The great John O’Sullivan has a story about Enoch Powell which he keeps promising to put into print. Since he still hasn’t done so, I will risk repeating it here. It occurred during a conversation some years after the Rivers of Blood speech. A group of conservatives were talking, and Powell was among them. At some point one of those present referred to the 1968 speech and asked Powell: ‘Why did you do it?’

Powell’s reply started something like this: ‘When the lark sings in the morning they do not say – “Oh lark why dost thou sing?” When the nightingale gives forth her song…’ and so on. After Powell had gone through an array of the bird kingdom metaphors, he came to his clincher: ‘And so it was with me that day in Birmingham.’

I was thinking about Birmingham and Powell this week for a number of reasons. Firstly, because he was the MP for nearby Wolverhampton; secondly, because it is where he gave his famous speech; and finally because it is where the latest outbreak of sectarian politicking in our country has occurred.

The bad news on immigration and integration in this country floods in so fast these days that it is hard to keep up with. But even in the mêlée that is modern Britain, the news that Israeli football fans have been told not to go to Birmingham because they will not be safe there is striking.

Nowadays the area has local politicians of a lesser intellectual calibre than Powell. Ayoub Khan was last year........

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