Lights Under Bushels

"There is no point in me denying it, I happen to have religious conviction. I don't actually think there is anything wrong in having religious conviction – on the contrary, I think it is a strength for people."

Our former Prime Minister, "who takes a Bible with him wherever he goes and last thing at night he will read from the Bible," now tells us that "the job is as much about character and temperament as it is about anything else. For me having faith was an important part of being able to do that." Given that 23% of our country's MPs admit to being Christian, it is a pity Blair didn't have the faith to say so while he was in his position of influence and leadership. Maybe Blair never got to reading his Lord and Saviour's exhortation in Matthew 5:14-16:

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Middle East Optimism

While convinced that Mr Abbas needs a clear "political horizon", Mr Blair is said to accept Israel's position that it will not move to concrete final status negotiations until it is confident that such a state is coherent enough not to pose a threat to Israel's security.

In his view therefore a programme of Palestinian "capacity building"; the measures Mr Abbas needs to ease the restrictions on Palestinian economy - and boost it in areas like the Jordan valley, which Mr Blair toured this week; and the central diplomatic process, are all interdependent.

Part of this conviction stems from his experience in Northern Ireland, where he faced continuous objections from the Army to "demilitarisation" plans. But when the Army saw their objections might be blamed for holding back a political process, they were more reluctant to press them.

I was about to comment on The Independent's optimistic review of Tony Blair's Middle East mission, but notice that His Grace has already done so with his usual eloquence: He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy. I am inclined to agree with his verdict:

Will he do it? Well, Cranmer has a hunch that he will. He achieved in Northern Ireland what had been deemed a religio-political impossibility, and today The Rt Hon Ian RK Paisley is governing the Province with an unrepentant terrorist at his side. It would be churlish not to put this down in very large part to the conviction, sincerity and charisma of Mr Blair.

Deedes - a gentleman, a scholar

On the day that we learn of the passing of Lord Deedes, an extraordinary journalist and commentator, I am struck by the chasm between his history of words, and the likely words of Tony Blair.

Whilst Bill Deedes is proven beyond compare as a writer of eloquence, insightfulness, and care, we are now faced with a bidding war over the memoirs of an ex-prime minister whose sought-for 'legacy' failed to materialise in reality, and therefore now needs to be created in a fact-fiction collaboration.

Is it really necessary for us all to relive once again the past ten years of presidential presumption, and the side-lining of parliament? Are we likely to learn anything more than some insider gossip of a government that perpetuates the myth that legislation changes hearts and minds? And does the UK really benefit from the previous prime minister, from a now un-elected and un-accountable position, writing about important events that are bound to include the current prime minister, and based on their stormy relationships, in a possibly not too rosy light?

I'm unconvinced, (as you might be able to tell), about the appeal of such memoirs. I'd much rather be directed to a file of articles by W F Deedes, from which I am likely to learn much more about political institutions, leadership - and the manners of a gentleman and a scholar.

Blair's Last Words

Mahatma Gandhi once noted, "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." What a shame that Cherie, on behalf of the Blairs, felt she had to have the last word as she left Downing Street. Having already given the BBC's Nick Robinson "the daggers" when earlier in Parliament he wished the family well, she sneered towards the media "I don't think we'll miss you."

European Fundamentals

Blair's top non-negotiable "red line" was "We will not accept a treaty that allows the charter of fundamental rights to change UK law in any way."

Yet look what we find on page 18 of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) mandate, under "II. AMENDMENTS TO THE EU TREATY":

9. The Article on fundamental rights will contain a cross reference³ to the Charter on fundamental rights, as agreed in the 2004 IGC, giving it legally binding value and setting out the scope of its application.

³ Therefore, the text of the Charter on fundamental rights will not be included in the Treaties.

(BTW, the seemingly innocuous "IGC 2004" refers to the Conference that adopted an amended version of the 2003 Constitution.)

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps I have failed to understand the legalese to be found in all the footnotes. Patiently checking the Open Europe blog periodically, they posted a report earlier today, The Constitution by any other name, in which they write:

Open Europe’s legal analysis, based on interviews with judges at the European Court of Justice, shows that there is a powerful body of evidence that even with such “safeguards” [designed to stop the Charter from changing national law - inserted at the UK’s insistence], the Charter would still come to change national law.

