The Long Shadow Of Enoch Powell

How many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had, Dave? None, I bet. Well done on being so polite to your social inferior, the King of Saudi Arabia. No such wog would ever be let into the Buller.

Yes, Enoch Powell was wrong about immigration (although it is obvious to the point of platitude that immigration has changed and will change Britain, the subject of the current controversy). But that wasn't the only thing he ever said. Nor did his rather cerebral utterances have very much impact. The National Front was already there, and in any case he would have lost them and theirs with "Like the Roman", never mind "I see the River Tiber".

Powell is in fact a score draw. He was wrong about immigration and about economics, and he was incomprehensibly unable to see how the two were connected. But he was right about Europe and about Northern Ireland.

Powell's real legacy will be the realisation, when it finally comes, that those who do not want unrestricted immigration should oppose the "free" market, and that those who do not want the "free" market should oppose unrestricted immigration. Not what he wanted. Not what he believed. But the only conclusion to which his story leads.