One of the genuine seasonal pleasures to be enjoyed as 2013 slipped around the U-bend was Enoch Powell making his familiar comeback as the Evil Ghost of Christmases Past. Enoch was disinterred by the producers of the hitherto un-noticed Murnaghan Show — presumably in order to frighten the viewers and put a spanner in the wheel of the programme’s principal guest interviewee, the Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
Dermot Murnaghan tripped up Mr Farage by the devilishly clever tactic of reading him some anodyne quotes from Powell’s exciting and controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and asking Farage if he agreed with them. But only later did he reveal that they were the words of the sulphurous Antichrist Powell! Brilliant. The quote Murnaghan used was about how mass immigration had led people to consider themselves strangers in their own neighbourhoods and placed a bit of a strain on local infrastructure. Farage, like I suspect a good 60 per cent of the population, nodded along in agreement, and the trap was sprung. Ha! You love Enoch, you do. You probably want to marry him.
A terrific ploy. They must take it further. When David Cameron is a guest on the Murnaghan Show, Dermot should ask him if he agrees with the following: ‘As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have a duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.’ And when the Prime Minister says yep, that’s me, down to the bone, Dermot can pounce: ‘Hitler said that! You’re Hitler, you are.’ And for Nick Clegg: ‘I’m quite modest. I don’t want to tell people I’m a leader.’ That’s Pol Pot! Nick’s Pol Pot! Maybe if they have Archbishop Welby on one day they can ask him if he agrees with this: ‘Man is subject to certain desires and needs which are as natural to his being as they are to that of any other animal.’
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