• We interviewed several judges at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), who said that they believed the Charter would change national laws, despite the safeguards. This is crucial, as it would be the Court’s judges who would ultimately decide on how to interpret the Charter if the constitutional treaty is ratified.
• One EU judge said it would “renew” member states’ labour laws and would be “a basis for challenging national law”. Another has said it is “foolish” to think it will not affect national laws. Even the President of the Court explicitly refused to deny that the Charter may be used to change member states laws.
• One judge told us: “The problem for the UK is that the social rights of the Charter could make it obligatory for the UK to accept some rights that they don’t accept in the same way as other European countries… they are afraid that because of the social rights in the charter the Court and the EU would extend the practice of other member states to the UK. I’d say that it’s more [like] a continental model, than an English model of social relations. So in this sense I understand that the companies’ owners are worried because you could have the exportation of the continental model on them.”
• Several judges said that the Charter, despite the “safeguards”, would give the court “more power”. Asked whether the proposal for safeguards would work, one judge said “I guess not, because I saw what was the destiny of other safeguard clauses in the treaty.”
• A legal opinion previously commissioned by the TUC found that, “The attempt by the New Labour government to ‘protect’ the UK’s restrictive labour laws from the fundamental rights proclaimed in the European Constitution failed…there will be no ‘protecting’ UK labour laws.”

Maybe Blair knows something we don't. Or maybe he just doesn't care, now he's finally on his way out...

Personality Politics

"As Tony Blair prepares to step out of the limelight it is worth remembering how he brought his personal life into play in the early stages of his rise to power. Blair the family man, with a working wife and three young children, pictured at his kitchen table in Islington where he famously cooked the children’s supper; Blair the father who got up in the night to attend to a crying child, because wife Cherie had to be in court next day. As Prime Minister, we saw him pose with his family outside Number 10, or talking to the press clutching a mug with pictures of his children stamped across it."

Writing in the June issue of The Difference, Jill Kirby asks "If we are to judge politicians by what happens in their personal lives, rather than by the quality of their policies, they may find themselves rejected on account of personal and family failings, rather than the failure of their policies. Is this the path we really want to tread?"

Let us know what you think!

Blair's European Red Herrings

Four years ago the Government set out its non-negotiable "red lines" for the contents of the proposed EU Constitution. Today Blair merely repeats the same position asserting that he will not compromise over the same four areas at this week's EU summit:

"First, we will not accept a treaty that allows the charter of fundamental rights to change UK law in any way. Second, we will not agree to something that replaces the role of British foreign policy and our foreign minister. Thirdly, we will not agree to give up our ability to control our common law and judicial and police system. And fourthly, we will not agree to anything that moves to qualified majority voting something that can have a big say in our own tax and benefit system. We must have the right in those circumstances to determine it by unanimity."

Let's get a few facts straight. Firstly, he may well claim that his stance means there would be no need for a referendum on any treaty, but he is in no position to bind his successor, and if Europe Minister Geoff Hoon says Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown could still hold a referendum on the future of the EU, then we could yet have a referendum — as indeed we should.

Secondly, two years ago, Blair gave explicit assurances to MPs in the Commons that Britain's £3 billion rebate from the European Union would remain and he would not negotiate it away, only to reverse his position just two weeks later. We eventually gave up about 20% of the rebate in the 2007-2013 seven-year budget. Now that he is even more desperate to secure a legacy beyond Iraq, we have even less reason to believe or trust him.

Finally, I think a closer inspection will reveal that at least three of his non-negotiable "red herrings lines" have already been crossed:

1. Charter of Fundamental Rights

Blair famously tried to tell us that this would have no more legal standing than The Beano, but the European Commission informed us that it would become mandatory. Its eventual status will probably be decided by judges at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, not by Britain or British politicians. The Human Rights Act already incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into English law, a move that has already required UK law to change and principles of our common law to be set aside.

2. Foreign policy

Our involvement in the Galileo satellite-navigation system has already compromised our independence on foreign policy. If the new "treaty" preserves any of the following phrases from the original Constitution that Blair approved, then we will no longer have full control over our own foreign policy or even use of our own troops: 1. "The EU shall conduct a common foreign and security policy, based on … the achievement of an ever-increasing degree of convergence of Member States' actions," "The common foreign and security policy shall be put into effect by the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs and by the Member States, using national and Union resources," and "Before taking any action on the international scene or any commitment which could affect the Union’s interests, each Member State shall consult the others within the European Council or the Council" (Article I-39). 2. "The common security and defence policy … shall provide the Union with an operational capability drawing on assets civil and military… The performance of these tasks shall be undertaken using capabilities provided by the Member States" (Article I-40). 3. "The Member States shall support the Union's common foreign and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity" (Article III-195).

