To people who get seduced by Tory talk of how liberal they are, I find something very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti.

- Andy Burnham, culture secretary.

Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.

- James McGrath, former adviser to the Mayor of London, in response to claims that older Afro-Caribbean Londoners might return to the West Indies as a result of Boris Johnson’s election.

Two brouhahas - one featuring a Labour minister, the other a minor Tory crony. But both show the same dangerous trend - for politically-motivated offence.

I’m completely flabbergasted that the majority of significant female commentators - men seem to have shied away - are convinced Burnham deliberately implied the head of Liberty, Chakrabarti, was boning David Davis. It’s just clearly not the case. Look at the language he used. “Hand-wringing” is a standard slur on bleeding-heart liberals. “Heart-melting” surely suggests friendship, affection even, but hardly romance. He could have gagged about them “in bed together” mixing the metaphorical sense with the literal. But for God’s sake, he talked about phone calls.

Shadow Justice Minister Eleanor Laing reportedly asked whether Burnham would have made such a remark had Chakrabati been a man. The answer, I suspect, is actually “yes”. As naff as it is, more explicit suggestions of sexual relations between male politicians are quite common. For example, the Mirror had a cover before the Iraq war of Tony Blair and George Bush pecking each other on the cheek, with the slogan “make love, not war”. As a rule, cautious politicians should avoid such tricks: they carry the risk of being seen as homophobic, if the idea of two powerful men in love is seen in itself to be funny. Where male and female public figures are implied to be an item, it’s likely the personalities themselves - rather than the whole idea of - gasp - men and women in love that’s funny. But this is irrelevant, because surely this isn’twhat Burnham meant. The sense of genuine bewilderment at Chakrabati’s furious misinterpretation is palpable in Burnham’s letter of apology.

On the surface, McGrath’s remarks are more worrying - not because racism is more worrying than sexism, but because the apparent endorsement of send-the-buggers-back repatriationism by the Australian amounts to a much more serious manifestation of racism than implying a male minster and a female campaigner might fancy each other does of sexism. Except, of course, it doesn’t, because that is not - as is immediately obvious, surely, to anyone with a brain - what McGrath was saying.

Darcus Howe - who, despite writing columns consisting essentially of unconnected, wildly unevidenced assertions about racism in a fairly random order, still evidently knows how to start a row - wrote a column before the election suggesting that older Afro-Caribbean voters might return to the West Indies in the event of a Johnson victory. The internet journalist interviewing McGrath put this point to him, gaining this response.

As with Burnham’s remark, there are two possible readings of this. Well, alright, three. One is simply that McGrath is a racist, who would prefer to see Britain free of immigrants (not counting himself) and endorses with enthusiasm the idea that Johnson’s policies may speed that day. This, it seems, is the interpretation some observers - not least the journalist who posed the question - have put on it.

The second, and most benign possibility, is that McGrath simply meant: anyone who doesn’t like it here can leave. London is not exactly suffering from underpopulation. Love it or leave it. I can imagine some of you scoffing at such a race-free interpretation. But let’s face it - there is nothing in McGrath’s actual remark to suggest this isn’t what he meant. The question asked about a specific group, but that doesn’t mean McGrath’s response doesn’t reflect his wider attitude.

The final interpretation is, I suspect, the most likely. This is that McGrath meant no racism, but that the remark revealed an underlying attitude that could be considered racist (but equally, would be considered not to be by many). This would be that first-generation immigrants, while welcome to stay as long as they want to, can’t expect society to change to meet their needs. As long as Britain suits them, they can stay. But if it doesn’t, they’re welcome to go home.

The problem with this view, this interpretation notes, is that it gives immigrants - and the elderly immigrants Howe was describing are, of course, now citizens - less of a value as members of society than “born and bred” Britons. No-one would ever say to anyone born and bred in Camden to leave London if they don’t like what’s happening to the city.

I don’t agree with that. There’s a tendency on both sides of the political spectrum towards the tyranny of the majority. It can be seen in Tebbit’s call for the unemployed to move to find work. If the political system, the reflection of the will of the majority, doesn’t meet the needs of a minority - doesn’t deliberately discriminate against them, but doesn’t satisfy them - that’s tough on them. This is hardly a stunning thing for a politician to say. Cities have never been cosy. Rising prices, gentrification, crime - all have driven plenty of long-settled residents out. Even if not stated, “if they don’t like it let them leave” is a steady part of any city’s ethos - at least, any city with the never-ending flow of aspiring residents gifted to London.

Which of these interpretations is the right one? I don’t know. But in the absence of any firm evidence, it seems wrong to assume the worst. Yet that is what many observers have done. Much like in the Burnham case.

How politically motivated is this rush to take offence? I honestly don’t know. Of course opposition MPs jumped on Burnham as proof that Labour is becoming the Nasty Party, and Ken Livingstone has been quick to call McGrath’s comments proof of the “real culture of City Hall”. But less predictable than the politicking has been the fury on the part of media commentators. This is what’s so worrying - people in the press taking offence simply because it’s the most suitable interpretation for a column. A rush to condemn, by people who are supposed to be outisde observers, because everyone enjoys reading that the Government are bastards and the Tories are racist.

Neither Burnham or McGrath has admitted meaning what they have taken to mean. The Burnham spat has died down with Chakrabarti’s acceptance of his apology. But Burnham - a well-meaning and competent, if profoundly boring, politican - has probably had his career chances singed. McGrath, incredibly, has been fired - not for being racist, Johnson made clear, but merely for seeming it.

The implications of this are worrying. All a politician has to do these days, it seems, to be embroiled in scandal, is to say something that could be misconstrued to have a meaning that would be sexist or racist. This in a time when politicians are being asked to speak for the media constantly. The internet, of course, exacerbates the problem. Burnham’s remarks were made in Progress, a regular pamphlet of the Labour right - ten years ago its contents would never have bubbled through to the mainstream press in time for the story to catch on. McGrath’s comments were made to an activist, Marc Wandsworth, written up on a “citizen’s journalism” website. Commentson the site focus on the stupid headline, which twists McGrath’s remarks into “Blacks should ‘go back home if they don’t like Mayor’”; and Wandsworth’s own sweeping generalisations about Australia.

The inevitable result, surely, will be that politicians will become scared to say anything of any consequence at all. And then we’ll start having a go at them for being bland…

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