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There's an old maxim among journalists that you shouldn't let yourself become the story.
As the Evening Standard's long-serving comment editor, I'm mostly happy to commission others to write on these pages and let them take both plaudits and flak.
But when I find that not only have I become the story, in the row over Labour's immigration policy, but that my views have been twisted out of all recognition, I have to respond.
I wrote here last Friday that, in the wake of the Nick Griffin row, we had to be honest about immigration and the benefits it has brought.
I also wrote of my disappointment that ministers have shied away from this debate, a point I illustrated with an account of the shift in immigration policy almost a decade a go.
As a ministerial speechwriter in a former career, in 2000 I penned a key speech for the then immigration minister Barbara Roche, which mooted changes to make it easier for skilled workers to come to the UK.
That was based on a sensitive report on migration by the Prime Minister's Performance and Innovation Unit.
Multiculturalism was not the primary point of the report or the speech. The main goal was to allow in more migrant workers at a point when - hard as it is to imagine now - the booming economy was running up against skills shortages.
But my sense from several discussions was there was also a subsidiary political purpose to it - boosting diversity and undermining the Right's opposition to multiculturalism.
I was not comfortable with that. But it wasn't the main point at issue.
Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a "plot" to make Britain multicultural.
There was no plot. I've worked closely with Ms Roche and Jack Straw and they are both decent, honourable people whom I respect (not something I'd say for many politicians).
What's more, both were robust on immigration when they needed to be: Straw had driven through a tough Immigration and Asylum Act in 1999 and Roche had braved particularly cruel flak from the Left over asylum seekers.
Rather, my sense was that the nervousness came primarily from No 10.
According to my notes of one meeting in mid-July 2000, held at the PIU's offices in Admiralty Arch, there was a debate about whether the report should be published by the PIU or by the Home Office: the PIU didn't think the Prime Minister wanted his "prints" on it.
From Tony Blair, the man who took us to war in Iraq on a lie - and who later fired the faithful Roche on a whim, months before she lost her seat thanks to the war - I don't find that particularly surprising.
Perhaps the lesson of this row is just how hard it still is to have any sensible debate about immigration.
The Right see plots everywhere and will hyperventilate at the drop of a chapati: to judge by some of the rubbish published in the past few days, it's frankly not hard to see why ministers were nervous.
The Left, however, will immediately accuse anyone who raises immigration as an issue as "playing the race card" - as the Government has on several occasions over the past decade.
Both sides need to grow up. A diverse society that welcomes immigrants works.
We've got one right here in London. Why is that so hard to discuss?
Reader views (10)
So Andrew, you say Straw is one of the '...decent, honourable people'. Would that be the same Straw who voted for invading Iraq based on WMD LIES: 'Tony Blair, the man who took us to war in Iraq on a lie' (and see Straw's statements on those WMDs that he made in Parliament prior to the invasion)???
No matter how hard you try with words to 'spin' your way out of SOME of the truth you stated, there's another big hole you have dug for LIEbore to get buried in.
Are you now going to write another article claiming you didn't mean that Phony 'Blacker than black' bliar LIED about those Iraqi WMDs?
- Ralph, London
What is so worrying about this recent revelation(but long suspected by all of us who have watched our country changed beyond all recognition over the past 15 years) is the media silence with which Neather's revelations have been received.
Only Melanie Phillips has highlighted this in the Daily Mail but elsewhere- silence.The truly awful thing is that New Labour have actually succeeded, in so short a time, in rendering England a place unrecognisable to those of us over 40.I have yet to meet anyone who can honestly tell me what benefits have resulted (to anyone other than the immigrant)from mass immigration.The opportunity to experience foreign cuisine(which is what is always offered up as something to be grateful for)is a pathetic sop for everything we have lost.I really cannot see any of the major parties making any changes in future.
The ground really has been sold from beneath unborn feet.