3. Common law and judicial and police system

On common law, this is the same as his first point, on which see the note above that the Convention on Human Rights has already undermined British common law. You only need to look at any British legal decisions that have been overturned by the European courts to realise we have already lost control of our judicial system. On the police, I think Cranmer just about says it all in his post today about Europol and the EU's aspirations to police statehood.

4. Tax and benefits

Of course, a proportion of our taxes already goes to Europe, but that's not Blair's point. He is simply claiming that we will retain our veto in the tax field. Clauses from the failed Constitution to watch for in the new treaty that would signal a surrender of economic control, paving the way for the introduction of European levels of taxation on the UK, include "The Union shall take measures to ensure coordination of the economic policies of the Member States" (Articles I-14) and "The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives" (Article I-53).

To conclude: Beware — It all sounds like yet more Euro-Spin on its way!

See also: Euro-Spin Update

Generation Blair

A child's start in life is still determined by the class, education, marital status, and ethnic background of its parents. By the age of three, children from disadvantaged families are already lagging a full year behind their middle-class contemporaries in social and educational development.

That is the damning conclusion of a study monitoring around 16,000 families of children born across the UK in 2000-2. An assessment of vocabulary revealed that children of graduates are ten months ahead of those with the least-educated parents, and a separate assessment measuring children's understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes, and shapes found an even wider gap of twelve months between the two groups.

Parents' education was not the only significant factor, however. For, although black African parents were more likely to have degrees than white parents, a quarter of the black Caribbean and black African children assessed were delayed in their development, compared with only 4% of white children. Here the difference appears to be caused by the children's family background: a third of black African (32%) and almost half the black Caribbean children (47%) were being brought up by lone mothers, compared with just 14% of white children and 5% of Indian children who had lone parents. This is an important factor, as the analysis also showed nearly three-quarters (72%) of children with single parents live below the poverty line.

In a worrying confirmation of the extent of another problem that has emerged in the last five years, the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, who carried out the research, also reports that almost one child in four is overweight (18%) or obese (5%) at age three. This study also revealed a similar difference attributable to race and class. Just 9% of Indian children overweight or obese compared with 23% of White and 33% of Black Caribbean children. Equally, children in more advantaged areas of England and Scotland were less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in less advantaged areas.

Late last year, Tony Blair claimed the Sure Start programme, designed to help the children in Britain's most deprived families, was "one of the Government's greatest achievements." Can anyone tell me what NuLabour has actually achieved with the £3,000,000,000 of tax-payers' money that it has poured into the scheme?

Reflecting on Blair's Reflections

"In this age, foreign policy is not an interesting distraction from the hard slog of domestic reform. It is the element that describes a nation's face to the world at large, forms the perceptions of others to it and, in part, its perception of itself."

Those who know me will know that I have long held that the next generation of politicians need to possess a far greater knowledge and experience of international affairs. Two of my favourite quotes are Michael Portillo's "Today’s politicians are amateurs who turn to foreign affairs only late in their careers" (The Sunday Times, 1 August 2004) and Alan Duncan's "Why are we talking so little of foreign affairs and social cohesion?" (18 July 2005)

I am therefore delighted to read that Tony Blair has now realised the central role of foreign policy in this country's future. It's just a pity that his Government is still not acting upon his reflections:

1. Be a player not a spectator

"There is no international debate of importance in which we are not as fully engaged as we can be... And the agenda constructed should be about our values—freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also justice and fairness."

Like we're not doing in places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia, and across the developing world.

2. Transatlantic co-operation is still vital

"Europe and America share the same values. We should stick together. That requires a strong transatlantic alliance. It also means a strong, effective and capable EU. A weak Europe is a poor ally."

So why have we not done more to defend our special relationship with America or more to limit the European Union's anti-American policies?

3. Be very clear about global terrorism

"Revolutionary communism took many forms. It chose unlikely bedfellows. But we still spent decades confronting it. This new terrorism has an ideology."

