When, back in 2005, Michael Howard said, ‘it’s not racist to talk about immigration’, his words sounded less like a statement of the obvious than a plea for the political and media classes to cut him some slack. They didn’t, of course. The then Conservative leader was roundly chided for playing the race card, accused of giving aid and comfort to the BNP, and warned that his focus on immigration would lead to an increase in racial assaults.
These days, however, everyone is thinking what Michael Howard was thinking three years ago. Gordon Brown talks about ‘British jobs for British workers’; Labour has no qualms about blowing the dog-whistle on Polish migrants at the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, and the BBC appears to have granted Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of the anti-immigration pressure group MigrationWatch UK, indefinite leave to remain on the airwaves.
All this represents an amazing turnaround in attitudes. Ever since Enoch Powell’s famous speech at Birmingham’s Midland Hotel in 1968, immigration has remained perilous terrain for mainstream politicians. Many have preferred simply not to go there for fear of being denounced as racists. Forty years on, the government’s chief enforcer of political correctness, the equalities supremo Trevor Phillips, also speaking at the Midland Hotel, said ‘the more we talk about immigration, the better’. Arguably the chief beneficiary of this new licence has been David Cameron, who finds himself able to set out policies to control immigration on ground that has been thoroughly decontaminated.
So what changed? Certainly there was popular pressure. For years voters have been telling pollsters that immigration was one of their main concerns. The persistent refusal of politicians to engage with the issue has been one of the chief causes of growing disillusionment with Westminster.
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