Have been meaning for some time to find reference to Andrew Neather, the Labour (UK) staffer who revealed some of the thinking behind Blair and Co's wide opening of UK borders. Here I find the reference, in a Peter Hitchens article:
The opening of our ports had "a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural".
Even this apostle of modernity [Neather] was a bit worried. "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was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.
"Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing . . . there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour’s core white working-class vote."
I [Hitchens] happen to think this brief glimpse of the truth was the most important political revelation of our time. I believe the ideas behind it still rule.Read more