Yes! Islamism is ideological. So let's start having an intelligent debate at the level of ideas, without making accusations of racism or islamophobia and without allowing the terrorists to exploit our democratic rights and freedoms to achieve their destructive ends.

4. We must stand up for our values

"We are faced with a challenge derived from a world view. We need our own world view, no less comprehensive but based on the decent values we believe in."

Indeed, so why are we not standing up for those values when it comes to China, Burma, Central Asia, or Zimbabwe?

5. It's about tomorrow's agenda too

"We need a sufficiently strong basis, founded in a clear and even-handed commitment to our values, for the world as it changes to adopt these values, universal as they are, to guide us."

Right, so it would help if we didn't constantly undermine those values, either domestically or internationally, and if we knew what it meant to stand for them.

As Blair concludes, over to you...

A Country Without A Hero

Russia's President Vladimir Putin yesterday maintained, "We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to fill it with new kinds of weapons." Yet, in the latest round of what increasingly looks like a new Cold War, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister and presidential hopeful Sergei Ivanov announced that the former superpower has successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads and a tactical cruise missile with an increased range "capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems."

Perhaps now would be a good time for "Vanity Blair" to allow his successor Gordon "Joseph Sedley?" Brown to get on with the job of running our country. By all means, let our latter-day "Captain George Osborne" continue his tax-payer funded world tour, selling weapons of mass destruction to former terrorist states as he goes, but with such significant developments taking place on the world stage, we cannot afford any further paralysis or stagnation by this unprecedented electoral inter-regnum.

Blair Sorry?

In his attempt to justify his latest piece of legislation, "wartime" stop and question powers for the police, Mr Blair claims in The Sunday Times, "We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong...a dangerous misjudgment."

With the Home Secretary, John Reid, suggesting that the Government might opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights, is the retreating Prime Minister apologising for incorporating the European Convention into British law through the Human Rights Act 1998 — for striking the wrong "balance between protecting the safety of the public and the rights of the individual suspected of being involved with terrorism"?

More School Voucher Support

Yet another publication has taken up Graeme Leach's call in The Difference for the introduction of school vouchers. This time it is The Spectator, in which Fraser Nelson argues:

[Sweden's voucher system] fits perfectly within Mr Cameron’s philosophical framework. The state pays the fees, but organises nothing. Civil society is invited to step in, run schools and take over in areas where the state fails appallingly. Nor is this an obscure Scandinavian theory. School choice is being used in the Netherlands, Chile, Canada and charter schools in the United States. Reams of data have now been assembled, proving that the choice works for the taxpayer, and promotes equality and social mobility. ...

In Mr Blair’s system, new schools can only open once they have a found a sponsor willing to part with £2 million in areas that fit ‘deprivation criteria’. Academies usually replace failed schools, thus adding nothing to the number of schools. Negotiations often take two years. And if the organisers want to open a second school, they must start this whole process from the beginning — and run the dispiriting gauntlet of the LEAs yet again

Mr Willetts is proposing to correct each of these defects.

The Spec's Political Editor concludes, "The freeing up of the education marketplace is a Conservative mission that, if implemented properly, could represent a bigger step forward than expanding grammar schools. But the first task for Mr Cameron is to make this case to his party."

To an extent that is clearly true. However, from my conversations with Conservatives over the past fortnight, I still wonder to what extent the Conservative "core vote" (especially the hidden, traditional blue vote that is either offline or not inclined to blog) is truly upset with the Party over the city academies / grammar school debate.

Blair's Faith

Readers may wish to comment on the following letter from today's Independent:

Sir: Of all the reviews of Tony Blair's legacy the ones I find most surprising are those which refer to his Christian faith as though that had been pivotal in his policy making. True, he has been supportive in campaigning for trade justice but over a wide area of domestic policy he has largely ignored the pleadings from faith communities.

Recently there has been the case of the Sexual Orientation Regulations where the "gay rights" agenda has taken priority over the rights of those with an orthodox Christian conscience. In schools, the distribution of condoms and morning-after pills has taken precedence over moral education, even though such a policy has led to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and in contributing to Britain having the highest abortion rate in Europe.

Economically it has been more advantageous for couples to live together rather than marry, and mothers have been pressured into dumping young children in nurseries rather than being helped to be good home-makers.