- Peter A, London,England
Andrew, even the very suggestion that immigration should be used for socially enginneering this country is scandalous and treacherous. Especially since you mislead your core voters. When the BNP talk about engineering Britain to become more white the left howl like banshees. Whats the difference with this revelation? We now know what Labour have been up to behind our backs, importing votes, lowering pay, forced diversity, undermining national identity.
- Lee, Leeds
Just wondered i am not up on the legal world but isn't it illegall too import voters to artificially support a government.I am aware that people who have made britain their new home are not allpwed to vote for some years but when they do they usually vote labour.I have noticed that comparing some electoral numbers with the previous years total voters are producing more voters than the previous years,markedly so.Have labour been importing prospective votes through their now admitted immigration policy to bolster future support,and is this noy illegal?
- Bains, nottingham
The labour shortages should have been allowed to slow down the economic growth. If they did we wouldn't had have to face the near meltdown later on. I accept, however, that under the misguided 'no boom no bust' banner the policy of an open border fitted in like a glove.
- Iceman, Sudbury, Suffolk
My Dad always warned me about Labour. You cannot trust them, he used to say. They hate Britain and everything it stands for and want to undermine it from within to create a permanent majority in their favour. They destroyed a fantastic education system in order to give all us plebs no fighting chance at social mobility (so we won'y vote Tory), and they love creating state dependencies be they people on benefits, a bloated public sector or even quangoes for their privately-educated mates. My Dad used to say all this in the 1980s and I thought him an old school bigot who didn't get it. But Dad - you were right. That's exectly what they are like. I'm sorry for dismissing you, and I'm even sorrier I ever voted for them (embarrassed even that I fell for the "New Labour" lie). My Dad has dimentia now so doesn't notice the damage done to his country after 12 years of their nonsense. All I can do now is warn my son and hope he is not as fooled as I was.
- Digger, London
You say of the deliberate increase in immigration fostered nearly ten years ago "there was also a subsidiary political purpose to it - boosting diversity and undermining the Right's opposition to multiculturalism."
Then you say "Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a "plot" to make Britain multicultural."
Where's the twist? A "political purpose" to boost diversity and undermine opposition to multiculturalism can perfectly fairly be described as a plot to make Britain multicultural. In what conceivable way is anything being twisted?
You are, rather clumsily, trying to put the cat back in the bag. But the cat won't go.
- Charlie, Bristol UK
This guy just cannot see that what he has done is so wrong. He actually thinks what he was party to (forced mass immigration) was the right think to do. He is dellusional and needs lessons in "how not to be corrupt". I suppose he's just another fully paid up nulabour sycophant who is so wrapped up in his own self importance, he fails to see the err of his ways. What utter failures these incompetents are.
- Tom W, London
The Government had plainly lost the plot by 2000, and are completely la-la now in 2009
The UK has many millions of skilled and unskilled 'natives' unemployed, so any immigrant workers should now return home with their families.
All the illegals and foreign criminals should be sent back, forcibly if necessary.
All asylum seekers should have any 'permission to stay' decisions reviewed before the end of the year.
- Cap, London
At the time you speak of there were more than a million people who lived in the UK claiming either unemployment benefit or hidden unemploymnet benefit Incapacity benefit.
Labour, egged on by their new found chums (soon to be ex chums) in big business wanted a biddable,flexible workforce that could be put to work for less than the minimum wage by creating "netting off" contracts where evey amenity (housing, travel to work meals whilst at work) were overcharged for. This priced the native worker out of a job but required the state to pick up the pieces in benefits and healthcare provision.The imported workfore paid no tax as they were beneath the threshold and the gangmasters even charged them to send their money back to their own ccountry so there was no stimulus to the local economy Labour has never been robust nor even close to robust on immigration. No one is allowed to articulate the benefits and disadvantages of uncontrolled immigration without being shouted down by those with a vested interest. London is now a "White Flight" city where much of the violent crime is carries d out by migrants or their offspring. There certainly is a plot and the facts are now coming out
- John Mac, Sevenoaks Kent
