Labour Must Fight Racism to Win the Election, not Appease Racists

I'm not a politician but I reckon I'm right about one thing. If you want to win a political fight the only way you can do this is to set the agenda rather than react to it. I also feel very strongly that you can't  defeat bad attitudes by playing along with them. 
Ed Balls apparently thinks differently. He thinks that to fight the UKIP menace Labour needs to start addressing peoples fears about immigration. This is in line with a wider message we seem to be getting fed by the media that says that the major political parties do not understand or engage with people's 'legitimate' fears about immigration. Personally I think the Balls strategy is all wrong and that the general media are feeding the anti-EU and anti-immigration frenzy which is being whipped up by UKIP, BNP and all the other xenophobic parties which appeared on the recent ballot.
If Labour want to win at the polls they need to have the courage to believe in something positive  and have faith that the public  will respond to good political debate and rhetoric. Labour need to stand for something different if they want to inspire the public to vote for them. They need to stop colluding with he idea that it is poor people from other countries who are causing them misery. They need to tell the public the truth about the financial crisis and  the dangers of unrestrained financial markets. They need to tell the truth about how good public services cost money rather than trying to flog more PFIs and the like.
Labour needs to sell itself as a party with a vision of something better- not Tory-lite or UKIP-lite but something much better that can give ordinary people hope.
There's still a year to turn this around.