The full transcript is available here from the Italian journalist who conducted the interview:

First and foremost, the issue of racism: Mr Owuo may not like to hear it, but we’re all racist; not just whites who vote the wrong way. As an illustration, 3-month-old babies prefer their own race. All ethnicities (with the exception of black men) prefer to date within their own race. And only one in ten Brits has a best friend from a different race.

Bearing that in mind, the sensible gauge of a nation’s racism would seem to be a comparative one, and on this metric Britain is in good shape as possibly the least racist country in Europe. So for Stormzy to be right, there would need to be an overarching, systemic bias in Britain which discriminates against one race over others. There is: against white people.

Mainstream publications, educational institutions, the media, and public figures are now collectively normalising the war on whiteness to such an extent, you’d think they were discussing a sickness, not a race.

Whites are being forced to undergo education on their inherent racism. They’re told they’re racist when they move out (white flight), and when they move in (gentrification). They’re racist when they participate in alternate cultures (appropriation), and when they don’t (non-inclusivity). They’re racist when they see colour, and when they don’t. Trying not to be racist is no defence obviously, because you don’t have to be racist to be racist.

Anything white is too white: Taylor Swift is ‘aggressively white’, the BBC and the theatre are both ‘hideously white’, and don’t even get me started on classical music. Everything white people do is also racist: voting the wrong way, raising money for charity, and drinking milk.

If only they’d listen, there’s plenty of advice out there for whites: pay a white tax, stop having opinions, shut up, be better, or just simply die. There’s also an abundance of hashtags, which though slightly controversial, never seem to provoke any backlash: #WhitePeople is certainly worth a giggle.

We’re told to stop empathising with whites; to ask whether our children can be friends with whites, and informed that white men have to be stopped. There’s even a ready stream of whites queuing up to disavow their whiteness.

Along with ‘man’, ‘white’ is the only word you can confidently affix to another, thereby rendering it automatically pejorative: whitesplain, white fragility, and whitewash all readily spring to mind.

Despite the fact that whites are now being denied jobs purely on the basis of their skin, are the victims in almost half of race hate attacks, and with white working class boys the worst performing demographic educationally, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t be racist to white people.

Past, present and future whiteness is being eradicated. The past via the destruction of white statues, the false diversification of white history, and the replacement of white culture. The present by a relentless call for diversity (non-whiteness), and the future by the literal calls for white genocide.

If the past two decades could be summed up in a phrase, ‘It’s not OK to be white’ would be apposite.

By parroting the victim narrative, Stormzy joins a growing legion of anti-British mouthpieces (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, David Lammy et al), oblivious to the irony of having been nursed at Britain’s teat, and spending their remaining years berating her for the privilege.

Political correctness is of course the root of this magnificent stupidity, as even its most ardent advocates have conceded. And it is pc’s most virulent strain, identity politics, which is the source of wanton and unnecessary division in Britain. The absurd idea that truths may only be spoken by those with the right victim status is a wicked lie.

How can it be taken seriously that a black man can rightly highlight the problem of absentee black fathers, but a white man cannot agree with him? Why is it ok for Maajid Nawaz to talk about Muslim rape gangs, but immediately a sacking offence for Sarah Champion? Why is it hip for Stormzy to rap about the Tory government, but racist for Michael Gove to quote Stormzy’s lyrics back to him?

There is of course a more sinister side to the left’s obsession with identity, which is the bigotry of low expectations. That Corbyn’s Labour Party chose to align themselves with Stormzy is predictable. That Corbyn’s Labour Party claimed the ability to ‘unlock’ minority potential, shameful. But the fact that Stormzy is promoted as some sort of messianic figure; that he is welcomed into primary schools, and given the BBC’s Christmas address, is contemptible.

The black community has more to offer than an illiterate, gang-glorifying thug with Tourette’s, and the implication to the contrary is morally repulsive.

If the recent election has taught us anything, it’s that Britain has soundly rejected woke politics. Your victim status is irrelevant: bad ideas ought to be challenged, bad motives deserve to be questioned, and bad characters need to be exposed. Objecting to Stormzy as either a worthy ambassador or one whose opinion merits adherence, should not be controversial.

Whatever his musical acumen, Stormzy would do well to ensure his political activism is thoroughly-researched, and his facts correct. Or as the great man more eloquently puts it: ‘Oi rudeboy, shut up!’