Hannan: why we should not campaign on the removal of the Tories’ biggest backfiring weapon

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

In yet another interview with the US Media, Daniel Hannan has praised Enoch Powell as one of his poltical influences.

The right-wing Tory MEP, who previously called the NHS “a mistake” that he “wouldn’t wish on anybody” has now praised the fearmongering Conservative MP of the 60s and 70s, who was most famous for saying:

“In 15 or 20 years time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man. We must be mad, literally mad as a nation, to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre…She is becoming afraid to go out; windows are broken; she finds extreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children: charming, wide-grinning piccaninees…Here is their means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise and consolidate their members…to overawe and dominate the rest.”

That speech was given in reaction to the introduction by the Labour Government of the Race Relations Act 1968 which prohibited discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnicity on the provision of housing, employment and public services.

The video is below, and Hannan praises Powell after 1 minute 50 seconds.

According to Paul Waugh, David Cameron is again unwilling to completely distance himself from his “eccentric” posterboy. Conservative HQ says had Hannan “explicitly praised Powell on race or immigration, David Cameron would have had a different response”.

Personally, I don’t think it matters in which context Hannan praised Enoch Powell: the praise as a hero of this at best ignorant and at worst xenophobic Conservative anachronism is unbefitting of any modern British elected representative, especially one who is employed to represent us abroad.

That said, David Cameron is not going to cut off his nose to spite his face, and – from a Labour perspective – we shouldn’t want him to.

We know that the Tories have an unweildy right wing, which is loud and influential in spite of Cameron’s own cuddly PR positioning. But we also know that Cameron sees Hannan as an asset – that’s why he presented him with a podium, a microphone and a keynote at the Conservative Spring Conference just a few months ago.

So Labour should not be campaigning to get the Tories to sack Hannan, because he can do more damage to their modernisation attempts than we ever could. As the self-appointed international spokesperson for the Conservatives, he will not be able to contain himself in the future – and each time he speaks he reveals the hardened right behind our so-called “government in waiting”.

Why deprive the Tories of their biggest, baddest, backfiring weapon?