A Place to Stand

The Observer & other media have pounced on the Tory candidate who said "Powell was right" on immigration but have been careful not to really say what they are criticising. Yesterday David Davis was interviewed & the interviewer asked him to denounce Hastilow not on the basis of the original article but on what the Observer had said combined with the remark "grinning picanninies" from Powell's speech 40 years ago. Criticism should be of what is actually said. The Full article is available here. In fact he very carefully did not say Powell was right but expressed it as a commonly held opinion:

When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most people say immigration. Many insist: “Enoch Powell was right”.

In fact his only criticism of a racial group is of the British

It’s claimed we couldn’t survive without immigrants to work in our hotels, pubs and restaurants, to pick our fruit and clean our hospitals.

But that’s because we make life too easy for the five million or more people who could be working but enjoy life too much living off the state.

Why are 1.65 million people unemployed when it seems as if there’s a job for more or less anyone who wants one? Why are 2.4 million people claiming incapacity benefit when society is getting healthier?

In the past they would have been accused of “swinging the lead”, “skiving”, “scrounging” or “cheating”. Now we’re told they need “up-skilling” and then they would be only too happy to work (but for their bad backs).

The real question is

And no wonder. Does anybody in the country really want to see our population grow by almost half a million every 12 months so that in 24 years’ time it will have increased by almost 11 million?

And if any media critics wish to answer this, or the rest of what he actually said, I will be very surprised.