It's not that the Westminster agenda-setters haven't been slapping down race cards left, right and centre. But, these days, unlike past culture struggles, the Rushdie Affair, Tebbit's cricket test, Thatcher's suggestion that Asians were planning to swamp Britain, the focus for discussion has managed to keep more or less within civilised limits.

In contrast to Paris and Bonn, where pandering to the extreme right seems to be the order of the day, the current chatter in London isn't about race relations between blacks and whites. This election, it's about Scottish and Welsh devolution, European integration and, more generally, England's role in the disunited Kingdom.

Although the main cause of this is the realisation that the question of national sovereignty is coming to a boil, the disregard for the race issue, at least in its black and white, red in tooth and claw variety, an issue which a decade ago seemed so full of import for Britain and its future, has everything to do with generational change.

The vast majority of British people, certainly those who live in the larger cities, those who are economically active, certainly those under 40, those who grew up in the multicultural Seventies, recognise that blacks and Asians, British blacks and British Asians, are not about to go back "home".

Meanwhile, members of the ethnic minorities, particularly those who were born and educated here, now feel that Britain, for better or worse, is home. Where else to go, when Britain is all you really know?

According to research carried out last year on behalf of Race for Opportunity, the Business in the Community sponsored campaign which promotes economic activity among ethnic minorities, British Asians are drawn to big-name brands such as Kellogg's and Cadbury's and firms seen as "British", such as British Gas and British Telecom. It suggests this is part of a "fervent desire to be accepted, understood and integrated" into British life.

The researchers might be putting it a bit strong; but there is a feeling among British Asians of wanting to belong. Allied to this, there's the hope, at least for some, that tomorrow will be better than today, and that today is possibly not all that bad.

Looking back at the last thirty years, at the Sixties and early Seventies, when nonwhite immigration into Britain reached its peak, many British Asians find themselves occupying, in material terms, quite comfortable niches in British society. They feel relatively at ease.

To that extent, the Prime Minister was right when, in January, during his tour of the Indian subcontinent and then later at the speech to British Asians at London's Commonwealth Institute, he spoke about the British Asian business success story.

British Asian businesses have done well. Twenty of the 500 wealthiest families in Britain can be described as British Asian. Lakshmi Mittal, who owns Ispat, the world's largest privately owned steel company, is worth £1.5 billion. The Hinduja family, which operates a worldwide trading, finance and industrial group, is worth £1.1 billion. Swarj Paul, who owns Caparo,the engineering company, and who was recently elevated to the House of Lords as a Labour peer, is worth £500 million.

It becomes a moot point to argue whether these businessmen and their families have any meaningful similarities with the great mass of British Asians. Yes, many of the richest Asians already come from moneyed backgrounds. They usually represent the newest manifestation of old money; the British end of a multinational family company.

But the values they embody, the proverbial ones of thrift, hard-work and dependence on family and community, are ones common to many British Asians.

Proof of this is the finding by Mars, the confectioners, that Asians own 65 per cent of independently owned shops in Britain. Open all hours, the corner shop perhaps typifies the British Asian work ethic: work hard; run your own business; secure your own future.

And the end result? A second generation of British Asians confident enough to know that they don't want to follow in their parent's footstep; a generation intent on becoming professionals rather than also-rans. Pushed into Public School, or at least Grant-Maintained crammers, they roll into Oxbridge, or at least the new universities, and tumble out ready to go and work in the City, or at least in the family business.

Sounds familiar? The road from Grantham to Downing Street must have been a similarly tough one. And, by all accounts, so too was the trek from Brixton.

The Jewish members of the Conservative party can, no doubt, report on the hardships faced by their parents as they journeyed from the East End to north London suburbia and the prospect of a grammar school education for their children.

Which goes some way to explaining why the modern Conservative party is quite so enthusiastic about British Asians.

Of course, Major is also keen to woo the Asian vote. And the Asian wallet. Tory party coffers have done quite nicely as a result of Asian businesses digging deep in their pockets to help their financially-embarrassed friends in the south.

The other effect of highlighting the Asian success story is that it reinforces Middle England's feel-good factor. If Asian businesses are doing well, then, by golly, we can't be doing too badly ourselves - or so the Tory spin-doctors must be hoping.

There is a flip side to this. Go to inner-city Britain, to Manningham, say, in Bradford, and the Asian success story soon crumbles. One of Bradford's most disadvantaged areas, Manningham has an unemployment rate of 32 per cent, compared to an average of around 10 per cent for the rest of the city. Some 70 per cent of its population under 30 are of Pakistani/Kashmiri/Bangladeshi origin. Around 45 per cent of these are unemployed.

Not surprisingly, a thousand Asian youths or perhaps a hundred - the figures vary depending on whose account you listen to - went on the "rampage" in the summer of 1995.

Today, government schemes try to channel energy into business startup schemes. But Bradford Council warns that the failure rate for startups is disappointingly high.

The picture's pretty much the same elsewhere in the country. According to the latest Labour Force Survey, over a third of economically active Asians under 25 are unemployed - around 47,000 people.

What all of this means is that some British Asians are doing well, some are doing badly. British Asians are not a homogenous group. Their experiences differ because of the various factors which set one British Asian community apart from another.

What should be taken with a pinch of salt is any idea from Conservative Central Office that the few Asian businesses which have done extraordinarily well somehow encapsulates all the Asian experiences of life in Britain.

A recent Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) survey found that many whites are envious of British Asians, their capacity for hard work, their strong sense of identity, their strong sense of family loyalty, their success. The researchers reported that the English who were interviewed showed deep anxiety about their own identity, they felt threatened.

After the general election, if, as the polls indicate,the Conservatives lose and middle England implodes, don't be too surprised if the race card you eventually see turns out to be pretty familiar.