No need to apologise, Sir Keir

Our prime minister hardly ever speaks the truth or makes an accurate observation. And what do you know: when he broke that dismal trend the other day, he had to apologise for it.

Watching the back of Nigel Farage pulling further ahead in the polls, Starmer realised he had to do something to slow Reform down. So he did.

Uncontrolled immigration, said Sir Keir, taking his cue from Farage, risks turning Britain into an “island of strangers”. That was a bold statement, coming from him, and Starmer was made to regret it.

All hell broke loose. Starmer’s parteigenossen screamed bloody murder, or rather ‘Rivers of Blood’. That is what the Left call Enoch Powell’s 1968 speech about, well, uncontrolled immigration. Yet the similarities between the two orations are strictly marginal.

Powell was prophesying something in danger of happening. Starmer was commenting on something that has already happened. Powell had to rely on his strong analytical mind; Starmer merely had to keep his eyes open.

Unlike Starmer, Powell was an intelligent and educated man. That was his undoing because he said, among other things: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.

The Roman in question was Virgil, and Powell quoted from The Aeneid. However, his detractors, unburdened by classical education, only heard the words ‘river’ and ‘blood’.

Since then, Powell has been the target of unremitting posthumous vitriol, as conservative prophets usually are, especially when they are proved right. Even the original conservative knew that, which is why he said: “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country.”

In the same speech Powell also expressed his foreboding less poetically. If immigration continued unabated, he said, the white population would find themselves “strangers in their own country”.

Since Starmer also used the word ‘strangers’, his fellow Marxists squealed so loudly that one could get the impression they’d like to ban the offensive word from the English language. Would they burn every recording of Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Seeing a leadership challenge looming large before his very eyes, Starmer hastily apologised for having uttered the only true statement in his life. Neither he nor his speechwriters, he pleaded, realised that unfortunate turn of phrase would make him sound like that dreadful man, Powell.

This reminds me of a story from the 1920s. When the great pianist Leopold Godowsky instructed his pupil how to play a particular phrase, the boy protested: “But if I play it like this, I’ll sound like Rachmaninov.” Don’t worry about it,” smiled Godowsky. “You won’t.”

His Marxist friends jumped on Starmer’s case not because what he had said wasn’t true, but because it was. If London is anything to go by, white Britons (even co-opted ones like me) already look and sound alien in the nation’s capital.

They represent just over a third of the city’s population, and you don’t need statistics to confirm it. Purely anecdotal evidence gathered during a walk through central London should suffice.

The palette one encounters in the throng is distinctly off-white, and English is hardly ever spoken, especially in a way that betokens a native command. The staffs of shops and restaurants are mostly either from North Africa or the Middle East, or perhaps the low-rent parts of Eastern Europe.

Many of them can hardly speak or understand English. And even some immigrants from the civilised parts of Europe are strictly monolingual in their mother tongue. When the French bakery chain, Pain Quotidien, opened in the King’s Road, Penelope and I had to speak to the staff in French to make ourselves understood.

And I’m talking here about the upscale city centre, not the predominantly Muslim and West Indian areas of South and East London. A blindfolded stranger dropped in the middle of those places who’d then have his blindfold removed would wonder if he is in Pakistan or Jamaica. Another possibility wouldn’t even occur to him.

As I said, you don’t need statistics to realise that Powell’s prophecy has come true. But statistics are available, for those doubting Thomases who refuse to believe the evidence before their own eyes.

Four in ten people living in London were born overseas. One in seven are Muslims, which number includes our illustrious and recently knighted mayor, known in some quarters by his nickname, Sadist Khan.

Nearly one-quarter of Londoners don’t speak English as their main language, and 320,000 of them can’t speak English at all. That’s the population of a sizeable city, such as Leicester.

Some 600,000 illegal immigrants also bless London with their presence, and I find this datum baffling. If statisticians can count them, then the authorities know who they are and where they live. How come they are still at large and in Britain? People committing illegal acts are criminals, aren’t they? Don’t tell me – I know you know, and you know I know.

The usual claim is that diversity enriches Britain’s culture. Well, it certainly doesn’t enrich her economy: migrants take much more out of it than they put in, and that’s before we count the intolerable pressure they put on public services and infrastructure.

Nor can I see how several million newcomers who can hardly string two English words together make the natives more cultured and refined. It’s easier to see how they can make the natives poorer and less safe.

Statistics bear this supposition out, certainly in London, which provides a glittering example for the rest of the country to follow. Over the past few years, shoplifting has gone up 15 per cent in England – but 54 per cent in London. Theft has gone down 14 per cent in England – and up 41 per cent in London.

Muggings, burglaries, robberies, car theft (a category in which London comfortably leads all major Western cities), even murder – crime is spinning out of control at an ever-increasing speed. Hordes of beggars and people sleeping rough may not be breaking any criminal laws, but they certainly don’t add much to the gaiety of the place.

Three of the top four most dangerous towns in England are upmarket boroughs of Central London (which for the purposes of that study were treated as separate towns): Westminster (crime rate of 432.3 per 1,000 population), Camden (195.2) and Kensington & Chelsea (157.3).

Not all of this crime wave is caused by immigrants, as they exert their ameliorating cultural influence on England. But much of it is.

Any sociologist worth his salt and a shot of tequila will tell you that large groups of aliens feeling no historical, cultural or social attachment to a place are bound to have a detrimental effect on its identity. Again, anecdotal evidence comes in handy.

I moved to London in 1988. And the London I moved to a mere 37 years ago was a different and infinitely better place than it is now. Much of this deterioration has been caused by foreign elements in the city having reached or exceeded the critical mass.

A couple of hundred thousand newcomers can make a city more interesting. Restaurants offering exotic fare pop out, French bakeries and Italian delis compete for custom. The city’s soul (especially its tastebuds) may indeed become enriched. But when the indigenous population is turned into a dwindling minority, that soul is ripped out.

The Great Fire of 1666 burned much of London, but it didn’t cauterise its soul. The problem Starmer mentioned is much worse – it shows what devastation his ideology can wreak on a vibrant and flourishing city.

So apology not accepted, Sir Keir. It’s denied for being stupid and cowardly.