The Nonsensical Neather Plot

Conspiracies are all the rage these days. And since this has turned into Immigration Week here one might as well address the Neather Brouhaha. This, British readers will need no reminding, refers to the uncovering of the nefarious New Labour plan to destroy Britain and spike the Tories’ guns forever by destroying this green and pleasant land and turning it into a multi-cultural hellhole.

We are led to understand that this was indeed a deliberate plot, apparently borrowed from the Democrats’ presumed determination to make the United States a Spanish-speaking Banana Republic. The evidence [sic] for this rests upon two paragraphs from an article written by a former government speechwriter. According to Andrew Neather, a report from Downing Street’s Performance and Innovation Unit [sic] saw immigration as a massive political opportunity for the government:

But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.