Those who think Britain is no longer a great and decent country should consider the events of the past two weeks: an alleged Islamist plot to attack airliners has already led to the charging of 11 suspects; our airports have been in turmoil; there is a furore over the effectiveness and propriety of ethnic ‘passenger profiling’; the Home Secretary warns that there are ‘dozens’ more terrorist plots under investigation.
Yet — in the midst of all this — the country is finally embarking upon a long-needed debate on immigration, and doing so (with a very few exceptions) in a calm and pragmatic fashion. Elsewhere in the world, such a conjunction of events would have led to inflammatory rhetoric by politicians and widespread social disorder. It is a tribute to the common sense of the British that the real target of abuse has been not immigrants or ethnic minorities, but the government.
Ministers predicted that 26,000 migrants would arrive from new EU countries between 2004 and 2006. The actual figure, it was announced last week, was 427,000 and Tony McNulty, the immigration minister, was forced to concede that the total may be closer to 600,000 when those who failed to register are taken into account.
For four decades, the British debate on immigration has been stultified, caught between the two extremes of Powellism and political correctness. Labour and Tory have both resorted to daft rhetoric in response to popular anxiety; William Hague, when he was Conservative leader, famously warned that Britain might become a ‘foreign land’, while No. 10 trumped him in May 2002 by floating plans to deploy Royal Navy warships and RAF warplanes to
intercept refugees.
Last week it was possible to see the seeds of a more mature argument.
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