Commenting on an adulterous minister Tony Blair said "he'd done nothing wrong", quite apart from trying to conceal the sleaze of cash for peerages.

On top of all this we've had the liberalising of drugs and drink laws, the promotion of big-time gambling, and new media laws which have made it more difficult to get a clean-up of TV.

JOHN WAINWRIGHT
POTTERS BAR, HERTFORDSHIRE

Super Thursday 2

Prompted by the anonymous comment about the latest 13% increase in the projected cost of ID cards, due to become compulsory for everyone applying for a new passport from 2009, I am opening this thread for any other readers who spot items of "bad news" being buried today.

I'll add to the list with this morning's government admission that 28 NHS trusts are failing to ensure non-emergency hospital patients are kept in single-sex accommodation — incidentally also yet another of Blair's broken promises, as he committed himself to end mixed-sex accommodation in the NHS in his original 1997 general election manifesto.

"Look At Our Economy"

Our past-his-'use by date' prime minister today challenges us to "Look at our economy":

• The highest borrowing costs among the Group of Seven (G7) nations — Interest rates at their highest for six years (not a bad record since Labour continued Conservative economic policy for Blair's first years in power)
  
• Inflation rate at its highest since before 1997
  
• Quarterly house-price inflation above 10 percent
  
• Record numbers of repossessions and people filing for bankruptcy
  
• Unsecured consumer debt in excess of £1 trillion
  
• International competitiveness down from fourth to thirteenth
  
• A spiralling trade deficit, now at more than £55billion (compared with a trade surplus in 1997)
  
• Productivity in the public sector down 10% overall — down 15-20% in health and education
  
• 1.2 million 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) — twice as many as are classified as unemployed
  
• 2.7 million recipients of incapacity benefit (not counted in the supposedly record low unemployment figures), 1.8 million of whom are thought to be physically capable of returning to work
  
• A third of households now dependent on the state for at least half their income
  
• UK pensions, once the envy of the world, now decimated after Brown rejected warnings about the consequences of his pensions plunder
  
• More than 110 tax rises in Tony's ten years, costing every family an extra £1,300 each year
  
• The poorest fifth of households £531 per year worse off and the next poorest fifth £427 worse off than they would have been under the 1997 tax and welfare system
• Number of households living on under £100 per week up from one million in 1997 to 1.5 million

Perhaps we shouldn't look too closely after all...

Blair Memories - In His Own Words

To mark the final episode in the "end of the beginning of the end" saga that is the prime minister's long-awaited departure, I thought I'd post some of my favourite quotes. Please do add some of your own in the comments!

"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war."

"Now is not the time for sound-bites. I can feel the hand of history on my shoulder."

"Profound problems require profound remedies."

"I am absolutely confident that the mechanisms for judging my fallibility are infallible."

Celebrating Great Britain

300 years ago today, having been ratified on 16 January 1707 by the parliament in Edinburgh by 110 votes to 67, the Act of Union came into force, providing "That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain."

How strange that in two days time Scotland could well take its first serious steps towards independence and the eventual balkanisation of the United Kingdom, itself a step towards our complete absorption into a federal Europe...

Now, that would be some legacy for the Scottish born and bred Tony Blair.

Blair's Self-Defence

"I got it wrong on problem families, admits Blair" declares the Telegraph. In actual fact his supposed admission of error was a self-righteous projection of blame onto unnamed advisors who "misguided us to the wrong policy conclusion" and an attack on David Cameron's recent call for a revolution in responsibility.

The outgoing prime minister is of course right no longer to agree with "the Blair of 1992" who believed that investment alone would deal with the "small and unrepresentative minority" of trouble-makers. However, he still fails to understand "the Cameron of 2007" and also seems not to recognise that the decisions he has been responsible for taking during his ten years in power have exacerbated the general social malaise through his consistent and deliberate destruction of our country's historic local and national institutions, from the family, through local councils, to Parliament itself.

He appears self-deluded when he maintains:

"I don't believe this is an issue to do with society as a whole. Obviously it impacts on society as a whole. But it is not part of a general breakdown in society, a tearing of our social fabric or a descent into a 'decivilised' culture. ... The reality is that we are dealing with a very small number of highly dysfunctional families and children whose defining characteristic is that they do not represent society as a whole. They are the exception, not the rule."

