THE Conservatives are in danger of becoming a schizophrenic party. On Saturday, Steven Norris, the party vice-chairman, said they needed more candidates who were gay, women and from racial minorities if they wanted to be seen as a "national, inclusive party".

He said he detected "a polite form of racism and homophobia" among some party members.

On Sunday, shadow health secretary Liam Fox said that some foreign doctors working for the NHS could not speak English properly. They should pass a more stringent language test before they were allowed into the country, he said.

His opponents have accused him of "thinly-veiled racism".

Even if Dr Fox has a point - and the newspapers are not full of stories of foreign doctors endangering lives because of their poor grasp of English - he appears to forget that there are so many foreign doctors and nurses here because we have not got enough of our own.

The North-East has first hand experience of this. Last year this region imported 48 South African nurses to stave off a staff shortage.

Dr Fox would appear to be suggesting that we should kick out those doctors who are medically competent but not particularly good with the language. Therefore English tax-payers will suffer through longer waiting lists.

It does indeed seem a silly, half-baked idea guaranteed to buy headlines on a quiet day.

Dr Fox is not the only politician recently to fall into this trap - remember Tony Blair's ill-advised suggestion that policemen should frogmarch violent drunks to a cashpoint where they would happily hand over an on-the-spot fine?

But not many politicians are quite so guilty of missing the point as Dr Fox.

Until recently, a foreign doctor has been operating in Dr Fox's leader's constituency. He performed so poorly that there are 60 complaints against him and the General Medical Council has found him guilty of professional misconduct. One of the more serious charges was that he failed to communicate the problems caused by his incompetence to his patients' GPs.

That doctor was Richard Neale, operating at a hospital in Northallerton where William Hague has his constituency headquarters.

Mr Neale came from Canada, spoke decent English and was white. And he ruined patients' lives.

Dr Fox's time would be better spent addressing the needs of Mr Hague's own constituents by preventing the known problem of medically-incompetent foreign doctors rather than grabbing the headlines with what could easily be called "a polite form of racism"