Months before the election, race had become an issue. Bradford West Labour party filed a complaint with the Commission for Racial Equality claiming that during a Conservative rally the editor of an Urdu-language paper was encouraging people to vote for a Muslim candidate. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is to try to see Asians and Afro-Caribbeans as homogenous. They are not,' he says. Suddenly I am beginning to miss the relative stability of racial politics in America.
Race is more complex here.
In fact, Britain seems to sustain two opposing trends simultaneously. Some are trying to pull ethnic minorities in under a single banner, while for others, even the categories black and Asian are too broad. They would prefer to see people organised around religions or ethnicities. The last stop on my journey is a drop-in centre in Bradford West where I am introduced to a group of six regulars. They are all Asian, all Muslim, all young men between the ages of 18 and 21.