The reality is that five out of every six police officers have been assaulted in the line of duty during the last five years.

The reality is that almost three teachers a week are subject to serious assaults at work, 17 per cent of pupils have Special Educational Needs, and truancy is up by almost a quarter since 1997.

The reality is that more than 60,000 NHS staff are physically assaulted by patients and relatives of patients each year.

Those responsible for such widespread disorder are not merely a "small and unrepresentative minority" to be dismissed as easily as Mr Blair would have us believe.

As I have already said, he clearly fails to understand "the Cameron of 2007" for Mr Blair still thinks that the answer is to increase the powers of the state:

"I now think that the proper answer is to add to the ASB laws measures that target failing and dysfunctional families early, and place those families within a proper, structured, disciplined framework of help and insistence on proper behaviour.

"I know this is difficult and controversial, because it involves intervening before the child is committing criminal offences, at least serious ones, and when the families have not yet become a menace."

We have heard this predeterministic line from him before. However, in this regard, David Cameron's answer is the complete reverse of what Mr Blair is suggesting – and the reverse of what Mr Blair appears to be portraying as Mr Cameron's position. Unlike Labour, who would support Mr Blair's belief that "a nanny state is what we need," the Conservative leader wishes to decrease the role of the state or, as he puts it, "to roll forward the frontiers of society."

On one point, however, Mr Blair is right: We need to "Concentrate on the facts. The right analysis will bring a better answer."

Time is Up - Protect Darfur

Ahead of tomorrow's global protests to mark the fourth anniversary of the conflict in Darfur, and clearly not appreciating that the time for mere talk has long passed, Tony Blair has yet again threatened "tougher action" against Sudan's government and rebels if they fail to act to end the crisis in Darfur.

The LibDem's Lynne Featherstone says all that's necessary in response:

"It is clear that what we are witnessing in Darfur is genocide. The British Government and the international community cannot continue to watch as this catastrophe unfolds in front of them. A no-fly zone, a proper and extensive arms embargo, targeted travel bans and asset seizures as well as meaningful sanctions are all essential yet the Government has so far done nothing. What will it take before this country takes the effective action that is so desperately needed?"

A Nation of Immigrants?

Just a couple of days since the Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, admitted that large-scale immigration has damaged our poorest communities, has deeply unsettled the country, and has resulted in inequality and child poverty, a new Civitas report reveals that immigration into Britain is now running at a level that is without precedent in our history and which threatens our cohesion as a nation.

Maintaining that immigration had never previously risen above very low levels or had any serious demographic impact prior to the last part of the twentieth century, the report's author, David Conway, claims that Labour's policies since 1997 have amounted to a virtual abandonment of the control of our borders, with net foreign immigration now representing an increase in Britain's population of one per cent every two years. He suggests:

"The country may possibly have already reached a tipping point beyond which it can no longer be said to contain a single nation. Should that point have been reached, then ironically, in the course of Britain having become a nation of immigrants, it would have ceased to be a nation. Once such a point is reached, political disintegration may be predicted to be not long in following."

Speaking earlier this week, the Immigration Minister cited the case of a school in his constituency where non-English speakers have soared from 1-in-20 to 1-in-5 in just a year and admitted, "It is true that a small number of schools have struggled to cope, that some local authorities have reported problems of overcrowding in private housing and that there have been cost pressures on English language training."

The new Australia-style points-based system that he revealed, restricting immigration to skilled workers (a policy adopted from the Conservatives' 2005 election manifesto) and to be introduced next year, is long overdue. However, this will have no impact on illegal immigrants or people coming from the European Union. Moreover, the Government still does not accept the need for a cap on how many migrants it allows into the country, so there is no reason to suppose that the new system will make any noticeable difference to our present laissez-faire migration.

If Britain is to remain a stable, free, and tolerant country, we need to recognise the extent to which Tony Blair's leadership of this country has radically and irreversibly transformed the face of our communities. Further, if we are to hold society together, we need to realise that the dialogue of civilisations is not merely an exercise to be carried out between nations but is now a requirement within our nation. Lastly, if we are truly to get a grip on this issue, we also need to reclaim full control of our borders from Europe – something that Blair's commitment yesterday to finalise a "basic outline agreement for a treaty" at June's European summit will not facilitate.